What if the best thing that ever happened to you…
Was not being rich, powerful or famous?
morality
Taking and Giving (1)
It’s funny what sticks. When I think about it, the earliest image I can remember about what an authority figure shouldn’t be came from Disney’s… Read More »Taking and Giving (1)
Alasdair MacIntyre on virtue and practices (1): What is a practice?
In the Homeric account of the virtues — and in heroic societies more generally — the exercise of a virtue exhibits qualities which are required… Read More »Alasdair MacIntyre on virtue and practices (1): What is a practice?
Agreeableness and amiability
Social agreeableness – being able to get along with other people, being “low friction” – is a sort-of-virtue. It’s a helpful enabler of community and… Read More »Agreeableness and amiability
Ends and Meanings (3): Alasdair MacIntyre virtue, mortality and story in heroic societies
Without … a place in the social order, a man [in a heroic society such as Homeric Greece or Saga Iceland] would not only be… Read More »Ends and Meanings (3): Alasdair MacIntyre virtue, mortality and story in heroic societies
Ends and Meanings (2): Alasdair MacIntyre on the modern self
MacIntyre believes that contemporary modern statements are ultimately ’emotivist’: in the absence of a clear telos (purpose / function / end), the statement “You ought… Read More »Ends and Meanings (2): Alasdair MacIntyre on the modern self
Ends and Meanings: Alasdair MacIntyre on the three-legged stool of Aristotelian ethics
Below is MacIntyre’s description of the Aristotelian model of morality. He believes this model began to break down during the Enlightenment, leaving us with the… Read More »Ends and Meanings: Alasdair MacIntyre on the three-legged stool of Aristotelian ethics
A disordered language of morality: Alasdair MacIntyre’s disquieting suggestion
Why does there seem to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture? Why do competing moral claims (for example between the… Read More »A disordered language of morality: Alasdair MacIntyre’s disquieting suggestion
Thought experiment: poverty and inequality without injustice
A small stone-age tribe lives undetected in a remote forest in your country. They live sustainably off the land by hunting and foraging. The forest… Read More »Thought experiment: poverty and inequality without injustice
At the Mountains of Madness: Edwardian* Science; Lovecraftian Cosmology
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a… Read More »At the Mountains of Madness: Edwardian* Science; Lovecraftian Cosmology