Herder's Ethics and Metaethics

[@nimaafshar115]

Many thanks about your informing and interesting lectures. Can you please talk about Thomas Reid and also his interaction with Hume and his effects on Kant, if any?

[@jorb1903]

I ordered another philosophy of history when I was drunk and reading that Herder was one of the few 17th century philosophers that wasn’t a full on racist 😂😂

[@sparkyy0007]

Without objective truths, and left to man's subjectivity, the basis of good or bad, right or wrong depends solely on who holds the biggest spear. All laws are forced morality, but who's morality. Democratic morals are just what the mob happens to agree upon, but who's mob is right. Without God and divine revelation to humanity, morals and ethics, their derived laws are purely subjective to the culture or ruler in power and change with the wind.

[@Eviticus-Maximus]

The idea of god is purely subjective, especially from culture to culture and time to time. This is (one of) what creates the absolute horror throughout the world.

[@sparkyy0007]

@@Eviticus-Maximus Thanks for that. If what you're saying were actually true, ie naturalism, then there's no hope. The biggest spear wins and all objections to tyrany can be fully addressed with two words.... So what.

[@Eviticus-Maximus]

@@sparkyy0007 I mean no offense. I just believe secular ethics is a much more practical way to go. I’d rather there be a big spear in the hand of someone who is ethical.

[@sparkyy0007]

@@Eviticus-Maximus Thanks for that. No offense taken my friend, but you and I both know of the 8 billion on this earth, no one is sporting a set of wings, and the only one who did....well...

[@mariusciobotaru3]

The problem with this argument is that someone's interpretation of God or divine will as a source for morals is culturally and historically dependent on the same social relations as morality is. Religion doesn't give you morals. It's only a tool to rationalize and justify certain types of normative attitudes that are the product of intersubjective experience. So, in your example, "the mob" decides morality regardless of the type of theoretical justification it chooses. It can be a religious type of metaphysical justification or a secular one. "The mob" also decides what is the appropriate interpretation of religion. "The mob" decides what religion has to say about morality and what kind of religious statements it takes into account and what to ignore. This goes against your argument because when the ignorant masses decide that their normative sentiments and beliefs are objectively true and universal on a religious basis there's no room for dialogue and progress. I can't convince someone that homosexuality isn't wrong for example if their attitude is grounded in religious or mystical thinking or some sort of metaphysical objective moral realm that's not susceptible to reason or change. Religion gives ignorant people a false sense of security in their unexamined convictions by allowing them to not question their beliefs which they perceive as absolutes.

[@AudioPervert1]

Be realistic Demand The Impossible... Old Indigenous Saying