scholarly journals LYING AND HYPOCRISY IN MORALITY AND POLITICS

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth W. Grant
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Political Relationships ◽  
Sense Of Reality ◽  
Political Virtues ◽  
Basic Alternative ◽  
Moral Requirements

Hypocrisy is necessary in politics, especially in democracies, but whilehypocrisy can facilitate democratic cooperation, lying tends to undermine it. Thereare two basic alternative possibilities for how to think about political ethics. Thefirst begins with universal moral principles that are then applied to politics as wellas to other areas of life. In the second approach, instead, each activity or type ofrelationship has its own moral requirements. What is it about politics that makeshypocrisy and lying either morally legitimate or morally illegitimate? For the firstapproach, lying and hypocrisy are vices, whereas for the second, they may beconsidered as virtuous under certain circumstances. Hypocrisy is necessarybecause political relationships are relationships of dependence among peoplewhose interests do not exactly coincide. To secure supporters and coalition partnersrequires a certain amount of pretense. The case of lying, however, is quite differentdue to three additional characteristics of political relationships: cooperation overtime requires trust; accountability requires transparency; and consensus requiresa shared sense of reality. Lying undermines all three. Thus, truthfulness is amongthe political virtues even if exceptions sometimes must be made. Today, “post-truth”politics (“New Lying”), threatens to create a dangerous indifference to the truth anda cynical, wholesale acceptance of political lying.

scholarly journals On James Sterba’s Refutation of Theistic Arguments to Justify Suffering

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Bruce R. Reichenbach
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Horrendous Evils ◽  
Consistent Application ◽  
Moral Requirements

In his recent book Is a Good God Logically Possible? and article by the same name, James Sterba argued that the existence of significant and horrendous evils, both moral and natural, is incompatible with the existence of God. He advances the discussion by invoking three moral requirements and by creating an analogy with how the just state would address such evils, while protecting significant freedoms and rights to which all are entitled. I respond that his argument has important ambiguities and that consistent application of his moral principles will require that God remove all moral and natural evils. This would deleteriously restrict not only human moral decision making, but also the knowledge necessary to make moral judgments. He replies to this critique by appealing to the possibility of limited divine intervention, to which I rejoin with reasons why his middle ground is not viable.

Ethics and action

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt King
Keyword(s):  
Joint Ventures ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Moral Requirement ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Right Action ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Difficult Cases ◽  
Moral Requirements

Moral theories are theories of right action. Moral principles are meant to guide action. And, if moral rules exist, they apply to all agents. Theories of action and agency seek to determine what counts as an action, what distinguishes agents from nonagents and the principles that govern what happens when agents act. These joint ventures both depend on and inform one another. When we deliberate about what to do, we often consider what moral requirements we might be under. We think about what we morally ought to do. It often seems like the answer to that question can depend on what sorts of abilities we have, what options are available. If I cannot do something, either because I lack the ability to do it or because I do not have the opportunity to act in that way, then plausibly it is not the case that I should do that thing. More importantly, perhaps, it is not the case that I failed a moral requirement. So what sorts of abilities do we have and how do they constrain what we ought to do? Moral principles tell us what we should do. But action theory tells us that what people do is a complicated affair. Typically, agents want and believe things, form intentions to act, then act on those intentions, while producing various results or outcomes. So an important question for ethics and action theory is: What parts of my action determine whether I act wrongly? Am I morally evaluable only for those parts I intend explicitly? Or must I answer for unintended consequences? In difficult cases, which take priority? Only moral agents need concern themselves with right action. However, we also think that morality is not optional. If some action is wrong, then no one should do it. No matter how much you want to, you still should not. And this seems like an important and necessary feature of morality. Ethicists have struggled, however, to justify why moral requirements should be universally binding. Some think that if we pay close attention to what it is to be an agent, one who performs actions for reasons, then we will find such a justification. Thus, a major foundational question of morality depends on a deeply foundational question from action theory: What does agency consist in?

Deleuze's Political Ethics: A Fascism of the New?

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-99
Author(s):  
Fred Evans
Keyword(s):  
Political Context ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Political Virtues ◽  
Ethics And Politics

The cosmology of Deleuze and Guattari emphasises the new. I raise the question of whether this emphasis cancels out two other political virtues, solidarity and heterogeneity, and thereby amounts to a fascism of the new. I reply that what Deleuze and Guattari say about cosmological unity and difference suggests that they can avoid this negative designation. I support this conclusion by considering their statements on ethics and politics and by translating their cosmological philosophy into the more immediate ethico-political context of the alloplastic stratum. The latter effort is abetted by elaborating the two thinkers’ use of the term ‘voice’, for example, in Deleuze's statement that Being is the ‘single and same voice for the whole thousand-voiced multiple … a single clamour of Being for all beings’ or in the two authors’ notion of a ‘constellation of voices’ that makes up the ‘molecular’ or ‘unconscious’ collective assemblage of enunciation. This elaboration is pertinent because political ethics is essentially which voices are heard, and which not, or at least their relative levels of audibility in the alloplastic regime. I further clarify this treatment of Deleuze and Guattari's political ethics by linking it to the idea of parrhesia, courageous speech and hearing.

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 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ETHICS ACCORDING TO THE POLISH PRIEST JÓZEF MAJKA

10.23856/3408 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 68-73
Author(s):  
Jan Mazur ◽  
Władysław Majkowski ◽  
Hameni Blaise
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Catholic Social Teaching ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gospel Message

The presented text is an attempt to answer the question: how was understood the social and political ethics by the Priest Professor Józef Majka (1918-1993) - one of the leading minds of Catholic social teaching in Poland? It is, of course, about capturing the specificity of this understanding, comparing it with the perspectives of other outstanding authors. Views of Priest Majka on this subject were included mainly in His book: Social and Political Ethics (1993). In His opinion, this kind of ethics is not only a group of philosophical considerations, but a real attempt to show Catholic social and political ethics. He wrote: "We do not think that it would be possible at all to develop a sensible system of social ethics, especially political, without referring to Christian principles and focusing on the message of the ultimate goal of a man in the Gospel message" (Majka, 1993:12). It seems that this unambiguous reference to the values and principles of the Gospel, recognizing them as necessary in the construction of a sensible system of social and political ethics allows us to consider His concept as original, thoroughly Christian, marked by a testimony of faith and penetrated by intellectual depth. It can be stated  that the social ethics in the sense of Father Majka is not an ideology, but an integral part of Catholic social science, situating above all in the area of  philosophy and theology, where it finds the necessary premises for moral principles and norms.

The responsibilities of victory: Jus Post Bellum and the Just War

2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEX J. BELLAMY
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Just War ◽  
Future Thinking ◽  
Jus In Bello ◽  
Jus Post Bellum ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
Moral Requirements ◽  
Moral Questions

AbstractRecent years have seen a growing interest in questions about justice after war (jus post bellum), fuelled in large part by moral questions about coalition operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a result, it has become common to argue that jus post bellum is a third strand of Just War thinking. This article evaluates this position. It argues that that there are broadly two ways of understanding moral requirements after war: a minimalist position which holds that moral principles derived largely from jus ad bellum and jus in bello concerns should constrain what victors are entitled to do after war and a maximalist position which holds that victors acquire additional responsibilities that are grounded more in liberalism and international law than in Just War thinking. Finding problems with both approaches, the article argues that it is premature to include jus post bellum as a third element of Just War thinking and concludes by setting out six principles to guide future thinking in this area.

Moral principles and cognitive load

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne M. Watkins ◽  
Simon M. Laham
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Moral Principles

Axioms of Morality

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-45
Author(s):  
Michael Clunn
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Moral Principles

Foundationalism states that philosophy must begin from basic building blocks and construct arguments based on these. The axioms of existence, consciousness, and identity are three primary axioms which cannot be denied without being self-defeating. These axioms are also common to all human life. This paper explores ways to construct moral principles and virtues from these foundational cornerstones.

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