[lit-ideas] Re: Grice and Foot on the foundations of morality
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2010 08:11:24 EDT
The wiki has a good essay on Foot. This is an excerpt from the latter bits:
"Her book, Natural Goodness, attempts a different line. The question, what
we have most reason to do, is tied to the idea of the good working of
practical reason. This in turn is tied to the idea of the species of an animal
as providing a measure of good and bad in the operations of its parts and
faculties. Just as one has to know what kind of animal one is dealing with,
to decide whether its eyesight is good or bad, the question of whether a
subject's practical reason is well developed, depends on the kind of animal
that she is. (This idea is developed in the light of a conception of animal
kinds or species as implicitly containing "evaluative" content, which may be
criticized on contemporary biological grounds, although it is arguable,
even on that basis, that it is very deeply entrenched in human cognition.) In
our case what makes for a well constituted practical reason, depends on
the fact that we are human beings characterized by certain possibilities of
emotion and desire, a certain anatomy, neurological organization, and so
forth."
"Of course it might be suggested that this is precisely not the case, that
human beings are of the second kind, and thus that the justice and
benevolence we esteem are artificial and false. Foot would hold that
considerations of machismo and lady-likeness are artificial and false; they are
matters
of "mere convention" that tend to put one off of the main things. That
being how it is with justice, was the position of the Platonic "immoralists"
Callicles and Thrasymachus, and that being how it is with benevolence, was the
view of Nietzsche.
In the case of Callicles and Nietzsche this apparently is to be shown by
claiming that justice and benevolence, respectively, only can be inculcated
by warping the emotional apparatus of the individual. Foot's book ends by
attempting to defuse the evidence Nietzsche brings against what might be
called, the common sense position. She proceeds by accepting his basic premise
that a way of life that can only be inculcated by damaging the individual's
passions, filling one with remorse, resentment, and so forth, is not true.
She employs exactly the Nietzschean form of argument against certain forms
of femininity, for example, or exaggerated forms of acceptance of
etiquette. Justice and benevolence, she claims however, "suit" human beings,
and
there is no reason to accept the critique of Callicles or Nietzsche in this
case."
The essay lists her books, but not her essays:
Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy. Berkeley:
University of California Press; Oxford: Blackwell, 1978 (there are more recent
editions).
Natural Goodness. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001.
Moral Dilemmas: And Other Topics in Moral Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2002.
References
^ "Philippa Foot obituary". The Guardian. October 5, 2010.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/05/philippa-foot-obituary.
^ Critique of Practical Reason, Book 1, Chapter 3, "[W]e pretend with
fanciful pride to set ourselves above the thought of duty, like volunteers....
[B]ut yet we are subjects in it, not the sovereign,"
^ Eilenberg, Susan (5 September 2002). "With A, then B, then C". London
Review of Books 24 (17): 3–8.
----
Grice, H. P. The conception of value. For a discussion of Grice's take on
Foot on 'Morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives' and further
personal discussion he held with her.
---
Speranza
In a message dated 10/10/2010 7:46:10 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Per usual, a Popn. take on this:-
--- On Sun, 10/10/10, Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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