GLS 800 Cast of Characters

GLS 800 Cast of Characters

THE GUYS

Plato and Co.
Love & Virtue
Greek moralists
the virtues (arete=‘excellence’) are the requisite skills and character-traits

Krishna
Duty

Lucretius
contrary to the prevailing religious tradition, no survival after death, no reincarnation, and no punishment in Hades. For the consequent lesson that death is not to be feared

According to the Epicurean canon, the fear of death must also be countered, and the rational management of pleasures and pains learnt.

Aurelius
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcus-aurelius/
Stoic Ethics
try to live a Stoic life, according to which only virtue is good, only vice is bad, and the things which we busy ourselves with are all indifferent.

that nothing is good for a human being which does not make him just, temperate, courageous, free; that nothing is bad, which does not make him the contraries of the aforementioned.


Rumi

Mencius
Benevolence

Dante
Judgement

King Lear
Misjudgement

Machiavelli
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/machiavelli/#3
Machiavelli employs the concept of virtù to refer to the range of personal qualities that the prince will find it necessary to acquire in order to “maintain his state” and to “achieve great things,” the two standard markers of power for him. This makes it brutally clear there can be no equivalence between the conventional virtues and Machiavellian virtù.

the prince just like the general needs to be in possession of virtù, that is, to know which strategies and techniques are appropriate to what particular circumstances. Thus, virtù winds up being closely connected to Machiavelli's notion of the power. The ruler of virtù is bound to be competent in the application of power; to possess virtù is indeed to have mastered all the rules connected with the effective application of power. Virtù is to power politics what conventional virtue is to those thinkers who suppose that moral goodness is sufficient to be a legitimate ruler: it is the touchstone of political success.

amoralism.

Moral values have no place in the sorts of decisions that political leaders

The Prince that a head of state ought to do good if he can, but must be prepared to commit evil if he must

Bacon
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/#7
for Bacon, the acquisition of knowledge does not simply coincide with the possibility of exerting power. His scientific knowledge is a condition for the expansion and differentiation of civilization as a process. Therefore, knowledge and charity cannot be kept separate

the perspective of the universal in Bacon's ethical thought is given predominance. The range of science and technology in their ethical meaning transcends the realm of the application of tools and/or instruments, in so far as the aim is the transformation of whole systems. Since causality and finality can interact on the basis of human will and knowledge, a plurality of worlds becomes feasible

Nova Atlantis “concerns a utopian society that is carefully organized for the purposes of scientific research and virtuous living” (Urbach, 1988, 10) holds true for his entire life's work.

Montaigne
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montaigne/#Wor

Montaigne demands a thought process that would not be tied down by any doctrinaire principle, a thought process that would lead to free enquiry.

In the longest chapter of the Essays, the ‘Apologie de Raymond Sebond’, Montaigne conjures up many opinions, regarding the nature of the cosmos, or the nature of the soul. He weighs the Epicureans' opinion that several worlds exist, against that of the unicity of the world put forth by both Aristotle and Aquinas. He comes out in favor of the former, without ranking his own evaluation as truth.

As a humanist, Montaigne conceived of philosophy as morals

Montaigne, who dedicated himself to freedom of the mind and peacefulness of the soul, did not have any other aim than cultivating and educating himself. Since philosophy had failed to determine a secure path towards happiness, he committed each individual to do so in his own way.

In the chapter ‘Apologie de Raimond Sebond’, Montaigne draws from classical and Renaissance knowledge in order to remind us that, in some parts of the world, we find men that bear little resemblance to us. Our experience of man and things should not be perceived as limited by our present standards of judgment. We display a sort of madness when we settle limits for the possible and the impossible.

Montaigne appears here as a founding father of the Counter Reformation, being the leader of the “Nouveaux Pyrrhoniens’, for whom scepticism is used as a means to an end, that is, to neutralize the grip that philosophy once had on religion.

Rousseau
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/#Mor
Genuine morality, on the other hand, consists in the application of reason to human affairs and conduct. This requires the mental faculty that is the source of genuinely moral motivation, namely conscience. Conscience impels us to the love of justice and morality in a quasi-aesthetic manner. As the appreciation of justice and the desire to act to further it, conscience is based on a rational appreciation of the well-orderedness of a benign God's plan for the world.

The general will is the source of law and is willed by each and every citizen. In obeying the law each citizen is thus subject to his or her own will, and consequently, according to Rousseau, remains free.

La Casas
Compassion

Swift

Moliere

Hume
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-character/#Hum
Like some of the Greek moralists, Hume thought morality must be rooted in our passional nature. For morality moves us to action whereas reason alone, Hume thought, does not. His preference for ancient ethics is most obviously seen in his focus on the nature of the virtues and in his efforts to explain how virtues arise from our feelings and desires.

Hume divides the virtues into two types: artificial and natural. Artificial virtues include justice, promise-keeping, and allegiance to legitimate government. Natural virtues include courage, magnanimity, ambition, friendship, generosity, fidelity, and gratitude, among many others. Whereas each exercise of the natural virtues normally produces good results, the good of artificial virtues is indirect in that it comes about only as a result of there being an accepted practice of exercising these virtues.

Artificial and natural virtues
Greek ethics
Hume's discussion of justice illustrates how the artificial virtues emerge from our feelings and desires.
Hume argues, the virtue of obeying laws arises naturally from our feelings and desires.

Stoic view
This second group of virtues is based on broadly-based feelings of good will, affection, and concern for others.

Hume's recognition that self-esteem must be tempered by benevolence is reflected in Aristotle's argument that the development and preservation of proper self-love requires friendships in which persons come to care for others for others' own sakes.

Hume's view of the relation between passion and deliberation is reminiscent of the Aristotelian view that someone with proper self-love will also be practically wise, in that his self-love will enable him to size up practical situations correctly and determine correctly what it is best to do.

Kant
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/
Kantianism and utilitarianism, the two major traditions in western moral philosophy, mistakenly placed the foundation for morality in legalistic notions such as duty and obligation.

Critique of Pure Reason

“Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.”

metaphysics is utterly impossible

THE GALS


It's all Greek
& All but one are characters in a play

Sappho
Lust

Anitgone

Lysistrata

Phedre
Translation by Ted Hughes
Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth 11 (1984-1998)

Medea
Rage

Until...

Wollstonecraft