Goodness

Disjointed Thoughts

obligations vs living well

• not just following rules, trying to reach God's design
• do we need God to be motivated to do good things?
  • prob not, many atheists are moral
• is God required in order to explain morality?
  • not for HobbesHobbes
    Thomas Hobbes
    
    Wrote [[Hobbes, Leviathan]]
    
    Do people have the natural ability to be good? Hobbes -> no
    - humans left to their own devices would be horrible; no innate goodness or morality
    Hobbes wanted to bring order, and a king will bring more order than any democracy ([[MOC - Modern Philosophers#Hobbes vs Locke|Comparison w/ Locke]])
    - trade in freedoms for the security of natural society
    
    
    Hobbes was pretty universally despised
    He identified common symptoms that people recognized... or AristotleAristotle
    Aristotle
    
    Books
    
    [[Aristotle, Poetics|Poetics]]
    [[Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics|Nicomachean Ethics]]
    [[Aristotle, Categories|Categories]]
    among many others
    
    
    Aristotle's Paradigm (Middle Ages bkgrd)
    
    Matter is eternal and exists w/o forms
    Forms only exist with matter
    No sensations, no imagination, no intellect w/o forms, phantasms, or species in the mind
    Impressions on a passive mind
    
    impressions are the things we see, sense
    
    
    Active intellect perceives pas...
  • but yes for how we generally use "morality"
  • so if there is morality, there is a God

Different Author's Views on Goodness

Immanuel KantKant
Kant
Wrote [[Kant, What is Enlightenment?]]
Man's primary problem isn't sin; it's that he doesn't have the freedom to reason & be enlightened (??)

Background

came from Prussia, wrote under Frederick the Great
Kant - a rationalist who wants to confine reason to the bounds of experience

reason is bound by the condition of possible experience; cannot reason about unexperienced things
so, we can't reason a/b God crating the world because we didn't experience it


... (1724-1804)

Selections

1. Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means. (The Categorical Imperative)
2. To be truthful (honest) in all declarations is, therefore, a sacred and unconditionally commanding law of reason that admits of no expediency whatsoever.

Notes

• universal & objective
• rigid system of rules
• duty/obligation
• respect persons

Thomas HobbesHobbes
Thomas Hobbes

Wrote [[Hobbes, Leviathan]]

Do people have the natural ability to be good? Hobbes -> no
- humans left to their own devices would be horrible; no innate goodness or morality
Hobbes wanted to bring order, and a king will bring more order than any democracy ([[MOC - Modern Philosophers#Hobbes vs Locke|Comparison w/ Locke]])
- trade in freedoms for the security of natural society


Hobbes was pretty universally despised
He identified common symptoms that people recognized... (1588-1679)

Selections

1. To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law, no Unjustice. Force, and Fraud, are in war the two Cardinal virtues. Justice, and Injustice are none of the Faculties neither of the Body, nor Mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his Senses, and Passions. They are Qualities, that relate to men in Society, not in Solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no Propriety, no Dominion, no Mine and Thine distinct; but only that to every mans that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it.
2. For Moral Philosophy is nothing else but the Science of what is Good, and Evil, in the conversation, and Society of mankind. Good, and Evil, are names that signify our Appetites, and Aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different… [S]o long as man is in the condition of mere Nature, (which is a condition of War,) as private Appetite is the measure of Good, and Evil: and consequently all men agree on this, that Peace is Good, and Gratitude, Modesty, Equity, Mercy, & the rest of the Laws of Nature, are good; that is to say, Moral Virtues; and their contrary Vices, Evil. Now the science of Virtue and Vice, is Moral Philosophy; and therefore the true Doctrine of the Laws of Nature, is the true Moral Philosophy.

Notes

• state of nature
• morality comes from laws
• no universal morality
• legal=right
  • so, no unjust law
• morality: what leads to a goal life

AristotleAristotle
Aristotle

Books

[[Aristotle, Poetics|Poetics]]
[[Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics|Nicomachean Ethics]]
[[Aristotle, Categories|Categories]]
among many others


Aristotle's Paradigm (Middle Ages bkgrd)

Matter is eternal and exists w/o forms
Forms only exist with matter
No sensations, no imagination, no intellect w/o forms, phantasms, or species in the mind
Impressions on a passive mind

impressions are the things we see, sense


Active intellect perceives pas... (384-322 BC)

Selections

1. By virtue I mean virtue of character; for this is about feelings and action, and these admit of excess, deficiency, and an intermediate condition. We can be afraid, for instance, or be confident, or have appetites, or get angry, or feel pity, and in general have pleasure or pain, both too much and too little, and in both ways not well. But having these feelings at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the intermediate and best condition, and this is proper to virtue. Similarly, actions also admit of excess, deficiency, and an intermediate condition.
2. Since life also includes relaxation, and in this we pass our time with some form of amusement, here also it seems possible to behave appropriately in meeting people, and to say and listen to the right things and in the right way. The company we are in when we speak or listen also makes a difference. And, clearly, in this case also it is possible to exceed the intermediate condition or to be deficient.
3. Those who go to excess in raising laughs seem to be vulgar buffoons. They stop at nothing to raise a laugh, and care more about that than about saying what is seemly and avoiding pain to the victims of the joke. Those who would never say anything themselves to raise a alugh, and even object when other people do it, seem to be boorish and stiff. Those who joke in appropriate ways are called witty, or, in other words, agile-witted.

Notes

• function of man: acting virtuously
• correctly calibrating feelings + actions
• virtue = excellence
• focusing on living a good life

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

1. The existentialist … finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer by any good [existing prior to humans], since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that "the good" exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: "If God did not exist, everything would be permitted"; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point.
2. When we think of God as the creator, we are thinking of him, most of the time, as a supernal artisan. Whatever doctrine we may be considering, … we always imply that the will follows, more or less, from the understanding or at least accompanies it, so that when God creates he knows precisly what he is creating. Thus, the conception of man iin the mind of God is comparable to that oof the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes man according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan manufactures a paper-knife, following a definition and a formula. Thus each individual man is the realization of a certain conception which dwells in the divine understanding.

Notes

• no God, so no morality
• existence precedes essence