Browsing by Author "Koehn, Glen"
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Item Divine Command and Socratic Piety in the Euthyphro(Wydawnictwo Naukowe Instytutu Filozofii UAM, 2011) Koehn, GlenWhile Socrates was in his own way a deeply religious man, the Euthyphro is often thought to provide a refutation of the divine command theory of morality: the theory that what is morally good is good because it is divinely approved. Socrates seems to suggest that what is holy or pious (ὅσιος) is pleasing to the gods because it is holy, and not holy because it pleases them. Thus the dialogue is sometimes presented as showing that what is morally good and bad must be independent of the divine will. I argue that matters are not so simple, since there are several ways in which the gods could help determine which acts are good, for instance, by disposing certain human affairs which are relevant to moral decisions. Moreover, Socrates suggests that he has obligations to the gods themselves, and these obligations would have to depend in part on what pleases them. It follows that the dilemma which Socrates poses to Euthyphro (pious because loved by the gods, or loved by the gods because pious) does not offer two mutually exclusive alteratives. There are various ways for the preferences of such gods to help determine which acts are adequate for moral praise or blame. It could therefore hardly be the case that religious doctrines, if true, are irrelevant to the content of morality. Knowledge of the gods’ preferences, if such knowledge were available, would be of importance to moral theory. Socrates himself does not deny this, nor should we.Item The Archer and Aristotle’s Doctrine(Wydawnictwo Naukowe Instytutu Filozofii UAM, 2012) Koehn, GlenIt is sometimes claimed that Aristotle’s doctrine of the Mean is false or unhelpful: moral virtues are not typically flanked by two opposing vices as he claimed. However, an explicit restatement of Aristotle’s view in terms of sufficiency for an objective reveals that the Mean is more widely applicable than has sometimes been alleged. Understood as a special case of sufficiency, it is essential to many judgments of right and wrong. I consider some objections by Rosalind Hursthouse to Aristotle’s theory and argue that they are based on a misunderstanding. However, there is indeed a tension in Aristotle’s view of goodness, hinted at in his claim that the good is “said in many ways”.