[lit-ideas] Re: two grice for the price of one,saturday night special

  • From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2015 00:41:37 +0100

One has to give JL some credit for the tenacity with which he defends his
grice.

Fukinbeliciana !

On Sat, Mar 21, 2015 at 9:13 PM, Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
> lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: 21 March 2015 21:11
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Hartiana
>
> Hart was a virtuous legal philosopher.
>
> My last post today!
>
> Why do moral theorists such as Grice and Grice use 'contract', and
> quasi-contract, when they don't mean it. Cfr. Locke on compact?
>
> Is there a legal implicature, there, somewhere?
>
> (Grice and Grice refer to Grice the author of "Studies in the way of words"
>  and Grice the author of "The grounds of moral judgement").
>
> As Ann Cudd says, "the metaphor of the social contract requires some
> interpretation in order to apply it to the situation of morality or
> politics", so Grice and Grice are being _metaphorical_ (or figurative).
> Literally, there is  no contract (even if 'literalness' IS one of the
> _figures_ of speech, even if a  boring one).
>
> Of course, we have to distinguish as to whether Grice and Grice are
> proposing contractarianism or mere contractualism.
>
> Contractarianism has its roots in Hobbes, whose account is based on mutual
> self-interest. Morality consists in those forms of cooperative behaviour
> that it  is mutually advantageous for self-interested agents to engage in.
> (The most  prominent modern exponent is David Gauthier).
>
> By contrast, any form of contractualism is grounded on the equal moral
> status of persons.
>
> ----- One may still need to study the legal implicature behind the use of
> 'contract', even if figurative, in both contractualism, contractarianism,
> and  Grice's quasi-contractualism.
>
> But back to O. K.'s point about 'Hart is virtuous' being kind of vacuous,
> or rather seldom made, qua utterance (I should revise his actual wording),
> I  found further evidence for the contrary -- what's the fun of philosophy
> if  we are not going to discuss?
>
> For Socrates, virtue is one.
>
> The Stoics adhered to the Socratic  doctrine that virtue is one.
>
> For Plato, granted, virtues are  four:
>
> temperance: σωφροσύνη (sōphrosynē)
> prudence: φρόνησις  (phronēsis)
> courage: ἀνδρεία (andreia)
> justice: δικαιοσύνη  (dikaiosynē)
>
> But D. Carr, however (in "the cardinal virtues and Plato's  psychologism",
> Philosophical Quarterly) considers either of the above FOUR  virtue
> combinations as mutually reducible and therefore NOT  cardinal.
>
> Gregory Vlastos goes further. In "The Unity of virtues in the
> "Protagoras"", Review of Metaphysics, 25) Vlastos argues alla Grice that
> Plato subscribes to a unified view of virtues -- 'virtue is entire'.
>
> In  "Protagoras" (and also in "Meno") Plato argues that the separate
> virtues  can't exist independently.
>
> Plato offers as evidence the logical  contradiction of saying that Smith,
> for example, acted with wisdom, yet in an  unjust way. Or that Smith acted
> with bravery (fortitude), yet without  wisdom.
>
> Plato was a philosopher, i.e. a lover of wisdom, and this  possibly biased
> into thinking that virtue is synonymous with wisdom -- and that  it can be
> taught (possibly at the Academy -- no fee required. Things changed  with
> Aristotle). (Geary disagrees: "Plato taught love-of-wisdom; not wisdom").
>
> Seneca, the Roman Stoic, also held that virtue is entire -- even if he
> perhaps lacked it.
>
> His reasoning is, like Plato, based on linguistic analysis -- now Latin,
> not Greek.
>
> Seneca explicitly says that perfect prudence is  indistinguishable from
> perfect virtue.
>
> "Considering all consequences, a  prudent man would act in the identical
> way as a virtuous person."
>
> "If  that's not a linguistic proof that virtue is entire, I don't know
> what  is."
>
> Nero found that VERY offensive and ordered Seneca to commit  suicide. This
> was not 'by law'; for otherwise Seneca could have appealed (vide  Hart,
> "Law as coercive orders", in "The Concept of Law").
>
> The thesis of  the Unity of Virtue happens to be then a well-known tenet
> of ancient  Graeco-Roman ethics, and Griceian one, at that.
>
> The strongest version of  the thesis, is held by Socrates and Plato. As
> Grice puts it, it states that  Virtue is One (said solemnly).
>
> A weaker but still very strong version of  the thesis for the integrity of
> virtue claims rather that there are  various virtues (like branches of
> philosophy -- Grice's point about saying  that Hart is ONLY a  'legal'
> philosopher (or Oxford's "man at  legal philosophy") gets, via something
> like damn by faint praise, that Hart was  not good at philosophy) are SO
> INTEGRATED with each other that a  person cannot have one virtue without
> having all the
> others.
>
> To have one virtue, in other words, is to have them all. (Mutatis
> mutandis, there is only one problem in philosophy, namely all of them).
>
> One cannot be truly courageous unless one is also just; one cannot be
> truly just unless one is also generous, as well as temperate, magnanimous,
> truthful, friendly, witty and so on.
>
> On the face of it, however,  this thesis SEEMS plainly false.
>
> Indeed, on most of the occasions  in which the Stoics exposed the thesis
> of the Unity of the Virtues it  was scornfully dismissed as one of the
> weakest aspects of Graeco-Roman  ethics -- it became fashionable again with
> Cato
> the  younger.
>
> The thesis of the integrity of virtue is  a puzzle that generates the
> right conversational implicature. For something can  be true BUT misleading
> -- or 'misleading but true' -- Myro, who knew Grice well  once formulated a
> "Grice rule": if what Grice says strikes me first as  plainly false, it is
> ultimately true; and vice versa").
>
> The thesis that virtue (like philosophy) is entire is not an empirical
> thesis, arrived at or supported by empirical evidence, neither is it a
> straightforwardly normative thesis of the kind just mentioned.
>
> Rather, the thesis is one that falls out of a broader normative view as  a
> corollary.
>
> It may be understood as the conclusion of an argument  that rests in part
> on normative and analytic premises.
>
> Moreover,  it seems to me that the premises of the argument are quite
> plausible and that  therefore the argument in favour of a qualified form of
> the thesis is quite  strong.
>
> The classical Graeco-Roman (and indeed Griceian) thesis of the  unity of
> virtue is understood to imply that to have one virtue is to have them  all.
>
> If a person is courageous, according to this thesis, then he  will also be
> generous, just, truthful, and temperate.
>
> Similarly,  if he is just, he will possess courage as well as all the rest
> of the  virtues.
>
> Grice does not elaborate the point, but if virtue is entire, so is vice.
> One of his adages against weakness of the will was of a man being 'caught
> in the  grip of a vice', but he admitted the utterance could trigger the
> wrong implicature in context -- especially in Oxford if not America.
>
> In Oxford, what Americans call a vise is a vice, and so, 'he was caught in
> the grip of a vice' may well mean, in Oxford, that he is held by the tool
> that  carpenters use.
>
> vice1 -- Latin vitium "defect, offense, blemish, imperfection," in both
> physical and moral senses (in Medieval Latin also vicium; source also of
> Italian  vezzo "usage, entertainment"), from PIE *wi-tio-, from root *wei-
> "vice,  fault, guilt."
>
> vice2 -- (spelt 'vice' in America) Anglo-French vice, Old French vis, viz
> "screw," from Latin vitis "vine, tendril of a vine," literally "that which
> winds," from root of viere "to bind, twist" (see withy). Also in Middle
> English,  "device like a screw or winch for bending a crossbow or catapult;
> spiral  staircase; the screw of a press; twisted tie for fastening a hood
> under the  chin." The modern meaning "clamping tool with two jaws closed by
> a screw" is  first recorded c.1500.
>
> But Hart _knew_ that!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
> .
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>
>

Other related posts: