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Originally posted by lord of the mark
Who is Raz?
Who is Raz?
I read some of his papers. They were so tedious I can't really remember anything about them.
After Wittgenstein, I can't really see why people would complain about ethics not having an empirical basis. Most of our language doesn't, so why should ethics be any different?
The essential problem with modern philosophers is that they generally don't want to admit things that previous thinkers took for granted. Their reasons for doing so are political more than anything else.
(1) They don't like the idea that some lives could be simply better than others.
(2) They don't like the idea that some people could be intrinsically incapable of living such lives.
(3) They don't like the idea that people could simply be wrong about whether they are in fact doing well in life.
(4) They don't like the idea that ethics has to do with doing well in life, but substitute for this the idea that ethics is solely about how we treat other people.
(5) They exalt freedom, individuality and equality over all other values.
(6) They tend to be hedonists, or at least have theories that don't exclude gutter hedonism.
In short, they tend to agree with the late 20th century liberal (or watered down countercultural) consensus about morality and the extent of political power. The problem is that it doesn't really work as an ethical theory, whatever its political merits.
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