A Brief Illustrated Treatise On Morality

AMORAL: lacking a moral sense

IMMORAL: a person or behaviour that consciously goes against accepted morals.

Advent 22

Volume 22 (Textile to Vasc): Theology.

Another day, another giant topic for the Overgraduate to sink his inadequate teeth into. My overtaxed grey matter does wonder at the wisdom of the task I have set myself. Has anyone ever gone on Mastermind with the specialist subject of pages 63 of the volumes of the 1959 Britannica?

Theology is that branch of philosophy that is concerned with the explanation of the world in the terms of a supreme mind or spirit. The study of theology is not therefore, as I comprehend it, the same thing as religious experience but the study of religious experience is a legitimate (in fact, one might argue, essential) constituent of theological study.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church invites us to distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia), the former being the mystery of God's innermost life, the latter the works by which God reveals himself. I understand this as the contrast between the spiritual and the temporal and it is in the space between those elements that my own unequal and impertinent negotiation with God takes place. Heavy man!. Page 63 has much to answer for.

Advent 18

Volume 18 (Plants to Raym): Plato.

Plato (427 -347 BC) survives as a major influencer on philosophic and political thought. The man himself stayed out of active politics having become convinced that there was no place in that field for a man of conscience. I hope that conclusion is wrong but it is a difficult proposition to name men or women of absolute conscience who have played on the major stages of political life. Britannica explains the foundation of platonic philosophy thus:

The reason why men forfeit felicity is that they mistake apparent good for real, the conditionally for the absolutely good. If a man ever knew with assurance what absolute good is, he would in practice never pursue anything else. It is this sense that 'all virtue is knowledge' and that 'all wrong-doing is involuntary' (i.e. consists in the pursuit of what is falsely supposed to be good).

 

  

RWC Bulletin 9

Simply the best

Not that much need be said really. The two best teams (notwithstanding Scotland's peculiar ill luck) have reached the final and that game will be refereed by the best referee. So good luck to Australia, to New Zealand and to Nigel Owens. May they between them conspire to give the world a game it can cherish, to the benefit of my precious sport.

I had some hunches before the tournament, most of which have been wide of the mark. I always feared that England would lose to Wales and I near as dammit knew Wales would lose to Australia, but I figured that England would beat Australia and that Wales would be eliminated to nurse yet another persecution complex. As it turned out Australia produced one of the three seminal performances of the competition to floor England and England went out because they were too stupid/arrogant (take your pick) to kick a goal against Wales. The other two seminal achievements? Japan's heroics against South Africa and the All Black evisceration of the poor old French.

My other wayward hunches: Ireland went out tamely and were feebler than I had predicted; Argentina have taken a meaningful step forward in their method - I hadn't seen that coming, probably because I wasn't looking very closely.

The final? Really can't call it. New Zealand are the better team but it is difficult not to admire what Cheika has done with his Australian team and David Pocock is my player of the tournament. One to watch rather than bet on. Enjoy.

By the way I have discovered the joys of Spotify and am currently listening to 10cc's back catalogue. Nice. I will be breaking away shortly to try to get my head around Bourdieu's The Field of Cultural Production. Will the Boy Bourdieu be able to hold a philsophical candle to my favourite Frenchman, Roland Barthes? I wouldn't bet on that either. Cheery bye.

What Cricket Is Really About

I love test match cricket but the thought has only recently crystallised in my mind that it exists as a site for practitioners of normative ethics. When you think about it cricket is like an examination paper for first year philosophy students.

England were thwarted by bad light as they neared a fourth win of the concluded Ashes series. But had they won, what would be the morality of a victory earned from a sporting Australian declaration? When is a victory not really a win?

And bad light stopping play - where does a professional sport lie vis-à-vis its paying customers when with all the floodlights turned on it nonetheless deprives the game of a victor?

And why is it 'understandable' for the Australian coach (who incidentally seems to me to be an eminently likeable sort) to chastise Stuart Broad for not walking when he guided one straight to slip and the umpire inexplicably managed to miss this fact, but not to complain about the countless other players of multiple nationalities who never walk? Is there a de minimis below which cheating isn't cheating?  

Thought(s) For The Day

This An Inspector Calls business has the power to make you ponder a bit. Though not last night during an epically, comically, worryingly inept technical rehearsal. Still a good night's sleep and an enjoyable perusal of the Argentinian Pumas dismembering the curiously uninvolved Welsh in Cardiff (catch highlights at Wales v Argentina) have got me out of a mild pessimism and back on the philosophical treadmill, in between bouts of line learning. Which treadmill has generated the energy to cut and paste these conflicting gobbets of wisdom.

But just remember this. One Eva Smith has gone - but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness, all intertwined with our lives, with what we think and say and do. We don't live alone. we are members of one body. we are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Goodnight. (Inspector's final speech in An Inspector Calls) 

Now where there are no parts, there neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible. And these monads are the true atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things.
(Gottfried Leibnitz 1646-1716) 

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
(Frederick Bastiat 1801-1850)
 

Or are they conflicting? Discuss - as examination questions often used to say.