Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Ethics

  • When I Recall My Moral Failures . . .

    . . . I find it hard to doubt  a) My strict numerical identity over time.  When I regret what I did, I regret what I did, not what some other person did, and not what some earlier temporal part of me did.  The fact that the passage of time does not lessen my sense…

  • Courage: The Hardest of the Cardinal Virtues

    The cardinal virtues are four: temperance, prudence, justice, and courage. Of the four, courage is the most difficult to exercise. Why is that? Temperance and prudence are virtues of rational self-regard. Anyone who cares about himself and his long-term well-being will be temperate and prudent, whether or not he is just or courageous.  This is…

  • Two Assurances of Religion and the Case of the Philosophically Sophisticated Rapist

    Karl Britton, Philosophy and the Meaning of Life, Cambridge UP, 1969, p. 192: Religion tries to provide two great assurances: that there is an absolute good and bad in the world at large, and that the absolute good has power. I agree that religion does attempt to provide these two great assurances. The first assurance…

  • Do Our Ideals Make Hypocrites of Us?

    Perhaps only unrealizable ideals do. But such 'ideals' are not ideals in the first place. Only that which is realizable by us counts as an ideal for us. Or so say I. This is a quick and dirty formulation of my Generalized Ought-Implies-Can principle. Take celibacy. Can any healthy man in the full flood of…

  • 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. So I had the thought: 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…

  • The Problem of Dirty Hands

    Here at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical

  • More Grist for the Moral Mill

    If you tell one lie, are you a liar? I should think not. A liar is one who habitually lies. Otherwise, we would all be liars and the term 'liar' would perish from lack of contrast. If you have been seriously drunk a time or two, are you a drunkard? I should think not. A…

  • ‘Nonconsensual Choking’

    I was struck by a curious expression I found in a recent NYRB piece: I faced criminal charges including hair-pulling, hitting during intimacy in one instance, and—the most serious allegation—nonconsensual choking while making out with a woman on a date in 2002. As opposed to what? Consensual choking? So if you are on a date…

  • Bolzano on Obligation and Supererogation

    Here is a curious passage from Bernard Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre, sec. 147 (HT: V.V.): . . . I take the concept of obligation in such a wide sense that it holds of every resolution which can be termed morally good, whether it is a definite duty or  or merely meritorious, so that we can say of…

  • The Left’s Misplaced Moral Enthusiasm

    Among the leftists who profess deep concern over the effect on children of the President's salty talk are  leftists who endorse the killing of disabled unborn children.  I call that misplaced moral enthusiasm. Which is worse: mocking a disabled reporter as Trump is alleged to have done, or the late-term abortion of the disabled unborn?  …

  • Kant on Suicide

    Is suicide ever morally permissible? Cutting against the Enlightenment grain, Kant delivers a resoundingly negative verdict. Suicide is always and everywhere morally wrong. This entry is part of an effort to understand his position. Unfortunately, Kant's treatment is exceedingly murky and one of his arguments is hard to square with what he says elsewhere. In his Lectures…

  • The ‘Perverted Faculty’ Argument . . .

    . . . is well-explained by Edward Feser in Drunk Stoned Perverted Dead.

  • Is It Always Morally Wrong to Take One’s Own Life? Part I

    A reader poses a question: A 45 year old lady wants to kill herself. This is not a view that she has come to lightly. She has been thinking about suicide fairly systematically for the last five years – ever since she turned forty in fact. She can think of reasons to live – her…

  • Sunday Morning Sermon: Moral Failure

    We fall back again and again into our old bad habits because of our weakness on all levels: the flesh, the heart, the will, and the intellect. Our minds are dark, our wills are weak, our hearts are foul. How do we know this? By honest self-examination and a refusal to evade the truth.   The…

  • Franz Brentano on the Charge of Excessive Rigorism

    On his Facebook Page, Vlastimil V. quotes Franz Brentano, approvingly, I think: It is certain that no man can entirely avoid error. Nevertheless, avoidable or not, every erroneous judgement is a judgement that ought not to have been made, a judgement in conflict with the requirements of logic, and these cannot be modified. The rules…