/lit/ - Literature

Do books on ethics actually tell us anything we don't instinctively know regarding morality?

Let me explain. There's a supposed distinction between prescriptive ethics ("how should people act?") and descriptive ethics ("how do people think they should act?").

Now take a book on prescriptive ethics, like Kant's Metaphysics of Morals. Notice that when someone tries to make an argument against Kant's system, they would very likely try to apply it to a real-life scenario and show an absurd conclusion (the well-known counter-example is lying to a murderer to save your life). The point here is that we use our instinctual morality to determine whether an ethical framework works or not.

Nobody actually turns to philosophical works to decide whether they should or shouldn't do something. He knows that he should or shouldn't, and uses that belief to verify the validity of the work.

Hence, all ethics is really descriptive, because if intuitively something doesn't feel right, regardless of how logical it might be, nobody will take the system seriously.

The question is, then, what's the point of ethics as a branch of philosophy if we're all just relying on our built-in moral compass to operate in the world?

>2k13
>Choosing anyone other than based Kant.

And I'm a utilitarian!

It's like you don't even transcendental argument.

of course. which idiot would think this?

>Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.

(in other translations "nonage" is "immaturity")

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html

>implying this is not far superior to all other notions of enlightenment

What is beautiful, /lit/ ?

Hi /lit/
Give me something beautiful