in thinking about this thing we call philosophy, it is quite often
a search for the limits of something… for example, epistemology,
the theory of knowledge is the search for the limits of knowledge,
the methods, the validity and the scope of knowledge…
so let us look at each separate parts of philosophy…
so Aesthetics, would the searching for the limits of beauty, ART, taste,
and the creation of personal kinds of truths… the methods, the validity
and the scope of Aesthetics… that sounds about right…
Ethics, would be the search for the limits of value and morality…
the methods, the validity and the scope of ethics/morality…
logic, would the search for the limits of valid inference and
reasoning… the methods, the validity and the scope of logic…
again, sound about right…
Metaphysic, would be the limits of the fundamental nature of
being and the world that encompasses it… the methods, the validity
and the scope of Metaphysics…again, sound about right…
Political philosophy, is the search for the limits of political philosophy,
the methods, the validity and the scope of political philosophy…
again, works for me…
and god knows that there are all kinds of little subsets of philosophy…
philosophy of religion and philosophy of science and the various
theories of mind theories… and the philosophy of languages…
and in each of those theories, we are looking at the limits of them,
the methods, the validity and the scope of the various subsets of
philosophy…
so let us pick one at random, Deconstruction: an approach to
understanding the relationship between text and meaning…
what are the limits to Deconstruction, what are the methods,
the validity and the scope of Deconstruction? and once again,
our little maxim seems to work…
and now we return to the ethics/morality portion of the program…
so, we have ethics/morality, so what are the sources of ethics/morality, the limits of
ethics/morality, the methods of ethics/morality, the validity and the scope
of ethics/morality?
we can begin by noting that each civilization, each nation and each state,
has had a different idea, basis and understanding of what was ethical
and what was moral? for example, the Greeks, specifically Athens, but not limited
to Athens, the basis of ethical/moral understanding was in the concept of Arete…
which we might think of as excellence…the moral man, the ethical man
was the epitome of excellence…we think of excellence as being one thing,
and being moral as another, but that was a distinction that the Greeks never made…
it was the same thing to them…
you could almost spot the fracture in Greek society when the split occurred
between the two, excellence and moral… and I would say around 400 bc.
would be where it began…both Socrates and Plato would have agreed with
the statement that they were the same thing, excellence and moral…
but you don’t see that after them…even Aristotle started to drift away from
that idea…
and you compare the Greek idea of the ethical with the Roman,
and you can see the difference…their social codes were derived from
another idea which was “mos maiorum” which is ancestral custom,
or “the way of the ancestor” it was time-honoured principles,
behavioural models and and social practices that affected private,
political and military life in ancient Rome…the ancients knew best would
be the best way to describe this ethical and moral theory…
which was different then the Greek model which would be the ethical
as excellence…which would be different then the ethical model
of the middle ages which was religious in nature…follow the biblical
theories of what was right and wrong, which is a different emphasis
then the Greeks or the Romans…
and to be clear, this is not an in depth, in the weeds attempt to
lay out the various aspects of the difference between those three
types of ethics… just broad strokes…the heart of each those ethical
theories lays in a different area…the concept of ethics as being excellent,
the theory of ethics as being laid down by one’s ancestors and the religious
aspect of ethics in the middle ages…
and we look at ethics/morality today and it doesn’t seem to have anything to
do with excellence or the path of the ancestors or any type of religious aspect…
in our society today, we hold what would be called situational ethics, the situation
dictates the ethics applied…but there is no overall, universal, transcendental/necessary
application rule/rules/laws that seems to dictate our ethical/moral behavior…
and all three, the Greeks, the Romans and anyone from middle ages, would
be aghast at our real lack of moral guidance in today’s society…
for all three had a strong sense of what was right and what was wrong,
but we have lost, (never found) that sense of what was right and what was wrong…
and by no means am I even pretending to know what the ethical/moral status of
the eastern nations, China, Japan, India would be, but I would guess that they
are vast difference from the past theories then there are in the present theories…
and there does seem to be some profound difference in the method of
working out ethical/moral theories…and they are in the way we achieve
and work out ethical/moral behavior/theories and I would call one way,
the internal theory and the other way, the external theory…
and that will be the focus of my next post…
Kropotkin