Abstract
The thematic unity to the moral and political theory of the Enlightenment expresses itself as an extension of the method of the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution was paradigmatic for ethical theories which followed it. Once Greek teleology and metaphysics lost their general support, ethics underwent a revolution on par with cosmology. The modern era dispensed with Aristotle’s teleological account of humanity’s natural purpose and end in happiness. For Aristotle, the final cause of man was flourishing, and virtue was “an activity which completed or perfected the individual.”1 In place of this view, the Scientific Revolution posited a mechanistic view of man as a part of nature governed by universal and abstract laws. The ethical question became how to subsume any given act under the proper law or to find the proper law which guides any given act. Thus, the paradigm was of “discrete, individual events obeying absolute, universal laws.”2 Enlightenment moral theories of several sorts have this paradigm in common: they seek to apply universal moral principles to specific acts in order to count them as good or bad. Furthermore, they isolate the act from the general character of the actor and largely from the particular morally problematic situation. Thus, a moral life did not concern the happiness of the individual reflected by his character or virtuous activity over his lifetime, but would only be the “succession of events obeying a universal law.”3
The rules of morality … are not the conclusion of our reason
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature.*
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Notes
* David Hume, (2007) A Treatise of Human Nature, (Sioux Falls: NuVision Publications), p. 326
Thomas Alexander, (1993) “John Dewey and the Moral Imagination: Beyond Putnam and Rorty Toward a Postmodern Ethics,” Transactions of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society, 29(3), p. 372.
Mary Warnock, Ed. (1938) Utilitarianism, On Liberty, Essay on Bentham: Together with Selected Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin, (New York: New American Library,) p. 13.
Warnock cites paragraph 54 from Jeremy Bentham, (1938) Fragments on Government, in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Ed. J. Bowring, (London: Publisher name).
Richard A. Posner, (1981) The Economics of Justice, (Boston: Harvard University Press) p. 56.
John Stuart Mill, (1987) Utilitarianism, (Buffalo: Prometheus Books) p. 53.
Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Trans. Lewis Beck White, (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1997), p. 9.
Immanuel Kant, (1949) “On the Relation of Theory and Practice in Constitutional Law,” in The Philosophy of Kant: Immanuel Kant’s Moral and Political Writings, Ed. Carl Friedrich, (New York: The Modern Library) p. 414.
David Hume, A Treatise Concerning Human Nature, (Sioux Falls: NuVision Publications), p. 326.
Thomas Dixon, (2003) From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. 94.
Peter Baumann, (1999) “The Scottish Pragmatist? The Dilemma of Common Sense and the Pragmatist Way Out,” Reid Studies, 2(2), p. 53.
Thomas Dixon, Ed. (2010) Thomas Brown Selected Philosophical Writings, (Exeter: Imprint) p. 147.
George Santayana, (1968) “Tradition and Practice,” in Santayana in America, Ed. Richard Colton Lynn (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World) p. 35.
Steven J. Lenzner, (1991) “Strauss’s Three Burkes: The Problem of Edmund Burke in Natural Right and History,” Political Theory, 19(3), p. 367.
Edmund Burke, (1986) Reflections on the Revolution in France, (London: Penguin Books) p. 153.
Vincent Colapietro, (1997) “Tradition: First Steps Toward a Pragmatic Clarification,” in Philosophy in Experience, Eds Richard Hart and Douglas R. Anderson (New York: Fordham University Press) p. 17.
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© 2014 Seth Vannatta
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Vannatta, S. (2014). Enlightenment Moral Theory and British Conservatism. In: Conservatism and Pragmatism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137466839_3
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