Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sun Apr 06, 2025 4:52 am
agora wrote: ↑Sat Mar 29, 2025 8:01 am
"Admiring the enterprise, aspiring to it, and even tolerating it, are themselves moral stances. They can themselves flourish or wither at different times, depending on how much we like what we see in the mirror.
...
“In this sentence, in what sense is the word enterprise used?”
• Is it in the sense of a company, organization, or business,
• or in the sense of the ability to think of new activities or ideas and make them work?
Not sure if yours is a different edition,
what I noted from the prior paragraph is this:
Blackburn wrote:Philosophy is certainly not alone in its engagement with the ethical climate.
But its reflections contain a distinctive ambition.
The ambition is to understand the springs of motivation, reason, and feeling that move us.
It is to understand the networks of rules or ‘norms’ that sustain our lives.
The ambition is often one of finding system in the apparent jumble of principles and goals that we respect, or say we do.
It is an enterprise of self-knowledge.
Of course, philosophers do not escape the climate, even as they reflect on it.
Any story about human nature in the contemporary climate is a result of human nature and the contemporary climate.
But such stories may be better or worse, for all that.
So the 'enterprise' refer the above in reference to
"Perhaps fewer of us are sensitive to what we might call the moral or ethical environment.
This is the surrounding climate of ideas about
how to live."
But note:
"An ethical climate is a different thing from a moralistic one." page3.
also, morality is not about how we live but;
"The
core of morality, then, lies not in what we do, but in our motives in doing it: ‘When moral worth is at issue, what counts is not actions, which one sees, but those inner principles of action that one does not see.’" page 102
It is in the Book 'Ethics' where Blackburn misunderstood the nuance of Kant's morality where he [Blackburn] as with the majority, understand that Kant insisted one must not lie even to save a life absolutely. Kant was not dogmatic about it absolutely.
Are you able to see that the enterprise referred to in the second paragraph of the text I shared corresponds to what is discussed in the preceding paragraph?
Here are those paragraphs:
Philosophy is certainly not alone in its engagement with the ethical climate.
But its reflections contain a distinctive ambition.
The ambition is to understand the springs of motivation, reason, and feeling that move us.
It is to understand the networks of rules or 'norms' that sustain our lives.
The ambition is often one of finding system in the apparent jumble of principles and goals that we respect, or say we do, although some philosophers take a different tack, and tell us not only to put up with the jumble, but to celebrate it.
Either way, it involves the hope of increased self-knowledge.
Of course, philosophers do not escape the climate, even as they reflect on it.
Any story about human nature in the contemporary climate is a result of human nature and the contemporary climate.
But such stories may be better or worse, for all that.
Admiring the enterprise, aspiring to it, and even tolerating it, are themselves moral stances. They can themselves flourish or wither at different times, depending on how much we like what we see in the mirror. Rejecting the enterprise is natural enough, especially when things are comfortable. After all, we do not like being told what to do, and become especially defensive when we are bent on behaving badly. We want to enjoy our lives, and we want to enjoy them with a good conscience. People who disturb that equilibrium are uncomfortable, so moralists and critics are often uninvited guests at the feast, and we have a multitude of defences against them. Analogously, some individuals can insulate themselves from a poor physical environment, for a time. They may profit by creating one. The owner can live upwind of his chemical factory, and the logger may know that the trees will not give out until after he is dead. Similarly, individuals can insulate themselves from a poor moral environment, or profit from it. Just as weeds flourish at the expense of other plants, so do some people. Those of us who do not like a fight can be exploited by others. The litter lout or the fly-tipper gets away with it because most observers would be frightened of intervening, while to as much as toot your horn at another motorist can risk a trip to hospital.
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