3 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
View submission: /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | February 10, 2025
Why would the history of philosophy have started with the Abrahamic god? And why would philosophy, which is the love of wisdom, have as its aim the creation of a "perfect morality?"
Comment by Disastrous-Pen6437 at 16/02/2025 at 11:17 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I am claiming it is cyclical, or self perpetuating. Something along the lines of the chicken hatching from the very egg it lay is a good way to express it. I also do not specifically claim Abrahamic god though every religion does indeed have a god.
Doubt towards religious commandments creates philosophy which creates runaway relativism and the solution for this is to reinvent a new set of commandments and religion which is improved upon the last to explain the world. This new set of commandments has, at least to people at the time, zero flaws and thus is called holy. Questioning what is holy, and showing that holy is problematic was exactly what Socrates did in Euthyphro.
I am claiming doubt creates philosophy because if we were to completely follow religious explanations of philosophy then there would be no philosophical problems and thus no questions to ask. Maybe I should correct my comment by removing morality, I don't think it is just morality which philosophy tries to do, I believe philosophy always wants to improve itself.
Comment by checkdateusercreated at 13/02/2025 at 23:31 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Ethics, being concerned with the issue of living *rightly,* necessarily requires some kind of system for evaluating decisions and sorting them into groups of *right* and *wrong.* If more than one system *can* be established, then those systems may themselves require another system for evaluating systems and sorting them into groups of *better* and *worse.* Identifying the most *right*, or *better*-than-the-rest, system would be an accomplishment for an ethicist.
The issue isn't the idea of a *perfect morality;* the issue is the idea of *creating* it: whatever there is in morality within which to find perfection, it is nonetheless never created but merely discovered. All moral absolutists subscribe to the idea of a perfect morality. All moral absolutists would find such a perfect morality difficult to explain, especially to other humans, if they even had something to explain in the first place for lack of ever discovering a perfect morality.
If you are interested in a framework that could be used to identify a perfect morality, consider Frank Jackson's analytic realism argument that what we call moral properties can be reduced to natural properties. Once you have several moral practices drafted into lists of relationships of these natural properties, you can see where they overlap or even where a given practice is self-contradictory (and, therefore, incoherent and invalid). Processing incumbent normative systems like this is merely one way in which an ethicist may begin to pursue a perfect morality.
A love of wisdom is not a love of information, observation, or experience; a love of wisdom is a deference to the utility of information, observation, and experience used well—used *wisely—*especially when compared with the destructive power of such things used *un*wisely*.* In other words, a love of wisdom is a passionate pursuit of *considered* utility: the utility that comes from making specific decisions on purpose, because you care about the outcome that is created through those decisions. It's not *wise* to merely *ponder* the *existence* of different normative systems: it *is* wise to investigate what that information can do to improve *your* life. Wisdom is not in *knowing*, but in *doing best,* and that requires some definition of what is best. The philosophy of the ancient Greeks centered on the idea of human excellence, and there can be no higher excellence worth pursuing than the idea of *the good life,* whatever that might actually be practice.
I am a moral absolutist and find that moral non-absolutism is incoherent, because the scope of the statement 'XYZ thing is *good*' isn't just *accidentally* or *inadvertently* universal, but *literally* universal, and therefore a lack of that thing or a preponderance of a contradictory thing is *bad:* there is no saying that some otherwise identical thing is good *here,* but bad *over there,* and making sense to yourself or anyone.
Comment by mcapello at 11/02/2025 at 20:04 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I agree, it does not seem to fit the history of philosophy even remotely.