scholarly journals On the Necessity of Referral to t he Category "Randomity" In the Process of Moral Assessment of Individual's Acts

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Petr Makuhin ◽  
Keyword(s):  

In the article, firstly through the analysis of the history of ethical teachings, the basic requirements for the procedure of moral assessment, for its subject (the legitimacy of this assessment) and the object (taking into account the consequences of the act, their motives, as well as the ratio of the goal and the means used to achieve it) are identified. Consideration of a particular deed taking into account all these aspects, it would seem, allows us to make its moral assessment objective, impartial, fair. However, secondly (and most importantly!), we substantiate the thesis that if this consideration is not supplemented with the category of randomity (moreover, interpreted as aclinamen), then the resulting assessment will itself be morally problematic, giving rise to moral complacency and depriving us the opportunity to help a morally stumbled person.

Ramus ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Michelini

In Euripides' Suppliants as one commentator remarks, ‘the play consists of talk’. Much of the talk is about ideas, which weave a tantalizing and complex intellectual dance through the debates of the central figures. The tone is set by the first debate, between the suppliant Adrastus and the young Theseus. The former makes a plea in terms that he himself seems to characterize as inadequate, while the latter rejects the suppliant with a bravura speech that offers no less than a philosophy of religion, morality and politics. Theseus' ideas are marked by severe internal contradictions, and they are subjected to further contradictions by later statements of Theseus and others. Yet this puzzling philosophy is assigned to a character who seems entirely free from the misjudgments typical of other tragic protagonists. The Euripidean tag that ‘the gods ordain things counter to expectation’ appears not to be true in Theseus' case. Here is a tragic hero who, in a just cause, plans a brief war from which he hopes to return home successful, without major harm to his people and without offense to the gods; and—unlike the protagonists of several Aeschylean plays and Adrastus in this play— the Athenian king succeeds in all his aims. Even when Theseus reverses his initial rejection of Adrastus, he is careful to point out that his initial moral assessment was and is correct (334-36). The reversal itself suggests that, if Theseus has a susceptibility to error, the hamartēma may be located in the fit between logos and ergon, thought and reality, a famous dilemma in the intellectual history of the fifth century.


Author(s):  
Светлана Анатольевна Васильева

В статье сопоставляются сон Раскольникова из «Преступления и наказания» Ф.М. Достоевского и «сценка на базаре» из «Пирамиды» Л.М. Леонова. История избиения лошади получает в XX в. другую нравственную оценку: индивидуальная теория Раскольникова превращается в идеологию государства и общества. The article compares the first dream of Raskolnikov («Crime and Punishment» by F.M. Dostoevsky) and the «scene at the bazaar» («Pyramid» by L.M. Leonov) seen by Matvey Loskutov. The history of beating a horse receives in the XX century. another moral assessment: Raskolnikov’s individual theory turns into the ideology of the state and society.


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