/lit/ - Literature

>>20063951
have a le ebin laugh

>>16408449
>>16408450
Thank you for your support, anons. I've already posted all that I have for now, but hopefully you guys will find it interesting. His concept of culturalism as a force that seeks to divorce culture from the violence, suffering, and passion that have sustained it up until now is equally applicable to the West. Its political form has been described by R. R. Reno in Return of the Strong Gods, and I suspect that there is exist strong institutional and personal ties between those who have sought to deracinate culture and those who have sought to tame politics.
Also, if anyone has any translation requests, feel free to email me at cheapjapanesetranslation@gmail.com.

>>16218917
Yes, it is.

>>15902917

Alright /lit/, I'm currently in the process of reading Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. I'll post more once I've read more. Since this is my first real foray into philosophy, my questions might seem trivial to more well-read /lit/itzens. I ask for your patience.

For now, I've got some questions about his discussion of Kant's categorical imperative. Here's what he had to say about it on pages 45 and 46 of the 2006 edition:

"How are we to decide whether this attempt to formulate a decisive test for the maxims of morality is successful or not? Kant himself tries to show that such maxims as 'Always tell the truth', 'Always keep promises', 'Be benevolent to those in need' and 'Do not commit suicide' pass his test, while such maxims as 'Only keep promises when it is convenient to you' fail. In fact however, even to approach a semblance of showing this, he has to use notoriously bad arguments, the climax of which is his assertion that any man who wills the maxim 'To kill myself when the prospects of pain outweigh those of happiness' is inconsistent because such willing 'contradicts' an impulse to life implanted in all of us. This is as if someone were to assert that any man who wills the maxim 'Always to keep my hair cut short' is inconsistent because such willing 'contradicts' an impulse to the growth of hair implanted in all of us. But it is not just that Kant's own arguments involve large mistakes. It is very easy to see that many immoral and trivial non-moral maxims are vindicated by Kant's test quite as convincingly - in some cases more convincingly - than the moral maxims which Kant aspires to uphold. So 'Keep all your promises throughout your entire life except one', 'Persecute all those who hold false religious beliefs' and 'Always eat mussels on Mondays in March' will all pass Kant's test, for all can be consistently universalized.
"To this one rejoinder may be that if this follows from what Kant said, it cannot be what Kant meant. Certainly and obviously it was not what Kant envisaged, for he himself believed that his test of consistent universalizability had a defining moral content which would have excluded such universal and trivial maxims. Kant believed this because he believed that his formulations of the categorical imperative in terms of universalizability were equivalent to a quite different formulation: 'Always act so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of others, as an end, and not as a means.'"

Is he being fair to Kant here?

>>14452739

>>13546681
What lit have you been reading, son?

>>13294612
all that has been said has already been said