The Last Word on Moral Philosophy

"Waste no more time debating what is a good man: be one." 

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations X

Today I moved seven generators and an oven. Two of the places we could use a truck and a trailer to reach, including to a mule farm with very little need for electricity at all. One we could still reach with the trailer, but only detached from the truck and attached to a Polaris Ranger instead. It only carried two, so I rode in the trailer holding on to the generators as we bounced over the mud trail, secure in the knowledge that I had tied the rescue knots lashing them to the frame myself. The last one we had to reach with just the Ranger, so I had to deadlift the generators into it to ferry one by one. We left the third guy with the truck.

I spent a large part of my life studying philosophy, including moral philosophy. Indeed, it was moral philosophy that first caught my attention: I was greatly taken by Plato's dialogues, beginning with the Laches, in which we were all invited to participate in the ancient discussions about what it means to be good and virtuous. Plato invites everyone, but especially in his most famous middle dialogues makes it seem as if it's hard to come to an answer; in his later dialogues, like the Laws, he makes it seem clear but his answers are ludicrous. 

Aristotle developed an answer in the Nicomachean Ethics that was broadly satisfying for more than a thousand years. The Stoics refined and improved upon it, but their model of virtue is basically Aristotelian. 

Aristotle also provided the best scientific writing for many generations, but his scientific writings were proven inaccurate in many ways by the late Medievals and early Moderns. Thinking that his moral philosophy was also as flawed, modern thinkers have tried to either refound it on reason -- like Kant or Rawls -- or to replace it -- like Marx or Bentham. 

All of those projects have been as ridiculous as Plato in his late phase, which is not to scorn them: they were, like he was, operating at the top of humanity's intellectual capacity. Studying them likewise is not a useless endeavor, as it allows you to approach an understanding of how and why the later models were flawed. 

Ultimately, however, there are no secrets remaining in moral philosophy. There is no reason to hold a week-long seminar, or a three-day retreat, or a day-long debate. We know how to be good, how to be virtuous, and what we ought to do. If you don't know, you should know. 

The hard part is doing it. If a course in moral philosophy leads to men who worry over abstracts of 'justice' or 'right' or 'duty,' sitting in libraries or lecture halls, it has failed. If it leads to men who know how to tie rescue knots and tourniquets, and who stand ready to apply CPR or work a chainsaw to clear a road, it has succeeded. 

I guess I had good teachers, starting with my father who set the example for me. I came across Aristotle early and Marcus Aurelius late, but they were right all along.