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Mar

2012

Rationally Speaking: On suicide

Hume, on the contrary, thinks that suicide is morally permissible, also on the grounds of his analysis of duties. He talks about three types of duties: to god, to ourselves, and to others. I will skip the first category, since I don’t think there are any gods toward whom we have any duties.

In terms of duties to others, Hume claims that in committing suicide we do not harm others (again, with the partial exception of the distress we may cause to loved ones). However, we also — by necessity — cease to do any good for society, which may present a problem. Hume’s response here is that our duties to society are in proportion to the benefits we receive from society (a form of pragmatic reciprocal altruism, if you will), and since we do not receive any benefits from society after we die (obviously), it follows that we do not have any duties toward it either. More broadly, in Hume’s words, “I am not obliged to do a small good for society at the expense of a great harm to myself.”

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...on-suicide.html

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Deontology Hume Suicide Philosophy Bioethics

Aug

2011

Rationally Speaking: On ethics, part III: Deontology

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...thics-part-iii-deontology.html

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Ethics Deontology

Plato showed convincingly in his Euthyphro dialogue that even if gods existed they would not help at all settling the question of morality.
Broadly speaking, deontological approaches fall into the same category as consequentialism — they are concerned with what we ought to do, as opposed to what sort of persons we ought to be (the latter is, most famously, the concern of virtue ethics). That said, deontology is the chief rival of consequentialism, and the two have distinct advantages and disadvantages that seem so irreducible
11 more annotation(s)...
- Here is one way to understand the difference between consequentialism and deontology: for the former the consequences of an action are moral if they increase the Good (which, as we have seen, can be specified in different ways, including increasing happiness and/or decreasing pain). For the latter, the fundamental criterion is conformity to moral duties. You could say that for the deontologist the Right (sometimes) trumps the Good. Of course, as a result consequentialists have to go through the trouble of defining and justifying the Good, while deontologists have to tackle the task of defining and justifying the Right.
- two major “modes” of deontology: agent-centered and victim-centered. Agent-centered deontology is concerned with permissions and obligations to act toward other agents, the typical example being parents’ duty to protect and nurture their children. Notice the immediate departure from consequentialism, here, since the latter is an agent-neutral type of ethics (we have seen that it has trouble justifying the idea of special treatment of relatives or friends). Where do such agent-relative obligations come from? From the fact that we make explicit or implicit promises to some agents but not others. By bringing my child into the world, for instance, I make a special promise to that particular individual, a promise that I do not make to anyone else’s children. While this certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t have duties toward other children (like inflicting no intentional harm), it does mean that I have additional duties toward my own children as a result of the simple fact that they are mine.
- Agent-centered deontology gets into trouble because of its close philosophical association to some doctrines that originated within Catholic theology, like the idea of double effect. (I should immediately clarify that the trouble is not due to the fact that these doctrines are rooted in a religious framework, it’s their intrinsic moral logic that is at issue here.) For instance, for agent-centered deontologists we are morally forbidden from killing innocent others (reasonably enough), but this prohibition extends even to cases when so doing would actually save even more innocents.
- Those familiar with trolleology will recognize one of the classic forms of the trolley dilemma here: is it right to throw an innocent person in front of the out of control trolley in order to save five others? For consequentialists the answer is a no-brainer: of course yes, you are saving a net of four lives! But for the deontologist you are now using another person (the innocent you are throwing to stop the trolley) as a means to an end, thus violating one of the forms of Kant’s imperative:
  “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.”
- The other form, in case you are wondering, is: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.”
- Victim-centered deontologies are right- rather than duty-based, which of course does raise the question of why we think of them as deontological to begin with.
- The fundamental idea about victim-centered deontology is the right that people have not to be used by others without their consent. This is were we find Robert Nozick-style libertarianism, which I have already criticized on this blog. One of the major implications of this version of deontology is that there is no strong moral duty to help others.
- contractarian deontological theories. These deal with social contracts of the type, for instance, discussed by John Rawls in his theory of justice. However, I will devote a separate post to contractarianism, in part because it is so important in ethics, and in part because one can argue that contractarianism is really a meta-ethical theory, and therefore does not strictly fall under deontology per se.
- deontological theories have the advantage over consequentialism in that they account for special concerns for one’s relatives and friends, as we have seen above. Consequentialism, by comparison, comes across as alienating and unreasonably demanding. Another advantage of deontology over consequentialism is that it accounts for the intuition that even if an act is not morally demanded it may still be praiseworthy. For a consequentialist, on the contrary, if something is not morally demanded it is then morally forbidden. (Another way to put this is that consequentialism is a more minimalist approach to ethics than deontology.) Moreover, deontology also deals much better than consequentialism with the idea of rights.
- deontological theories run into the problem that they seem to give us permission, and sometimes even require, to make things actually morally worse in the world. Indeed, a strict deontologist could actually cause human catastrophes by adhering to Kant’s imperative and still think he acted morally (Kant at one point remarked that it is “better the whole people should perish” than that injustice be done — one wonders injustice to whom, since nobody would be left standing). Deontologists also have trouble dealing with the seemingly contradictory ideas that our duties are categorical (i.e., they do not admit of exceptions), and yet that some duties are more important than others. (Again, Kant famously stated that “a conflict of duties is inconceivable” while forgetting to provide any argument in defense of such a bold statement.)
- . One famous attempt at this reconciliation was proposed by Thomas Nagel (he of “what is it like to be a bat?” fame). Nagel suggested that perhaps we should be consequentialists when it comes to agent-neutral reasoning, and deontologists when we engage in agent-relative reasoning. He neglected to specify, however, any non-mysterious way to decide what to do in those situations in which the same moral dilemma can be seen from both perspectives.

Mar

2011

The Duty to Be Happy - Brainiac

we make a fatal mistake in thinking of happiness as a kind of duty. If we're not happy, we feel as though we've committed a crime against ourselves; if we are happy, we feel as though we've accomplished something.

www.boston.com/...the_duty_to_be.html

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Happiness Philosophy Deontology

Is the importance of happiness overstated? That's the question the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner asks in Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy, a book-length essay on happiness and its place in our lives.
For centuries, Bruckner explains, Western society focused on heavenly things. Happiness, if you were lucky enough to get some in this life, was understood only as a nice bonus, fleeting and illusory. What really mattered was the state of your soul - and it was suffering, not happiness, that would bring your soul closer to God. Bruckner quotes his namesake, Pascal, who wrote: "It is not shameful to die in pain - it is shameful to die in pleasure."
4 more annotation(s)...
- Modern Westerners, for good reason, look at things differently. Most people, even the very religious, are focused on getting the most out of our earthly lives: we want to be happy. The problem, Bruckner argues, is that pursuing your own happiness is actually harder and less satisfying than trying to perfect your soul. The old way of thinking made something useful out of suffering; the new way of thinking sees suffering as a senseless waste
- And the truth about happiness, as Bruckner sees it, is that it's rarely very effectively pursued. Happiness is really about luck and grace; you can be thankful for happiness, but you can't manufacture it. In fact, thinking of being happy as the sole aim of life makes happiness less meaningful. "Now that it has become the only horizon of our democratic societies," Bruckner writes, happiness, "being connected with work, will, and effort... is necessarily a source of anguish." We work at being happy - and, in working at it, rob ourselves of everything spontaneous and really joyful about happiness.
- Bruckner isn't saying that we shouldn't be happy; what outrages him is the way modern society can turn happiness into a competition. Happy people, he thinks, tend to lord their happiness over unhappy people; unhappy people tend to feel that, if they aren't happy, then their lives are failures. In fact, many unhappy people lead very valuable lives, and assiduously cultivated happiness is sometimes not particularly valuable
- Suffering is a natural part of life; it counts as living, too.

Mar

2011

Rationally Speaking: Is modern moral philosophy still in thrall to religion?

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...moral-philosophy-still-in.html

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Ethics Virtue Ethics Utilitarianism Deontology Religion

Recently I re-read Richard Taylor’s An Introduction to Virtue Ethics, a classic published by Prometheus
Taylor compares virtue ethics to the other two major approaches to moral philosophy: utilitarianism (a la John Stuart Mill) and deontology (a la Immanuel Kant). Utilitarianism, of course, is roughly the idea that ethics has to do with maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain; deontology is the idea that reason can tell us what we ought to do from first principles, as in Kant’s categorical imperative (e.g., something is right if you can agree that it could be elevated to a universally acceptable maxim).
12 more annotation(s)...
- Taylor argues that utilitarianism and deontology — despite being wildly different in a variety of respects — share one common feature: both philosophies assume that there is such a thing as moral right and wrong, and a duty to do right and avoid wrong. But, he says, on the face of it this is nonsensical. Duty isn’t something one can have in the abstract, duty is toward a law or a lawgiver, which begs the question of what could arguably provide us with a universal moral law, or who the lawgiver could possibly be.
- His answer is that both utilitarianism and deontology inherited the ideas of right, wrong and duty from Christianity, but endeavored to do without Christianity’s own answers to those questions: the law is given by God and the duty is toward Him. Taylor says that Mill, Kant and the like simply absorbed the Christian concept of morality while rejecting its logical foundation (such as it was). As a result, utilitarians and deontologists alike keep talking about the right thing to do, or the good as if those concepts still make sense once we move to a secular worldview. Utilitarians substituted pain and pleasure for wrong and right respectively, and Kant thought that pure reason can arrive at moral universals. But of course neither utilitarians nor deontologist ever give us a reason why it would be irrational to simply decline to pursue actions that increase global pleasure and diminish global pain, or why it would be irrational for someone not to find the categorical imperative particularly compelling.
- The situation — again according to Taylor — is dramatically different for virtue ethics. Yes, there too we find concepts like right and wrong and duty. But, for the ancient Greeks they had completely different meanings, which made perfect sense then and now, if we are not mislead by the use of those words in a different context. For the Greeks, an action was right if it was approved by one’s society, wrong if it wasn’t, and duty was to one’s polis. And they understood perfectly well that what was right (or wrong) in Athens may or may not be right (or wrong) in Sparta. And that an Athenian had a duty to Athens, but not to Sparta, and vice versa for a Spartan.
- But wait a minute. Does that mean that Taylor is saying that virtue ethics was founded on moral relativism? That would be an extraordinary claim indeed, and he does not, in fact, make it. His point is a bit more subtle. He suggests that for the ancient Greeks ethics was not (principally) about right, wrong and duty. It was about happiness, understood in the broad sense of eudaimonia, the good or fulfilling life. Aristotle in particular wrote in his Ethics about both aspects: the practical ethics of one’s duty to one’s polis, and the universal (for human beings) concept of ethics as the pursuit of the good life. And make no mistake about it: for Aristotle the first aspect was relatively trivial and understood by everyone, it was the second one that represented the real challenge for the philosopher.
- <div style="font: 15px Arial; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">For instance, the <i>Ethics</i> is famous for Aristotle’s list of the virtues (see Table), and his idea that the right thing to do is to steer a middle course between extreme behaviors. But this part of his work, according to Taylor, refers only to the practical ways of being a good Athenian, not to the universal pursuit of eudaimonia.</span></div><div style="font: 15px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br><br/></div><table cellspacing="0" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse;" cellpadding="0"><tbody><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Vice of Deficiency</b></span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Virtuous Mean</b></span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Vice of Excess</b></span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Cowardice</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Courage</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Rashness</span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Insensibility</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Temperance</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Intemperance</span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Illiberality</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Liberality</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Prodigality</span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Pettiness</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Munificence</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Vulgarity</span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Humble-mindedness</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">High-mindedness</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Vaingloriness</span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Want of Ambition</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Right Ambition</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Over-ambition</span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Spiritlessness</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Good Temper</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Irascibility</span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Surliness</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Friendly Civility</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Obsequiousness</span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Ironical Depreciation</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Sincerity</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Boastfulness</span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Boorishness</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Wittiness</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Buffoonery</span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Shamelessness</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Modesty</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Bashfulness</span></div></td> </tr><br/><tr> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Callousness</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Just Resentment</span></div></td> <td valign="top" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(128, 128, 128); height: 15px; padding: 1px; width: 152.4px;"><div style="color: #23252b; font: 14px/21px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Spitefulness</span></div></td> </tr><br/></tbody> </table><div style="font: 15px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"></div>
- How, then, is one to embark on the more difficult task of figuring out how to live a good life? For Aristotle eudaimonia meant the best kind of existence that a human being can achieve, which in turns means that we need to ask what it is that makes humans different from all other species, because it is the pursuit of excellence in that something that provides for a eudaimonic life.
- Now, Plato - writing before Aristotle - ended up construing the good life somewhat narrowly and in a self-serving fashion. He reckoned that the thing that distinguishes humanity from the rest of the biological world is our ability to use reason, so that is what we should be pursuing as our highest goal in life. And of course nobody is better equipped than a philosopher for such an enterprise... Which reminds me of Bertrand Russell’s quip that “A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress, though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.”
- But Aristotle's conception of "reason" was significantly broader, and here is where Taylor’s own update of virtue ethics begins to shine, particularly in Chapter 16 of the book, aptly entitled “Happiness.” Taylor argues that the proper way to understand virtue ethics is as the quest for the use of intelligence in the broadest possible sense, in the sense of creativity applied to all walks of life. He says: “Creative intelligence is exhibited by a dancer, by athletes, by a chess player, and indeed in virtually any activity guided by intelligence [including — but certainly not limited to — philosophy].” He continues: “The exercise of skill in a profession, or in business, or even in such things as gardening and farming, or the rearing of a beautiful family, all such things are displays of creative intelligence.”
- what we have now is a sharp distinction between utilitarianism and deontology on the one hand and virtue ethics on the other, where the first two are (mistakenly, in Taylor’s assessment) concerned with the impossible question of what is right or wrong, and what our duties are — questions inherited from religion but that in fact make no sense outside of a religious framework. Virtue ethics, instead, focuses on the two things that really matter and to which we can find answers: the practical pursuit of a life within our polis, and the lifelong quest of eudaimonia understood as the best exercise of our creative faculties
- “The exercise of skill in a profession, or in business, or even in such things as gardening and farming, or the rearing of a beautiful family, all such things are displays of creative intelligence.”
  
  So if one's profession is that of assassin or torturer would being the best that you can be still be your duty and eudaimonic? And what about those poor blighters who end up with an ugly family?
- > So if one's profession is that of assassin or torturer would being the best that you can be still be your duty and eudaimonic? And what about those poor blighters who end up with an ugly family? <
  
  Aristotle's philosophy is ver much concerned with virtue, and being an assassin or a torturer is not a virtue, so the concept of a eudaimonic life for those characters is oxymoronic. As for ending up in a "ugly" family, Aristotle did write that eudaimonia is in part the result of luck, because it is affected by circumstances.
- > So to the title question of this post: "Is modern moral philosophy still in thrall to religion?" one should say: Yes, for some residual forms of philosophy and for some philosophers <
  
  That misses Taylor's contention - which I find intriguing, though I have to give it more thought - that *all* modern moral philosophy, except virtue ethics, is in thrall to religion, without realizing it.