Morality without the wink: A defense of moral perfection

Journal of Philosophical Research

Volumn 29, Issue , 2004, Pages 315-331

  Smith, Tara ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 63549102149     PISSN: 10538364     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/jpr_2004_6     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 82
2. T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899), 433-434
3. th ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1981), 10, n. 4, and 78
4. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, in Ethical Philosophy, ed. W. Wick (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1983), 110-111
5. Marcia Baron, "On de-Kantianizing the Perfectly Moral Person," Journal of Value Inquiry 17 (1983), 283
6. Bertrand Russell, "A Free Man's Worship," Why I am Not a Christian, ed. P. Edwards (George Allen & Unwin, 1957), 109
7. Alan Gewirth, Self-Fulfillment (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 59, 133, 182-183
8. On the Roman Catholic Church's shifting attitudes on this question, see H. P. Owen, "Perfection," Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 6, ed. P Edwards (New York: MacMillan, 1967), 87-88
9. and Martin Foss, The Idea of Perfection in the Western World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1946), chap. 2
10. I am not talking about perfectionism, the view that the good resides in the development of those faculties or capacities that define human nature. For more on that, see Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)
11. and Georgios Anagnostopoulos, "Ancient Perfectionism and its Modern Critics," Social Philosophy and Policy 16 (1999), 197
12. Susan Wolf, "Moral Saints," Journal of Philosophy vol. 79 (1982), 419, 438
13. Oxford English Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971)
14. Harry Binswanger, "The Possible Dream," The Objectivist Forum 2 (1981), 3
15. For elaboration of several species of perfection (aesthetic, obedientiary, technical, etc.), see John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), 11-24
16. Also see Virginia L. Muller, The Idea of Perfectibilty (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985)
17. Cf. Robert B. Louden, "Can We be Too Moral?" Ethics 98 (1988), 372, 373
18. quoted in J. B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy - A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 48, n. 17. Many ethicists have recognized the contextuality of various aspects of morality's demands, yet when it comes to perfection, the relevance of context is largely forgotten
19. Cf. Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York: Dutton, 1991), 304
20. Also see Ayn Rand, "The Cult of Moral Grayness," The Virtue of Selfishness (New York: New American Library, 1964), 76
21. Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith & Reason (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1985), 29, 61
22. and Anagnostopoulos, "Ancient Perfectionism and its Modern Critics," 200-201
23. Henceforth, I will use "life," "flourishing," and "well-being" interchangeably. For a fuller elaboration of this view, see Viable Values, and for an explanation of the relationship between living and flourishing, see especially chap. 5
24. Edmund L. Pincoffs also raises questions about the meaning of the alleged impossibility in "A Defense of Perfectionism," Quandaries and Virtues: Against Reductivism in Ethics (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986), 101-114
25. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 111
26. Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man, 106, 69, 112-113
27. Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: Harper, 1935), 43
28. Foss, The Idea of Perfection in the Western World, 86
29. W. T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1969), 67
30. For like-minded passages from St. Paul and Martin Luther, see Jones, A History of Western Philosophy. vol. 2, 70
31. rd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1999), 78
32. E. J. Bond, "Theories of the Good." Encyclopedia of Ethics, vol. 1, ed. L. C. Becker (New York: Garland, 1992), 410
33. and Lawrence Blum, "Altruism," Encyclopedia of Ethics, 35
34. J. O. Urmson, "Saints and Heroes," Reason and Responsibility, ed. Joel Feinberg (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth, 1981), 546