[lbo-talk] counting to 200 -- how about 500

C. G. Estabrook galliher at uiuc.edu
Mon Nov 12 11:13:05 PST 2007


I think Carroll's got this about right (and I love the buttered parsnips). It comports well with the views of the recent theorists of "virtue ethics" (altho' I don't know if he agrees), e.g.,

"We can recognize and admire the good person even as we know that we are not much like her. This is a point of inserion into the hermeneutical circle or dialectic of ethics. We recognize some good people, we know some of the things that they aim at and see as good; in this way we can begin to formulate a a notion of the life that is becoming to a human being ... and with this notion we can come back and re-appraise both ourselves and our perceptions -- and also the life of those we saw as in many respects good." --CGE

Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> The Kantian Moral Imperative, quite aside from anything Marx, Freud, or
> Sartre ever said or thought, is pretty silly. And even if it were true
> it would have no relevance to the questions you pose -- because it is at
> the highest level of theoretical abstraction -- and there is no direct
> link between such high-level abstractions and any particular decision or
> act. So Kant doesn't help you any more than Marx or Sartre help you.
> Kant (if accepted) can explain _after_ the event how it fits into the
> cosmos, but doesn't butter any more parsnips at the concrete level than
> does Marx or Sartre.
>
> The Kantian Moral Imperative is every bit as abstract and every bit as
> irrelevant to how we really live our daily lives as is the theory of
> Surplus Value.
>
> Carrol



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