Summary: A history of how the concept of ethics (or moral philosophy) has been developed over time in western culture.
In my long term reading project about discernment, I have been gradually moving toward reading about ethics. I do not think that discernment is primarily about ethical action, but at some point, when you think about discernment the idea of what “is right” has to come up.
A couple of years ago, early in this project, I read Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, which tried to show that virtue and ethics were actually a cultural good and not simply a repressive feature of an older society. After Virtue was originally published in 1981 and I initially assumed that Short History of Ethics was a later book, but it was first published 15 years earlier. It is not a part of the Very Short Introduction series (as I assumed), but written as an introductory textbook for a college level philosophy/ethics class. While it is understandable, it is assumes a working familiarity of philosophy and its history. And as I have said many times before, philosophy is not a strong suit of mine, but I could follow the basic thread.
I picked up A Short History of Ethics as an audiobook because it was on sale, but that was not a great format. As with many book, audio helps me finish, but it is a hard format for deep reading because it is harder to re-read sections to understand the better. This audiobook was even worse because the narrator was Scottish with a strong accent. I have been reluctant to pick this edition up on previous sales because the narrator had awful reviews. I did get used to the narration, but if there were any other option, I would recommend you pick another option.
I think the strongest sections were the early chapters on Greek philosophy and the ending sections on modern ethics. The first eight chapters were introduction and background on Greek philosophy. While they were helpful to frame the later discussion on what ethics were, it did feel like he was never going to finish discussing Greek philosophy. (He does talk about the fact that there are many eastern ethical systems that are not based on Greek philosophy, but that it was outside the scope of the book.)
It was not until about the midpoint of the book that Christianity was introduced. Prior to that and it is primarily describing what ethical systems were as a base point and the different approaches that Greek philosophical systems used to approach ethics. But with the introduction of Christianity there is a real conflict between cultural systems around ethics. It is not as if there was no conflict about ethics prior, but the along with the introduction of Christianity, there was also a much greater cultural interaction between groups as transportation and trade technology increase at the same time. The last half of the book is really a slow rise of individualism as a natural result of the very idea of ethical conflict and the increasing relevance of a personal God which gives rise to personal ethical system.
At one point in a larger discussion of natural law, MacIntyre essentially says that either there is some form of natural law where the ethical system comes from outside, or ethics in some way are a purely subjective system of the individual who has to evaluate everything with an internal rationality. That is obviously a hyperbolic dichotomy, but there is a real point there. I am pretty strongly against natural law systems of ethics because of the history of misuse, but I also am reluctant to completely dismiss all natural law influence.
The real value of the book for me was the discussion of how ethics changes over time. Not just the evaluative methods, but what “a good” is and even what the purpose of society and action is. Discernment without any sense of how our culture works and how we are influenced in our understanding of what “being Christlike” is about can’t really happen without some reflection on our understanding of ethics. There are certainly other books that provide similar lenses. The Economics of Good and Evil or Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes or let alone books that just look at comparative Christianity as a narrower scope get at different aspects.
I am increasingly convinced that Ignatius’ rules of discernment arose when it did, was not just because there was a need for personal discernment along with the rise of the Enlightenment, but also that the rise of the Enlightenment and the movement of mystical Christianity through books like The Cloud of Unknowing and The Interior Castle were modeling a type of faith that requires interiority and reflection. But you can’t separate the rise of the Enlightenment from the increased interaction with diverse cultures that caused people to reflect on their own culture. There was, of course, a particular problem with the chauvinism and bias of western Christian cultures that assumed that they were not just right, but divinely chosen to dominate, but at the same time, there was pretty much always a prophetic thread that challenged the dominate culture in their dominance.
I know I missed more than I understood with A Short History of Ethics, but I did get something out of this reading and it did help me reflect on the tension that is inherent in discernment between collective and individualistic values. We need both and any movement to minimize either collective or individual discernment minimizes the ways that God has traditionally spoken to us. In a similar way, we can’t reject the concept of objective truth nor assume that it is possible for use to get some glimmer of truth in light of special or general revelation. And we can’t ignore the ways that prior generations used their understanding of truth to create and/or justify harm. We have access to a wide scope of history, the comparative understanding of knowledge and culture over time and the analytic tools to know that everything should be complicated.
A Short History Of Ethics: A History Of Moral Philosophy From The Homeric Age To The Twentieth Century by Alasdair MacIntyre Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook