The Place of Cicero in Locke’s Moral Theology

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-88
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Unpublished Works

Locke’s published and unpublished works disclose a marked contempt for classical moral philosophy, with one signal exception: Cicero. This chapter reconstructs Locke’s interpretation of Cicero, to explain why he was held to be an exception to Locke’s more general disdain for ancient ethical theories. This approach also illuminates our understanding of the relationship between Locke’s moral theory, political philosophy, writings of Christian apologetic, and theory of toleration. It suggests that Locke’s moral philosophy is decidedly more complex, and richer, than is often recognized: pregnant with naturalistic impulses that were nonetheless subordinated to a grounding of morality in the authority, will, and command of a divine legislator. These aspects of Locke’s moral theory proved to be immensely stimulating to later British philosophers such as Hume, even if they sought systematically to decouple moral philosophy from Christian theology.

scholarly journals From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Moral Universe ◽  
Theoretical Question ◽  
The Relationship

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries represent a period of remarkable intellectual vitality in British philosophy, as figures such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Smith attempted to explain the origins and sustaining mechanisms of civil society. Their insights continue to inform how political and moral theorists think about the world in which we live. The aim of this book is to reconstruct a debate which preoccupied contemporaries, but which seems arcane to us today. This concerned the relationship between reason and revelation as the two sources of mankind’s knowledge, particularly in the ethical realm: to what extent, they asked, could reason alone discover the content and obligatory character of morality? This was held to be a historical, rather than merely a theoretical question: had the philosophers of pre-Christian antiquity, ignorant of Christ, been able satisfactorily to explain the moral universe? What role did natural theology play in their ethical theories—and was it consistent with the teachings delivered by revelation? Much recent scholarship has drawn attention to the early-modern interest in two late Hellenistic philosophical traditions—Stoicism and Epicureanism. Yet in the English context, three figures above all—John Locke, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume—quite deliberately and explicitly identified their approaches with Cicero as the representative of an alternative philosophical tradition, critical of both the Stoic and the Epicurean: academic scepticism. All argued that Cicero provided a means of addressing what they considered to be the most pressing question facing contemporary philosophy: the relationship between moral theology and moral philosophy.

From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy

2019 ◽  
pp. 179-222
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Tendency ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cause Of Error ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Empirical Methodology ◽  
Civil Societies

Hume gave more attention, and wrote more extensively, on the relationship between moral theology and moral philosophy than on any other issue. In doing so, he made clear the importance of Cicero—when interpreted as an academic sceptic—to the explanations he formulated. Hume quite explicitly identified his own variant of sceptical philosophy with Cicero’s, and argued that it alone was consistent with the empirical methodology upon which the ‘science of man’ had to be constructed. In contrast to Locke—with whose moral theory he engaged more closely than scholars have recognized—Hume argued that Cicero justified a complete conceptual separation between the realms of morality and religion. This informed Hume’s narrative of the history of philosophy, which identified the pathological human tendency to demand certainty and to avoid doubt as the greatest cause of error and disruptive of the ties which held people together in civil societies.

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.

Reciprocity in Morality and Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronit Donyets Kedar
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Cooperative Scheme ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mutual Advantage ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy ◽  
Liberal Thought

Abstract Western liberal thought, which is rooted in the social contract tradition, views the relationship between rational contractors as fundamental to the authority of law, politics, and morality. Within this liberal discourse, dominant strands of modern moral philosophy claim that morality too is best understood in contractual terms. Accordingly, others are perceived first and foremost as autonomous, free, and equal parties to a reciprocal cooperative scheme, designed for mutual advantage. This Article aims to challenge the contractual model as an appropriate framework for morality. My claim is that the constituting concepts of contractualist thought, especially the idea of reciprocity, while perhaps fitting to law, are misplaced in morality. I argue that importing the concept of reciprocity and its conceptual habitat from law to morality yields ethical contractualism an unconvincing moral theory.

scholarly journals Individual morality and the morality of institutions

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Scanlon
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
The Relationship

This paper discusses the relationship between moral philosophy and political philosophy. It holds that political philosophy in some way is part of moral philosophy as the former deals with the content of moral standards governing the relations between individuals and institutions. That would be the purpose of the ?morality of institutions?, while the so-called "individual morality" would inform the standards applicable to individuals. On the basis of a conception of individual morality as it relates to contractualism and a discussion of the morality of institutions that closely follows John Rawls? theory of justice, the paper addresses the question of the foundations of the obligation to comply with institution-defined standards that are directed towards individuals. At the end, it focuses in particular on the difficulty of rationalizing that obligation in the case of unjust institutions.

1. Doing Political Philosophy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
William Abel ◽  
Elizabeth Kahn ◽  
Tom Parr ◽  
Andrew Walton
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter provides an overview of how to do political philosophy. It identifies some of the main aims of the discipline, showing that one can make progress with the subject by studying arguments about the justifiability of various public policies. Political philosophers are mostly concerned with exploring the moral claims of an argument, and the relationship between an argument’s claims and its conclusion. It is here that the discipline connects to other parts of philosophy, particularly moral philosophy and logic. This chapter discusses two tools in the practice of political philosophy. One of these involves arranging arguments in clear and organized terms, and the other involves the use of examples and thought experiments in the analysis of moral claims. The chapter then discusses how to employ these tools in the service of a political argument.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Historical Relationship ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter introduces the key themes and questions to be explored in the work. In particular, it discusses the tendency of much recent scholarship on early-modern philosophy to emphasize the importance of two late Hellenistic philosophical traditions: the Stoic and the Epicurean. It indicates that three important British writers—John Locke, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume—deliberately and explicitly aligned their approaches with Cicero, as the representative of an alternative philosophical tradition: academic scepticism. This, they argued, offered the conceptual resources more satisfactorily to address a question that contemporaries recognized to be particularly pressing: the relationship between moral theology and moral philosophy. It further yielded highly distinctive narratives of the historical relationship between classical moral philosophy and the Christian moral theology which had appropriated and displaced it. These narratives were in turn challenged by Shaftesbury and Mandeville, who placed themselves (respectively) within the Stoic and Epicurean traditions.

Obligation and Assent in Hobbes's Moral Philosophy

2002 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-67
Author(s):  
Rosamond Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of

AbstractIn the history of moral and political philosophy, Hobbes has a bad reputation. Among other things, he has been a favorite whipping boy of moral theorists who wanted to criticize egoism. He has been so disparaged that philosophers who actually draw on his insights avoid acknowledgment of their debt and advise their similarly inspired friends to follow a similarly guarded course, all presumably to protect their own reputations. In what follows, I want to raise the question of whether Hobbes's critics have been engaged in combat with a straw man.1 Is Hobbes's moral theory a classic example of egoism? This is not a new question, but, in my opinion, the answers that have been generated to date are not satisfactory. The issue turns on his account of obligation, and the question is whether Hobbesian obligation is merely a detailed and interesting version of calculating prudent self-interest or whether it involves something that ranks as a moral foundation.2 What is at stake is the status of his Laws of Nature. Are they just a list of calculated best bets, guidelines for action, advice that can be ignored if it should ever turn out to be convenient or more prudent to do something else instead? Or, are the Laws of Nature moral commandments that may not be breached regardless of the personal advantage that could be had through a violation?

Mandeville and the Construction of Morality

2019 ◽  
pp. 118-148
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Conduct ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Original Narrative ◽  
Meaningful Role

Once considered primarily as a satirist, recent scholarship has drawn attention to the importance and originality of Bernard Mandeville’s moral philosophy and theory of sociability—and its influence on later philosophers including Rousseau, Hume, and Adam Smith. Mandeville’s close engagement with Epicurean writings, ancient and modern, is clear; less recognized is the extent to which he drew upon them to develop a naturalistic moral theory which could respond directly to Shaftesbury’s Stoic moral philosophy (and, less directly, to Locke’s Christian moral theology). In such a theory, God’s design, will, and sanctions played no meaningful role; but this did not preclude Mandeville from offering his own, strikingly original narrative of the intertwined histories of moral philosophy and moral theology. As had Locke, Mandeville drew particular attention to the individual’s craving for esteem and its importance in their habituation, in society, into norms of moral conduct to which they subsequently feel beholden.

Fellow travellers on different paths: A conversation with Charles Taylor

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (8) ◽  
pp. 985-1002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michiel Meijer ◽  
Charles Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Kantian Constructivism ◽  
Strong Evaluation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship

This interview with Charles Taylor explores a central concern throughout his work, namely, his concern to ‘reenchant’ self and world through a careful examination of value as emanating from the world rather than from ourselves. It focuses especially on the status of his central doctrine of ‘strong evaluation’ against the background of mainstream meta-ethical theories, such as neo-Kantian constructivism and robust realist non-naturalism. Additionally, the relationship between Taylor’s theism and his moral–political philosophy is discussed. A key issue that is examined is what ontological background picture can make sense of the strong evaluative experience of higher worth. Some other related issues that are explored revolve around Taylor’s papers ‘Disenchantment-Reenchantment’ and ‘Recovering the Sacred’, which tentatively explore the meaning of reenchantment.

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