AKC 3 General – Autumn Term 2010 – Knowing What To Do
18/10/10
AKC 3 – 18 OCTOBER 2010
Knowing What To Do: Ethics in a Contemporary Context
Lecture 3: Three Key Thinkers in Ethics: Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant
Professor Clemens Sedmak, F. D. Maurice Professor of Moral and Social Theology, KCL
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
ETHICS
* two ethical treatises: the “Nicomachean Ethics” and the “Eudemian Ethics”
* key concepts: happiness/flourishing and “virtue”
* uses Plato’s insight into unity of character
* ethics is no a theoretical discipline
HAPPINESS
* search for the highest good
* use of reason and being active: happiness as virtuous activity
* happiness: some other goods and friends
* two kinds of virtue: virtues of the mind and virtues of character
CHARACTER
* ethical virtue is fully developed only when it is combined with practical wisdom
* character formation: dispositions and habits (“second nature”)
* special terms: “akrasia” (weakness of the will) and “pleonexia” (desire for more and
more)
* deficient character: lack of harmony
VIRTUES
* virtue as “hexis” (tendency/disposition)
* virtue comparable with technical skills
* virtues avoid extremes
* virtues and particular circumstances
HUMAN BEINGS
* accepting reality
* accepting the “soul”
* political animals and the idea of citizenship
* the every idea of a “noble person”
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 – translated Aristotle into a Christian context, author
of the “Summa Theologica”)
ETHICS
* deliberation and choices
* complete beatitudo: uninterruptible vision of God
* ethics: deciding about goods – a bonum is something desirable as a kind of perfectio
(perfection/improvement) of one's condition, something to be pursued.
* basic human goods: life, knowledge, living in fellowship (societas, amicitia), practical
reasonableness, relating appropriately to the transcendent cause of being
AKC 3 General – Autumn Term 2010 – Knowing What To Do
18/10/10
CONSCIENCE
* cf. “turn towards interiority” (Augustine)
* conscience: practical intelligence at work (judgments about rightness/wrongness),
* conscience is binding upon oneself even when it is utterly mistaken
* cultivation of conscience: if one has a defect character, one will make wrong
judgments, if one has formed one's judgment corruptly, one will also be acting wrongly
PRUDENCE
* knowledge of highest good
* memory, docility, vitality
* attention, providentia, circumspectio
* stultitia: weakness of senses and judgment
THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES
* theological virtues require God’s grace
* hope: “bonum arduum futurum possible”
* faith: gift of faith; faith as source of knowledge; certitudo
* love/charity: no boundaries
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Main works in ethics: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Critique of
Practical Reason (1788), Metaphysics of Morals (1797),
ETHICS
* ethics based on principles: morality's commands are unconditional
* development of sense of duties
* postulates: freedom, immortality, God
* human beings – citizens of two worlds (noumenal and phenomenal aspects), members
of both the intelligible world and the sensible world
AUTONOMY
* autonomy: linked with conscience, reason
* “the property of the will by which it is a law to itself” (self legislation)
* will of a moral agent is autonomous in that it both gives itself the moral law (it is selflegislating) and can constrain or motivate itself to follow the law (it is self-constraining or
self-motivating)
* source of the moral law: pure rational will
UNIVERSALITY
* impersonal standpoint
* universal claims of ethics
* categorical imperative: “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can
at the same time will that it become a universal law”
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AKC lecture handouts are also posted online: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/akc
If you have any queries please contact Elizabeth at dean@kcl.ac.uk.
The AKC Exam: Friday, 1st April, 14.30 and 16.30.
You must enrol on the AKC via OneSpace (eLearning pages & Online Discussion)
AKC Discussion at Denmark Hill, 28 Oct, Deanery Mtg Rm WEC,17.15-18.45