From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Sat 15 Nov 2003 - 22:39:44 GMT
Can we make of ourselves better moral people !?
According to Iris Murdoch that is the main question of ethics.
Murdoch wrote about Sartre and existentalism. She will in the
end renounce Sartre but will embrace existentalism forever:-
" the gain of existentalism is that it acts, in any case, as a
philosophy where which we can live by/ for ".
That' s why she rejects the vigirous intellectual culture, which
denies ethics all together, or reduces it to a kind of behavioural
ethics:- an empiric discipline which describes vaguely how
people behave. Murdoch wants just more room for the ' inner-
side ' of ethics, thoughts and the pros and cons.
As an example she declares that mother M is not that keen on
her daughter- in- law D. Oh, M finds D a great woman, but she
is so bold, so inmature, to informal and uncivilized.
But M is a decent person, she never shows her deeper feelings
about her daughter- in- law.
After a while M asks herself if she still thinks in those ways about D.
Maybe it is me, she says. Maybe I am to elitair, maybe I am
jealious and she decides to reconsider her feelings about D.
She finds that D her bold character is just spontaneous, her
immature behavior sincere and her informality cheerful.
The example shows that the normative judgement about
somebody can change without the changing of the charac-
ter of the person(s) involved.
Murdoch wants to show with this example that the moral
standard is not due by how somebody behaves, but just is
a result of hers and his thinking.
In cases like the above Murdoch argues that the behaviorist
never can judge somebody's inner- side because about the
inner- side noone can say something meaningful.
Yes, thus hails the sound of victory, we can improve ourselves!
But how ? By better watching closely, like the mother- in- law
did. By paying attention to people and to things surroundering
us:- " unsentimental, unselfish, objective attention ".
Noone will argue against Murdoch view that a better and deeper
attention leads to a fuller picture of somebody.
But the conclusion that the new picture is a better one per sé
is not a convincing one and is also in conflict with Murdoch
initial point that man is by nature selfish.
More study about man will reveal the details of that selfishness.
By nature, man is maybe a selfish being, only within culture
he may develop himself as being an attentive and unselfish person.
( The sovereingnty of the good and Metaphysic as a guide to morals)
Daan Roovers/ translated out of Dutch by Kenneth Van Oost,
November 2003
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat 15 Nov 2003 - 22:45:45 GMT