FROM THE ARCHIVES
[ home | archives | e-mail ]
Re: Good People
[Caleb Stegall 03/14 01:37 PM]We ought to bring a little more rigor to this discussion of what makes one a “good person” — and by extension what makes for a good society. For example, the emailer below thinks that strip malls, sprawl, and mcmansions are bad things, but also thinks that pointing out the value judgments implicitly adopted by those who live there is incredibly offensive. In this emailer’s view, these people are good people who have, apparently, behaved quite foolishly having been bamboozled. What can one do with this? It is a basic rejection of the foundation of western ethical thinking which must begin with Augustine’s insight that “when there is a question as to whether a man is good, one does not ask what he believes... but what he loves.”
I don’t think there is nearly so much bamboozling going on as some who wish to avoid making moral judgment would like to think. People basically know what they want — they know what they love. If the state, market, culture, etc., make it easy for them to pursue these things as the path of least resistance, so much the better. And as Frederica has pointed out, our society has essentially decided that what we love best of all is to give unrestrained expression to our basest appetites. It is true, people usually don’t explicitly calculate the naked truth of their decisions — human nature is too clever and deceitful for that. However, as Iris Murdoch put it, “At crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over.” This is because our choices don’t spring into being ex nihilo, but rather come out of the order or disorder of the soul. The most fundamental ethical question, then, is: What do you love? What does our society love? Everything else — including the choices that we make long before they are outwardly made manifest — flows from that.
|
