18 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. |
| 12066 | Aristotelian and Kripkean essentialism are very different theories [Witt] |
| Full Idea: The differences between Aristotelian essentialism and Kripke's essentialism are so fundamental and pervasive that it is a serious distortion of both views to think of essentialism as a single theory. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be very important, because there is a glib assumption that when essentialism is needed for modal logic, that we must immediately have embraced what Aristotle was saying. Aristotle was better than Kripke. |
| 12067 | An Aristotelian essence is a nonlinguistic correlate of the definition [Witt] |
| Full Idea: An Aristotelian essence is a nonlinguistic correlate of the definition of the entity in question. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is a simple and necessity corrective to the simplistic idea that Aristotle thought that essences just were definitions. Aristotle believes in real essences, not linguistic essences. |
| 12082 | If unity is a matter of degree, then essence may also be a matter of degree [Witt] |
| Full Idea: By holding that the most unified beings have essences in an unqualified sense, while allowing that other beings have them in a qualified sense - we can think of unity as a matter of degree. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is Witt's somewhat unorthodox view of how we should read Aristotle. I am sympathetic, if essences are really explanatory. That means they are unstable, and would indeed be likely to come in degrees. |
| 12089 | Essences mainly explain the existence of unified substance [Witt] |
| Full Idea: The central function of essence is to explain the actual existence of a unified substance. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 5 n1) | |
| A reaction: She is offering an interpretation of Aristotle. Since existence is an active and not a passive matter, the identity of the entity will include its dispositions etc., I presume. |
| 12102 | Essential properties of origin are too radically individual for an Aristotelian essence [Witt] |
| Full Idea: The radical individuality of essential properties of origin makes them unsuitable for inclusion in an Aristotelian essence. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: Nevertheless, Aristotle believes in individual essences, though these seem to be fixed by definitions, which are composed of combinations of universals. The uniqueness is of the whole definition, not of its parts. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 12085 | Reality is directional [Witt] |
| Full Idea: Reality is directional. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: [Plucked from context! She attributes the view to Aristotle] This slogan beautifully summarises the 'scientific essentialist' view of reality, based not on so-called 'laws', but on the active powers of the stuffs of reality. |
| 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? |