Problems with the critique of Ethical Egoism

The critique that ethical egoism is an oxymoron if all moral action is "other directed." The issue I have with this is that it assumes ALL moral action is "other directed." This premise assumes that one can, therefore, be neither moral or immoral to themselves. This is problematic because I would venture to say, that if someone never eats so that others can eat and then this person dies from starvation, that person has acted immorally toward themselves. In summary I have issue with the statement that all moral action must be other directed.

What to do with the Ring of Gyges

Plato's story about the Ring of Gyges is an extreme hypothetical but it does serve a valid purpose in fleshing out whether appearances matter more than truths.  I would agree that it is far better to be moral than to merely seem moral, as there is damage to one's soul which impairs the ability to experience true happiness, but the situation he presents is even more dire.  The soul is indeed more important than the body and Plato explains this view well.
Rather than simply comparing appearance versus actuality, he states that a man who seems moral but is actually evil is worse off than a man who seems evil but is really a saint.  This is a harder concept to swallow because both men are in bad situations.  A man who is full of vices, even if he can hide them well and receive honor, still will never have true happiness.  There are countless examples of addicts and hedonists who search for means to happiness through carnal pleasures but never receive a respite from their search, so the appearance is less important than the actuality of being moral.  The man who is moral but seems immoral is in a bad situation not just because he receives no honor and is disliked by the city, but he is likely to appear like a pariah and may receive physical harm due to the society's perceptions.  Society can often get morality wrong and there are many examples of innocent men suffering because of misconceptions (Jesus often springs to mind) so it is not outside of the realm of possibility that a man who is truly good could seem bad because he goes against a corrupt nation's laws.
As the 1930s and 40s have a perfect example of evil, I feel it is appropriate to draw from that.  This hypothetical could be fleshed out to mean is it better to be a Nazi or a Rabbi in Hitler's Germany?  Obviously both situations are bad (one for the soul and one for the body) but which is truly worse?  When speaking of this we mean a fervent Nazi and a devout Rabbi (this is to prevent muddling the argument with examples of soldiers who helped smuggle Jews out and also prevents the atrocities some Jews did to others in the concentration camps from confusing this issue).  I'd like to say that the Rabbi is better off, but enduring the hardships one faced within concentration camps (which can parallel a good man being thrown in prison for appearing to be guilty of crimes in the Platonic example) caused irreparable harm to many Jews who went there and one can assume that there would be harm to the souls of the good men in the misguided city.  There were some people who came out of the camps and were unable to tame their inner demons (or the various bestial elements of a man's soul for Plato).

Aristotle and Virtue Ethics

In Aristotle's Virtues Ethics, taken from his much larger work, Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that the ultimate goal of life is to achieve happiness, which is chosen of its own accord as an end (never as a mean to any other virtue). Furthermore, Aristotle states that happiness is "an activity of the soul" that can only be achieved when one is activing in accordance with reason, and in this way, happiness is the "supreme good" and the highest of virtues; the purest excellence. Aristotle then proceeds to outline the two major branches of virtue: intellectual virtue and moral virtue. Intellectual virtue, according to Aristotle, stems from teaching and to a certain extent is an inherent capacity, whereas moral virtue is the "outcome of habit"---it must be cultivated by direct experience through our action. Aristotle then proceeds to describe virtue as being the disposition between two vices, namely excess and deficiency. Virtue can therefore be described as a mean state, for a mean state is not full of either extreme. Aristotle goes on to cite some actions that are decidedly either excesses or deficiency and have no mean, such as adultery, which is always a grave sin, according to Aristotle's views. Do you agree with Aristotle in that virtues should be described as mean states lying between two vices or do you think that they should not even be compared relative to vices? Also, do you think that virtue ethics is compatible with deontology? For if we are acting out of reason in accordance with virtue, would not we be living according to a deontological principle? Just food for thought. :)

Is Virtue Relative?

Macintyre suggests that virus are "aquired human qualities" derived from specific "cultural and social traditions".  This makes sense because the way one is taught from a young age to live his/her life is most likely the values he/she will hold as true later in life.  But what happens if a child grows up in an environment that distorts "good" virtues?  What's to say one culture is wrong about its interpretation of virtuous? Are there then even such things that are universally virtuous?  Time and place seem to heavily influence one's collection of virtues.  That is clear in Macintyre's account of several different figures/movements in history that all hold different qualities of virtue with esteem.  It would be logical to conclude that as societal standards change, virtues change.  But to me it seems to be a "cop-out" to say that because another person's view of virtue is different then I can do whatever I want.  It shifts responsibility and accountability.  However, Macintyre does say that there is a centralized, singular concept that brings all interpretations of virtue together: practice.  The practice he refers to is the pursuit towards a certain kind of excellence, or way of life, by following all the right "rules".  But who creates these standards of excellence that a person strives to follow?  Are they understood universally?

Were the Nazis Just Unlucky?

In our discussion of Nagel's "Moral Luck", one of the main points that we considered was the idea that being a member of the Nazis was somewhat circumstantial and that, had someone who was a member of the Nazis lived in a different part of the world, he or she might have lived a blameless life. Likewise, a person who had lived a peaceful, seemingly moral life might have been a Nazi if he or she had been given the opportunity or put in the same situation as the members of the Nazi party. I think that while circumstance definitely has something to do with our actions insofar as morality is concerned, I do not believe that it is the only factor in determining how we will act in a given situation. If it was the case that all of morality was simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time, so to speak, then what would be the point of even trying to act in a way that we perceive to be moral, since everything would be at the mercy of chance? I think that instead of morality being a matter of luck, it is something that is internal and must be practiced, almost like muscle memory in a way. The more we train ourselves to act in accordance with out beliefs about morality, the easier it is to adhere to our principles and act morally in the future. Since so many of our moral decisions are made in a split second, or are based on a gut reaction, if we have practiced our moral beliefs enough, then acting in a way that does not compromise these beliefs is likely to almost be a reflex. So, going back to the example of the Nazis, I believe that while circumstance and luck was definitely not on their side, it is not the case that these were the only factors concerned in their participation in the party. Had they practiced adhering to their values to the extent that their moral beliefs were always in view, they might have led very different lives despite their location and bad luck.

Deontological Ethics: Kant

In The Moral Law, Kant is looking for a universal moral law that everyone can live by. He says that in a post-Darwinian world, people want to explain the moral law through anthropology; explaining it through scientific reasoning. One of the things he spends time talking about is the fact that you cannot have good will without reason, because reason was made to guide good will. My question, then is, is it possible to follow/think through reason but still act upon what you think instinctively? Isn't that what people do anyways, follow their instincts even after reasoning through the situation? 

Would Fried say parents are harmful?

In "The Evil of Lying," Fried argues that lying to someone is harmful. Parents lie to their children quite often and do not reveal the truth until the child is much older. The most obvious cases would be Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the stork. So in this case, Fried would say that parents are harmful to their children and that they are morally wrong. I wonder if/how this changes once the parents reveal their lies to the child.

Is Kant a fan of the Golden Rule?

Categorical imperative: "Act that the maxim of your action can be a universal law."

Golden rule: "Treat others as you wish to be treated."

Is the Categorical Imperative a much broader, more universal form of the golden rule? I'm not saying they're exactly the same, but pretty darn close.

My views on Deontological Ethics/ Kant

After reading the views of Immanuel Kant, I think that I am sold on deontology. It makes perfect since that the rightness and wrongness of an act should be determined by its qualities not its assumed consequences. Going against individual moral principles therefore would be unacceptable for the sake of a guess. If morality is something that we all are familiar with, it would just make the most logical sense that obeying these principles should be absolute, not being contingent depending on certain circumstances. What made the most since is Kant's test to determine the moral status of an act. According to Kant, if the principle the act is based on could logically be a universal law, then the act is acceptable. For example, if a situation calls for an individual to lie for the sake of potentially doing good, Kant argues that since ethics are absolute, If the law made it so that people have to tell lies instead of the truth that would not be right. I most certainly agree with this.

What Would Jesus have done in Omelas?

So, I'm not really sure how I feel about negative harm. Is it a thing, is it not a thing? I don't know. My morality is colored by my religion, and that is probably why I tend to believe that if I witness a wrong occurring, and it is within my power to stop it, I am morally obligated to stop it. If I saw a person being mugged, or raped (yeah, this just got real) on a street somewhere, and did nothing to stop it, I would not be pleased with myself. Yes, it was not my fault that this bad thing happened, but I did have the ability to stop it, and I didn't do so. To me, that makes me almost as bad as the perpetrator.

Does that mean I believe in negative harm? Maybe. I do know that it is a hard thing to consider with Omelas, because there my fixing a harm being done to one person would harm hundreds. I read that story my freshman year in FYS, and we talked about it. A similar discussion to the one that we've had in this class; someone in that FYS class brought up Jesus and Christianity. Now, I try to deny to myself that I am a consequentialist, but sometimes that seeps through, and I had to stop and think for a moment about what I would want to do in this situation (rescue the child) and how that could be wrong because I would have been damning a whole city by doing so. I had to wonder (as cliche as it is) "What Would Jesus do?" I concluded that the correct answer was that Jesus would have taken the place of the child (assuming that a substitution could be made, Le Guin never addresses that).

Is that an incorrect interpretation of Jesus' teachings? Is this a deontological viewpoint, saving the child because it's right, or a consequentialist one, keeping the many people happy?

I do know that if I saw that child, and did nothing (for this post, walking away is something), I would not be able to live with myself afterwards.