Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by John Brandau
The Issue:
Naturalistic Reductionism and Ethics
The theoretical (scientific)
perspective tends to
reduce the human being
to a complex set of
causal mechanisms.
Why?
The theoretical perspective can give only
descriptive, not evaluative, accounts.
The implications of determinism for value
and moral agency
The Question
Is there a legitimate practical epistemic domain
(domain of knowledge) which is inaccessible to
the theoretical perspective?
If not, is it possible to adequately replace
traditional, normative ethics with a naturalized
ethic?
Aristotle
His ethics of virtue is
often said to be
naturalistic.
Even so, he retains
moral agency and
transcendent values
in his ethics.
He holds an explicit
distinction between
theoretical and
practical knowledge.
Spinoza
His ethics is very similar to
Aristotles in content and in
being eudaimonistic.
He holds a reductionistic and
arguably naturalistic
understanding of the human
being.
He denies the freedom of the
will and transcendent values.
He tends to subsume the
practical under the theoretical.
Heidegger
He strongly opposes
the reductionistic
understanding of the
human being.
He maintains that the
theoretical
perspective is
ultimately grounded in
the practical
perspective.
Minor Premise
-Understanding or judgment of a particular ethical
Conclusion
-Appropriate action accompanied by an equally
appropriate emotional reaction; ex: Rescuing the child
with a sense of sympathy for him or her and disgust for
his or her assailant(s).
Spinoza: Knowledge
Adequate vs. Inadequate ideas
3 Types of knowledge
-Imaginatio: disorganized accumulation of experience
-ratio: logical deductions made based on an
understanding of the nature of space (e.g. geometry) or
of the nature of thought (e.g. logic, psychology)
-sciencia intuitiva: the intuitive grasp of a particular thing
on the basis of ratio
Spinoza: Ethics
The polemic against traditional ethics:
Heidegger
Truth as aletheia (relation to akrasia)
The Being of beings
Zuhandenheit (handiness) vs.
Vorhandenheit (objective presence)
Being-in-the-World
In in the sense of innan-
The reference (Verweisung) of beings in the world
Relevance (Bewandtnis) as the Being of beings in the
world and the condition of encountering beings
Definition: the unthematic, circumspect absorption in the
references constitutive for the handiness of the totality of
useful things
The derivation of Vorhandenheit from Being-in-the-world
Dasein
Orientation towards the past: thrownness and
facticity
Orientation towards the future: understanding,
project and death
Anticipatory resoluteness as Daseins disclosure
of itself and its Situation
Anticipatory resoluteness as phronesis
Conclusions?