/lit/ - Literature

The history of moral philosophy has usually been written - except for those historians influenced by Augustine, Marx, or Nietzsche - in such a way as to disguise this fact [The fact that constancy and integrity are required for us to be moral agents, and that practical thinking, which necessarily engenders tensions as a result of the conflicts between different roles and responsibilities in a social order, is necessary in order to exercise constancy and integrity]. Why does this matter? It is because it is from these tensions and conflicts, when and insofar as they are present, that morality gets an important part of its content. There are of course social and cultural orders in which tension, let alone conflict, between such rival moral systems has not yet been generated to any significant degree. But, whenever it has been so generated, it defines an area in which at least some moral agents find themselves with particular responsibilities to discharge. Consider how this might be so with regard to truthfulness, considered as one essential constituent of the human good. Both Aquinas and Kant hold that it is wrong to tell a lie in any circumstance whatsoever. But one could refrain from lying throughout one's life without having done what is required of one, if one is to achieve the good of truthfulness. For truthfulness requires of us that, when it is of peculiar importance that rational agents should understand some particular aspect of their lives, so that they are neither misled nor deceived, it is a responsibility of those who are truthful to disclose what is relevant to such understanding. What it is relevant to disclose is in key part determined by the limitations of the contemporary role structure and the ways in which it assigns responsibilities may obscure from view just that about which the virtue of truthfulness requires that we and others should be undeceived. Conflicts about whose responsibility it is to know about this or that are therefore among those that in some circumstances, especially the circumstances of distinctively modern societies, provide content for the requirements of morality. "Ask about any social and cultural order what it needs its inhabitants not to know" has become an indispensable sociological maxim. "Ask about your own social and cultural order what it needs you and others not to know" has become an indispensable moral maxim.

From "God and the Theologians," in Against the Self-Images of the Age, 24-25.

"Williams' attack is directed against the moral forms of contemporary Christianity. He exposes the fake character of a great deal of remorse and searching of conscience by describing its role in providing a welcome barrier to genuine self-knowledge. He brings out excellently the way in which condemnation of overt breaches of the sexual code, whether in ourselves or in others, can be a symptom of a more than ambiguous attitude to sexuality, and how the price of self-knowledge and truthfulness may be a life which conventional Christianity condemns. Williams finds a clue to Christianity in Christ's obvious preference for publicans and sinners over the clergy. Williams could scarcely be more severe in his treatment of his own religion, and if it is necessary to ask whether he goes far enough, it is not because one could go any farther in that direction. It is rather that he never asks what makes traits like conscientiousness and a sense of duty so important to contemporary Christianity. The answer is that these traits belong to the manner in which we act; they do not define the contents of our actions. Injunctions to repent, to be responsible, even to be generous, do not actually tell us what to do. And about the content of the moral life Christians in fact have no more to say than anyone else. Christians behave like everyone else but use a different vocabulary in characterizing their behavior, and so conceal their lack of distinctiveness. Thus true self-knowledge for Christians would involve the uncovering of much more than a retreat by individuals into neurotic self-concealment. But even in this Christians only reflect a general predicament.
All those in our society who self-consciously embrace beliefs which appear to confer importance and righteousness upon the holder become involved in the same strategies. The fact that their beliefs make so little difference either to them or to others leads to the same concern with being right-minded rather than effective. Hygienic, liberal, periodical-reading progressives who are against capital punishment and blood sports tend to be quite as nasty as Christians are, in this respect.
And there are many other varieties of the neurotic self-deceiver. When Williams tries to accuse his fellow-Christians of believing not in God, but Nobodaddy, I hope that he makes them wince. But I hope he also makes all those of us wince who have turned conscientious atheism into a substitute Nobodaddy of our own."

>>16163570
It's good! Once you finish it, you should read After Virtue. Leibowitz is a necessary prerequisite, and After Virtue is a necessary sequel.