Autor: Lawrence, G. Frederick

Buch: Communication and Lonergan

Titel: The Human Good and Christian Conversation

Stichwort: Modern Political Philosophy - 1. wave; Sorge um self-preservation wird dominierend; summum bonum, malum
Modern Political Philosophy; The first wave of modernity; Allan Bloom

Kurzinhalt: displacing the desire to know elevated to normative status by the ancients with the desire for self-preservation

Textausschnitt: ... the moderns contended that the concentration on virtue contradicts the concern for well-being. Aristotle admitted that "equipment" as well as virtue is needed for happiness, but said nothing about how that equipment is acquired. A careful examination of the acquisition of equipment reveals that virtue impedes that acquisition. [...] Equipment is surely necessary, so why not experiment with doing without virtue. (1990, pp. 282-283) (notabene)
()
14 In other words, thinkers like Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke judged that in the light of humanity's "disequilibrium of high aspiration and poor performance" (Lonergan,1967/ 1988, p. 39), taking care of equipment not only means doing without virtue if need be, but displacing the desire to know elevated to normative status by the ancients with the desire for self-preservation. (253f; Fs) (notabene)
()
15 In tandem with modern science's myth of productivity, modern political philosophy undertook the vast "humanitarian" project of taking care of equipment by parleying private vices into public welfare. But this was to subordinate the second and third levels of the structure of the human good to that of needs, desires, and particular goods. It follows that the common good no longer refers to the good of order as normative, but to particular goods as satisfying needs and desires as correlative with life in contradistinction to the good life. As a mere collectivity of private goods, the common good is "common" only in the sense of an accidental genus or species instead of as the objective of rational choice correlative with the human capacity for intellectual development. Furthermore, in relation to the normative order of vital, social, cultural, personal, and religious values, the preference for mere life over the good life means the supremacy of vital values. The dominant practical question becomes not merely, "What's in it for me or my group?" but "What's the value of being good if you're not well off?" (254; Fs) (notabene)
()
17 Concerns for the third level are acknowledged by the early moderns under the rubric of natural right. Friendships are relevant as long as they are based on utility or pleasure. Liberty means either the freedom to design institutions that will provide mutual security and rules that guarantee the public good by enabling each individual to pursue private goods without obstruction from others, or at least the freedom to consent to such a design. It is clear, then, that the notion of natural right, inalienable, underivable from any authority, is an eminently selfish idea. As the product of an attempt to define human equality independently of any religion or metaphysics, it also meant to leave open the answer to the question of the right way to live, at least in principle; but in fact, that openness was a void the early moderns were content to see filled by commerce. Taking care of equipment is realized as taking care of business. (254f; Fs)