Words&Dirt

“‘Look at Bonzo, your old commander.  He’s got an advanced case of Spanish honor.  He can’t allow himself to have weaknesses.  To be better than him, that’s an insult.  To be stronger, that’s like cutting off his balls.  That’s why he hates you, because you didn’t suffer when he tried to punish you.  He hates you for that, he honestly wants to kill you.  He’s crazy.  They’re all crazy.’

‘And you aren’t?’

‘I be crazy too, little buddy, but at least when I be craziest, I be floating all alone in space and the crazy, she float out of me, she soak into the walls, and she don’t come out till there be battles and little boys bump into the walls and squish out de crazy.’

Ender smiled.”

––Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, pg. 109-10

“As is often the case in both science and philosophy, there is no ultimate answer to the question of how we should conduct our life.  But that doesn’t mean that there is no answer, or that all answers are about the same.  In particular––and despite the possible protestations of professional philosophers––we can put together a reasonable view of the ethical and meaningful life by combining elements of all three major moral theories, and the specific combination does not have to be the same for everybody.  For instance, I am particularly sympathetic to virtue ethics because I find the idea of flourishing as a lifelong project attractive, and because I easily recognize my own akratic tendencies.  But I am also aware of the power of Kant’s categorical imperative, which I interpret just a bit less strictly than that august philosopher.  And finally, I also find much value in the consequentialist emphasis on our personal responsibility to make informed decisions because morality has a lot to do with the ramifications of our actions.

A professional moral philosopher will probably object to this project of constructing a morality menu on the ground that some of the ethical concepts we have examined entail mutual contradictions, so that it is not possible to arrive at a coherent system of thought by combining the best of virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism.  I am tempted to respond as the American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) famously did (in Song of Myself): ‘Do I contradict myself?  Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.’  There is some wisdom in Whitman’s retort.”

––Answers for Aristotle, by Massimo Pigliucci, pg. 73-4