Morality and the Good Life

1. Morality and the Good Life Using our Moral Imagination

2. Review • The Ring of Gyges – Plato asks the question of ‘Why Be Moral?’ • The implication of the story is that anybody would do the same as Gyges and they would be a fool not to. • If we condemn Gyges, it’s because we are envious or don’t want to be thought badly of. • In Plato’s view, we act out only out of our own self-interests.

3. Review • People praise moral behavior for the rewards it brings. • But the appearance of morality gets these rewards as well as the actual morality, so the prudent person will be concerned with reputation, not morality. • “Why be Moral?”

4. Review • Aristotle’s virtue theory is a character based view: What is the good person like? (Instead of asking: What is the right thing to do? – action based question). • General moral virtue is an abiding character trait that makes one a good steward of one’s self-interest (prudent), a good human being, a good friend and a good citizen. • An abiding character trait that helps you to fulfill your function in society as long as a reasonably good society would include this role.

5. Review • Aristotle was interested in the question of how to live “a complete and flourishing human life”. • For Aristotle, a virtue is a mean between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. ---- The Golden Mean! • Aristotle calls these excesses and deficiencies vices – for someone who has all the vices is called vicious.

6. Review • Eudaimonia(εὐδαιμονία) – “Happiness”, “Well-Being”, “Flourishing”. • Arete (ἀρετή) – “Virtue”, “Excellence”, “Goodness”.

7. Review • Aquinas – Faculty of the mind (Thin description) • Plato – Techné (Skills) • Aristotle – Arete (Character)(Modeled on Morals)(Act from virtue with the right reason coming from the agent)(Full Virtue – Thick Description)

8. Benedict Spinoza (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677)

9. Virtue, Reason and the Passions: Benedict Spinoza, Ethics • Someone who exercises reason is independent of the passions. • The passions restrain reason, and even delude reason into making us believe we need or want something. • Reason is self-interested – as the proper virtue of human beings.

10. Ethics • Passions are external, and out of control from reason. • Acting in the law of nature, is acting in accordance with our virtue, which simply exemplifies reason and knowledge.

11. David Hume

12. Human Feeling as the Source of Ethics: David Hume, Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals • There are no moral facts, since there are only empirical and conceptual facts. • Reason is slave to the passions, but we can introspect to identify our passions, and generalize our feelings to distant others (the artificial virtue of Justice). • “A is morally wrong” means “I have a sentiment to blame someone for doing A”.

13. Moral Principles • Sentimentalism: we come to know moral truths through our emotions and feelings for others.

14. Immanuel Kant

15. Duty and Reason as the Ultimate Principle: Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals • A good will is not good because of its effect; it is good in itself. • An action done from duty derives it worth from the maxim by which it is determined. • I can will the lie, but not that lying should be a universal law. • All imperatives of duty can be derived from this one categorical imperative .

16. Metaphysics of Morals • First Categorical Imperative: “I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” • Second Categorical Imperative: “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”

17. Metaphysics of Morals • A rational being necessarily will that his faculties be developed. • Rational beings are ends in themselves, not to be used merely as means.

18. Metaphysics of Morals • Moral Realism • There are moral facts and they are not reducible to natural facts, though “the non-moral features of a situation fix its moral status”. (nonnaturalism, supervenience) • Transcendental Deduction

19. Metaphysics of Morals • “A is morally wrong” means “It is true that A is morally wrong”. (Correspondence theory of truth.) Kant: “A is morally wrong” means “A is incompatible with the categorical imperative”.