Category: Ethics
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On Blaming the Victim
In the entry immediately 'south' of this one, I engaged in some victim-blaming. Is it ever justified? I say it is. As you might expect, I have an article on this very topic over at the Stack.
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Peter Singer Reviews Thomas Nagel’s, Circling the Good
Here. (HT: the ever-helpful Dave Lull)
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Bad and Good Self-Censorship
'Censorship' and 'self-censorship' are not dirty words. There are good and bad forms of each. Bad self-censorship The spreading virus of wokeness has transformed not only publishing but the entire information economy. At every level of it from school lectures to movies to Substack blogs, participants are vulnerable to having their careers ruined by a…
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Decent Man, Manly Man, Otherworldly Man
No morally decent man wants ever to have to take a human life. But no manly man will be unprepared to defend against a lethal attack using lethal force, or hesitate to do so if and when circumstances require it.* The first proposition cannot be reasonably disputed; the second can. How might one dispute the…
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Ultra posse nemo obligatur
Ought implies can. Not first with Kant!
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The Euthyphro Problem, Islam, and Thomism.
Top o' the Stack. The problem is genuine but insoluble. Or so I conclude. What say you?
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Derek Parfit on the History of Ethics
David Edmonds, in his superb biography, Parfit: A Philosopher and his Mission to Save Morality (Princeton UP, 2023, p. 160) reports, Parfit once summed up the history of ethics in four neat steps: 1) Forbidden by God. 2)Forbidden by God, therefore wrong. 3)Wrong, therefore forbidden by God. 4) Wrong.
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God and Morality
A short piece by Richard Swinburne.
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Moral Failure and Moral Capacity
Not being capable of truly horrendous crimes and sins, we moral mediocrities sin in a manner commensurate with our limitations. It follows that we are all equally sinful in that we all sin to the limit of our capacity. It is not that we always sin, but that when we do, we sin only as…
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Duty and Inclination
It is one's duty to control one's inclinations despite the strong inclination to dismiss one's duty.
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Weakness is No Justification: The Converse Callicles Principle
It needs to be said again at this time when Israel is under attack again due in no small measure to President Biden's weakness and senility. First posted 24 July 2014. ……………………… Might does not make right, but neither does impotence or relative weakness. That weakness does not justify strikes me as an important principle, but I…
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Can Mere Thoughts be Morally Wrong?
A Substack meditation inspired by Matthew 5.27-28
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Tempted?
Indulgence weakens; resistance strengthens.
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Morally Obtuse!
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Equality is a Norm, not a Fact. Does it Have a Ground or is it Groundless?
As a matter of empirical fact, we are not equal, not physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, socially, politically, or economically. By no empirical measure are people equal. We are naturally unequal. And yet we are supposedly equal as persons. This equality of persons as persons we take as requiring equality of treatment. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), for…