From Theonomy to Autonomy (original) (raw)

The Invention of Modern Moral Philosophy A Review of The Invention of Autonomy by J. B. Schneewind

Journal of Religious Ethics, 2001

This review essay assesses the significance of J. B. Schneewind's The Invention of Autonomy for the history of moral thought in general and for religious ethics in particular. The essay offers an overview of Schneewind's complex argument before critically discussing his four central themes: the primacy of Immanuel Kant, the fundamentality of conflict, the insufficiency of virtue, and community with God. Whereas Schneewind argues that an impasse between modern natural law and perfectionist ethics revealed irresolvable tensions within Christian ethics and thus encouraged the emergence of secular moral thought, this author suggests that these tensions were specific to a voluntarist strand of Christian moral thought from which even antivoluntarists of the modern period were unable to break free.

On the Institution of the Moral Subject.

ON THE INSTITUTION OF THE MORAL SUBJECT: ON THE COMMANDER AND THE COMMANDED IN NIETZSCHE’S DISCUSSION OF LAW Abstract: The article discusses how Nietzsche understands the institution of law and morals in distinction to Kant and the Christian tradition. It argues that Nietzsche to a large extent is inspired by the paradigm-shift toward a evolutionary biological thinking introduced by several of his peers in the late 19th century, among else Fr. A. Lange, who sees this shift as a sobering scientific-materialistic alternative to Kant. In Nietzsche, the Kantian moral imperative is replaced with a notion of a morality emerging thanks to historical, or pre-historical, civilizational processes, imposed on a feebleminded human without any inherent rational dispositions to obey Law. It is also a process, which rather than universalizing the human, splits it in a duality where one part obeys old immediate self-interests and another part obeys new ‘commands,’ having been shouted ‘into the ear’ by a so-called ‘commander.’ The compliance with law takes two radically different forms in Nietzsche: servile and mediocre individuals need to be exposed to discipline and punishment in order to adopt Law; while so-called ‘sovereign’ individuals are able to impose law upon themselves. The figure of the ‘sovereign’ has consequently been an issue for vigorous debate in especially the Anglo-Saxon tradition of Nietzsche research, since his apparent ‘respect for law’ and ‘sense of duty’ reiterate typical Kantian qualities. Relating to these discussions, I suggest that Nietzsche’s ‘sovereign’ (in one context) is identical his ‘commander’ (in other contexts). When the ‘sovereign’ as such imposes law upon himself and others, his act is conventional and arbitrary (like language in Saussure), and is rather irrational than rational as in Kant. His will is not a good will, nor a rational will with a vision of human autonomy. His command of himself and others is a performative, thus without truth-value (like illocutionary speech-acts in Austin and Searle).

Ethical thought in the nineteenth century

The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth Century German Philosophy, eds. Kristin Gjesdal and Michael Forster

At the close of the eighteenth century, Kant attempts to anchor morality in freedom. A series of nineteenth-century thinkers, though impressed with the claim that there is an essential connection between morality and freedom, argue that Kant has misunderstood the nature of the self, agency, freedom, the individual, the social, the natural sciences, and philosophical psychology. I trace the way in which a series of central figures rethink the connection between morality and freedom by complicating the analyses of the aforementioned notions. In particular, I discuss Schiller's demand for a unified self; Hegel's attention to the socially and historically situated agent; Feuerbach's and Büchner's turn to natural science; Marx's materialism; Schopenhauer's philosophical psychology; and Nietzsche's attempt to anchor normative demands in will to power.

The Cambridge History of Moral Philosophy Extract

With fifty-four chapters charting the development of moral philosophy in the Western world, this volume examines the key thinkers and texts and their influence on the history of moral thought from the pre-Socratics to the present day. Topics including Epicureanism, humanism, Jewish and Arabic thought, perfectionism, pragmatism, idealism and intuitionism are all explored, as are figures including Aristotle, Boethius, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Rawls, as well as numerous key ideas and schools of thought. Chapters are written by leading experts in the field, drawing on the latest research to offer rigorous analysis of the canonical figures and movements of this branch of philosophy. The volume provides a comprehensive yet philosophically advanced resource for students and teachers alike as they approach, and refine their understanding of, the central issues in moral thought. Read more at http://www.cambridge.org/it/academic/subjects/philosophy/history-philosophy/cambridge-history-moral-philosophy#SKuHy5AdTDKYDw3K.99

HISTORIA PHILOSOPHICA AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL 15 · 2017

Historia Philosophia, 2017

Several passages in John Locke’s Letters for Toleration suggest he was favourable to an enforcement of the moral code by magistrates. According to John Marshall, Locke was not sympathetic towards moral coercion when he wrote An Essay concerning Toleration (1667), given his insistence on the limits of civil power ; his views in this regard changed in the nineties, because of his adhesion to the ideals of the Movement for the Reformation of Manners. However, there is no clear evidence that Locke was contrary to an enforcement of morality by magistrates before he wrote the Letters ; more importantly, some manuscript notes which he penned in 1681 reveal that, already in those years, his ideas on morality had undergone an important change which legitimated magisterial action against immorality. The private, super-political nature conferred on the concern for virtue and vice in An Essay concerning Toleration had begun to be obscured in Locke’s writings by his identifying virtue with social decorum, a public concern.

A Pre-Thomistic-Historic Account of Freedom and Virtue

A brief and cursory overview of main positions on freedom and virtue, from the perspective of a follower of St. Thomas Aquinas. In his preface to Fr. Servais Pinckaers’s book, The Sources of Christian Ethics, Fr. Romanus Cessario commends Fr. Pinckaers for providing “an invaluable compendium” of Thomistic moral theology (ix). According to Cessario, one of the great contributions of Pinckaers is that “his esteem for the Angelic doctor is neither exclusive nor blind. . . . [Fr. Pinckaers] encourages dialogue with a variety of traditions, within the Church and outside of it. Far from inducing a fortress mentality in which one would seek refuge in a Thomistic system,” Fr. Cessario continues, “an authentic engagement with Aquinas fosters the solidity and openness needed for ongoing theological enterprise” (xi). The purpose of this lecture is to further the work of Fr. Pinckaers in a realm to which he devoted a significant portion of his book: the issue of moral freedom and virtue from a Thomistic perspective. Specifically, I am interested in exploring St. Thomas’s understanding of the freedom of the human person in light of Fr. Pinckaers’s emphasis on the “freedom for excellence” in contrast to a “freedom of indifference.” Readers of Pinckaers’s book will be familiar with the basic outline of his history of moral theology. St. Thomas Aquinas was the inheritor and systematizer of ancient pagan and Christian thought; along with them, he understood the primary moral questions to be of virtue, happiness, and fulfillment, with an emphasis on charity. Freedom was understood as a freedom in conformity with nature and God’s laws. But before the middle ages were over, this harmoniously balanced theology was upset. William of Ockham introduced his noxious philosophy of nominalism which entailed a moral theory of voluntarism. This, in Pinckaers’s words, was “a new moral structure,” which reduced the good to whatever emerges from the law of God’s will: “Obligation became the very essence of morality” (251). Freedom was understood as a “freedom of indifference” in which the will was completely independent of any external or internal impulse or constraint. Given this background, this lecture has three goals: 1. To round out Fr. Pinckaers’s history of voluntarism by discussing antecedents to Ockham’s theory 2. Contextualize St. Thomas’s unique understanding of human freedom and its relation to virtue. 3. Note the position of the Catholic Magisterium regarding human freedom and morality, including its fundamental continuity with the thought of St. Thomas and Fr. Pinckaers. In addition to primary sources, the two most helpful sources have been Bonnie Kent’s book, Virtues of the Will, and Vernon J. Bourke’s book, Will in Western Thought. A narrower, but directly related topic, is Rito Saarinen’s study, Weakness of the Will in Medieval Thought: From Augustine to Buridan.