Basic Question- Is an action moral because God commands of it, or does God command it because it is moral?

The Three Assumptions:

1. A divine being exists.
2. This particular being has commanded/approved of certain actions and forbidden others. (this one is at stake)
3. The actions this being commands are morally right; the ones forbidden are wrong. (this one is at stake)

Two Horns:

Either God invents goodness and badness, making them arbitrary to his whim or God merely informs us of what is good and bad independently of his will.

3 Views:

1. Materialist
2. Life-force
3. Religious

Problems

Materialist can not answer the questions: Why is there a universe? Has it any meaning?

Life-force is either just a religious perspective or just a materialist perspective. If it's a religious perspective, then it's a watered down form of it.

C.S. Lewis's thoughts on religious view

Sombody or something wants me, and the rest of the world, to be a certain way. "What lies behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we knoe....It is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another." Two competing ideas of "God".... Panteism- God= the universe, and is beyong good and evil; Creator Theism-God= outside the universe, preferring good to evil.

 Explain Silentio’s use of midrash (define this) in his attempts to understand the story of Abraham’s “binding of Isaac.” Summarize the four attempts to understand Abraham, and how each attempt fails to capture that dimension which makes Abraham the “Father of Faith.” Why is it important for Silentio (and Kierkegaard) to show that Abraham exceeds understanding (this is asking about the philosophical context in which Kierkegaard is writing)?

Midrash- From Judaism; a way of interpreting the Bible, not just to explain laws and teachings.

4 Ways to Explain:

• Make himself despicable to Isaac
• Distracted by depressive thoughts about God
• Felt like he failed God's test in being willing to kill his son
• Isaac caught Abraham's frustration and dispair about following God's commands.

Compare and contrast Kierkegaard’s notion of the “Three Spheres of Existence.” What are they, and what are some of their features? What kind of person lives out their lives in each sphere?

Three Spheres of Existence:

• The Aesthetic Sphere-
  Not really joing the dance; choosing to be a bench warmer....(This kind of people who lives out their lives on this level are just absorbed in thing.) Comparable to a young person with a crush.
• The Ethical Sphere- Leaping, but awkwardly landing...(The kind of perople who live out their lives resigning from absorption in things. Such as a Monk, like Silentio, who joins a monastery, withdrawing from the world.) "Knights of Infinite Resignation" Something very awkward about these kinds of people.
• The Religious Sphere- Graceful leaps and landings....(This kind of people who live our their lives being able to harmonize back with life on the other side of resignation.) "Knights of Faith" These people are comfortable receiving back tat which they renounce.

Distinguish between the two different forms of religion and conceptions of God in the Ethical Sphere and the Religious Sphere. How does “god” work in the Ethical sphere, and how does “god” work in the Religious Sphere?

The Concept of God From Within the Ethical Sphere:

• Think of Kant's analysis of "perfect being"-those beings that are purely rational.
• To realize autonomy is to mimic this, and so God more or less just is the structure of reason.
• This is the fundamental position grounding DCT

The Concept of God From Within the Religious Sphere

• There's no relationship with a divine being in DCT
• DCT ends up underming what makes Abraham the "Father of Faith"

Explain Silentio’s idea of the “teleological suspension of the ethical.” What are the relationships between these ideas: a) the single individual, b) the universal, and c) the absolute in Silentio’s idea?

The Teleological Suspension of the Ethical:

Teleological Suspension:

• This is not to abandon it
• Preserves it in a highter order, and so relativizes it.

If the Ethical is the highest a person can reach

• Then doing one's duty-ultimate fulfillment or salvation
• And being an individual-sin against the universal structures of rationality.
• The Tragic hero ramains within the ethical sphere

Faith

• The paradox that an individual is higher than the universal, on the other side of the universal.
• An incommensurability that is not evil, unlike the Aesthetic sphere
• Involes an absolute relation to the avsolute "test of faith"
• The ethical duty becomes the temptation.

What does Noddings take to be what it means to “care”? How does she develop this into a framework for thinking about ethics?

Care- "a state of....engrossment...to be in a burdened mental state, one of anxiety, fear, or solicitude about something or someone."

• When we care, we displace our own self-interest for the sake of another person.

1. Another person "as a possibility for my own"

Direct possibility for becoming

Coupled with a feeling of "I must do something"

-to act, for example, to elimate an intolerable pain, fill a need, or actualize a dream.

Provide a description of the basic difference(s) between Virtue Ethics and Deontology, and between Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism.

Virtue ethics-is a branch of moral philosophy that emphasizes character, rather than rules or consequences, as the key element of ethical thinking.

Deontology -meaning 'obligation' or 'duty') is an approach to ethics that focuses on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions.

Consequentialism- says that we ought to do whatever maximizes good consequences.

Define “eudaimonia” and provide its basic structure and how we go about realizing it, for Aristotle. Make sure to address all four elements of the structure, but pay particular attention to the issue about why “eudaimonia” is not merely a feeling or a capacity.

Eudaimonia: (def.) spiritual well being; human flourishing

 The Structure of Human Happiness (Eudaimonia)

1)     Requires a grasp of the proper function of human being

                        -compare with the proper function and characteristic action of a sculptor

2)     The proper function of human being is the integration of all the dimensions of the soul

                              -We don’t usually regard animals as being happy

3)     Happiness is a set of actions and activities, not just a state or capacity

-        We don’t usually regard animals as being happy

-        It’s also enduring, rather than going up and down with circumstances

4)     How does one become happy

-       Through fortune and circumstances?

-        Through learning and attention; through effort, action, and cultivation of character.

                                                             i.          But it is not praiseworthy. It’s honorable, or an honor

What are the three things Aristotle thinks we are responsible for? Why those three and not other things?

Three things were responsible for

a)     Specific actions

     i) “Actions concerned with things that promote the end are in accord with decision and are voluntary. The activities of the virtues are concerned with these things that promote the end”

b)     States and quality of character/body

i)               Activities produce the kind of person we are ….”practice make perfect”

c)      How ends of our actions appear to us

Insofar as we are responsible for our state of character, we are also responsible for how ends appear to us—since their appearance is a function of our state of mind

 Explain the relations between Aristotle’s notions of voluntary action, decision, deliberation, and wishing.

Voluntary action

1)     There are two ways in which an action can be said to be involuntary

a.    When it is forced

-Examples: natural events like a strong wind; being restrained by a tyrant

b.     When it is performed out of ignorance

- Done in ignorance; this applies to drunken or angry actions, and vicious people

- Done from ignorance; such as someone who has been lied to

2)    Six-fold structure

i) who is doing it?

ii) what is being done?

iii) about what or to what he is doing this?

iv) what he is doing it with?

v) for what result?

vi) in what way?

            Decision

1)    “What is decided is what has been previously deliberated… *involving+ reason and thought…”

2)    More constrained than wishing

a.     We wish for certain ends, such as happiness

b.     We decide on specific steps needed for realizing the end(

3)    Distinct from belief

a.     Beliefs are about what is true or false

b.     Decisions are about what is good or bad to do

c.     It seems that decisions follow or imply beliefs…

            Deliberation

1)    We only deliberate about what can result from our own actions, or about what is up to us.

a.     specifically, those things that are local to ourselves and our community

b.     Not about the ends, but the means or steps for realizing those ends

                                                              i.         Encountering an impossible step = giving up

                                                            ii.         If the step appears possible, we perform it.

2)    Only in cases where the outcome of our action is unclear, or the right thing to do is undefined

3)    Decision to do an action results from deliberation

            Wishing

1)    We wish for ends.

2)    Not as the ends are good in themselves, but as they seem good to us

3)    But different things appear good to different people.

-based on their character… see the analysis of responsibility above.

Define the term “arête” (virtue), and how it works in Aristotle’s analysis of being human. How does it work, and what does it help us do? Make sure to compare this to how it works in non-human things.

 Areté:causes its possessors to be in a good state and to perform their functions well (23), like the eye

·       Help makes human beings perform their functions well

·      Virtues of character are “about feelings and actions, and these admit of excess, deficiency and an intermediate state”

 Identify a specific virtue, providing the excess and deficiency between which it rests. Provide also an example of each vice and virtue from famous movies, tv shows, or stories, and explain how each figure represents the vice or virtue.

Virtue- Wit….. ex. Robin Williams

Excess- Vulgar bufoons….. ex.Sarah Silverman

Deficiency-Boor ….. ex. Jersey Shore