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Correctly diagnoses the problem: fails to provide a solution.

Fuck yes, we never ever talk about MacIntyre.

Considering that isn't the point or in the scope of the text I would hardly call it a failing. This text is just to set the ground for virtue ethics, not to actually do it.

MacIntyre doesn't really provide rigorous argumentation but that's what you get for taking your stylistic cues from Nietzsche and Marx. This book is only really popular among Catholics in my experience.

Nietzsche is 100% right.

>ethics
i just stay away.

maybe, but MacIntyre isn't.

maybe you can stay away from the texts, but its impossible to stay away from having a set of ethical principles

Staying away is a choice with moral consequences.

Brilliant analysis of contemporary ethics. Correctly ascribes the ascent of SJWism to a combination of Nietzsche, Kant and Mill.

No one provides a real solution but that's not exactly the scope of the book. He says we have to await a St. Benedict (ie, a saint of the community). He provides as much of a solution as does Heidegger or Marx.

Except it is rigorously argued and revived the tradition of Virtue Ethics which is not firmly Catholic or necessarily Christian. It's latter Macintyre that is more explicitly Catholic and Thomist.

If you think "Nietzsche or Aristotle" is poorly argued then you don't read.

It's the only worthwhile branch of philosophy. Metaphysics, epistemology, ontology a shit.

I was considering starting it 40 minutes ago, but opted for Aquinas by Feser to help me understand actual Aquinas.
I'll read this after it, it's very high on my to read list.

>It's the only worthwhile branch of philosophy. Metaphysics, epistemology, ontology a shit.
Metaphysics are the basis for ethics.
Metaphysics are the basis for everything.
To understand any philosophy, first understand it's metaphysics.

Say that to my face fucker and not online and see what happens.

It's not necessary to read all of it at first, assuming you know some of the ground he's covering.

"Nietzsche or Aristotle" being one of the most cited chapters.

Nietzsche said this was impossible and discouraged people from wanting that.

Where'd he say that?

Feser is a great source for learning about the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. However, I think the ethics section of that book is lacking a little. Between After Virtue and The Sources of Christian Ethics by Servais Pinckaers you should get a better idea of Thomas's ethics.

I'll be reading it in its entirety anyway, no reason to just read one chapter independently.
I'll read it all eventually. Feser has thus far been a fantastic source of information on Locke and philosophy of the mind.

He argues that everything is a slight misinterpretation, always, which Heidegger and Derrida take up.

But Nietzsche's critique of morality is of modern and not pre-modern morality. He doesn't ever criticize Aristotle and he almost points towards the need to cultivate virtues. He's certainly closer to Aristotle than to Kant. For both Nietzsche and Aristotle morality is not a set of answers.

Definitely agree there. Feser's writings were instrumental in turning me from the obnoxious heathen I was in college into the crazy Catholic I am today. I particularly like how in Aquinas he walks you through all the basics of Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics to show that most of the objections to the five ways (the only part of the Summa modern people ever read even though it's like one page of a three thousand page work) completely miss the point.

That's quite the change. Were you raised in a religious family?
I was converted by Gene Wolfe just before college, or rather set to be a Catholic without doubts plaguing me

>But Nietzsche's critique of morality is of modern and not pre-modern morality.

you're overlooking his criticisms of post-socratic greece (plato esp.), christianity and judaism. it's true that he is closer to aristotle than kant, but it's also true that he is much closer to heraclitus and homer than to aristotle

>Unironic Christians ITT

I was raised in a nominally Catholic family, but we were lucky to make it to mass on Christmas and Easter. Still received all the sacraments though, because that's what families are expected to do where I grew up. I went to one of the most obnoxiously lefty colleges in the country and dated a man for about a year, so it was a pretty big transformation (still kind of working through things).

>but it's also true that he is much closer to heraclitus and homer than to aristotle

Yes, well, I don't think Heraclitus, nor Nietzsche, nor Heidegger have adequate critiques of Aristotle's ethics.

The fact remains that our culture has absorbed both Nietzsche and the Enlightenment. Our arguments will always have recourse to basically two opposing languages. Sometimes it's an appeal to utility, sometimes it's Nietzschean skepticism.

Only Aristotle can get beyond this.

>The fact remains that our culture has absorbed (both) Nietzsche

I FUCKING WISH

Not all. The appeal of virtue ethics is that it can be both religious and secular.

Maimonides loved Aristotle, Muslims loved Aristotle, Christians loved Aristotle. This is all true. But you could just as well have an Aristotelian society that is more like Asia with religion in the background.

You're assuming that the only kind of secularism is Liberalism.

We haven't absorbed Nietzschean skepticism? We're always making arguments on the basis of "Well, you just want to exercise your power over me. You can't rationally justify your desires beyond that."

It's everywhere.

But we also still believe that we should work for the greatest good for the greatest number. Or that laws should apply universally because that's what a law is.

End result is people speak past each other always. Emotion-based arguments run wild.

I'm assuming you are a guy?
Most people here are nominally Catholic, but I'd say that's about the same as being anything else really, with 2 extra occasions for getting money from relatives.

>It's the only worthwhile branch of philosophy. Metaphysics, epistemology, ontology a shit.

Kill yourself, you retarded sack of shit.

Levinas was a pseudo-intellectual charlatan.

But Kirpke wasn't

Not really. You need to understand Heidegger for Levinas to make sense. Most people don't quite understand Heidegger and when they do they abandon him.

Levinas is a brilliant response to Heidegger.

We're literally in a stage of philosophy where we think all of those are meaningless and dead now.

Yep I'm a guy. The getting money from relatives was definitely a perk growing up. Though I think among my generation cultural Catholicism is basically dead. Most people who grew up culturally Catholic either go full fedora/secular humanist or end up fully embracing the teachings of the Church. Of course, your average parish is still full of "Spirit of Vatican II" boomers so the effects of this haven't really been felt yet.

You an Aussie?
Here cultural Catholicism is similar to Ireland, but like with them, it is also dying.
It's a shame the spirit of Vatican II is similar to anti intellectualism where people are almost discouraged from researching of church teaching for the nice feels.
Yes, but it's also the low point of philosophy as well as a growing revival of said disciplines. It was completely gone in anglo world 30 years ago and now there's a small, but dedicated number of excellent philosophers in the general aristotelian tradition.

Nope I'm from New Jersey. Basically everyone in my town is a Catholic of Irish and/or Italian descent. Had I not grown up in the Church, I would have probably gone to one local mass and gotten the hell out of there for Eastern Orthodoxy. Looking into the history of things, it's pretty clear to me that the Catholic position is the most intellectually sound. But with how awful your typical mass is (table altars, tasteless protestant hymns written in the 70s, hideous vestments, etc), I probably would have retreated to Orthodoxy. At least they know how to not completely shit on the liturgy.

>It's the only worthwhile branch of philosophy.

Metaphysics, epistemology, ontology a shit.

How are you defending a book about virtue ethics while being dismissive of metaphysics, when virtue ethics is entirely dependent on Aristotelian metaphysics?

Understanding the metaphysics is pretty crucial to understanding the ethics anyway, so it's still better to start there.

Here awful hymns aren't as widely spread, it's the danger if you go to a mass for students mostly.
But I only know of one proper choir, it's like you are at a top tier concert, but it's mass.
I don't know why or how, but the number of homosexual Catholics on lit is really fucking high, you are the 4th one I've spoken to.
Ethics are very tangible, unlike metaphysics, so reading it regardless of any other education is much easier.
It's similar to political philosophy, you don't need to develop a whole new mindset for a study, because lets face it, aristotelian views are now entirety built up from scratch while simultaneously crashing the Hume/Kant/Mill mindset that was given to us.

Well, he is right in that there are unironic Christians in these thread. Catholics, specifically, seeing as this is a discussion of intellectually rigorous philosophy.

Ethics isn't reducible to metaphysics, just like physics isn't reducible to mathematics, but metaphysics is still foundational to ethics just like mathematics is to physics.

Not really.

You can study the ethics and not have to read any of the metaphysics and still understand it.

How many Deontologist know Kantian metaphysics?

>Most people don't quite understand Heidegger and when they do they abandon him.

What? That's quite an empty claim there.

They don't play the Haugen/Haas Gather hymnal stuff over there? It's basically all I hear during mass in Jersey. I've also noticed that queer people tend to be overrepresented in Catholic circles too. I think it's because being gay forces you to confront the absurdity of modern life. In reaction to this, your options are basically to embrace the absurdity, kill yourself, or adopt some traditional religion (with Catholicism being the most intellectually solid choice). I've tried the first one and it didn't really work out, and the second choice isn't possible for ethical reasons. So here I am as a gay Catholic.

You might be right, but I view nearly all of existentialism that way.

No adult sees themselves as 'existentialist' even if they've read it. It's childish or they simply can't sustain it.

Fucks sake I lost my text.
I'll give a short recap of what I wrote.
All ethics stem from metaphysics. You can understand a lot of ethics, but to get to the core and analyze from the centre you need metaphysics.
Kantian ethics come directly from his metaphysics.

Boys post your Summas.
They play a lot of trashy pop, but it's more related to the performance than it is with the lyrics. Let's say it's the JP II song tier quality, nice simple songs, but depending on who plays it it's either decent or awful.
And I don't know any gay Catholics, and few ones who are hetero live a clean sexual life if they are in relationships.

Forgot pic

It's 2016 not 1922, moron. The reality is the opposite of what you describe.

Levinas and Heidegger are both pseudo-intellectual charlatans.

Isn't most anglo philosophy now just logic and linguistics?
I don't agree with the claim that metaphysics, epistemology and ontology are dismissed by the ones who know of it, but it's certainly true that they are unpopular.

>Isn't most anglo philosophy now just logic and linguistics?

Fuck no.

>I don't agree with the claim that metaphysics, epistemology and ontology are dismissed by the ones who know of it, but it's certainly true that they are unpopular.

Utter horseshit. Metaphysics, epistemology and ontology are literally the core of philosophy as practiced today.

Well then, the information I've been getting is conflicting with your account. Here, well there's not much philosophy at all and most is commentaries on Plato, Augustine, Kant etc.
Friends who study philosophy tell me that modern philosophers see metaphysics, and subsequently ontology as dead.

>Correctly ascribes the ascent of SJWism to a combination of Nietzsche, Kant and Mill.
Lol, what the hell are you talking about? I fail to see how these three are in any way responsible for SJWism, especially considering Nietzsche was such a critic of egalitarianism.
I don't see the Kant or Mill connection either.

Define metaphysics.

note: this thread is shit

Branch with deals with the underlying principles of reality.
Well then, read the book.

I will, sooner or later, but was hoping you could substantiate your own argument.

I didn't read it yet.
But I can see where he could go with it. Modern morality is an amalgamation of elements from the three, for example rejection of Christianity from Nietzsche could be the main element that came from him, he's also certainly not referring to Kantian ethics in their fullness because he's more or less rationalization of Christian morality of his time, it's got to do more with his idealism, or rather relativism which comes from that and whatever hedonism you wish from Mill, as utilitarian ethics are basically anything you want them to be.

This is what happens when Veeky Forums tries to discuss things they don't understand.
Better stick to the memes, lads.

Thanks for the reply. I can see how you could blame these philosophers in a roundabout way, but ONLY in a roundabout way. It seems like their respective works can at best only provide support for SJWism, and then only when taken out of context or misunderstood. By contrast, I would expect that Marxism-Leninism is far more responsible for directly popularizing egalitarianism and accelerating its growth.

It just seems like such an obtuse argument. But I'm intrigued, and have all the more reason to read After Virtue.

>All ethics stem from metaphysics. You can understand a lot of ethics, but to get to the core and analyze from the centre you need metaphysics.

Yes I agree completely. One of the reasons I disagree with the New Natural Law people, who seem to want to have natural law without natures.

>Boys post your Summas.

i.imgur.com/c0fB9dI.png?1 I'm a plebeian, I know.

Natural law is something no one in the public life, save a few, seems to understand. Whenever you appeal to it, they seem to think it's whichever you can see in nature, and it's incredibly annoying.
Well it seems rather plausible, I don't think egalitarianism is really ethics of the type he will discuss. I'm more inclined to see the difference between liberal and statist as a political and economic as opposed to ethical, in line with say Hayek.

Because we both think morality should be universal (Kant and Mill proposed universal rules to guide ethics) while also thinking that any ethical statement is just someone's exercise of power and cannot ever be universally applicable.

We haven't given up on either the enlightenment or on Nietzsche.

But Aristotle's morality provides guidance without recourse to universal rules (Aristotle explicitly says there's no pre-determined answer for ethics). So Nietzsche's critiques of morality don't apply to Aristotle because he isn't rule based. Kant and Mill will always be rule based.

How does that work with Catholicism in this case?

MacIntyre doesn't see egalitarianism as SJWism.

He would call SJWism "Emotivist" meaning that they present an argument which claims to say something rationally, but deep down it's argument is really "X is good because 'X is good' sounds good." In other words, something is good because it sounds nice. Macintyre says this isn't a real argument and it's bound to fail eventually. He goes as far as to say the U.N. Human Rights are "Emotivist" and we don't have a real argument for universal human rights. He's not fighting this per se, only highlighting that the U.N. and everyone else supports this because it feels good.

His critiques of Marxism is basically that it always ends up being Utilitarian or Nietzschean (which goes against Marxism) and that anyone who is honest with themselves, like he claims Trotsky did, will realize that Marxism cannot be relied upon to predict the future.

Take Aristotle and replace him with St. Thomas Aquinas. Their both pre-modern virtue ethicists who can avoid the pitfalls of universal rule-based morality and moral nihilism.

Human rights have a theoretical philosophical basis, but that basis is explicitly Christianity (Aquinas, Grotius, even Locke).
But the modern day UN has a completely incorrect, as you say, emotivist vision of human rights so things which have nothing to do with human rights are classified as such.
Things like free education, abortion and alike are maybe in someone's mind good, but are certainly not universal and based in metaphysics.

I know about that, but Catholicism is very much invested in universal rules, although it's never one rule which is applicable in the way such as Kant's golden rule.

Yeah, MacIntyre would probably say we should go back to Aristotle and then figure out how to properly set up something like Human Rights.

The other thing, too, is that Virtue Ethics implies a different conception of the individual.

i remember you

>Human rights

Completely ad-hoc and meaningless.

Can you fucking read?

Basically the best philosophers of the 20th century were saying philosophy is dead. I don't get how we've gone beyond that, in terms of philosophical trends. There's movements but there hasn't been a big philosophy to completely change the game.

Use the word 'Emotivist' it's more specific to what it represents.

The fuck are you on about

MacIntyre explicitly said that "rights" are a fictional concept (and I'm not entirely sure he's wrong).

The earliest usage of the word I know of in a way that similar to how we use it is by Henry of Ghent in his quodlibetal questions, and then later during the dispute about property (and therefore property rights) between the Franciscans and the Pope. As far as I know Aquinas never even mentions the concept.

Rights as a concept go further back, but weren't classified like they are today, or during the enlightenment.
You can trace it to Cicero for sure when he talks about how men are naturally free, but the artificial institution of slavery makes them unfree.
Aquinas endorses it also in a different way, you can have rights based on the natural law quite easily (an innocent man has a right to live because killing him would break his way to the highest good for example).
Made a recent purchases thread 8 months ago, only getting around it now.

Take some philosophy courses before spouting off, son.

How come you get to read all these cool books and I have to stay in the "Goethe, Descartes and Brit (C)lit" zone?

You read of your own will in your free time?

I do. I have a brutal backlog though

Why do you think we don't?
Reading is like a hydra, for every book there are two more you want to read.

It's a very accurate quote. It's just that I feel falling behind by not being able to read fast enough

>tfw the book you're reading references other books, and you add those to your reading list

does it ever end

Nope. It's an endless circle and it keeps expanding

When you go senile or die or life takes free time away.
I'm reading more then ever and less and less fiction. But it's the most rewarding thing in my life now and I want to keep doing it. Too bad I'm not a good student.

How can you fall behind on something that you will never be able to catch up to?

Divine mystery

...

I don't know that they do, though. I'm not even sure what, ontologically speaking, a right is supposed to be. Mind you ethics/political philsoophy is not my specialty.

I'm a law student so my knowledge is mostly from that field.
Basically, it has become a dogma.
But originally, it came from Locke as a very incoherent idea and was assimilated by Rousseau, who made it into something even more nonsensical. It with those two become popular because it sounds really nice.
But in aristotelian terms a right is something should be able to do to fulfill your nature which the society should provide because it leads to good and virtue.
For example, right of a mother to rise her child, or a mans right to live as something fundamental. So if you want it to make sense, you can't follow the modern view of it.

Fine, but if what you describe is true, then a right is really something that is reducible to the principles of natural law/virtue ethics. In other words, it's distracting short-hand.

Well yes, human rights are directly tied to the natural law, but the natural law has been abandoned by the powers that be and that's why you'll hear retardation like 'woman has a right to abortion' or 'right to free education' or 'right to homosexual marriage'.
It's complete demagoguery, utter bullshit and they should at least pretend they have some basis for it, but everything has fallen so low no one cares.

oh no