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Changability of human nature in light of a value
Jelínek, Jakub ; Barabas, Marína (advisor) ; Holba, Jiří (referee)
This work presents the question whether our nature is changeable and deserves changing in the ethical sense, on the contrast of Kant's moral philosophy with Buddhist thinking. Kant's approach associates morality with pressure on desires (mainly speaking of inclinations - habitual sensuous desires) because it understands sensuality - where it places them - as given. Splitting a human being into reason (standing aside from causality) and sensuality is the cause why Kant's efforts to incorporate moral progress (towards "joyful fulfilling of one's duty") into his system fail, unless it is to undergo a radical reconstruction. However, the experience of craving shows its non-mechanical basis, the basis in understanding its object as of a value for us. The Buddhist account of non-self (similarly to Heidegger's thought that we at first understand ourselves wrongly as an entity that only occurs) problematises this understanding. The self-demarcation, which establishes craving means understanding oneself as an object, with which something can happen and which can have some attributes. But our experience of freedom shows, that our power to act is not a possibility of that sort. If we are able to recognize self-demarcation (selfishness) as a fallacy, it means that our nature is changeable. And because such...
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"Guilt and Wrongdoing: The Problem of Responsibility"
Pacovská, Kamila ; Barabas, Marína (advisor) ; Kohák, Erazim (referee) ; Cowley, Christopher (referee)
(in English) This dissertation explores the notions of guilt and wrongdoing in the context of contemporary analytic ethics. It draws upon the critique, advanced in the second half of the 20th century, of a one-sided interest in episodic action and its rightness or wrongness. Thanks to the revival of virtue ethics during this time, the subject matter of ethics was extended to take account of human character and human life as such. As a result, the domain of moral psychology and of contingent aspects of moral experience started to be explored again. This development in ethics is outlined in the first chapter and the second chapter addresses the impact of this changed understanding of ethics upon our conception of moral judgment and responsibility. I suggest that the concept of responsibility divides in two: responsibility for the agent's (inner) fault and responsibility for the wrongdoing itself. Whereas the remainder of chapter two deals with the former, the rest of the thesis focuses upon the latter i.e. upon responsibility for the wrongdoing and upon two problems which are generated by the intricate bearing of luck and contingency on the concept of responsibility. The first of these problems concerns the relation of the person to her guilt. Guilt arises through a condemnable action for which the...
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Changability of human nature in light of a value
Jelínek, Jakub ; Barabas, Marína (advisor) ; Holba, Jiří (referee)
This work presents the question whether our nature is changeable and deserves changing in the ethical sense, on the contrast of Kant's moral philosophy with Buddhist thinking. Kant's approach associates morality with pressure on desires (mainly speaking of inclinations - habitual sensuous desires) because it understands sensuality - where it places them - as given. Splitting a human being into reason (standing aside from causality) and sensuality is the cause why Kant's efforts to incorporate moral progress (towards "joyful fulfilling of one's duty") into his system fail, unless it is to undergo a radical reconstruction. However, the experience of craving shows its non-mechanical basis, the basis in understanding its object as of a value for us. The Buddhist account of non-self (similarly to Heidegger's thought that we at first understand ourselves wrongly as an entity that only occurs) problematises this understanding. The self-demarcation, which establishes craving means understanding oneself as an object, with which something can happen and which can have some attributes. But our experience of freedom shows, that our power to act is not a possibility of that sort. If we are able to recognize self-demarcation (selfishness) as a fallacy, it means that our nature is changeable. And because such...
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Relationship between practical wisdom and ethical states in Aristotle
Kudláč, Jakub ; Barabas, Marína (referee) ; Mráz, Milan (advisor)
In our text we examme the relationship between practical wisdom and ethical states in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. The goal of our work is to define the function of practical wisdom in ethical virtue. We gradually analyze the indiviual parts of definition of ethical virtue from EN II, 6, that is, that virtue is a state concerned with choice which holds the mean relative to us in such a way as a man of practical wisdom would define it. After the analysis of state concerned with choice and practical wisdom we arrive at the determination of practical wisdom as the source of virtuous action; only practical wisdom can be the criterion that pronounces what is bad and good; desire in itself is not capable of deliberation. Following from this a new question arises: how can practical wisdom influence the irrational part of the soul, which is the seat of desire? Practical wisdom, having no direct influence on desire, uses ethical virtue-temperance as it's intermediary. This induces in irrational desire the intention to follow practical wisdom and thus practical wisdom becomes master of desire. We see the contribution of our work firstly in defining the function of practical wisdom in Aristotelian Ethics with greater accuracy and secondly in establishing temperance as a neccessary condition of the other virtues and...
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