BOOK REVIEW ON UNDERSTANDING HUMAN GOODS
A Theory of Ethics
Introduction
To lead a good life is to excel at being a human being. Thus to understand what the good life consist in, one must understand what lies at the heart of a distinctly human existence. The standard answer was that the exercise of reason was what lifted humans above the level of animals. Virtue ethics focues on virtues Kantianism focues on rules contractarlanism focues on contract, why not focus on the good, or rather why not focus ethical theory of goods, since it is intuitively very clear that there isn't just one good in the world. Although the distinction between the attributive and the predicative concerns good as a concept, it is also the case that when it comes to conception of the good philosophers have tended to take different positions depending on how they have tended to use good.
MAIN CONCEPT OF THIS BOOK
This book presents an original analysis of one of the core topics in ethics. Timothy Chappell touches on central issues in philosophy and explores their interrelations, venturing into new ground the themes are also placed on the historical and current philosophical map, providing a survey of the positions taken. Topics touched on include utilitarianism, Kantianism, virtue ethics, personal identity, Parfitian reductionism, persons , animals, abortion, euthanasia, the freedom of will and the meaning of life. The main concepts of this book are moral philosophy and the concept of a person. The human world is alive with different sorts of goods the multifarious kinds of things that human beings can rationally see as worth achieving or celebrating by their actions and in their living well, still less of thinking or theorising well about ethics. This book contains six chapters. Let us see a brief description of these six chapters. The first chapter deals with identifies three foundational questions for ethics, and attempts to answer them: about motivation (what is the points of acting?) One sort of diehard optimist calls him the Hedonist replies that the point of acting is pleasure. Another sort of diehard optimist calls him the Calvinist replies that the point of acting is to praise God and glorify him forever. About the good (what is the good?) and about our dispositions (what are the virtues?). In each case against monism and nihilism, and in favour of pluralism. The indication some connections between these three kinds of pluralism and argue for the 'Working Hypothesis' that there is a deep connection between the theories of motivation and of justification.
The second chapter deals with the working hypothesis by suggesting that we can arrive at taxonomy of the goods by analysis of the different motivation types that agents display in action. Such taxonomy is offered, and applied to solve problems about egoism, objectivity, and the existential status of goods. The plurality of goods poses the Problem of Reconciliation the problem of how, if the goods are plural, they can be reconciled within a single life. This could even be called the problem for first order moral theory. Once set up, it is central to the rest of the book.
The third chapter deals with the Threefold Schema. This is the schema of possible practical attitudes to goods which says that, for any good, it is possible (i) to promote or (ii) to respect or (iii) to violate that good; and that to promote or respect a good is always per se at permissible, while to violate any good is always per se impermissible. Hence the author defends two controversial claims. First, at least some actions must be permissible and good but not obligatory, so that there is supererogation. Second, at least some non-evalratively defined material moral absolutes.
The fourth chapter deals with personal identity. In which personal identity is a traditional problem in the philosophy of mind, there is a sense of the phrase (more often employed outside than within technical philosophy) in which one's (personal) identity means roughly one's sense of who one is. The author argue that both senses of personal identity yield crucial notions for ethics. The ethical importance of personal identity strictly so called correlates with the deontological requirements of the Threefold Schema, inasmuch as it is strict biological human identity that determines the bounds of the ethically basic notions of agency, responsibility, and moral significance. Personal identity in the sense of intigrity correlates with the superstructure of ethics the part of the subject that has to di with what goes on within the constraints of the Threefold Schema. The considerations that can make it rational for an agint to choose one way rather than another, even when the Schema itself places no rational constraints upon choice, concern the agent's continuing projecy of seeking narrative integrity over time their project of finding or creating their own personal identity in the second sense identified above.
The fivth chapter deals with the narrative conceptions of persons, of the good, and of ethical rationality have major advantages over maximising ethical rationality. The view that rationality always requires us to maxivise the good (maximalism), together with the view of the self whhich is natural for the maximalist, entails a List Conception of the good criticism shows that this List Conception is false, and that we should replaceit with a Narrative Conception of the good which goes closely with our two other Narrative Conceptions, of rationality and of personhood. This facilitates an answerto the Problem of Reconciliation.
The sixth chapter deals with Narrative Conceptions Examined are further developed by exposing each to objections.
The Narrative Conception of the good: Good are important, not merely as items on a list, but also and more centrally as possible components of a good human life.
The Narrative Conception of rationality: For non-maximising choice between an irreducible plurality of goods to be rational, that choice should be guided, within the limits of the Threefold Schema, by the Narrative Conception of the good.
The Narrative Conception of the person: For the purposes of personal identity conceived in the strict logical sense, persons are substances – living individual human anmials. This sense of 'persons'grounds one crucial way, correlative to the Threefold Schema,in which person and their identites matter.
Conclsion
This book mainly to develop an ethical theory that explains the relation of the different goods to motivation and rationality,the broad framework of the Threefold Schema and Narrative Conception has the very inportant capacity to show us how determinism can be false without this implying that there is nothing left for humans' actions to be but helplessly subject to indeterminism. This book is worthwhile of reading.
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