Radical Evil and the Nature of Virtue

2021 ◽  
pp. 112-132
Author(s):  
Mark Timmons
Keyword(s):  
Moral Evil ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Radical Evil ◽  
Moral Feeling ◽  
Moral Requirements

This chapter situates Kant’s conception of virtue against the thesis of radical evil, according to which although human beings have a predisposition to virtue, they nevertheless have a propensity to moral evil. Section 1 of the chapter explains Kant’s conception of the “original predisposition to good” as presented in the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Section 2 discusses the predispositions to moral feeling, conscience, love of humanity, and respect that Kant posits as presuppositions of being subject to moral requirements. The thesis of radical evil is explained in section 3. Kant’s concept of virtue is the topic of section 4, the propensities to evil (frailty, impurity, and depravity) are discussed in section 5, and in section 6 the task of acquiring virtue by overcoming affects and passions leading to moral evil is explained. The chapter ends with a brief comparison of Kant’s conception of virtue with Aristotle’s.

Moral psychology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Slote
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Evaluation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Psychological Issues ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Moral Weakness ◽  
Moral Requirements ◽  
Wrong Action

Moral psychology as a discipline is centrally concerned with psychological issues that arise in connection with the moral evaluation of actions. It deals with the psychological presuppositions of valid morality, that is, with assumptions it seems necessary for us to make in order for there to be such a thing as objective or binding moral requirements: for example, if we lack free will or are all incapable of unselfishness, then it is not clear how morality can really apply to human beings. Moral psychology also deals with what one might call the psychological accompaniments of actual right, or wrong, action, for example, with questions about the nature and possibility of moral weakness or self-deception, and with questions about the kinds of motives that ought to motivate moral agents. Moreover, in the approach to ethics known as ‘virtue ethics’ questions about right and wrong action merge with questions about the motives, dispositions, and abilities of moral agents, and moral psychology plays a more central role than it does in other forms of ethical theory.

Schopenhauer and Confucian Thinkers on Compassion

2020 ◽  
pp. 346-359
Author(s):  
Douglas L. Berger
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Thought ◽  
The Will ◽  
Moral Feeling ◽  
Cultural Dialogue

In his fascinating 1836 volume On the Will in Nature, Schopenhauer demonstrates a familiarity with scholarship on classical Chinese thought that is, at best, glancing. He takes special interest, however, in a remark rendered from the Song Dynasty Confucian thinker Zhu Xi to the effect that the “will of human beings” is at the ground of all things, which suggests to him a deep resonance with his own system. Though there is nothing of substance to be found in this suspected connection, Schopenhauer may have been better advised to delve into Zhu’s reformulation of ancient Confucian formulations of compassion for an opportunity at cross-cultural dialogue. This chapter demonstrates that, while Zhu Xi’s inspiration for his explication of compassion, namely Mencius, took a far more naturalistic view of this moral feeling, Zhu’s commentarial reformulation of Mencius’s thought, which makes compassion a metaphysical manifestation of the basic patterns of human nature, may have prompted Schopenhauer to deeper confidence in his own convictions about the “intelligible character.”

scholarly journals Divine-Human Intersubjectivity and the Problem of Evil

Open Theology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-70
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Bracken
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Natural Evil ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Oriented Approach

Abstract The use of the interrelated terms divine primary causality and creaturely secondary causality to describe the God-world relationship presents problems to Christian philosophers and theologians in dealing with two key issues: first, the freedom of human beings (and to some extent other finite entities) to exercise their own causal powers in independence of Divine Providence for the world of creation; secondly, the responsibility of God and all creatures for the existence of natural evil and the corresponding responsibility of God and human beings for the existence of moral evil in this world. After reviewing some of the ways these issues have been dealt with in the past, the author offers his own solution in terms of a Neo-Whiteheadian systems-oriented approach to the God-world relationship with emphasis on a reciprocal causal relationship between God and creatures so as conjointly to bring about everything that happens in this world.

scholarly journals God, Moral Requirements, and the Limits of Freedom

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 285
Author(s):  
Laura W. Ekstrom
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Recent Argument ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Requirements

This article addresses James Sterba’s recent argument for the conclusion that God’s existence is incompatible with the degree and amount of evil in the world. I raise a number of questions concerning the moral principles that Sterba suggests God would be required to follow, as well as with respect to the analogy he draws between the obligations of a just state and the obligations of God. Against Sterba’s proposed justified divine policy of constraint on human freedom, I ask: What would motivate a perfect being to create human beings who imagine, intend, and freely begin to carry out horrific actions that bring harm to other human beings, to nonhuman animals, and to the environment? I argue that the rationale is lacking behind the thought that God would only interfere with the completion of the process of human beings’ bringing to fruition their horrifically harmful intended outcomes, rather than creating beings with different psychologies and abilities altogether. I end by giving some friendly proposals that help to support Sterba’s view that God, by nature, would be perfectly morally good.

scholarly journals Justification of Morality: Clarifying One of the Tasks of the Ethical Theory

TECHNOLOGOS ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 34-44
Author(s):  
Prokofyev Andrey
Keyword(s):  
Beneficial Effect ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Normative Content ◽  
Moral Requirements

The paper deals with borders between different tasks of the ethical theory such as defining, explaining, justifying morality, and clarifying its normative content. The focus of the study is justification of morality, i.e. developing the argumentation that can persuade a rational agent to accept moral requirements and to carry them out. The justification of morality uses as its premise some universal human needs or traits and establishesthe essential tie between them and theprincipled fulfillment of moral duty. The fact that everyone has these needs or traits should convince a rational moral skeptic to abandon her skepticism. The immediate subjects of the analysis are 1) precedents of the unreflecting confusion of justification and three other tasks of ethics and 2) conscious efforts to make the scientific explanation of morality a basis of justification. The author supposes that definitions of morality and its evolutionary, psychological, sociological explanations, no matter how neat and sophisticated they are, can not provide a ‘grip’ on a rational agent. At the same time, clarifications of the general normative content of morality also can not justify it because they presuppose that this ‘grip’ is already in place. In this regard, such conceptions of justification as ‘evolutionary’, ‘psychological’, ‘sociological’, ‘utilitarian’, and even ‘contractual’ are impossible. The author also shows that efforts of some theoreticians to base their justifications on the fact that human beings are constituted to be altruistic by evolution (R. Richards) or carrying out moral norms has an enormous beneficial effect on society (R. Campbell, A.V. Rasin) are not very successful. The real justuficatory work in these cases is done not by the appeal to biological or sociological facts but by traditional arguments – the benefit of an agent or the self-evidence of intuitions

scholarly journals UNDER AN UNSTARRY SKY: KANTIAN ETHICS AND RADICAL EVIL

ARHE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (34) ◽  
pp. 241-274
Author(s):  
EMILIANO METTINI
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Radical Evil ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
High Level ◽  
Better Than

Kantian ethics and concept concerning “radical evil” represent one of the most interesting facets of moral reflection of German philosopher. Using anthropological and philosophical approach based on well-known critical method, I. Kant tried to find a comprise between “natural” behavior (i.e. not regulated by synthetic a priori judgments) but based only on sensation of pleasant unpleasant and “rational” behavior when humans tried to exit the realm of appearance and personal egoism for entering a new ethical dimension based on right (not pathological, if using I. Kant’s word) maxims being able to make human beings better than they are. In the paper it is underscored that main goal of Kantian ethics is the creation of a community where religion is a fact of reason and not of faith and reason, having as main actors men reaching an high level of self-consciousness and virtue that I. Kant granted as the greatest happiness one can have. The author tried to highlight the passage from “human being” as individuum (representative of a species) to ethically autonomous member of social consortium using as sources different Kantian works where this problem has been studied deeply and gave great emphasis to story of Job, representing in the best way the passage the Author wrote of. At the same time, he set for himself the goal of exploring progressive character of Kantian ethics aimed at making human beings better than they are, but not the best, considering noumenic nature of ethics hidden in the “Realm of goals”. Given such assumptions, the Author leads a debate with scholars distorting Kantian ethical thought by interpretation from Lacanian standpoints so that those scholars made I. Kant original source of totalitarianisms, where, in scholars’ opinion, humans do their duty both for saving their lives and express their sadistic tendencies and makes clear that Kantian ethics, throughout contradictory and complicated, is oriented to correction and education of human behavior for saving humans being from their own passions.

Are Arendt's Reflections on Evil Still Relevant?

2008 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
Radical Evil

AbstractThe relevance of Arendt's reflections on evil is analyzed in three respects. She warns that the appeal to absolutes (good or evil) destroys politics; her claim that radical evil involves making human beings as human beings superfluous is relevant to contemporary concerns with the vast refugee and stateless populations; and her idea of the banality of evil focuses our attention on the evil deeds that persons commit even when they do not have evil motives or intentions.

scholarly journals Language Empowering in Character Building (Pemberdayaan Bahasa dalam Pembentukan Karakter)

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
Kamsinah Kamsinah
Keyword(s):  
Moral Action ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Building Components ◽  
Individual Potential ◽  
Nature And Nurture ◽  
Moral Feeling ◽  
Character Building

Character building is the most important thing to do as it is a striving system which underly behavior (Freud).  Even more, good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are to some extent a gift. Good character, however, is not given to us. we have to build it peace by peace by thought, choice, courage, and determination.  So important it is that it is said that  if there is no more character every thing is lost (Mahatma Gandhi). The best way to build it is  to develop   the function of all  individual potential,  including cognitive, affective,  and psychomotoric aspects simultanously in the context of socio-cultural interaction (in family, in  school, and in society). Character  is gained by nature and nurture. It can be done begin from the golden age to the old one through the three character building components: moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral action as suggested by Lickona. They make it possible since human beings, as  the best-formed creature of all, are the ones and the only creature posessing culture, and that,  they can educate and be educated in terms of   the model of  person of character.  Everybody must have character. Therefore,  to apply Lickona’s,  one must  empower her/his language, in which  she/he/ perform her/his competence in using language creativity (Chomsky) in   both ordinary  and literary language. In this case, Buginese language is used as the sample.

scholarly journals Kant on Radical Evil: A Pragmatic Reading

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-76
Author(s):  
Anthony Rimai
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Formal Proof ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Radical Evil ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Evil Nature

One of the primary concerns of Immanuel Kant in his major works on philosophy of religion is the doctrine of radical evil. He was greatly perplexed by the conundrums of this doctrine. Although Kant claimed it to be a universal trait, he failed to give a formal proof (evidence) supporting it. However, he asserted that the conducts of human beings are enough to demonstrate the nature of radical evil. The complexity of the doctrine is further fuelled by introducing the idea of the need of divine intervention for one to overcome such moral-religious predicament. Critical responses from both Christian and secular scholars reflect interesting take on his ethico-religious discourse. One of the prominent criticisms to Kant’s doctrine of radical evil is its relapse to religious absurdity reflecting the Christian doctrine of the ‘fall of mankind’ as narrated in the first book of the Bible. Consequently, the seriousness of the criticism not only affects the moral maxims but also the portrayal of its strong religious affinity, rendering the doctrine even more allusive and perplexing. The article intends to throw some light on the pragmatic perspective of the doctrine with special focus on the universality of the radical evil nature of human.

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