Just began wading through After Virtue (for those who haven't read it: it's great). These talks are v helpful for getting my head around the main themes/issues!

Well, I really appropriate the feedback and the time you took give it. I'm really glad to have stumbled upon your lectures, they're some of the best I've found online.

The ontology in which Sartre arrives at his ethics is profound. Thanks for the lectures!

There's quite a bit of discussion of that in the secondary literature -- and Mac addresses some of those concerns in After Virtue (and a number of other works). The short answer is that some perspectives are more adequate because they can provide a solid account not only of their own position, what sort of development it calls for, what practical reason looks like, etc. but also of where the other rival positions are less adequate, and why that is the case

Yep, it's pretty much irreplaceable as an approach if we want to make sense out of moral theory as it fits into actual lives

Great over view of ethics.

Well, that would seem to be how it would look, until you start reading more of Sartre's stuff, including this essay. He does himself stress consistency, and the responsibility imposed by "choosing for all human beings" -- now, if you pressed him why these values ought to apply, be respected, etc, he'd ultimately be forced to say "I choose those as good" and "if you don't see them as good, well. . . . " So, there's clearly a tension in his work -- but he also doesn't think just anything goes

I really enjoyed the part of this lecture on narratives and on how it is implied in everyday life. Sometimes not in the correct manner if something can not be explained find a narrative for it. But I liked the narrative concept in terms of how ones stance changes over time there was this narrative originally and now a new narrative takes it place due to changes in one life.

@AdversusHaereses Well, nothing on the docket right now. I suppose it could be interesting to produce a series on phenomenological thinkers, in which I'd discuss Husserl, who frankly I find very dry. Heidegger I find much more interesting, and I could see producing some videos discussing a few of his key ideas. Max Scheler, Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Gabriel Marcel -- those are phenomenologists I find even more interesting. Your query gives me an idea. . .

I couldn't help but recall a passage from Chesterton's Orthodoxy, "...you cannot praise an action because it shows will; for to say that is merely to say that it is an action. By this praise of will you cannot really choose one course as better than another. And yet choosing one course as better than another is the very definition of the will you are praising. The worship of will is the negation of will. To admire mere choice is to refuse to choose." I wonder how Sartre might respond.

Well. . . if you mean in the sense of entirely agreeing with, I have to admit the answer is no. But, if you mean agreeing with on many points, Yes, there's quite a few who I'm in a good bit of agreement with -- though there are some places I thought they're quite wrong: Aristotle, Epictetus, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, G.W.F. Hegel, Maurice Blondel, Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Jacques Lacan. A bit of an eclectic list

Well, what Chesterton is doing there -- and I'm a big fan of his, btw -- is not what you'd want to take as an adequate conception of the will as such -- Augustine and Anselm raise similar problems at key points, when they're trying to determine how the will could be inconsistent with itself (after all, the will ought to simply be able to will itself, right? Well. . . actually not) Again, Sartre doesn't actually say simply "anything goes", when one reads the rest of the essay or his works

@xOnimpulsex It's a bit of rough going at first, I'd say, because Sartre is more or less locating himself in relation to some other important philosophers, and using their terminology, mainly Husserl, Heidegger, Bergson, and Hegel -- he also coins a few new terms of his own, but there should be some explanation of them in the introduction for you. The book itself is indeed pretty great -- my favorite as an undergrad

@AdversusHaereses I'd say, if by "find[ing] their ideas good", you mean as a whole, as a system, I too don't find them good. If by it, you mean something more like thinking they have some good ideas, which can be extricated from their larger philosophical commitments, then I think there's quite a lot to learn from Heidegger, perhaps less from Husserl

If you go to the channel, and look in playlists, you'll find a Descartes playlist

We've been boosting sound on videos for over a year or so. For videos that are uploaded, until KZfaq adds that to their editing options, we're stuck with them "as is".

i'd rather watch your videos instead of attending my philosophy classes. :D

Really enjoyed the lectures i've watch on you channel. Is there a plan to do any René Descartes and his work, Meditation on First Philosophy or Discourse on Method, or both.

@gbisadler Oh I see. Just ordered "Being and Nothingness". Looking forward to it

Well, I like Pierce, but I think he can be awfully naive in a kind of Enlightenment-derived kind of way, as you see, for example, in the "Fixation of Belief" essay. Whitehead and Hartshorne I just never really got into enough to be able to appreciate and evaluate well

@gbisadler Do you have any lecture on Husserl and Heidegger coming soon?

@xOnimpulsex Well, I'd say with Sartre, its rather ontology driving ethics -- he never did formulate anything he felt to be a successful articulation of Existentialist Ethics -- that fell to Simone de Beauvoir, in the Ethics of Ambiguity

Ideally, you'd get something out of doing both

Definitely an interesting list. A couple Catholic philosophers in there, I see. But Whitehead, Peirce, Hartshorne don't make the list? Might be too technical sort of question for the venue. Actualities and all that.

I have a question. I want to know how MacIntyre escapes a kind of relativism given the importance he gives to the historical context of moral concepts? If moral concepts are dependent on the practices, etc., of social life, how do we determine which practices are right and wrong?

Great video. Apart from the first recorded case of covid-19 coughing in the class.

I liked your hypothetical question about going back in time to kill Hitler (prior to his rise). It might sink the knife deeper and twist it a bit if you phrase it as "go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby" or "kill Hitler's parents before he is born," or the like. Also, though utilitarianism is usually distinguished from emotivism, it increasingly seems to me that utilitarianism is basically emotivism writ large, or aggregated. Utilitarianism (classical) conflates happiness, pleasure, right and good. But for the utilitarian, that which is good is not merely what brings me happiness (individual emotivism), but what brings happiness to the greatest number of people, which just social or collective emotivism. No?

@gbisadler Oh by no means do I find their ideas good! I just think its interesting to learn them. Heidegger is someone who I still haven't made my mind up much of, but Husserl I tend to have an open opposition to his ideas. But I still nevertheless find them interesting.

Are there any thinkers whose ideas you do find good as a whole?

As an emotivist myself, I believe that there is no such thing as an objective right and wrong, that these are constructs drawn from a structural context which are representative of the power existent within these contexts, and that attempting to judge others in terms of right and wrong puts them in a box and totalises them as Other - the emphasis placed by virtue ethics on character makes no sense to me, for I do not believe that there is such a thing as the continuity of the self. However, since one appears to one's consciousness as a continuous self, and it can never be known whether or not continuous selfhood is existent or merely apparent, I consider it necessary for there to be a grounding for one's own - not others' - action. Thus, I ground my action to restrain a murderer in the empathy I feel for the victim, not because there is a 'wrong' that the murderer is committing, and to not help the victim would be in bad faith. At the end of the day, one must act, one way or the other, and empathy is my recourse because it is the ground for action with the least risk of totalisation; it involves making an effort to understand the Other in a way which doesn't judge them, but respects them as an agent capable of making their own choices which are as morally valid as one's own. To pass moral judgement with any degree of responsibility would require full knowledge of all the related causes, which is something nobody can have.

Is this going over Macintyres precatholic and Thomist thought or not?

But what if emotism often is the pretext of utilitarianism, because people want to be good, or even kantian ethics

It seems that Sartre ultimately reduces the morality of a choice to a mere tautological reiteration of what is chosen. He can't even say "the choice is good because it is chosen," since that would bar the possibility of bad choices, thus rendering claims about the "goodness" of choice incoherent.

I am interested in how we should look at the Sartrian 'choosing' here. Obviously, we do not condone all of our choices. We can sometimes break our low-fat diet when a friend offers us a nice ice cream. Some of our actions and attitudes do not get the same respect as other actions and attitudes. Recognizing the multitude of forces that want to have a say within our embodiment, would certain choices not be considered bugs rather than features of our idealized self? Thank you.

Wait what are you then? neither deontologist nor utilitarian, I am kind of the minimizing pain utilitarian.

I don't get how an atheist (which I am) could justify anything but emotivism. It seems like even holding a utilitarian ethic is really just one person's ethic. Also I find it interesting that the only rebuttal to relativism was saying if someone believes it then you will initiate force over them. No offence but this seems like a weak argument.