Category Archives: History of moral thought

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 18]: MACINTYRE, ENLIGHTENMENT AND TRADITION

August 15, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts I am publishing from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought I have reached Chapter 20 which explores the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, whose approach has deeply influenced me even as I have profoundly disagreed with it, and which uses MacIntyre’s work as a means of pulling together the threads of my own argument. This extract provides some background to MacIntyre’s work, and of his critique of the Enlightenment, and begins to challenge that […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: alasdair macintyre, aquinas, aristotle, emotivism, enlightenment, ethics, history of moral thought, liberalism, marxism, moral autonomy, teleology, virtue ethics

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 17]: SCIENCE, NIHILISM & MORALITY

June 28, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts I am publishing from my book-that-is-almost-finished on the history of moral thought we have reached Chapter 18, which explores the contemporary debates about the relationship between science and morality, from Joshua Greene’s work to Sam Harris’ arguments. This extract is from the section that unpacks Alex Rosenberg’s arguments about morality in his book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality. The desire to root morality in science derives from a laudable aspiration to demonstrate the redundancy of […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Science & Technology • Tags: alex rosenberg, atheism, emotivism, euthyphro dilemma, evolutionary ethics, jl mackie, moral nihilism, morality, scientism

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 16]: MORALITY’S SUBJECTIVE TURN

May 13, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 17, which looks at the subjective turn in analytic philosophy, and the unravelling of morality in the twentieth century, from the intuitionism of GE Moore’s Principia Ethica to JL Mackie’s ‘error theory’ and moral nihilism. This extract begins with Moore and looks at how intuitionism gave way to emotivism. GE Moore’s Principia Ethica, published in 1903, came to be both one of the most […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: aj ayer, emotivism, ge moore, herbert spencer, history of moral thought, hume, intuitionism, js mill, kenan malik's books, morality, naturalistic fallacy

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 15]: POLITICS, MORALITY AND THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION

April 11, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts I am publishing from my almost-written book on the history of moral thought, we have reached Chapter 16. Beginning in the eighteenth century with Enlightenment hope and ending in the twentieth with postmodern despair, this chapter explores how the changing character of movements for social and political liberation have influenced moral thought – and how changing moral conceptions have, in turn, influenced movements for liberation. This extract is from the beginning of the chapter, and […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: declaration of the rights of man, french revolution, haitian revolution, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books, liberties, morality, robin blackburn, slavery, toussaint l'ouverture

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 14]: SARTRE AND THE ANGUISH OF FREEDOM

March 25, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 15, which looks at existentialism, and primarily the work of Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre. This extract is from the section that explores Sartre’s concept of freedom and his relationship to Marxism. ‘Existence comes before essence’. So claimed Sartre in his celebrated 1946 lecture Existentialism is a Humanism. It is a phrase that gets to the heart (one might even say the essence) […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: aristotle, camus, consciousness, darwin, descartes, existentialism, free will, human agency, human nature, humanism, kierkegaard, marx, morality, religion, sartre

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 13]: NIETZSCHE, NIHILISM AND THE DEATH OF GOD

February 12, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 14, which is devoted to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. This extract is from the discussion of Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche trained as a philologist, not as a philosopher, and his writing is quite unlike traditional philosophical work, whether the dry, rigorous plodding of an Aristotle or a Kant, or the flights of sometimes barely-intelligible fancy that mark the work […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: christianity, death of god, ethics, greek philosophy, history of moral thought, judaism, kenan malik's books, nietzsche, reason, religion

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 12]: HEGEL AND ROUSSEAU, FREEDOM AND HISTORY

January 8, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts that I am running from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 13, which looks at the moral ideas of Hegel, Rousseau and Marx, and at the historicisation of ideas of human nature and morality. This extract is taken from the section on Hegel, Rousseau and the debate about freedom and ‘self-realization’.

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: bradley, conservatism, democracy, edmund burke, hegel, history of moral thought, hobbes, human nature, morality, right hegelians, rousseau, young hegelians

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 11]: HUME, IS AND OUGHT

December 12, 2011 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts that I am running from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 12, ‘Passion, Duty and Consequence’. Chapter 11 explored some of the ideas of the Radical Enlightenment. Chapter 12 turns its gaze more on to the moral arguments that emerged from the mainstream Enlightenment – in particular the work of Hume, Kant, Bentham and Mill. This extract is from the section on David Hume. In every system of morality, […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: emotions, history of moral thought, human nature, hume, morality, patricia churchland, reason, skepticism

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 10]: SPINOZA’S ETHICS

November 6, 2011 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts I’m running from my still-being-written book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 11, which explores the ethical claims of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza. The rise of the market economy and the growth of religious scepticism had, by the seventeenth century, corroded the ability of both God and community to warrant moral behaviour. Who or what could now authorize moral rules? This was the question now facing moral philosophers. One answer was […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: descartes, history of moral thought, hobbes, human agency, human nature, kenan malik's books, morality, spinoza

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 9]: MARTIN LUTHER’S ACCIDENTAL REVOLUTION

October 14, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Continuing the series of extracts from the book that I am writing on the history of moral thought, we have reached Chapter 10, which looks at the Renaissance and the Reformation and at the impact of both on moral philosophy. This excerpt is about Martin Luther’s theology and about the ambiguities of the Reformation, an intensely conservative religious reaction against the spirit of reason that Aquinas had introduced into Christianity that was nevertheless also the source of a radically libertarian revolution, the harbinger […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History of moral thought • Tags: anabaptists, christianity, diggers, euthyphro dilemma, kenan malik's books, levellers, martin luther, morality, protestantism, reformation, religion, renaissance, secularism, theology, william ockham

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 8]: DANTE, POET OF THE SECULAR

September 18, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Continuing the series of extracts from the book that I am writing on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 9, a chapter that explores medieval Christian thought, and in particular the work of Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest of Christian theologians. Western Christendom had recently rediscovered Aristotle, largely through translations from the Muslim world. Aquinas found in Aristotle both a reason for, and a means to, transform the traditional relationship between reason and faith in Christian theology. For Augustine and […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: aquinas, aristotle, augustine, christianity, dante, divine comedy, ethics, god, greek philosophy, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books, morality, muslim rationalism, original sin, poetry, religion, secularism, sin, virtues

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 7]: ISLAM AND RATIONALISM

August 6, 2011 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts I’m running from my still-being-written book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 8, which explores the struggle between the Rationalists and the Traditionalists in early Islam, and the significance of that struggle not just to Islam but to Christianity and to the development of modern secularism too. The expansion of the Islamic empire from India to Iberia created new political tensions and theological dilemmas. It also created new kinds of administrative […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: al-farabi, al-ghazzali, al-kindi, al-ma'mun, al-mansur, aristotle, christianity, enlightenment, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, falsafah, god, history of moral thought, ibn rushd, ibn sina, judeo-christian tradition, kenan malik's books, mu'tazilite, muslim rationalism, neo-platonism, parmenides, plato, qur'an, religion, theology, via negativa

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 6]: ISLAM, ORIGINS AND ETHICS

July 3, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Continuing the series of extracts from the book that I am writing on the history of moral thought, here is an an excerpt from Chapter 7, a chapter that explores the origins of Islam and of Islamic ethics. (Sharp-eyed readers of this blog might have noticed that Chapter 6 is missing from the series. That chapter explores early ethical thought in India and China and for pragmatic reasons I will not be writing it till later.) THERE WAS NOTHING ABOUT MUHAMMAD’S […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: ethics, god, history of moral thought, muhammad, religion

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 5]: GOD AND EVIL

June 19, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Chapter Five of the book that I am writing on the history of moral thought explores the idea of evil within monotheistic religion. It opens with the Book of Job, in my eyes the most eloquent book in the Bible, and the one that gets to the heart of the problem of evil for a faith that believes in a omnipotent, omniscient, totally benevolent God: how could such a God allow the righteous and the innocent to suffer? Chapter 5 […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History of moral thought • Tags: augustine, bible, blake, book of job, dostoevsky, ethics, evil, god, hiroshima, history of moral thought, irenaeus, kenan malik's books, religion, richard swinburne, theodicy, theology, torture

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 4]: AUGUSTINE, HUMAN NATURE & ORIGINAL SIN

May 8, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Continuing the series of monthly extracts from the book that I am writing on the history of moral thought, here is the fourth excerpt (naturally from Chapter 4). The first three chapters in the book deal with Greek and Hellenistic thought. Chapter 4 begins the discussion of the monotheistic religions, moving from the origins of Judaism to early Christianity (the exploration of Islam comes later). This extract is taken from the section on Augustine, the most important of early Christian […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: augustine, ethics, free will, god, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books, neo-platonism, original sin, pelagius, plato, plotinus, religion, sin