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Tag Archives: ethics
Fiction and Reality
Frank Rich had a great piece on the balloon-boy fiasco in Sunday’s Times.
Richard Heene is the inevitable product of this reigning culture, where “news,” “reality” television and reality itself are hopelessly scrambled and the warp-speed imperatives of cable-Internet competition allow no time for fact checking. Norman Lear, about the only prominent American to express [...]
Obama and Expectations
I finished the previous post on the rather optimistic thought that Obama’s aspiration to be a president of the United States, to connect with conservatives as well as liberals, is what the times call for. This is worth looking at more closely.
Firstly, there is this from Yglesias on that prize.
But in semi-defense of the Nobel [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged global warming, idealism, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama, philosophy, politics, rationalism, realism, Tibetan autonomy Leave a comment
The Growth Illusion
Although I have gone to some effort to try and get folks to address the wider picture of the Levitt & Dubner attack on efforts to curb carbon emissions, I have only just received the first comment on it or any of the follow-up posts. Thanks to NelC for engaging–it is supposed to be the [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged climate change, conservatism, Enlightenment, global warming, liberalism, Marilynne Robinson, Michael Sandel, modernity, philosophy, rationalism, religion, Romanticism, Rousseau, Rowan Williams, secularism, virtue ethics 2 Comments
A Note to Concerned Bloggers
[I am emailing this around to various bloggers who took part in the recent discussion of the Global Cooling chapter of Superfreakonomics.]
Y’all,
I haven’t had the opportunity to read Superfreakonomics yet, but from what I have seen of it, at least the last 60% of the book is devoted to taking down the notion that we [...]
Posted in correspondence Also tagged altruism, Chicago School, climate science, Freakonomics, global warming Leave a comment
Being Freakonomical with the Heart
[ (i) This is a tribute to, and perhaps fulfilment of, Daniel Davies's post Being Freakonomical With The Truth. (ii) I see that I made a major error in last night's post: Michael Sandel doesn't belong to an academic philosophy department, but is of course in the Harvard Department of Government, with a manifest passion [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged altruism, Chicago School, climate science, Freakonomics, geo-engineering, global warming, Michael Sandel, philosophy Leave a comment
The Age of Cynicism
Madeleine Bunting is in a quiet way one of my favourite journalists writing today. She invariably tackles important questions and I often find myself grappling with them immediately and then reflecting on on months later. Her latest column, Our speechless outrage demands a new language of the common good, I think will fall comfortably into [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged altruism, Aristotle, economics, markets, Michael Sandel, patience, philosophy, virtues Leave a comment
The Silence of the Lambs
l read with fascinated horror the write-up in TPM of Hannibal Rising, the latest in the Silence of the Lambs/Hanibal Lecter franchise. I am not going to name the author because I can’t emphasise enough that what I am saying is not at all personal but simply reflects in the starkest terms a general contemporary [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged compassion, empathy, Enlightenment, Nietzsche, philosophy, pity, Romanticism, sentimentalism, sympathy 1 Comment
A True-Born Englishman
—
A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction.
Daniel Defoe (1703, h/t Sullivan who has the rest)
Pat Buchanan’s rant on the passing of WASP-supremacy has attracted no soul-searching whatsoever as far as I can tell. As Serwer say, ‘good riddance’, and very well said too, but Robert Farley’s response I thought was [...]
Lost in Zombies and Sea Monsters?
Dazzle camoflage is the only way I can explain my reaction to the Jane-sploitation zombie and sea monster mash-ups, the grotesquery not so much concealing as confusing. The perplexity was only compounded when it became clear that publishers were investing heavily in the genre with supporting short films. Fortunately this was a prelude to enlightenment:
I [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged literary criticism, Pride and Prejudice, rationalism, Romanticism, Sense and Sensibility, sentimentalism Leave a comment
Management Science
Well, I promised myself I’d finish this before the sequel appeared in the shops, and the conclusion has been made, shall we say, somewhat easier by the fact that the burden of my conclusion – that there is something terribly, horribly wrong with the state of modern economics – has become somewhat of an open [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged economics, Enlightenment, Jane Austen, management science, philosophy Leave a comment
Enlightenment
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.
Mansfield Park
Preface
Introduction
Method
Critiques
The Moral Law Within
Fanny and Edmund
The Crawfords
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
Mrs Norris
The Quiet Thing
Enlightenment
Kantian Deontology
King Lear
Romanticism
The Satirical Inheritance
Conclusion
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
4. Enlightenment
In Sense and Sensibility Austen showed that the Hume’s declaration in the Treatise that ‘reason is, and ought [...]
Posted in Mansfield Park Also tagged Christianity, Enlightenment, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, philosophy, rationalism, Romanticism, sentimentalism Leave a comment
Freakonomics and The Dismal Science
Cute-o-nomics
The maps of real knowledge, designed for real life, showed nothing except things which allegedly could be proved to exist. The first principle of the philosophical mapmakers seemed to be “If in doubt, leave it out,” or put it into a museum. It occurred to me, however, that the question of [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged altruism, E F Schumacher, economics, egoism, Marilynne Robinson, philosophy, psychological egoism 2 Comments
Why I am a Zionist
I thoroughly applauded Recip Erdogan in taking to task Israeli President Shimon Peres at Davos in January over operation Cast Lead (the Israeli assault on Gaza), so why have I recently started calling myself a Zionist? Let me explain.
Posted in topical Also tagged Israel, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Northern Ireland conflict, Palestine, peace, Zionism Leave a comment
The Quiet Thing
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.
Mansfield Park
Preface
Introduction
Method
Critiques
The Moral Law Within
Fanny and Edmund
The Crawfords
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
Mrs Norris
The Quiet Thing
Enlightenment
Kantian Deontology
King Lear
Romanticism
The Satirical Inheritance
Conclusion
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
3.6 The Quiet Thing
I bring depression into the picture partly because Jane Austen does, in one of her novels, [...]
Posted in Mansfield Park Also tagged Enlightenment, Jane Austen, Kant, Mansfield Park, philosophy, rationalism, Romanticism, sentimentalism Leave a comment
Free Will, Super Freakocide and Mansfield Park
(See below for updates.)
Horgan on Free Will
On his blog at the Centre for Science Writing ,John Horgan has been looking at Free Will, ethics and science, his latest post skewering an Einstein quote using a quintessential classical physics analogy (lunar orbits) to suggest that Free Will is an illusion.
I agree with John’s broad thesis, about [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged Buddhism, Christianity, climate change, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, philosophy, Rowan Williams Leave a comment
Greed is Good
Following on my ethics of finance theme, the Goldman Sachs profits and the Lloyds bid to get out of the UK toxic asset insurance scheme there has been much discussion of just what is going on.
This side of the pond first. In response to the Lloyds move, Simon Jenkins wrote a blistering piece in the [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged banking, Darwinism, economics, financial crisis, greed, Marilynne Robinson, selfishness Leave a comment
After Virtue: First Thoughts
I said I would have a look at Alastair MacIntyre’s After Virtue once I had completed the Mansfield Park essay. I have now in a manner completed the essay (though I am tweaking it as I post it) and have had a chance to have a quick look at After Virtue. Here are my initial [...]
Posted in classics Also tagged Alasdair Macintyre, Buddhism, dependent nature of reality, Marxism, philosophy, Stalinism, sunyata, Tibetan Buddhism Leave a comment
Mrs Norris
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.
Mansfield Park
Preface
Introduction
Method
Critiques
The Moral Law Within
Fanny and Edmund
The Crawfords
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
Mrs Norris
The Quiet Thing
Enlightenment
Kantian Deontology
King Lear
Romanticism
The Satirical Inheritance
Conclusion
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
3.5 Mrs Norris
“If I had known you were going out, I should have got you just to go as [...]
Posted in Mansfield Park Also tagged Enlightenment, Jane Austen, Kant, Mansfield Park, philosophy, rationalism, Romanticism, sentimentalism Leave a comment
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.
Mansfield Park
Preface
Introduction
Method
Critiques
The Moral Law Within
Fanny and Edmund
The Crawfords
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
Mrs Norris
The Quiet Thing
Enlightenment
Kantian Deontology
King Lear
Romanticism
The Satirical Inheritance
Conclusion
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
3.4 Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
Mr. Yates was beginning now to understand Sir Thomas’s intentions, though as far as [...]
Posted in Mansfield Park Also tagged Enlightenment, Jane Austen, Kant, literary criticism, Mansfield Park, philosophy, rationalism, Romanticism Leave a comment
Brooks and Lazy Debt Moralism
I do enjoy reading David Brooks, perhaps because there are few I disagree with so agreeably. David has written a column today praising the responsibility of the Tories for their fiscal responsibility. I suppose responsibility is a relative thing and relative to the Republicans the Tories are indeed responsible. The problem is that nobody has [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged debt, GOP, irrationalism, politics, public finance, sentimentalism, Tories Leave a comment
The Crawfords
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.
Mansfield Park
Preface
Introduction
Method
Critiques
The Moral Law Within
Fanny and Edmund
The Crawfords
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
Mrs Norris
The Quiet Thing
Enlightenment
Kantian Deontology
King Lear
Romanticism
The Satirical Inheritance
Conclusion
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
3.3 The Crawfords
Worse still, because more vital in the book, is her constant deliberate weighting of the balance against [...]
Posted in Mansfield Park Also tagged Enlightenment, Jane Austen, Kant, Mansfield Park, philosophy, rationalism, Romanticism Leave a comment
Fanny and Edmund
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.
Mansfield Park
Preface
Introduction
Method
Critiques
The Moral Law Within
Fanny and Edmund
The Crawfords
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
Mrs Norris
The Quiet Thing
Enlightenment
Kantian Deontology
King Lear
Romanticism
The Satirical Inheritance
Conclusion
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
3.2 Fanny and Edmund
prig
noun a self-righteously moralistic person
Compact Oxford English Dictionary
In any assessment of Mansfield Park it is important [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged Enlightenment, Jane Austen, Kant, literary criticism, Mansfield Park, philosophy, rationalism, Romanticism, sentimentalism Leave a comment
Thought Crimes
Over at Crooked Timber, Henry has kicked off an interesting discussion of the importance of intent in the law, based on the US conservative legislator John Boehner’s accusing liberals of thought crimes.
“All violent crimes should be prosecuted vigorously, no matter what the circumstance,” Boehner argued. “The Democrats’ ‘thought crimes’ legislation, however, places a higher value [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged conservatism, criminal law, Jane Austen, Joseph Butler, philosophy, progessives Leave a comment
Sex, Cable TV and the Ecocidal Moment (and MP)
Let us take these in reverse order, coming back to Mansfield Park. Rowan Williams in a speech in Southark Cathedral to mark an Anglican push on climate change is waving the flag over Alastair McIntosh’s latest book.
In his splendid book, Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition, Alastair McIntosh speaks of [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged Cowper, environment, Epicurus, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, philosophy, Romanticism, sex Leave a comment
Preface to Mansfield Park