Aristotle

February 19, 2012 at 1:26 pm by

Aristotle says, for example, that the just individual will distribute goods in accordance with virtue or merit, and there is no suggestion here that this injunction might sometimes African Mango be ethically suspended or superseded in the name of overall good consequences. Moreover, certain sorts of actions—for example, adultery and matricide—are cheap wedding dresses
said to be always wrong, and such absolute prohibitions seem to penny stocks to watch” place Aristotle with the deontologists and against the consequentialists, once again, therefore, calling the whole teleological/ deontological distinction into question. Does this mean that we have no use for the idea of a teleological ethics? Not quite. The problems we have encountered come from the assumption that ancient trade show booths virtue ethics and modern consequentialism are (most) usefully classifi ed together and the assumption that teleology and deontology
sole f80 together exhaust the possibilities for ethics. But if, in line with etymology, we were to conceive teleological ethics more narrowly as the sort of ethics electric cigarette that prescribes certain goals, purposes, or ends for agents, then we could avoid the just- mentioned assumptions and still have a useful distinction. After all, some forms of ethics—for example, various forms of the “self-realization” ethics "">SEO Services so characteristic of British neo-Hegelianism—do seem to tell the agent consciously to strive for or seek certain goals, and it might be useful to be able to distinguish such views from approaches to morality that don’t require particular purposes in
leather furniture agents (even if they do require the agent somehow to produce good results or consequences). Alternatively, we might reserve the term “teleological” for forms of ethics that derive from or accompany a teleological metaphysics or (philosophy of ) science; and this narrow usage would also, I think, escape the pokies diffi culties that a more overarching construal of teleology appears to create. But such more specifi c or narrower usages do render the idea of teleological ethics less important as a classifi catory notion, and it may even be email lists possible that future philosophical/ ethical encyclopedias will not feel the same need to explain the notion that they certainly have felt up till now.

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the end of teleological ethics

at 1:23 pm by

The term “teleological” comes from the Greek word telos for goal, aim, or end. The idea of teleological ethics in recent usage has been understood, most fundamentally, as standing in contrast with “deontological” approaches to
sole-f63 ethics. Deontological moralities require people or societies sometimes to act in disregard of or even against good consequences, for example, by forbidding the killing of an innocent person even if that is the only way one can prevent a greater loss of human life. Teleological theories, by contrast, are all supposed to total gym xls accept some version of the idea that the end (always) justifi es the means. In addition, the notion of a teleological ethics is generally thought to embrace two rather different kinds of approaches to morality or ethics: ancient virtue ethics and modern-day consequentialism (including
pokies
utilitarianism). However, the widespread assumption that these two forms of ethics have weight loss pills something in common that distinguishes them from deontological theories is subject to great, if not insuperable, diffi culties that threaten the very idea of a fundamental distinction between teleology and deontology. In uggs the fi rst place, the idea that (act-) hair removal utilitarianism and (act-)consquentialism are teleological is something of a stretch. True, utilitarians like Henry Sidgwick often speak of happiness or pleasure as a/the rational (fi nal) end of human action and also hold that seo firms the morality of any action is determined by how much (of a net balance of ) happiness or pleasure it yields. But none of this entails cyprus company that the agent who acts rightly must aim at the general happiness or indeed at happiness at all. If the best consequences
replica handbags for human happiness will actually be achieved by an agent’s concerning herself only with her own family or by her refusing even to think about using deontologically forbidden means to certain good ends, then it pet supplies will be permissible and even obligatory for her to disregard the “goal” of universal happiness. In that case, utilitarianism is more stationary bike stand properly regarded as a consequentialist view than as a teleological one; and indeed the modern-day tendency, initiated by Elizabeth Anscombe, to dwell on the consequentialist, rather than on the teleological, character of utilitarianism, perfectionism, and the like, shows, I think, an implicit recognition of the inaccuracy funny t shirts of regarding these views as necessarily prescribing that people should 36 essays on the history of ethics have universal happiness or any other particular good as their goal, aim, or end in life.1 By the edmonton home builder same token, the indiscriminate application of the term “teleological” to all ancient forms of virtue ethics is also problematic.
replica watches To be sure, Aristotle not only begins the Nicomachean Ethics by saying that happiness, or eudaimonia, is a reasonable ultimate end of all human action, but also subscribes to a metaphysical form of teleology according to which all (living) things aim for
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ends or goals that are dictated by their natures. This might then understandably lead one to suppose that Aristotle thinks of the human virtue(s) he describes in books II through V of the Ethics as character traits required for individual human happiness, and that he is perhaps even an ethical egoist
Atkins Diet Food List who holds that the virtuous, rational individual aims for her own happiness in all her (deliberate) actions. But in fact this gives a distorted picture of Aristotle’s view in the Ethics, and we can take the fi rst step toward seeing this if we recognize that
no no hair removal Aristotle conceives of happiness or eudaimonia as consisting mainly in acting virtuously (over a long life). If eudaimonia is to be understood in terms of living virtuously, then, upon pain of circularity, virtue cannot also be understood as what contributes to or is required for eudaimonia. And indeed there is a great deal of evidence in the Ethics that Aristotle rejects the latter idea and instead understands virtue in intuitionist terms. The
Essay writing virtuous individual, on that reading, is someone who, without the benefi t of formulas or rules, “sees” what is just or courageous and, therefore, noble in various situations and, without a struggle or mental reservations, (habitually) acts accordingly. Situational Pizza Express vouchers facts about what is just or courageous would then function as the ground fl oor of Aristotelian ethics, with happiness being understood in terms of virtue, rather than vice versa. Moreover, Aristotle often ergohuman describes the virtuous person (e.g., the soldier who risks his life for his country) as someone who acts “for the sake of the noble,” and this seems to rule out or at least move away from the idea that (rational) virtue consists in seeking one’s own happiness. Certainly, in a fashion rather typical of ancient virtue ethics, free ipad 2 Aristotle sometimes argues that, in doing what is noble (for its own sake), we invariably are better off than if we had been the sort of person able or likely to do otherwise (accordingly, even a young man who dies bravely in battle will have had a better life than a coward who lives a long life). But, again, this only means that virtuous actions contribute to or are requisite to our happiness, not
digital signage that our happiness is their goal. (Aristotle is a eudaimonist, but it seems a mistake to think of him as an ethical egoist.) In that case, the idea that Aristotelian ethics is unambiguously teleological is mistaken or at least dubious, and this conclusion is further Data Mining Software strengthened by considering the seemingly deontological character of Aristotle’s thinking.

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ancient ethics and modern

January 19, 2012 at 1:32 pm by

The idea that there is a vast difference between ancient ethics and modern moral philosophy is a philosophical commonplace, but philosophers have various different ideas about where the difference lies, and many of those ideas are true. I want to review, briefl y, some of the differences that have been mentioned and then go on to mention another difference between ancient and modern that I think is more important than people have realized and that in fact diamond engagement rings is generally ignored. By ancient ethics I shall mean, exclusively, the ethics of classical antiquity in the West, the ethics of Greece and Rome—so I shall be excluding not only Jewish thought, but also the philosophy that fl ourished before the Common Era in India and China as well. But let me now mention seriatim some of the distinctions others have used to characterize the divide between ancient ethics and modern moral thought. First and foremost, I suppose, is the idea that the (Greek and Roman) ancients lacked our concept and phenomenon of morality—an assumption which lends itself to the title of this essay. It has been said that Greek culture was a shame culture, not a guilt culture like our own in modern times, with the result that one can only properly speak of ancient ethics, not of ancient moral philosophy. Now some part of this undoubtedly is true—though it would take a person with better photocopier hire scholarly credentials than I have to make the best case for this assumption and I don’t propose to get into the textual details of either the primary or the secondary literature that is relevant here. Still, and as I said, the notion of guilt and, commensurately, of conscience seems absent in Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans, and the Stoics, and this may mark an important difference between the ancient and the modern. Some philosophers have inferred from this difference that the Greeks altogether lacked moral concepts, and the title of this essay seems to imply this further thesis. It is easier for us to distinguish the moral and the ethical than it would have been for the Greeks and Romans, and the Greeks and Romans seemed to lack a word that means what we now mean by “morally”—though of course that very term comes from Latin. Still, we can have concepts that we lack a specifi c distinguishing word for, and the way Plato and Aristotle in particular speak about (what we would call) moral phenomena makes me hesitate—and more than hesitate—to say that they lacked moral concepts, even that they lacked ancient ethics and modern moral philosophy 39 our moral concepts. When Plato says that the philosopher should sacrifi ce his interest in philosophy to the larger needs of the state, the way he is thinking does seem distinctively, particularly, moral; and the fact that neither Plato nor Aristotle seems to be an ethical egoist (even if they are ethical eudaimonists) and the fact that they both have so much to say about justice also lend support to the idea that they were (sometimes) thinking morally without, perhaps, having fully expressed or articulated moral language. We are certainly talking about important differences here—not having specifi c or completely articulated moral language is certainly different from having it, lacking (ideas of ) conscience and guilt is certainly different from having them. But if the Greeks did in important instances think morally, and not just ethically, then the differences we have just been speaking of may not mark the philosophically deepest kind of distinction one can make between ancient ethics and modern moral philosophy.1 However, I just above mentioned (without clarifying) the notion of eudaimonism, and if, as I believe, all the positive ethical doctrines of the ancient world are eudaimonistic, then that may well mark a very important distinction between the ancient and modern. For most modern moral philosophy is distinctly non-eudaimonistic. By eudaimonism I mean, roughly, the idea that no character trait counts treadclimber reviews as a virtue (or as ethically justifi ed) unless it serves the interests of, is profi table to, those who possess it. (Alternatively, as Julia Annas puts it, eudaimonism holds that the entry point for ethical thought and speculation is the interests, the well-being, of the person doing the thinking and speculating.)2 Relatively few important modern philosophers count as eudaimonists—with Hobbes being, perhaps, the most notable modern exemplar of eudaimonism. But certainly utilitarianism and Kantian ethics are far from eudaimonistic, and perhaps the main reason why I feel so comfortable saying this is that both views think morality allows for and sometimes requires the sacrifi ce of self-interest. Now Plato’s idea in the Republic that the philosopher should sacrifi ce himself for the greater good of society seems to be neither egoistic nor eudaimonistic, and given what I have just been suggesting, this means that Plato, at least in this one place, is espousing a distinctively modern view of how the individual, or some individuals, should act.3 But Aristotle, on the other hand, never (as far as I know) strays from his espousal of eudaimonism, and, for example, when he talks of the soldier who gives up his life 1. For trenchant criticism of the idea that the Greeks paid no Proactol heed to moral considerations,

see John McDowell’s “The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle’s Ethics,” reprinted in his Mind, Value, and Reality, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, especially pp. 15–16. 2. See Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 27ff. Incidentally, I am assuming that eudaimonism doesn’t entail egoism, because one

trait that might actually benefi t an individual is an intrinsic altruistic concern for the well-

being of certain others. Our example, just below, of the courageous soldier who dies defending his polis may very well (at least given Aristotelian assumptions) illustrate this distinction. 3. My thinking here has been infl uenced by Nicholas White, “The Ruler’s Choice,” Archiv fuer Geschichte der Philosophie 68: 24–46, 1986. 40 essays on the history of ethics for the good of the polis, he nonetheless insists that such a person does better within his short life span than he would have done if he had been cowardly and, as a result, had lived a longer but unvirtuous life. (Nicomachean Ethics 1169a 12–30). And I also know of no instance or place where either Epicureanism or Stoicism clearly rejects or criticizes eudaimonism, so the fact that ancient ethics is almost exclusively eudaimonistic and that the most important modern ethical thought is defi nitely not indicates something very importantly different between the ancient and modern world. If I may be allowed to speculate, it seems to me that this major shift in emphasis is in considerable measure due to the infl uence of Christianity (and of Judaism operating through its infl uence on Christian ideals). Christianity teaches us to honor and admire Jesus’s self-sacrifi ce on behalf of humankind, and no one ever said that Jesus was himself (or that God as identical with him was) better off as a result of Jesus’s suffering and dying on the cross than would have been the case if that self-sacrifi ce had never occurred. So Christianity emphasizes the value and virtue of self-sacrifi ce in a way that goes against classical eudaimonism, and the fact is, too, that ancient Judaism, and not just Christianity, idealized kindness and compassion in a way that seems to take us beyond Greek and Roman eudaimonism toward Rolex replica watches distinctly modern moral views. The Christian ideal of agapic love, which is to some extent embodied in the Jewish injunction to love one’s neighbor as oneself, also anticipates modern moral thought. And none of this should come as any sort of surprise. Judeo-Christianity anticipates modern thought because it shaped that thought, and it is widely recognized that even such predominantly secular moral philosophers as Hutcheson, Hume, Kant, Bentham, and Mill were infl uenced by the Christian moral/religious milieu in which they were raised, lived, and did their thinking. So the rejection of eudaimonism is one of the most important differences between modern moral philosophy and ancient ethics, and for the longest time I was convinced that it represented the most important difference between the two. However, I now think that the eudaimonism/anti-eudaimonism distinction relates to another distinction that is just as, or perhaps more, important, but before I say more about this, I want to briefl y discuss two other possible ways of distinguishing between ancient and modern., both suggested by what we have been saying about the prevalence of ideals of compassion and kindness in Judeo-Christianity. First, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans say very little about (the value of ) kindness and compassion, and the reason may be that the Greeks were all intent on giving a rational basis to their ethical thinking. It is not at all clear how one could show make your own t shirt kindness or compassion to be dictates of reason/ Reason, and certainly Christianity and Judaism never attempt such a thing. To that extent, Christianity and Judaism implicitly espouse or favor a more sentimentalist approach to morality/ethics than anything one fi nds in ancient Greece and Rome. When Christianity praises and idealizes God’s love, and God as love, it doesn’t offer any rational basis for that love or for admiring it, and to that extent Christianity anticipates and shaped eighteenth-century ancient ethics and modern moral philosophy 41 British moral sentimentalism and the sentimentalism both of present-day care ethics and of contemporary versions of virtue ethics that follow Hutcheson and Hume more than Plato, Aristotle, or the Stoics. For one very obvious reason, however, I don’t think one can use this distinction to mark the main difference between ancient and modern; for even if there wasn’t any sentimentalism in the philosophical thought of classical antiquity, there is plenty of rationalism in modern moral philosophy. Kant and Sidgwick in their very different ways are both rationalists about morality, and it would be absurd to suggest that they aren’t typical of modern thought. Modern thought is divided between moral rationalists and moral sentimentalists—with the preponderance, if anything, favoring the rationalist side. Thus rationalism has been the predominant trend in both ancient and modern thought, but the distinction between sentimentalism and rationalism also suggests another possible major difference between ancient and modern steriods thought. In ancient times, the individual was seen as unproblematically connected to or immersed in his or her community (though putting things this way is perhaps too suggestive of self-consciousness about this issue that didn’t exist in ancient times).4 The idea that the individual is autonomous from others and has rights against his community never clearly occurs to Plato, Aristotle, et al.; but this idea has great prevalence in modern times, and one might conceivably want to hold that the most important difference between ancient and modern lies in this direction. Now certainly the emergence of ideals of autonomy and of the idea of rights of autonomy against other people or one’s larger community is a major development of modern thought—though I don’t think I know enough to usefully say anything about how or why all of this happened in modern times but not before. But in modern times and especially very recently, there has been a considerable backlash against the ethical individualism (as it seems reasonable to call it) that one fi nds in the modern but not the ancient world. Recent communitarians and care ethicists argue strenuously against the ethically atomistic rationalism that is perhaps most paradigmatically exemplifi ed in Kant’s philosophy, with its focus on autonomy as the basis for all morality. They oppose rationalism in general and in particular oppose the idea that the individual is metaphysically or morally conceivable independently of his or her community or circle of intimates. Morality, rather than being due to hypothetical or actual autonomous choice, is said to be something largely pre-given and not dependent on individual choice, and this is more than a little reminiscent of the kind of thinking that went on (or was presupposed, but not self-conscious) in the world of classical antiquity. So one can’t just say that the 4. This way of seeing Greek thought and social life can be found in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and in his The Philosophy of History; also, more recently, in Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988, pp. 33–34. But the view is widespread and familiar. For sustained criticism of it, however, see Nicholas

White, Individual and Confl ict in Greek Ethics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002, ch. 4.

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