Selflessness As Virtue

The current state of the world appears precisely as Thomas Hobbes described it: hostile, violent, and chaotic. There are handfuls of wars in progress internationally, millions die annually from disease, starvation, and lack of access to clean water. In the midst of such a hectic situation, there can be found within society various systems of morality. While it appears that mankind has no moralbasis for its actions, there are indeed virtues which are pursued by peoples and nations throughout the world. In truth, no matter of philosophy has suffered as much discrepancy and quarrel as the notion of morality. Dispute and conflict arise over not just disobedience to moral precepts but differences in the considerations of what these precepts are.
Nevertheless, there tends to be a generalacknowledgement and objective pursuit by individuals of a human telos or conceivable social goal. This acknowledgement is evidenced by the individual’s ability to imagine a better or proper condition of society. The condition is thus viewed as a superior and, at least in part, attainable end for society, and is almost always proportional to one’s religion. In Biblical terms, this may be the“kingdom of God”, while the eastern religions of Islam and Daoism invoke this idea of harmony in their very name. Essentially, it is agreed there exists a need for harmony, whether conceived of in the manner of moral treaty, justice, or peace. The latter two similarly work toward an objective telos. Islam, meaning “submission” and Daoism (Dao meaning “way”), however, allude to the means to this end. Itis this means that is source of all moral utterance and subsequent disagreement. In After Virtue, the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre appropriately sums up the nature of general moral disagreement:
The most striking feature of contemporary moral utterance is that so much of it is used to express disagreements; and the most striking feature of the debates in which these disagreements areexpressed is their interminable character. I do not mean by this just that such debates go on and on and on – although they do – but also that they apparently can find no terminus. (MacIntyre, 6)
Thus, an opinion on the means to the human telos is prone to be ultimately inconsistent with all other opinions. Reality shows that there many different conceptions of what is just or right. Asmentioned earlier, the conceptions of justice and peace aim at an understanding of what is right. They are not limited to any specific religion. Rather, they can be found in the thinking of peoples from every tribe and nation around the globe. More importantly however, the concepts of what is just or peaceful insist a image of society which in turn leads one to a sense of moral obligation. In order todecipher the nature of this discord, one must first understand the wild history of moral thought.
The majority of traditional moral thought adheres to the moral philosophies In Kant’s view, the fundamental aim of moral philosophy is to “seek out” the foundational principle of a metaphysics for morality. Kant's analysis of commonsense ideas begins with the thought that the only thing good withoutqualification is a ‘good will’. While the phrases ‘he's good hearted’, ‘she's good natured’ and ‘she means well’ are common, ‘the good will’ as Kant thinks of it is not the same as any of these ordinary notions. In Kant's terms, a good will is a will whose decisions are wholly determined by moral demands or as he often refers to this, by the Moral Law. Thus, Kant concludes that individuals areobligated by duty to do ‘right’.
Adam Smith, one of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, diverged from the Kantian notion of ethics. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith makes the point that the foundation for moral judgment has its origin in society. The general conceptions of what is good or bad, right and wrong are rooted in social interaction. As we as individuals make...