(February 25, 2013 at 12:20 pm)genkaus Wrote:(February 24, 2013 at 11:42 pm)whateverist Wrote: I'd say that it isn't a moral code we need but a civil and criminal code.
A civil and criminal code simply tells you what you should not do. It cannot dictate what you should do.
Nor would I want it to. Isn't it enough to spell out what the agreed upon consequences are for transgressions of the group agreements. Why would we want to have our actions prescribed by some moral code?
(February 25, 2013 at 12:20 pm)genkaus Wrote:(February 24, 2013 at 11:42 pm)whateverist Wrote: But my point is that any conception of the good which relegates a person to being a rule follower is badly conceived. In the end, one would hope that a person would cultivate ones sense of empathy to a degree that one would extend good manners to others out of a recognition of their inward depth and potential. To my way of thinking the highest good would transcend the category by internalizing it unselfconsciously. Ultimately rule following must fall away or else our attempts at moral education will have been side tracked.
While I agree with you about rule-following, I disagree that the sense of empathy should be the basis for developing one's moral sense. Like I said before, given the contradictions that would come from it when applied consciously, doing so subconsciously would be a sure-fire way of having a great amount of internal conflict.
But I'm not suggesting that any innate sense as we find it will do. Rather, I'm suggesting that it is by cultivating and refining that sense that we become considerate and well mannered. A good person, in the moral sense, is one who takes into account the well-being and sensibilities of others as a natural expression of empathy which has been developed and extended overtime as ones own self-knowledge grows. Only to the degree I know and understand myself can I possibly extend courtesy to others. One becomes good not for its own sake but as a by product of maturation and acculturation by way of empathy.
Only unselfconscious empathy saves a person concerned with moral sensibility from turning into a prig. Any obsession with what is right and wrong outside of any context results in vanity otherwise.
