Rethinking \a short history of ethics\
Rethinking, the short history of ethics.
Rethinking could be a exciting adventure. By rethinking I refer to a specific prcess:I read several chapters or several pages, close the book(or the pdf),begin to reconstruct the argument,look for a rebuttal, check. More than often I not only fail the last task, but also find myself losing the subtvlety of the original texts,or losing the argument entirely. Yet, it is then that I can find how much the text challenges me and how much the outlook of myself could be reshaped, how much the argumentative skill could be improved. It could be really a adventure,through a jungle of the memory,with a crutch of intellect, towards a destination with a feeling of de juva but nonetheless enlightening. Sometimes rethinking could be demoralizing, for it could show how little one has understood in reading the book, though spending so much time. What it takes, is a brave heart, or a masochist spirit (or both!).
For the past blogs(or reading notes) I have only presented the final result, the result after rethinking and rereading and correction. From now on I will present some of the processes,which are of interest especially to myself, but perhaps also to a broader audience. The grammar and spelling mistake would be apparent, but such is the nature of transcribing rethinking that it would not be possible or necessary (but modal!) to correct all the slips.
Alasdair’ a short history of ethics.
Me:In Chapter 1, the philosophical point of the history of ethics, Macintyre aruged against the dehisotriliaztion ot philosophy. When I thought about dehisotriliazation, I think more about meta-ethics, the view that the philosophy of morality does not make first-order moral claims, but studies the nature of morality, of whether it is a tendency or a 命题。
Revision:Macintyre does not introduce the difference of first-order and second-order in first paragraphs. Rather he writes that some philosophers treat MORAL CONCEPTS as a timeless,limited, unchanging, determinate species of concept. This contrasts the historians significantly, who quickly admit that moral standards change over time, but historians also imply that “right” and “good” does not change, only the standards of them do. It is not because of social life changes that morality changes, as any attempt to separate moral life from social life would be doomed, and translation of moral concept in ancient Greek into English would also fail. Macintyre said that only words in a continuing discipline,such as math, and logical words, such as AND,IF,do not change. Moral concepts belong to neither of these kinds.
Reflections and criticism: 1.A moral life is not a dichotomy of judgement,: about which are right and which are wrong; rather it is one with a sets of mental concepts in different dimensions that can apply to different scenarios. 2. It also should be noticed whether a society does apply those concepts to people other than themselves: those of different origins,different time.
Revision: Macintyre then argues that it is not that we have rules of morality and a separate philosophical comment to made, for the latter consisted in the change of moral history/outlook. Macintyre then rejected then separation of second-order philosophy and first-ordal moral claims.The spirit is :Steer Clear of antiquarianism and Hegelism.
Chapter 2 The prephilosophical history of “good” and the transition to philosophy.
Me:Now, the question is, although moral philosophy is bond by the history of morality, the reverse cannot be said to be always true: A prephilosophical histroy of good exists.
Revision:Macintyre wrote that the difference between moral question and philosophical question about morality conceals often the fact that the former in persistence may lead to the latter.Key words in those discourse became ambiguous and no longer clear.The social changes in question are those reflected in Greek Literature from Homer to sophists.
Reflections and criticism:
By no means the Homer period is the “original point” of the moral history. It is simply the beginning of 笔叙历史。
Me:Agathos, the term used to describe cunningness, powfulness and braveness, is the Greek word for ancestor of “good”. But there is a huge difference in the commendatory word,for agathos consisted the quality of a Homer noble men, and it would make no sense to describe a man who is agathos but not brave. It is also a predicate that tells you about a man’s action and history. Whether one fails to be agathos does not really rely on one’s intention. One could be with all good intent ended up by unfortunate circumstance but can still be termed a good one. Such is not the case for agathos at all.
Revision: It is also not square at all with what many recent philosophers have thought to be the characteristic properties of moral. Agathos is a factual statement.
Me: It is also useful to look at Greek counterpart of virtue: apeture, the fulfillment of one’s function. Also shame: xxxx
Revision: IN Homer’s poems those words made up a system, and the slaves who fell out of social function fell out of it were with no moral qualities at all. Homer’s poem presents the pure form of morality, with a cosmic order which the mythology is set out to preserve. In later literature the agathos and kacos began to designate those of nobleborn and baseborn, the meaning of virtue also changed. Different social forms became aware. Some philosophical questions and morality questions are distinct, but that is not the case in Ancient Greek.
Chapter 3 The sophists and Socrates.
Sophists:
Me; 1. Recounting the rise of city-states, the adaptions to different rules, the birth of sophists, their goals: to convince, to please in the assembly and law courts.No criterion of justice or goodness without the current practice or success in the city state.
Revision: IN theatitus Plato outlined the view from the mouth of Protagoras such relativism of not only morality but also of knowledge,
Me:that everyone has one'sown truth. Now Protagoras must face the task of explaining why his sayings should be taught at all.
Revision: Protagoras is allowed by Plato to neglect that.
Criticsim: Protagoras pictured a nature man in contrast to a moral man, a natural man separated from his social background and social conventions and free to use whether or not to adopt to a particular morality in one city-state. It is not clear whether the separation is also one of social functions, by which one seemingly would be judged by fellow citizens. The concept natural man has a long history and is proposed with different psychologies. One thing is shared by these men: the only objective of satisfying his own need and desire. But notice that a desire without a object would be empty so that the insatiable desire becomes really a desire of nothing. It then should be noticed that the desires described as such are naturally determined, or, to be chosen freely.
Revision: A conceptual and a factual point can be made about the Greek so-called natural man. The factual that this man is merely a man from another and earlier culture;The conceptual is that it is no accident. What is more: the words to describe natural man, such as selfish, aggressive, must come from social expectations, and thus bring internal conflict within the concept of natural.
Revision: What the sophists and the long tradition following them fail to distinguish: the man who stands out side and is able to question the convention of some one given social order, and the man that stands outside social life as such.
Socrates: