Handout 09
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Philosophy
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Jan 9, 2024
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Uploaded by MajorBraverySeaUrchin43
The Good Life, Lecture 9, October 4
Is there anything wrong with being as morally good as possible?
Recap: Well-being, morality and the good life
•
What is the connection between well-being and morality? Possible views:
o
Morality is defined in terms of our own well-being: e.g., ethical egoism.
o
Well-being is defined in terms of morality.
o
Well-being always overrides morality.
o
Morality always overrides well-being. E.g., Singer.
o
Neither well-being nor morality consistently overrides the other.
What is a moral saint?
•
A moral saint is “a person whose every action is as morally good as possible” (p. 419).
o
What the life of a moral saint looks like depends on our conception of moral
goodness: for example, a utilitarian saint will devote her life to maximizing
utility; a Kantian saint will focus on complying with the Categorical Imperative.
o
Wolf’s view is meant to apply to
any
plausible ideal of moral sainthood.
•
Loving Saint: someone who devotes
herself to others “gladly, and with a whole and open
heart”. Her happiness “would truly lie in the happiness of others” (p. 420).
•
Rational Saint: someone who
would
be happy pursuing selfish goals, but who “
pays little
or no attention to his own happiness in light of the overriding importance he gives to the
wider concerns of morality” (p. 420).
•
Key trait: the moral saint “will have the standard moral virtues to a non
-
standard degree”.
Wolf’s thesis
•
We have
non-moral
reasons not to be moral saints: “[M]
oral perfection, in the sense of
moral saintliness, does not constitute a model of personal well-being toward which it
would be particularly rational or good or desirable for a human being to strive.” (p. 419)
•
Wolf is not
offering
moral
arguments against any specific ideal of moral sainthood. She
is arguing against moral perfection in general as a personal ideal: moral sainthood is an
undesirable model both for ourselves, and for what we want people around us to be like.
Wolf
’s
arguments
1.
Moral sainthood is
practically
incompatible
with the pursuit of non-moral interests.
o
The moral saint will simply not have
time
for the development of traits, and the
pursuit of interests, that we take to be part of a healthy, well-rounded life. There
will always be something more morally valuable for him to do.
o
“
If the moral saint is devoting all his time to feeding the hungry or healing the
sick or raising money for Oxfam, then necessarily he is not reading Victorian
novels, playing the oboe, or improving his backhand.” (p. 421)
2.
Some features that we value in ourselves and in others are
in tension
with the demands of
moral sainthood: for example, having a cynical sense of humor
requires “an attitude of
resignation and pessimism towards the flaws and vices to be found in the world” (p. 422).
3.
A moral saint cannot develop a genuine identity as a person.
o
“The way in which morality (…) is apt to dominate (…) seems to require either
the lack or the denial of the existence of an identifiable, personal self.”
(p. 424)
[In-class assignment]
Develop an objection to one of Wolf’s arguments
. (You can use the
discussion on pp. 425-426 as a starting point.) Then exchange your sheet with another group and
develop a response to the objection raised by that group.
Objection:
Response:
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