“As Different . . . as Light Is from Darkness”

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Gary L. Steward
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Thomas Paine ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
Moral Questions

This chapter argues that the clergy’s overall perspective on political resistance remained consistent, even as political loyalties shifted with the Declaration of Independence in 1776. John Witherspoon, the leading clergyman to publicly support independence, remained consistent in his rejection of political absolutism and his belief in the doctrine of resistance. He did not agree with the perspective of Thomas Paine and other political radicals but argued for resistance along the lines of his own theological tradition. Support for political independence, it is argued, should not be viewed as signaling a broader shift in Witherspoon’s ethical and philosophical views. He did not embrace a secular understanding of moral virtue held by philosophers like Francis Hutcheson. His moral philosophy and approach to moral questions remained consistent with his own theological tradition, and no major shift needs to be asserted in this regard.

scholarly journals Francis Hutcheson on Shame

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105
Author(s):  
Andrey V. Prokofyev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Bernard Mandeville

The paper analyzes the conception of shame of the British sentimentalist Francis Hutcheson. It rests on the understanding of moral virtue as a representation of benevolence and the iden­tification of shame with the misery from the unfavorable opinions of others. For Hutcheson, shame complements honour as a second part of the particular human capacity that linked to the moral sense. In ‘An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue’, Hutch­eson is arguing with Bernard Mandeville about the role of shame and honour in the genesis of morality. He tries to show that the general approval of benevolence and the love of public good cannot be born out of self-love and a sensitivity to public opinion. He uses three argu­ments: a) shame is an immediate evil, b) shame is inseparable from the moral sense, b) their link is independent from public opinion. In addition, Hutcheson demonstrates that the sense of honour and shame can deviate from the moral sense in par­ticular instances via some asso­ciations. Hutcheson’ attitude to these deviations is uncertain and ambivalent. In ‘A System of Moral Philosophy’, honour and shame accompany not only the moral sense but also the sense of decency and dignity. This treatise also contains a brief polemics with Aristotle on the role of emotions generated by opinions of others in the pro­cess of moral self-improve­ment. Hutcheson’s conception of shame is a step in the develop­ment of socialized interpreta­tion of this emotion. Theoretically, it is interesting as an attempt to analyze origins of the particular lists of subjects of shame.

scholarly journals The Moral Philosophy of Maria Montessori

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
PATRICK FRIERSON
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Maria Montessori ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Shared Agency

Abstract This paper lays out the moral theory of philosopher and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). Based on a moral epistemology wherein moral concepts are grounded in a well-cultivated moral sense, Montessori develops a threefold account of moral life. She starts with an account of character as an ideal of individual self-perfection through concentrated attention on effortful work. She shows how respect for others grows from and supplements individual character, and she further develops a notion of social solidarity that goes beyond cooperation toward shared agency. Partly because she attends to children's ethical lives, Montessori highlights how character, respect, and solidarity all appear first as prereflective, embodied orientations of agency. Full moral virtue takes up prereflective orientations reflectively and extends them through moral concepts. Overall, Montessori's ethic improves on features similar to some in Nietzschean, Kantian, Hegelian, or Aristotelian ethical theories while situating these within a developmental and perfectionist ethics.

The Relation between Political and Moral Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-67
Author(s):  
Charles Larmore
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Common Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Freedom Of Thought ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Moral Questions

This chapter talks about the pervasive conflict on what should count as the terms of social cooperation, such as the need for authoritative, enforceable rules that constitute the elementary facts of political life. It discusses the disagreement about the nature of right and good, specific moral questions, and features of the good or just society as the most enduring and polarizing sources of social discord. It also characterizes one of the roles of a conception of justice that shows how to adjudicate conflicts among the members of society. The chapter also explains disagreements that often consist of one person merely holding different views. It illustrates a common experience in some parts of the world in which people enjoy freedom of thought and expression and reasoning about ethical matters that goes beyond platitudes.

Carmichael, Gershom (1672–1729)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Moore ◽  
Michael Silverthorne
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
The University

Gershom Carmichael was a teacher and writer of pivotal importance for the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. He was the first Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, predecessor of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid. Carmichael introduced the natural law tradition of Grotius, Pufendorf and Locke to the moral philosophy courses he taught at the University of Glasgow (1694–1729). His commentaries on Samuel Pufendorf’s work on the duty of man and citizen (1718 and 1724) made his teaching available to a wider readership in Great Britain and in Europe. He also composed an introduction to logic, Breviuscula Introductio ad Logicam, (1720 and 1722) and a brief system of natural theology, Synopsis Theologiae Naturalis (1729).

Aristotelian Virtue and Its Limitations

Philosophy ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 69 (269) ◽  
pp. 291-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christipher Cordner
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Living Well ◽  
The World ◽  
Good Will ◽  
The Will

‘Virtue ethics’ is prominent, if not pre-eminent, in contemporary moral philosophy. The philosophical model for most of those urging a ‘virtues approach’ to ethics is of course Aristotle. Some features, at least, of the motivation to this renewed concern with Aristotelian ethical thought are fairly clear. Notoriously, Kant held that the only thing good without qualification is the good will; and he then made it difficult to grasp what made the will good when he denied that it could be its preoccupation with or attention to anything in the world. The idea of the good will then seems to be an idea of something which transcends the world, and therefore to be no easier to make sense of, or to believe in, than Plato′s form of the good is usually thought to be. The first obvious attraction of Aristotle′s ethics, then—at least to those of an empiricist or worldly cast of mind—is that it promises an understanding of the ethical which locates that robustly within the world. Aristotle′s virtues are real this-worldly existences. They are, moreover, qualities whose place in our lives seems to be explained readily, and attractively, in Aristotelian terms. Moral virtue is essentially connected with eudaimonia, a concept variously construed as happiness, as living well, or even as flourishing. Morality is important because of the contribution it makes to the living of a fully human life. And a ‘fully human’ life is characterizable in what modernity calls ‘humanist’, or sometimes ‘naturalistic’, terms: it requires no invocation of transcendence or other-worldliness.

scholarly journals “An Erring Conscience is an Absurdity”: The Later Kant on Certainty, Moral Judgment and the Infallibility of Conscience

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Knappik ◽  
Erasmus Mayr
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
On Certainty ◽  
First Order ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
Characteristic Features

Abstract This article explores Kant’s view, found in several passages in his late writings on moral philosophy, that the verdicts of conscience are infallible. We argue that Kant’s infallibility claim must be seen in the context of a major shift in Kant’s views on conscience that took place around 1790 and that has not yet been sufficiently appreciated in the literature. This shift led Kant to treat conscience as an exclusively second-order capacity which does not directly evaluate actions, but one’s first-order moral judgments and deliberation. On the basis of this novel interpretation, we develop a new defence of Kant’s infallibility claim that draws on Kant’s account of the characteristic features of specifically moral judgments.

The Evil Within

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Jeske
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Serial Killer ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Moral Deliberation ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Death Camp

Thomas Jefferson and Edward Coles were men of similar background, but the former remained a slaveholder while the latter emancipated his slaves. Examining the ways in which people such as Jefferson, who perform wrong and even evil actions, attempt to justify those actions both to others and to themselves illuminates the mistakes that we ourselves make in moral reasoning. The study of moral philosophy can help us to identify and correct for such mistakes. In applying the tools of moral philosophy to case studies of Nazi death camp commandants, American slaveholders, and a psychopathic serial killer, the author demonstrates how we can become better moral deliberators, thereby fulfilling our duties of due care in moral deliberation, moral self-scrutiny, and the development of moral virtue. These case studies serve as extended real-life thought experiments of moral deliberation gone wrong, and can show us how four impediments to effective moral deliberation—cultural norms and pressures, the complexity of the consequences of our actions, emotions, and self-deception—can be identified and overcome by the study and use of moral philosophy. Thus, the study of moral philosophy ought to be incorporated into moral education so that its tools become common currency in moral deliberation, discussion, and debate.

Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s Democratization of Moral Virtue

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Getty L. Lustila
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

AbstractThis paper examines Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s moral philosophy, focusing on her accounts of virtuous conduct, conscience, obligation, and moral character. I argue that Cockburn’s account of virtue has two interlocking parts: a view of what virtue requires of us, and a view of how we come to see this requirement as authoritative. I then argue that while the two parts are ultimately in tension with one another, the tension is instructive. I use Cockburn’s encounter with Shaftesbury’s writings to help bring out this tension in her thought. I conclude that Cockburn’s work marks a bridge in modern moral philosophy from seventeenth-century natural law theory to the naturalism of the eighteenth century— that of Gay, Hume, and Bentham.

SELF-INTEREST AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY: A REPLY TO SOME IMPLICATIONS OF JEROME MORAN'S ‘ARISTOTLE ON EUDAIMONIA (“HAPPINESS”)’

Think ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (52) ◽  
pp. 87-90
Author(s):  
Tim Miles
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Moral Questions

Moran argues that the ancient Greek philosophers did not really do moral philosophy because they conflated self-regard with other-regard. I argue that on the contrary questions of what is in a person's own interest are moral questions and that self-interest should play a part in moral philosophy.

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