esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) (04/10/85)
Lines beginning with > are from tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) > These thoughts aren't entirely my own. They're inspired by what has > become my favorite "book for future generations" -- After Virtue, by > Alisdair MacIntyre. [...] > Once there were many virtues, interdependently referring to each other > and subject to moderating virtues which balanced their proportion in society. > These virtues included justice, friendship, wisdom, excellence, beauty, and > others. An Aristotelean polis was supposed to cultivate and preserve the > virtues, particularly the public virtues of justice, wisdom, and excellence. "Once there were many" -- and now there aren't? :-> Actually, I fail to see what was so great about the moral theory of that (hypothetical?) place and time. I fail to see how one can tell what the virtues are, or why they are worth cultivating, without a *prior* understanding of good and bad -- in particular, of what's good or bad for a person. Thus I see MacIntyre's whole emphasis on "virtues" as putting the cart before the horse. > Most of the rules of this [Enlightenment] project he [MacIntyre] labels > "liberal individualism", a point of view which imagines that individuals > can invent premises to moral philosophies out of nothing but their own > imaginations, such that competition between these premises can be papered > over into pluralist "consensuses". [...] > We should abandon the project of rationally constructing whole moral and > political systems by deduction from axioms put forth by historically bound, > subjective wills. That was the Enlightenment project which has failed. I agree wholeheartedly with the rejection of "liberal individualism" so defined. That is indeed a project doomed to fail. But the cure offered, I think, is no better than the disease. > Tony Wuersch Paul V. Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec1!pvt1047 Dick Naugle Says "o PREPARE FOOD FRESH o SERVE CUSTOMERS FAST o KEEP PLACE CLEAN"