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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (58425)	2/6/2001 1:45:10 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

I said it was a silly little book, but it started the whole discussion of morality. Before Aristotle, people argued about divine law, obviously something that cannot usefully be argued about, only believed. Aristotle believed in reason, rather than superstition. It is this strain in the discussion of human conduct that rules today. The evolution of ethical thought has been dramatic. To free slaves is obviously the categorical imperative. None of the great moral teachers of antiquity considered it as such, because they sought their laws in the mind of god, instead of in reason. To accept that god existed and was just required the believer in slavery to rationalize it (the problem of evil). The superiority of Lincoln's morality ("As I would not be a slave, neither would I be a master") to Aristotle's is obvious to almost everyone today. People had to die to destroy slavery as a human institution. Aristotle has been demonstrated to be wrong. But it was his attempt to rationalize human behavior that started the discussion.