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- Maybe if I start afresh things will go better here, with the machine. I find the discussion rather wild. A basic idea has to be that virtues are the naturally required habits for human fulfilment. This is what Aristotle and others have attempted to chart and the paradigm to which my former tutor Alasdair MacIntyre attempted to recall us.I find Alan's notion of virtues as confessedly needed for just a particular group incoherent. Thus if faith, hope and Charity are indeed virtues then they are nmeant for everybody. Thus faith is "sinned against", misachieved, by either unbelief or believing too lightly, while to it corresponds an attitude of keeping going with one's Projects under discouragement. The vices contrary to hope are presumption and despairt, to Charity, just about everything negative.Prudence, also needed for happiness, is departed from by recklessness, precipitation, inconsiderateness, etc., justice by injustice (ought to be clear), temperance by greed, excess, abstemiousness etc., fortitude by cowardice etc.This is the same for everyone everywhere. These main vietues have several adjoined varieites, which one may explore at leisure. Also, a unity of virtue is proposed, that you can't have one without having all and you can't fail in one without failing in all. This is of course controversial and some claim it is monstrous. however one must be clear that none of these virtues, qua virtues, have any matter which can be subjected to legal judgment. One cannot know for certain that an apparently habitual drunkard does not have temperance, I at least would claim. We are not in the realm of law and judgment, or even, therefore, "morality". At the simple level of practival reason as such, thereofre, these viertues are needed for fulfilment of nature in all possible worlds, in whatever language we choose to express this or in other languages not available to us just now. "Why then, o hating love, o loving hate, o anything of nothing first create?"Stephen Theron.
- Hello Paul,
On Sept 9 I wrote:
I'll reply to your more recent email directed to me re Kant's formalism shortly.
However, now I can't find your email re Kant's formalism. My gmail
searches are not bringing it up. My apologies.
Here is my belated reply to your query about my assessment of
Kant's formalism. Put very succinctly, and so perhaps too hermetic?
First Kant arrives at the initial content for morality via the
desideratum of pure form, since he holds that this is the only way to
avoid the contingency of a merely given moral rules.
This is a crucial matrix for Hegelians to take note of since it brings
up the question: Is the concrete actualized ethics of the Sittlichkeit
at hand /in effect merely given and contingent? If not, why and how
not? (This is a challenge that Bob Wallace, for one, has taken very
seriously.)
Do you follow me here? Meaning, do you understand this point? Not that
you agree with it, as a loyal Hegelian I'm sure you don't.
Please keep in mind that the categorical imperative is a triad. Alas
Hegel and Hegelians only appear to take note of the first formulation,
according to universalization, e.g. the imperative of the pure form
of a rule. However, there is a triad of a) form b) matter c) form +
matter. Hence Kant himself corrects for the pure formality of the
first formulation when he proceeds to the second.
For my standpoint, the problem with the formality of the first
Categorical Imperative is that it is not specifically practical. The
desideratum of the consistency in the application of a rule applies to
reason en toto, not to practical reason in particular. (This is an
unusual complaint-- and it identifies me as a non-Kantian, an
apostate.)
Rather, Kant arrives at morality as such when he identifies the second
formula, qua the *matter* of morality, which pertains to treating
others as ends, rather than merely as means to our own satisfaction.
This is to the point, whereas universalization is not, esp since it
captures the essential prescriptive contrast between indulging our
satisfactions at the expense of others, and valuing others as ends.
I.e. The contrast between self-regard and altruism, or other-regard.
Your reaction?
And anyone else's of course.
Bruce