RSS
Ethical Systems or Sin, Evil, Inhumanity
Kelly James Clark in Realism/Anti-Realism, William Alston, ed. (Cornell University Press: 2002).
In this paper, I defend the importance of narrative to moral philosophy, in particular to moral realism. Moral realism, for the purposes of this essay, is the claim that there are moral truths independent of human
beliefs, attitudes, desires and feelings.i Contemporary philosophers typically focus on discursive arguments and exclude narrative. But narrative is considerably more powerful than argument in effecting belief-change. I shall argue that through such belief-change one can attain to moral truth.ii This account is opposed to that of fellow
narrativalist, Richard Rorty, who denies moral realism. Since I believe the clash between realists and anti-realists resolves into a clash of intuitions, I don't propose to offer a convincing argument in favor of moral realism. Instead, like Rorty I will draw a word-picture, which stands in stark contrast to the word-picture that he draws about
stories; it is my hope that the reader will find my word-picture more
compelling than Rorty's word-picture. In the final section I will offer
some considerations in favor of moral realism.
Robert Merrihew Adams (Oxford University Press: May 2002), 424 pages.
Renowned scholar Robert Adams explores the relation between religion and ethics through a comprehensive philosophical account of a theistically-based framework for ethics. Adams' framework begins with the good rather than the right, and with excellence rather than usefulness. He argues that loving the excellent, of which adoring God is a clear example, is the most fundamental aspect of a life well lived. Developing his original and detailed theory, Adams contends that devotion, the sacred, grace, martyrdom, worship, vocation, faith, and other concepts drawn from religious ethics have been sorely overlooked in moral philosophy and can enrich the texture of ethical thought. ~ Product Description
Corey L. M. Keyes and Jonathan Haidt, eds. (American Psychological Association: January 2003), 368 pages.
Toward redirecting mainstream psychology's focus from the disease model to the higher rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs that have long informed humanistic psychology, the contributors to these 13 chapters participated in the first Summit of Positive Psychology held in 1999. Keyes (sociology, Emory U.) and Haidt (social psychology, U. of Virginia) introduce the rationale for studying fulfillment, morality, and other factors that make life worthwhile. Keyes and foreword writer Martin Seligman, a former APA president, were summit co-chairs. ~ Product Description
Francis A. Schaeffer on Humanity said...
The God Who Is There, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968), p127.
Anyone with sensitivity and concern for the world can see that man is
in a great dilemma. Man is able both to rise to great heights and to
sink to great depths of cruelty and tragedy. Modern man is desperately
struggling with the concept of man in his dilemma.
Frank Jackson (Oxford University Press: May 11, 2000), 192 pages.
Frank Jackson champions the cause of conceptual analysis as central to philosophical inquiry. In recent years conceptual analysis has been undervalued and widely misunderstood, suggests Jackson. He argues that such analysis is mistakenly clouded in mystery, preventing a whole range of important questions from being productively addressed. He anchors his argument in discussions of specific philosophical issues, starting with the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism and moving on, via free will, meaning, personal identity, motion, and change, to ethics and the philosophy of color. In this way the book not only offers a methodological program for philosophy, but also casts new light on some much-debated problems and their interrelations. ~ Book Description
The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (Random House : 1993), pp. 245-246.
A Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear
his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and
Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising
of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children,
they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till
morning, and in the morning they hang them — all sorts of things you
can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a
great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel
as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's
all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even
if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing
children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother's womb, and
tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their
bayonets before their mother's eyes. Doing it before the mother's eyes
was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very
interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a
circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion; they
pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At
that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face.
The baby laughs with glee, holds out his little hand to the pistol,
and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains.
Artistic, wasn't it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet
things they say.
Fyodor Dostoevsky on Eden said...
"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man", in The Best Short Stories of Dostoevsky, trans. David Magarshack (New York: The Modern Library, 1992 [first published 1877]), 335-6.
Oh, everything was just as it is with us, except that everything seemed to be bathed in the radiance of some public festival and of some great and holy triumph attained at last. The green emerald see lapped the shore and kissed it with manifest, visible, almost conscious love. Tall, beautiful trees stood in all the glory of their green luxuriant foliage, and their innumerable leaves (I am sure of that) welcomed me with their soft, tender rustle and seemed to utter sweet words of love. The lush green grass blazed with bright and fragrant flowers. Birds were flying in flocks through the air and, without being afraid of me, alighted on my shoulders and hands and joyfully beat against me with their sweet fluttering wings. And at last I saw and came to know the people of this blessed earth. They came to me themselves. They surrounded me. They kissed me. Children of the sun, children of their sun — oh, how beautiful they were! Never on our earth had I beheld such beauty in man. Only perhaps in our children during the very first years of their life could one have found a remote, though faint, reflection of this beauty. The eyes of these happy people shone with a bright luster. It was an earth unstained by the Fall, inhabited by people who had not sinned and who lived in the same paradise as that in which, according to the legends of mankind, our first parents lived
before they sinned. These people, laughing happily, thronged round me and overwhelmed me with their caresses; they took me home with them, and each of them was anxious to set my mind at peace.
"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man," in The Best Short Stories of Dostoevsky, trans. David Magarshack (New York: The Modern Library, 1992; first published 1877), 335-6.
But are such repetitions possible in the universe? Can that be nature's
law? And if that is an earth there, is it the same earth as ours? Just
the same poor, unhappy, but dear, dear earth, and beloved forever and
ever? Arousing like our earth the same poignant love for herself even
in the most ungrateful of her children? I kept crying, deeply moved by
an uncontrollable, rapturous love for the dear old earth I had left
behind... Suddenly a strange feeling of some great and sacred jealousy
blazed up in my heart. "How is such a repetition possible and why? I
love, I can only love the earth I've left behind, stained with my blood
when, ungrateful wretch that I am, I extinguished my life by shooting
myself through the heart. But never, never have I ceased to love that
earth, and even on the night I parted from it I loved it perhaps more
poignantly than ever. Is there suffering on this new earth? On our
earth we can truly love only with suffering and through suffering! We
know not how to love otherwise. We know no other love. I want suffering
in order to love. I want and thirst this very minute to kiss, with
tears streaming down my cheeks, the one and only earth I have left
behind. I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!