Review Of Moral Tradition And Individuality By J. Kekes

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 87, A Centenary Celebration: Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, and Murdoch, 2019

2011

Philosophers, historians, and social scientists often suppose that our moral judgments are insulated from our historical understanding, and vice versa. That is, they generally assume that while our moral judgments appraise social and historical facts, they do not constrain our predictions and explanations of those facts; conversely, our historical accounts describe and explain social phenomena, including ethical phenomena, but they are separate from our evaluations of those phenomena. I challenge both of these assumptions, in arguing that our historical understanding is wrapped up in certain inextricable ways with our moral outlook. More specifically, I contend that some of our moral judgments presuppose assumptions about history and the social world; and also that our social and historical accounts can be informed by our views about morality. In short, our moral and historical views are interdependent. 9 See Samuel Scheffler's Equality and Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 10. Scheffler's definition of tradition is intended to apply to traditions of many different kinds, including religious traditions, literary or artistic traditions, and the traditions associated with particular institutions, organizations, communities, and professions. 10 David Wiggins, Ethics (London: Penguin, 2006), p. 236. 11 A form of ethical life includes what Bernard Williams calls-ideas of responsible action, justice, and the motivations that lead people to do things that are admired and respected‖ in Shame and Necessity, p. 4. 12 Similar arguments to the one I shall present could also in principle be formulated to address others and non-liberal forms of ethical life to which others attach great value.

ON THE INSTITUTION OF THE MORAL SUBJECT: ON THE COMMANDER AND THE COMMANDED IN NIETZSCHE’S DISCUSSION OF LAW Abstract: The article discusses how Nietzsche understands the institution of law and morals in distinction to Kant and the Christian tradition. It argues that Nietzsche to a large extent is inspired by the paradigm-shift toward a evolutionary biological thinking introduced by several of his peers in the late 19th century, among else Fr. A. Lange, who sees this shift as a sobering scientific-materialistic alternative to Kant. In Nietzsche, the Kantian moral imperative is replaced with a notion of a morality emerging thanks to historical, or pre-historical, civilizational processes, imposed on a feebleminded human without any inherent rational dispositions to obey Law. It is also a process, which rather than universalizing the human, splits it in a duality where one part obeys old immediate self-interests and another part obeys new ‘commands,’ having been shouted ‘into the ear’ by a so-called ‘commander.’ The compliance with law takes two radically different forms in Nietzsche: servile and mediocre individuals need to be exposed to discipline and punishment in order to adopt Law; while so-called ‘sovereign’ individuals are able to impose law upon themselves. The figure of the ‘sovereign’ has consequently been an issue for vigorous debate in especially the Anglo-Saxon tradition of Nietzsche research, since his apparent ‘respect for law’ and ‘sense of duty’ reiterate typical Kantian qualities. Relating to these discussions, I suggest that Nietzsche’s ‘sovereign’ (in one context) is identical his ‘commander’ (in other contexts). When the ‘sovereign’ as such imposes law upon himself and others, his act is conventional and arbitrary (like language in Saussure), and is rather irrational than rational as in Kant. His will is not a good will, nor a rational will with a vision of human autonomy. His command of himself and others is a performative, thus without truth-value (like illocutionary speech-acts in Austin and Searle).

PREFACE 1 We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge—and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves—how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" [Matthew 6:21]; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. We are constantly making for them, being by nature winged creatures and honey-gatherers of the spirit; there is one thing alone we really care about from the heart—"bringing something home." Whatever else there is in life, so-called "experiences"—which of us has sufficient earnestness for them? Or sufficient time? Present experience has, I am afraid, always found us "absent-minded": we cannot give our hearts to it—not even our ears! Rather, as one divinely preoccupied and immersed in himself into whose ear the bell has just boomed with all its strength the twelve beats of noon suddenly starts up and asks himself: "what really was that which just struck?" so we sometimes rub our ears afterward and ask, utterly surprised and disconcerted, "what really was that which we have just experienced?" and moreover: "who are we really?" and, afterward as aforesaid, count the twelve trembling bell-strokes of our experience, our life, our being—and alas! miscount them.—So we are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law "Each is furthest from himself" applies to all eternity—we are not "men of knowledge" with respect to ourselves. 2 My ideas on the origin of our moral prejudices—for this is the subject of this polemic—received their first, brief, and provisional expression in the collection of aphorisms that bears the title Human, All-Too-Human. A Book for Free Spirits. This book was begun in Sorrento during a winter when it was given to me to pause as a wanderer pauses and look back across the broad and dangerous country my spirit had traversed up to that time. This was in the winter of 1876-77; the ideas themselves are older. They were already in essentials the same ideas that I take up again in the present treatises—let us hope the long interval has done them good, that they have become riper, clearer, stronger, more perfect! That I still cleave to them today, however, that they have become in the meantime more and more firmly attached to one another, indeed entwined and interlaced with one another, strengthens my joyful assurance that they might have arisen in me from the first not as isolated, capricious, or sporadic things but from a common root, from a fundamental will of knowledge, pointing imperiously into the depths, speaking more and more precisely, demanding greater and greater precision. For this alone is fitting for a philosopher. We have no right to isolated acts of any kind: we may not make isolated errors or hit upon isolated truths. Rather do our ideas, our values, our yeas and nays, our ifs and buts, grow out of us with the necessity

Metascience, 2022

This document is a chapter-by-chapter summary (23 pages) of my dissertation. This dissertation examines Michel Foucault’s critique of the present through his analysis of our hidden but still active historical legacies. His works from the Eighties are the beginning of what he called a “genealogy of the desiring subject,” in which he shows that practices such as confession—in its juridical, psychological, and religious forms—have largely dictated how we think about our ethical selves. This constrains our notions of ethics to legalistic forbidden/required dichotomies, and requires that we engage in a hermeneutics of the self which consistently fails to discover its imagined secret self, or to find the happiness and freedom promised by contemporary ethics. In order to think the modern self in different terms, Foucault’s later works analyzed Classical and Hellenistic ethical sources, emphasizing their distance from today. He hoped doing so would allow us to rethink our current assumptions about ethical matters, the truth of oneself, and the relation to others. While Foucault’s genealogical descriptions critically diagnosed contemporary ills such as these, he did not prescribe a cure, preferring to let his readers experiment with new practices of their own design. My dissertation attempts such an experiment, supplying concrete solutions to our ethical ills, because I believe that philosophy should help us improve, as well as understand, our ethical selves. In order to do so, I demonstrate that a form of subjectivity based on Benedict Spinoza’s ethical and political works avoids the pitfalls of modern "desiring subjectivity" as diagnosed by Foucault. Additionally, the practices of the self found in Spinoza can be used to directly counter and displace each central element of “desiring subjectivity,” and thus supplies the kind of effective positive move which should follow after genealogical critique. In order to mobilize Spinoza in this way, I first had to use Foucault's ethical grid of intelligibility (the little-analyzed four "modes of subjectivation" from the opening pages of The Use of Pleasure). I explained Classical, Hellenistic, and early Patristic Christian ethics through these four modes of subjectivation, as well as the desiring subjectivity of the present moment, and how Spinoza, in each of these four modes, directly counters the dangers of contemporary ethical subjectivity.

2001

Verbum Et Ecclesia, 2023

We are indeed, as suggested by the organisers of this project and the conference by which it was precipitated, dealing with an 'unsettling anomaly' in our efforts to understand the nature of, and come to grips with, the phenomenon of morality, the importance of which is widely accepted in our world and times. In my understanding, 'morality' -differently from the notion of 'ethics' -refers to the phenomenon that human beings universally submit their behaviour to the judgement of others, or, better stated, to the 'demands of obligation', 1 which simply means that humans universally acknowledge that the question about the moral status, that is, the wrongness or rightness of human action, is a legitimate question. 'Ethics', in contradistinction to 'morality', refers to the more intellectual enterprise of trying to identify, analyse, understand and critically develop the actual action guides ('theories') that govern the moral status of human behaviour, as well as applying those action guides to concrete moral challenges or dilemmas. In short, morality is a behavioural phenomenon that can be observed and/or discerned in society in the sense that the normative dimension (that of which we declare that it 'ought' to be or to happen) is apparent, recognisable and applicable. Ethics, on the other hand, is a kind of philosophy, that is, an exercise in reflection about concepts and ideas. Both morality and ethics are concerned with the normative nature and impact of some concepts, ideas and practices in human existence. But I am arguing that, in the case of 'morality', we are referring to a key aspect of our common behaviour that, in a certain sense, can be observed or experienced. I 'see' morality every time I observe a person helping another in need. I do not 'see and/or observe' ethics in that sense, unless I am engaged in ethical argumentation and its outcome (i.e. the publications and/or texts and/or lectures that emerge from ethical deliberation). 1.The Afrikaans language says it better: 'Mense onderwerp hul gedrag universeel aan 'n behorenseis'. This article investigates the nature of an 'Ethics of Responsibility' (ER) as well as its significance for the broader research project dealt with, namely 'Morality in History'. The article starts off with a conceptual analysis of the notions of 'morality' and 'ethics', followed by an exposition of Alasdair MacIntyre's formulation of the 'anomaly' of current-day moral theory. This leads to a comprehensive analysis of MacIntyre's argument as to why the Enlightenment project was, according to him, doomed to failure and a return to Aristotle is essentially called for. Consequently, the approach known as the ER is introduced, drawing on the work of Hans Jonas, Emmanuel Levinas, Richard Niehbur, Richard Bernstein, William Schweiker and Aristotle. The following concepts are analysed and integrated into the framework of the ER, namely accountability (Schwecker), reciprocity (Levinas), fallibility (Van Niekerk), futurity (Jonas), the dialectic between normativity and applications (Bernstein) and phronesis (Aristotle). The article argues that the theoretical model of an 'ethics of responsibility' contributes significantly to reflection on the 'origins of morality'. The 'anomaly' of current-day moral theory is analysed This is followed by a comprehensive exposition of the ER. This model of ethical conceptualisation bestows even more clarity on the intra-and interdisciplinary implications of the article, as a model is developed, drawing on the work of Jonas, Levinas, Schweiker and others, that utilises the insights of Aristotle and thereby transcends the approaches to moral reasoning of Modernity.

With fifty-four chapters charting the development of moral philosophy in the Western world, this volume examines the key thinkers and texts and their influence on the history of moral thought from the pre-Socratics to the present day. Topics including Epicureanism, humanism, Jewish and Arabic thought, perfectionism, pragmatism, idealism and intuitionism are all explored, as are figures including Aristotle, Boethius, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Rawls, as well as numerous key ideas and schools of thought. Chapters are written by leading experts in the field, drawing on the latest research to offer rigorous analysis of the canonical figures and movements of this branch of philosophy. The volume provides a comprehensive yet philosophically advanced resource for students and teachers alike as they approach, and refine their understanding of, the central issues in moral thought. Read more at http://www.cambridge.org/it/academic/subjects/philosophy/history-philosophy/cambridge-history-moral-philosophy#SKuHy5AdTDKYDw3K.99