Traditional Moral Philosophy Research Articles

Machiavelli’s The Prince: How to Refute Virtue Ethics in Three Steps

This article examines Niccolò Machiavelli’s account of virtues in his famous work The Prince. The Italian philosopher uses three different stages or steps of argumentation. All these steps are analyzed in this paper. It is argued that in each step, Machiavelli makes partial conclusions which are neglected in the next step. In the last step, Machiavelli concludes that not only some virtues lead to failure, but all virtues are harmful to a successful leader. Instead of an honest and just way of acting, Machiavelli proposes the slyness of a fox – the most effective and successful way of acting. Cicero’s De Officiis effectively helps to understand the radicality of Machiavelli’s account of virtues. Cicero’s work enables one to explain all the central metaphors and analogies used in Machiavelli’s The Prince. Comparing Cicero’s and Machiavelli’s radically different accounts of the same virtues and vices shows that Machiavelli changed the traditional understanding of virtues, thus refuting traditional moral and political philosophy. -------------------------- Received: 05/01/2023. Reviewed: 20/02/2023. Accepted: 30/03/2023.

African Traditional Religion and moral philosophy

AbstractThe article provides a philosophical explication of an African religious moral philosophy. Often philosophers repudiate the view that African Traditional Religions (ATR) can embody a religious moral philosophy. Theologians, on the other hand, tend to believe that ATR can, but they often do not provide a systematic account of such an ethical system. The article demonstrates that ATR can embody an under-explored moral philosophy. ATR refers to indigenous religious ideas, beliefs, and practices of the indigenous people below the Sahara. The article will invoke the metaphysical and moral concept of vitality as the basis to construct an African religious moral philosophy. (It is worth noting that this article merely constructs, but it does not defend, this ethical system.) Vitality is the spiritual energy that originates, maximally inheres and defines God, and God has since distributed it to all that exists, albeit in varying degrees. By ‘moral philosophy’, the article focuses on (1) meta-ethics (it proffers a vitality-based account of the moral terms right and wrong); (2) normative theory (it expounds on the perfectionist and deontological principles of right action); and (3) applied ethics (it invokes a vitality-based conception of moral status to explore environmental ethics and select bioethical themes).

Identification of Cultural Practices among Young Adults: a Context-Sensitive Analysis

This article attempts to present ways in which culture is experienced by young adults. Culture is understood here not as an external construct that defines humans, but as a result of human actions, both individual and communal. Assuming that participation in culture is not just an occasional act but rather, a continuous, and strictly relational process, the authors suggest that the meanings ascribed by the respondents to their participation in culture will provide an insight into the processes of assimilation of culture, in connection to the phenomenon of learning. The authors try to understand the currently prevalent rationality for participation in culture, in the form that emerges from negotiations between the learning subject and the external world. The study reveals that the said rationality has little to do with the models of cultural citizenship and cultural education that are oriented towards deconsumption, personalism and community, or with traditional moral philosophy.

The Making of a Civil Code in China: Promises and Perils of a New Civil Law

The Chinese Civil Code was enacted on May 28, 2020 and will become effective on January 1, 2021 as the first civil code in the Communist China. Half a century of codification effort finally resulted in this much anticipated code. It utilized state-of-the-art codification techniques and presents a number of innovative features unique to China. In its concise 1260 articles, the Code is divided in seven books: the general provisions, property, contracts, personality, family law, succession and torts. In a break with civilian traditions, the Chinese Civil Code divides obligations into contracts and torts, and it absorbs law of unjust enrichment into the book on contracts as quasi-contracts. Moreover, a book on law of personality stands on its own which includes an enumerated list of personality rights protected by Chinese law with a focus on privacy and data protection in an effort to keep Chinese civil law up-to-date in order to tackle the legal challenges posed by the advancement of technology. Much progress has been made but there are problems that need to be addressed for this Civil Code to be successful. Some of these come from the tensions between the rise of private law and the dominant state sector, the contradictions among legal transplants, the incompatibility between doctrinal innovations and the existing structure, the clash between distributive justice - the foundation of Chinese moral philosophy and commutative justice - the foundation of Western private law. I will argue that solutions to some persistent problems require structural change in Chinese economy, doctrinal innovation and clarification, and conscientious acceptance of a law that is based upon philosophical ideas that differ from traditional Chinese moral philosophy.

“Enlightenment”: A Thinking Mode in Traditional Chinese Moral Philosophy

“Enlightenment”: A Thinking Mode in Traditional Chinese Moral Philosophy

When dreams become nightmares: a comparative study of Enemies, a love story and The reader

This thesis makes a comparative study of two internationally acclaimed texts of Holocaust literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Enemies, a love story and Bernhard Schlink’s The reader. Special attention will be given to the sociopsychological world of Jews and Germans in the post-Holocaust era, namely the Jews’ collective anxiety and the Germans’ collective shame. While doing so, we will call into focus the traumatic symptoms of the two female protagonists Masha and Hanna respectively, and treat the widespread skepticism towards traditional religions and moral philosophy. The questions of how to reconcile the past and the present and how to face the future constitute the thematic core of the texts in case. Both texts reflect the historical catastrophe and reveal the scarred human psyche. They work to offer illuminating insights into the great complexity of human nature. The two texts are a compelling reminder that religious, political and cultural enmities and conflicts may result in irreparable individual and collective trauma, thus necessitating negotiation, dialogue and cooperation between different cultural groups in order to make constructive (rather than destructive) cultural choices.

The virtuous epidemiologist.

This article addresses the scholarly gap in the ethics of epidemiology by exploring what virtue ethics, one of the oldest ethical traditions in moral philosophy, has to say about 'the virtuous epidemiologist'. It expounds comparatively the content and merits of a virtue ethics approach against more popular contemporary schools of thought such as consequentialism and deontology. Without necessarily dismissing the value of principles and standards, it presents a vision that a virtuous epidemiologist should cultivate wisdom in making prudential judgments in conditions of uncertainty; fortitude in dealing with powerful politicians and administrators which does not sacrifice truth; temperance and self-restraint in keeping one's ideological views from compromising one's scientific credibility; and justice in giving due weight to individual rights and the public interest when doing research and giving advice on public health interventions.

A Commentary Reflection of Moral Psychology Based on Embodied Cognition

The rise of embodied cognition in recent ten years has brought about significant influence on the research of moral psychology. On the one hand, the development of neuro-cognitive science has facilitated the research of morality deeply into the mirror neurons of brain, no longer being limited simply on the philosophical speculation; and on the other hand the experimental research of embodied cognition has provided new evidence for some traditional and philosophical moral issues and even made some new recognition of the issues which are different from the traditional interpretations. Tracing back to the research of the Western moral psychology, we find that cognitive rationality and virtual ethics are the two main research lines for moral psychology.（1）J. Piaget and L. Kohlberg opened a way for the research of cognitive development of morality, and their successors have formed new Kohlbergian School, such as the moral judgment theory based on DIT proposed by J. Rest and his colleagues, G. Lind’s dual-aspect theory based on his MCT and KMDD®; the social cognitive domain theory proposed by E. Turiel and his colleagues; the feminine caring ethics advocated by C. Gilligan and N. Noddings; the Social Intuitionist Theory proposed by J. Haidt based on evolutionary psychology, cultural psychology and neuro-cognitive science and so on. (2) The traditional moral philosophy and ethics have opened another way to the research of character education and virtues, such as the American movement of character education facilitated by W, Bennett and T. Lickona and others; the argument between J. Rawls and R. Nozick on moral problems; A. C. MacIntyre’s moral critique to the Western societies and his virtue ethics and so on. Since 21st century the research of embodied cognition has broken through the limitation of the traditional research on moral psychology, attempting to realize the new synthesis of intellect, human body and its environment, and therefore started the embodied research of moral judgment which is unfolded around the three dimensions of physical cleanliness, disgust, body temperature and body movements. I has also assimilated Piaget and Vygotsky’s ideas of psychological development, the theory of conceptual metaphor in cognitive semantics and the theory of evolutionary psychology, and made its theoretical interpretation and exploration for the embodied effect of moral judgment. Since the variable of physical body could have its influence on individual moral judgment by means of one’s emotion and cognitive elements, the moral judgment based on embodied cognition should be integrated with the theories of moral judgment, especially with moral competencies that are the core of moral judgment, and meanwhile the relationship between the embodied cognition and moral intuition should be deeply explored, and the issues such as chronergy, that is, time efficiency, and dynamics taken place when there is the embodied effect should be further examined, the regulated variables of embodied effects while making moral judgment and the individual differences should also be found out through detailed research. And finally we should check out the embodied effects of moral judgment through the cross-cultural comparison.

Effectiveness of Chinese Martial Arts and Philosophy to Reduce Reactive and Proactive Aggression in Schoolchildren.

This study examined the effectiveness of Chinese martial arts in reducing reactive and proactive aggressive behavior among schoolchildren with a cluster-randomized trial. A screening questionnaire was completed by 3511 schoolchildren of Grades 2 to 5 from 13 sites in Hong Kong. We shortlisted 298 children who scored z ≥ 1 on the total score of the Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire in their respective sites to participate in the experiment. They were divided into 31 clusters that were blinded and randomly assigned to one of the 4 conditions: skills only, philosophy only, skills and philosophy, and physical fitness (placebo). Subjects were assessed at baseline, posttraining, and 6 months after training using aggression scales. Results from the linear mixed model indicated that the time × training interaction effects were significant for aggressive behavior (reactive and proactive), delinquent behavior, anxiety/depression, and attention problems. Although all measures declined in all conditions over time, only the skills-and-philosophy condition showed a significant reduction at posttraining and/or 6-month follow-up compared with the placebo. The results provided a theoretical proof for the relationship between aggression and sport involvement combined with children's moral reasoning. This study gives practical implications to intervention that solely playing sports or teaching moral lessons is not effective enough for high-risk schoolchildren with aggressive behavior. However, combined traditional Chinese martial arts skills and moral philosophy training could be considered in the school curriculum to reduce school violence and facilitate creation of harmonious schools.

Moral Experience and the Unconscious

Moral Experience and the Unconscious Steven Groarke In a fascinating paper, where the stakes are a good deal higher than the modesty of its tone might suggest, Edward Harcourt requires us to think again about the ethics of psychoanalysis. We should not allow ourselves to be misled by Harcourt's tendency to downplay the ambitious reach of his argument. Indeed, Lacan demonstrated what is at stake here by drawing attention to the "originality of the Freudian position in ethical matters" (1986/1992, p. 11). Lacan may be relied on, more obviously than anyone else I can think of in the Freudian field, as a counterweight to the assimilation of psychoanalysis to moral philosophy. A stenographer began to transcribe Lacan's seminars starting in 1952 and, reflecting on matters some 20 years later, Lacan claimed that "of all the seminars that someone else is going to bring out, [L'éthique de la psychanalyse (1959–1960)] is perhaps the only one I will rewrite myself and make into a written text" (1975/1998, p. 53). Clearly, Lacan considered the seminar important enough to warrant special attention and, in my view, it is one of the most significant psychoanalytical and philosophical works on ethics in the Freudian tradition, a counterpart, as Certeau (1986, p. 60) points out, to Freud's masterwork on religious history in Moses and Monotheism. It is not surprising that Harcourt makes no mention of Lacan or L'éthique in an otherwise wide-ranging and eclectic paper. Unlike Harcourt, Lacan did not view the ethics of psychoanalysis of a piece with Aristotelian ethics, or with a style of ethical theory based on notions of arete, right habits, and a rational conception of the life of eudaimonia in which the good for human beings can be identified with reference to the nature of human experience. More pointedly, psychoanalysis on Lacan's reckoning is not a type of education in the excellence of character, and he certainly did not think that analysts needed a better theory of maturity. Rather, taking his bearings toward the real from Freud, he privileged the discipline of Ananke or necessity over the ends of virtue. As opposed to the defining continuities in Harcourt's argument regarding classical and psychoanalytic ethics, Lacan (1986/1992, p. 11) emphasized "the interval between Aristotle and Freud." On this view, which is one that I share, the Freudian interpretation may be counted as an ethical event, precisely, to the extent that the 'interval' provides an opening over against the tradition. As far as I know, the vast majority of moral philosophers have shown little or no interest in psychoanalysis, although among those philosophers who have engaged seriously with psychoanalytic theory, John Cottingham (1998) is notable for allowing that the Freudian concept of the unconscious has profound implications for the ethical task of determining the conditions of human fulfillment. If, as Cottingham (1998, p. 140) argues, "we take the central problem of moral philosophy to be that of how we should live our lives to the full…then psychoanalytic theory uncovers a fundamental flaw in the idea that we can reach that [End Page 137] goal by the application of a rationally laid plan." Lionel Trilling (1951) spoke in the same vein for variousness and possibility, for the potentialities of life, against a narrowing of mind modeled on the use we make of it in everyday, organizational tasks. The same holds for Cottingham as for Trilling and Lacan: psychoanalysis announces and inaugurates a new discourse on the human predicament. And developing requisite habits of virtue on the Aristotelian model of ethics, for instance, does not meet the fundamental Freudian challenge that there is something in the human psyche, an irreducible tendency to self-disruption (Lear, 2000), which repeatedly resists the principle of reason. Lacan (1973/1977, p. 33) insisted more vociferously, perhaps, than anyone else that the "status of the unconscious … is ethical." Nevertheless, he maintained that the logic of the unconscious cannot be stated in the vocabulary of traditional moral philosophy. Although the moral philosopher, at best, aims at finding ways in which we can rationally agree about what matters, the unconscious is precisely that about which we want to know...

The Normative Significance of Conscience

Despite the increasing amount of literature on the legal and political questions triggered by a commitment to liberty of conscience, an explanation of the normative significance of conscience remains elusive. We argue that the few attempts to address this fail to capture the reasons people have to respect the consciences of others. We offer an alternative account that utilizes the resources of the contractualist tradition in moral philosophy to explain why conscience matters.

"Unnatural" thoughts? On moral enhancement of the human animal.

Recent discussions about moral enhancement presuppose and recommend sets of values that relate to both the Western tradition of moral philosophy and contemporary empirical results of natural and social sciences, including moral psychology. It is argued here that this is a typology of thought that requires a fundamental interrogation. Proponents of moral enhancement do not account for important critical analyses of moral discourse, beginning with that of Friedrich Nietzsche and continuing with more prominent twentieth century thinkers such as the poststructuralist Michel Foucault, the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, and the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. In this paper, such analyses are taken into account to highlight the need for more fundamental philosophical interrogation of the project of moral enhancement.

Contra o “ar rarefeito da teoria moral”

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2016v15n2p246O diagnóstico já fora dado por Wittgenstein ele mesmo, tão cedo quanto no Tractatus e mais claramente ainda nas Investigações Filosóficas: a urgência em se resolver certos “problemas filosóficos” não passa de um sintoma de doença filosófica. Poderíamos mesmo dizer que a principal preocupação de Wittgenstein ao longo de seu trabalho era aquela de fornecer um tratamento filosófico eficiente para a cura das ilusões do filósofo e um método (ou alguns métodos) para se determinar uma nova atitude filosófica por meio de uma nova atividade filosófica. Tanto o diagnóstico quanto o tratamento sugerido tiveram um enorme impacto sobre a reflexão filosófica contemporânea, a qual eu gostaria aqui de considerar desde o ponto de vista da assim chamada “filosofia moral”, cujo destino é a questão deixada em aberto por este artigo. No que se segue, eu vou começar por uma breve caracterização da referida atitude wittgensteiniana tal como aplicada a alguns autores: Anscombe, Gaita e Elliott, sobretudo; e tentar esboçar uma imagem de uma atividade filosófica que é principalmente (e moralmente) terapêutica; este quadro será então completado com a crítica compartilhada por estes autores à “filosofia moral tradicional” tal como primeiro e claramente atestada por Anscombe; finalmente, tentarei esboçar e exemplificar algumas das possibilidades alternativas abertas ao destino da “filosofia moral” contra a mera exegese e contra uma atitude academicista e pedante que parece estar sempre à espreita em nossas incursões normativas

Marxism and Aristotelian Ethics

This article surveys the interpretations of the ethical foundations of Karl Marx’s thought. These interpretations focus on the early ideas of Marx and analyze them in the context of various traditions of moral philosophy. Aristotelian ethics is often proposed as the best model to understand the ethical foundations of Marx’s work. This article also points to the significance of Alasdair MacIntyre’s works in moral philosophy for the Aristotelian interpretation of Marx’s ethics.

Training Emotion Cultivates Morality: How Loving-Kindness Meditation Hones Compassion and Increases Prosocial Behavior

Traditional moral philosophy has long focused on rationality, principled thinking, and good old-fashioned willpower, but recent evidence strongly suggests that moral judgments and prosocial behavior are more heavily influenced by emotion and intuition. As the evidence mounts, rational traditions emphasizing deliberative analysis and conscious decision making are called into question. The first section highlights some compelling evidence supporting the primacy of affective states in motivating moral judgments and behavior. The real challenge is finding a way to align intuition with desired behavior. In cool reflective states, one may desire to be a kind and loving person. But when it is time to act, the moment is often accompanied by strong affect-laden intuitions. I argue that if affective states are the primary motivators of behavior, then moral sentiments must be trained through habituation in order to increase prosocial behavior. The second section provides empirical evidence linking emotional training with increased prosociality. To highlight this connection, focus is placed on the relationship between habitual meditation training, compassion, and prosocial behavior. Recent studies by Antoine Lutz, Richard Davidson, Susanne Leiberg, and others show that various meditation practices can dramatically affect the human person at various levels, i.e., increased physical health, neural restructuring, regulation and development of emotions, and increased helping behavior, to name a few. The current article focuses on the impact the habit of loving-kindness meditation (LKM) has on compassion and prosocial behavior. Recent studies strongly support the conclusion that LKM training hones compassion and ultimately leads to an increase in compassionate behavior.

Non-Eudaimonism, The Sufficiency of Virtue for Happiness, and Two Senses of the Highest Good in Descartes's Ethics

In his reflections on ethics, Descartes distances himself from the eudaimonistic tradition in moral philosophy by introducing a distinction between happiness and the highest good. While happiness, in Descartes’s view, consists in an inner state of complete harmony and satisfaction, the highest good instead consists in virtue, i.e. in ‘a firm and constant resolution' (e.g. CSMK: 325/AT 5: 83) to always use our free will well or correctly. In Section 1 of this paper, I pursue the Cartesian distinction between happiness and the highest good in some detail. In Section 2, I discuss the question of how the motivation to virtue should be accounted for within Descartes’s ethical framework. In Section 3, I turn to Descartes’s defence of the view that virtue, while fundamentally distinct from happiness, is nevertheless sufficient for obtaining it. In the final section of the paper (Section 4), my concern is instead with a second and sometimes neglected distinction that Descartes makes between two different senses of the highest good. I show that this distinction does not remove the non-eudaimonistic character of Descartes’s ethics suggested in Section 1, and present two reasons for why the distinction is important for Descartes’s purposes.

Five Moral Philosophies on Economic Growth: Fundamental Perspectives on Assessing its Benefits and Costs

Most economists are absorbed with writing papers for journals and other audiences and with other routine tasks of their professional lives. They have little time for introspective reflection on the moral philosophical - indeed, often secular religious - foundations of economics; indeed, they may not even be aware that contemporary economics rests on such a powerful set of value assumptions. The large role of moral philosophy in the historical development and now the current practice of economics is thus mostly left implicit and disguised. This paper briefly traces five traditions in moral philosophy that have contributed importantly to shaping the implicit value system of current economics: (1) the moral philosophy of Adam Smith of a “divine harmony” of market forces; (2) the “atheistic” utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and other utilitarians; (3) the “worship” of perfect productive efficiency and the scientific management of society of August Comte and other French positivists; (4) the “faith” of Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes and other progressive economists that the abolition of economic scarcity will save the world; and (5) the newer anti-progressive, anti-economic messages of contemporary environmental religion. The paper shows how powerful values derived from these moral philosophies not only play a large implicit role in economic policy making but in ethically justifying the very use of the technical methods of economics itself. This paper was presented to a panel organized by the Association of Christian Economists at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in January 2013.

Biology and Ethics: A Case for Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Habituation

Prior to evolutionary biology, ethics, as a theoretical discipline, was essentially confined to philosophy, where it aimed to analyse the content of morality and what it required of humans. Albeit, in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), Charles Darwin redefined morality to be an innate biological trait, which is inherent in the human biological constitution, thereby opening the way for the ‘biologicization’ of ethics. However, the Darwinian approach projected mere elaborate descriptions of the underlying biological mechanisms of moral behaviour as ethics, thereby sidelining the core normative concerns of traditional ethics. In reducing morality to a mere biological instinct—a spontaneous outburst that requires little human striving—it logically voided the notions of moral culpability, blameworthiness, and approbation. Moreover, the biological approach consigned habit and the intellect to the primordial past, suggesting that these faculties are of secondary importance in the moral behaviour of subsequent human generations. This resulted in a ‘closed habituation’ model, which is also logically inadequate for dealing with the notions of human freedom and moral responsibility. This paper is an attempt to resolve these shortfalls, using Aristotle’s theory of moral habituation as bench mark. The paper proposed a broad theoretical model which reincorporated the sidelined concerns of traditional ethics and, therefore, demonstrated that traditional moral philosophy could not be rendered obsolete by the incursion of biology into ethics, as contemporary evolutionary theorists of ethics have claimed. Key words: Aristotle; Biologicized ethics; Evolution; Morality; Habituation

Marks, Morals, and Markets

The prevailing justification for trademark law depends on economic arguments that cannot account for much of the law’s recent development, nor for mounting empirical evidence that consumer decisionmaking is inconsistent with assumptions of rational choice. But the only extant theoretical alternative to economic analysis is a Lockean “natural rights” theory that scholars have found even more unsatisfying. This Article proposes a third option. I analyze the law of trademarks and unfair competition as a system of moral obligations between producers and consumers. Drawing on the contractualist tradition in moral philosophy, I develop and apply a new theoretical framework to evaluate trademark doctrine. I argue that this contractualist theory holds great promise not only as a descriptive and prescriptive theory of trademark law, but as a framework for normative analysis in consumer protection law generally.

Relational Ethics and Moral Imagination in Contemporary Systemic Practice

This article discusses an approach to relational ethics in contemporary systemic practice. It explores the possibilities offered by traditions of moral philosophy in attending to problems from a relational ethics perspective. This includes a focus on relationships as a crucial element in the development and maintenance of a moral self and how couples and families construct an ethical platform together, both consciously and unconsciously; and also how relational ethics may inform ideas about the values‐driven problems people present in therapy. Finally, it suggests how ethical responsibility and accountability can be constructed as relational responsiveness. Despite our associations with morality as judgmental and rule driven, moral conduct and decision‐making can involve imaginative, creative and aesthetic possibilities.