I hope you'll excuse me, but this is playing on mind nowadays (for understandable reasons, I hope you agree).
The thorny question: why is it always 'in the name of', as if one could automatically dismiss the possibility that there's a closer association of the two than one would feel comfortable with?
Got caught up in a silly, silly discussion with someone on this. He wanted to talk about 'moral will' and moral skill' -a very odd way of partitioning how we 'think' about morality. What does it mean to say, for example, that you 'understand' what is right or wrong but you lack the will to follow up on those beliefs? In this reading you survey the world, determine what is wrong or right and then act. That seems to be the picture. The model is the isolated individual whose acts/choices are what determines value. What of consciousness and internal acts?
You doubt that in reality that is how it really works. Can one (should one) talk about violence in the name of religion without looking at the content of religion, the historical understanding of 'difference' within a particular religion and the actual social and political context that makes violence more likely?
Even if one were to agree to the simplistic framework, it rests on too static a picture and too stark a dichotomy between moral will and moral skill. As if to say-as an economist might say-we can rationally see the good and then we just have to choose it. I suspect that value and desire are linked in much more complicated ways: the will is 'moved' or attracted to the good and the notion of the good may help us reflectively 'order' or purify our desires. Moral skill or understanding would not, then, be just a matter of 'seeing' what is right.
~~~
The thorny question: why is it always 'in the name of', as if one could automatically dismiss the possibility that there's a closer association of the two than one would feel comfortable with?
Got caught up in a silly, silly discussion with someone on this. He wanted to talk about 'moral will' and moral skill' -a very odd way of partitioning how we 'think' about morality. What does it mean to say, for example, that you 'understand' what is right or wrong but you lack the will to follow up on those beliefs? In this reading you survey the world, determine what is wrong or right and then act. That seems to be the picture. The model is the isolated individual whose acts/choices are what determines value. What of consciousness and internal acts?
You doubt that in reality that is how it really works. Can one (should one) talk about violence in the name of religion without looking at the content of religion, the historical understanding of 'difference' within a particular religion and the actual social and political context that makes violence more likely?
Even if one were to agree to the simplistic framework, it rests on too static a picture and too stark a dichotomy between moral will and moral skill. As if to say-as an economist might say-we can rationally see the good and then we just have to choose it. I suspect that value and desire are linked in much more complicated ways: the will is 'moved' or attracted to the good and the notion of the good may help us reflectively 'order' or purify our desires. Moral skill or understanding would not, then, be just a matter of 'seeing' what is right.
~~~
Right-seeing. Seeing as something more than a metaphor (and here I abandon my Jewish/Wahabi roots for a second). The icon. Art. Yes, where's my Russian hat...
The cross:
...
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