Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Ethical crises old and new
- 1 Moral nihilism: Socrates vs. Thrasymachus
- 2 Morals and metaphysics
- 3 The soul and the self
- 4 Division and its remedies
- 5 Rules and applications
- 6 The past, present and future of practical reasoning
- 7 Autonomy and choice
- 8 Ethics and ideology
- 9 God and ethics
- Bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Ethical crises old and new
- 1 Moral nihilism: Socrates vs. Thrasymachus
- 2 Morals and metaphysics
- 3 The soul and the self
- 4 Division and its remedies
- 5 Rules and applications
- 6 The past, present and future of practical reasoning
- 7 Autonomy and choice
- 8 Ethics and ideology
- 9 God and ethics
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
REALIST ETHICS AND DIVINE COMMANDS
Finally let us return from the macrocosm to the microcosm, from society to the individual. I have argued that our self and our coming soul are such that we shall be unable to fulfil our moral obligations and live well – assuming such obligations and standards are real – until we are adequately unified and our plural selves harmonized as a single self. That in turn means that the possibility of living good lives will depend both on the reality of moral standards and on help from an external source necessarily ‘more than human’ in view of the effectiveness required. Or to put it bluntly in traditional Christian terms: if we are to be supported by God's grace, we can be so empowered, at least progressively, while without such empowerment, ‘ought’ (if there is an ought), so far from implying ‘can’, would rather imply ‘cannot’. Insofar as morality would then make any sense, it would function similarly to Paul's reading of the Jewish Law: to make us aware of how we cannot fulfil our moral aspirations. Thus, and in traditional terms, for morality to function God must function both as final and (at least in great part) as efficient cause of our moral life.
A number of contemporary theists and moral objectivists think they see a way round a contemporary shyness of introducing God into an account of first principles of morality, both as object of moral action and ultimately as the necessary support for its performance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Real EthicsReconsidering the Foundations of Morality, pp. 257 - 284Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001