Thursday, November 08, 2007

Liberal democracy cannot survive unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture

The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue Raymond L. Dennehy, University of San Francisco Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in JIS 2007.
This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics--insofar as it is a virtue ethics--forms individual character so that a person not only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover, possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to freedom and equality for all.
FREEDOM AND VIRTUE
The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are given in its support.
  • First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.
  • Second, a monistic virtue ethics--insofar as it is a virtue ethics--forms individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way.

This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to freedom and equality for all. Read the entire essay...

2 comments:

  1. Did you notice that, as is the case with all right wing culture warriors, he didnt even mention the world wide armaments race or the fact that USA "culture" is totally dominated by the the "culture" of death brought to one and all, including the entire planet, by Eisenhower's military-industrial complex.

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  2. Ah yes, father knows best, patriarchal papa pope and his one "true" way is what the world needs. All the righteous inherently godless "religious" egos wanting to impose their "superior" morality on to everyone else.

    I quite like this assessment as to what patriarchal monotheistic religions (in particular) and the cultures created in their image are really all about.

    "Humankind is patterned, culturally and egoically, to enact the mocking and destruction of the Truth-Bearing Force on Earth. Indedd, humankind "scapegoats" everything that that comes to its notice, not only in the "religious" or Spiritual context, but in EVERY context. Whatever humankind can enclose in the "middle" of human attention is, thus and thereby, controlled and ultimately destroyed.

    I Truth, the "Great Tradition" of humankind is the "scape-goating" of the Divine, the control and destruction of That Which Is Divine, the control and destruction of Reality Itself.

    Such is the human scale of things.

    Such is the ritual of egoity, which has been going on for thousands of years."

    Notice also that the site on which this essay appears is very much related to all the usual right wing outfits that are propaganda factories for the Pentagon death machine. The apologists for western imperial power.

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