Arquivo para January 21st, 2025
Vicious and virtuous circles
21
Jan
Even though we are at a moment of civilization
with a “polycrisis” (a term used by Edgar Morin), where would we be without some idea of justice, kindness and fraternity? perhaps in an even worse barbarism of war and daily violence, but someone might ask, aren’t we close to this?
No one questions that rationality adopts behavior that can guarantee the future of humanity and our own, but the lack of control of personal and social “virtues” creates a new culture, what some call a deteriorated culture that has generated a collective brainrot.
What the English philosopher says about virtues is that rationality must accompany these aspects, that there is something good about it, and this is the reason for the facts about our own human nature, and she challenges two non-cognitivist premises, which would be based on a misunderstanding of practical rationality, human motivations to act in everyday life and on a logical grammar underlying saying that something is “good”, since the “something” here is essential for determining and signifying the good.
He deduces from this reasoning that what is logically vulnerable to facts, and facts, in turn, are identified and understood, correctly and more fully, in the light of what is good.
This is what we prefer to call a virtuous circle, because it is often said that the good is fragile, but only when it is inserted in a vicious circle (cultural and social), the virtuous circle also makes evil fragile if we are part of it; everything that is evil is easily repelled.
The cultural problem is not to allow a culture to deteriorate as it evolves. It is neither harmful nor vicious for a culture to evolve, but its roots must not be lost at the risk of changing values that make it a vicious social, cultural and personal practice.
Interrupting this flow is not simple: a culture of consumerism (as we have more consumer objects), a culture of immorality (as there are more facilities for small thefts which, if vicious, become big ones), a culture of ecological ignorance: deforestation and practices that turn the production of consumer materials into a culture of unsustainable degradation of nature.
Also the inhumane levels of social security, extreme poverty and the absence of sustainable medium and long-term policies to remove the pockets of misery that persist in the world.
Philippa Foot’s logical grammar does not change or adapt the meaning of “good”, it speaks of “good roots” and when we speak of the “good dispositions of the human will” it must include the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance, which make up agape love, but without these virtues the word can be used in non-virtuous contexts.
In the photo: Allegoria della Virtù e della Nobiltà. Giambattista Tiepolo , 1740-1750.
Foot, Philippa. Natural Goodness. UK: Oxford University Press, 2001.
