22 ideas
8013 | In the Reformation, morality became unconditional but irrational, individually autonomous, and secular [MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: Three concepts about morality emerge from the Reformation period: that moral rules are unconditional demands that lack rational justification; that moral agents are sovereign in choices; and that secular powers have their own norms and justifications. | |
From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.10) | |
A reaction: I get the impression that a rather frank admission of the role of self-interest emerged at that time as well. It is only in the late seventeenth century that the possibility of a secular altruism begins to be investigated. But there's Shakespeare... |
8021 | The Levellers and the Diggers mark a turning point in the history of morality [MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: The Levellers and the Diggers mark a turning point in the history of morality. | |
From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: John Lilburne, the Leveller, 'Free-Born John', was the most important of them. They mainly fought for rights of religious conscience, but it quickly escalated into a demand for economic and social rights. It spread to France and the United States. |
1556 | By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias] |
Full Idea: I regard you all as relatives - by nature, not by convention. By nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature. | |
From: Hippias (fragments/reports [c.430 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 337c8 |
8006 | When Aristotle speaks of soul he means something like personality [MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: When Aristotle speaks of the soul we could very often retain his meaning by speaking of personality. | |
From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch. 7) | |
A reaction: MacIntyre contrasts this strongly with Plato's dualist view. Famously Aristotle thinks the soul is the 'form' of the body, but this implies that he also includes the higher-level functions of the body. Soul is character? |
2176 | There is only a problem of free will if you think the notion of 'voluntary' can be metaphysically deepened [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: There is a problem of free will only for those who think that the notion of voluntary can be metaphysically deepened. | |
From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], III - p.68) | |
A reaction: Years later, I now see that his refers to a pet hate of mine in discussions of free will, which is the idea that a person can have something called 'ultimate' responsibility for an action (which is the 'deep' version of 'you did it'). |
2181 | It is an absurd Kantian idea that at the limit rationality and freedom coincide [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: There is a deluded Kantian idea that at the limit rationality and freedom will totally coincide. | |
From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], VI - p.158) |
4317 | We judge weakness of will by an assessment after the event is concluded [Williams,B, by Cottingham] |
Full Idea: Williams has shown that whether an action was weakness of will depends on an evaluation after the event, as in the question of whether Gauguin was right to abandon his family to pursue his art. | |
From: report of Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993]) by John Cottingham - Reason, Emotions and Good Life p.1 | |
A reaction: The 'Gauguin Problem' is that Gauguin's actions only become weakness of will if the pictures are no good, and he can't know that till he's painted them. Good point. |
2174 | Responsibility involves cause, intention, state of mind, and response after the event [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: The four elements of any conception of responsibility are cause, intention, state of mind, and response after the event. | |
From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], III - p.53) |
2178 | In bad actions, guilt points towards victims, and shame to the agent [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: In what I have done, the guilt points in one direction towards what has happened to others, and the shame in another direction to what I am. | |
From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], IV - p.92) | |
A reaction: Not convinced. I think shame has the fear of being observed as an inescapable component. Even when alone shame involves imagining what others might think. |
8002 | Sophists don't distinguish a person outside one social order from someone outside all order [MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: The sophist tradition failed to distinguish the difference between the concept of a man who stands outside and is able to question the conventions of some one given social order, and the concept of a man who stands outside social life as such. | |
From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch. 3) | |
A reaction: A very nice distinction. Compare foreigners in Athens with Diogenes of Sinope, who renounced all cities. This is the germ of MacIntyre's view that morality is essentially dependent on some sort of social order. He is a reviver of virtue theory. |
8012 | The value/fact logical gulf is misleading, because social facts involve values [MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: One reason why it is highly misleading to talk of a logical gulf between value and fact....is that we cannot characterize the social life of a tribe in their factual terms and escape their evaluations. | |
From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.10) | |
A reaction: Personally I like the objection that facts about functions cannot avoid the value of good functions, but this is very good. It is much better than simply trying to find a specific counterexample, such as facts about promises. Values just are facts. |
8005 | 'Happiness' is a bad translation of 'eudaimonia', which includes both behaving and faring well [MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: The name 'eudaimonia' is badly but inevitably translated by 'happiness', badly because it includes both the notion of behaving well and the notion of faring well. | |
From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch. 7) | |
A reaction: This seems to imply that it does not include the notion of feeling good. Aristotle, however, concludes that pleasure is part of eudaimonia. I take our 'happiness' to be an internal notion, while the Greek word is an external notion. |
2169 | Greek moral progress came when 'virtue' was freed from social status [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: There was moral progress in the ancient Greek world, notably to the extent that the idea of areté, human excellence, was freed to some extent from determination by social position. | |
From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], I - p.7) |
8001 | 'Dikaiosune' is justice, but also fairness and personal integrity [MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: The Greek 'dikaiosune' is inadequately translated as 'justice', but also as any other word; it combines the notion of fairness in externals with that of personal integrity in a way that no English word does. | |
From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch. 1) | |
A reaction: 'Dikaiosune' is said to be the main topic of Plato's 'Republic'. Plato seems to have meant it to cover whatever makes a good character. Justice in behaviour presumably flows from internal justice of character (which is, roughly, inner harmony). |
8023 | My duties depend on my identity, which depends on my social relations [MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: I cannot answer the question 'What ought I to do?' until I have answered the question 'Who am I?', and any answer to this question will specify my place in a nexus of social relationships. | |
From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.13) | |
A reaction: This is the beginning of the modern critique of deontological ethics coming from revived virtue theory. As it stands, MacIntyre's idea sounds contractual, but I think he intends it in a more organic way. I am a fan. |
2172 | The modern idea of duty is unknown in archaic Greece [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: Duty in some abstract modern sense is largely unknown to the Greeks, in particular to archaic Greeks. | |
From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], II - p.41) |
2179 | If the moral self is seen as characterless, then other people have a very limited role in our moral lives [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: The conception of the moral self as characterless leaves only a limited positive role to other people in one's moral life. | |
From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], IV - p.95) |
2180 | If reason cannot lead people to good, we must hope they have an internal voice [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: If we think the power of reason is not enough by itself to distinguish good and bad, then we would hope that people have limited autonomy, that there is an internalised other in them that carries some social weight. | |
From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], IV - p.100) |
8022 | I am naturally free if I am not tied to anyone by a contract [MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: The essence of the claim to natural rights is that no one has a right against me unless he can cite some contract, my consent to it, and his performance of his obligations under it. | |
From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: This has become the foundation of western democracy, and the rebellious teenager's charter. Children have not consented to a contract with their parents. Close and loving relationships cease to be contractual. |
8031 | Fans of natural rights or laws can't agree on what the actual rights or laws are [MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: It is notorious that adherents of theories about natural rights or natural laws offer lists of rights or laws which differ in substance from each other. | |
From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.17) | |
A reaction: There seems to have been a consensus early on that self-defence was a natural right, but divergence presumably occurs when you get bolder and more complex. There is a lot of divergence over which is Shakespeare's best play. |
8008 | The Bible is a story about God in which humans are incidental characters [MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: The Bible is a story about God in which human beings appear as incidental characters. | |
From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch. 9) | |
A reaction: Very illuminating. He creates man, is betrayed by man, drowns him and starts again, sends a redeemer who gets murdered, and finally enlightens a small band who continue the uphill struggle to promote God's way. What next? |
2175 | There is a problem of evil only if you expect the world to be good [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: There is a "problem of evil" only for those who expect the world to be good. | |
From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], III - p.68) |