[Main Blog Post] [Book] Thoughts on A Short History of Ethics

[jprussell]

This has taken a bit longer to put together than I anticipated given the length of the book, as indicated by the title A Short History of Ethics, but I hope I've done it justice, and as usual, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Comments

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for the blog, that was a long read! "because God said so, that's why" is something I've never heard a believer say. It's obvious to every Christian that the bible has texts supporting every side of every argument, and that no two people agree on what God says.

They also say God is everywhere, which is I think a good solution to the riddle. You know what's right, and the fact that you can't model it rationally doesn't make it otherwise.

[jprussell]

Fair enough on what how modern believers view God and ethics, but "because God said so, that's why" is a somewhat flippant over-summary of a position that has been a major thread in theological and moral reasoning, at least at some times in the past. The higher-level argumentation gets into something like "is God's Law good because it came from God, or is God good because he enjoins us to follow just Laws?" In other words, is the definition of "goodness" that it comes from the Almighty, and any other argumentation, logic, or whatever is just trying to help us understand it, or is there some definition of "goodness" that can be argued, reasoned about, and so forth that we can more or less settle on without resort to "if it is God's will, it is by definition good, whatever we may or may not understand about it."

There's also quite a bit of discussion about virtues that have been exalted as obviously good in Christianity that non-Christian societies either didn't have or put much less emphasis on - like charity. You can craft arguments for why something like charity should be included in the virtues for non-Christian reasons, but for most Christians, the reason to be charitable is because Jesus said "Love thy neighbor." Aristotle, the Romans, and Nietzsche would/did find arguments for Christian-style charity unconvincing, and some made their own arguments against it. The broader issue I was pointing at with the (again, admittedly over-simplified and maybe not as charitably-put phrasing as it could have been) wording "because God said so, that's why" is that different attempts at systems of ethical reasoning treat different sources as authoritative for ethical guidance (to differing degrees, of course) - many post-Englightenment thinkers have looked to things like "inherent moral intuitions," individual moral sovereignty, or the outcomes of actions in terms of pleasure generated by them, while Christians, Jews, and Muslims look to their holy books and the commentaries upon them, and Aristotle and his various followers look to things like organic social traditions.

Anyhow, thanks as always for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Jeff