Historical Morality

A brief correction to last nights post and perhaps a little expanding.

I'm not entirely sure it is fair to say that I'm trying to think about a historical-philosophical morality. It would be better to simply call it a historical morality.

I'm following Collingwood's lead on this project for now. And because I don't yet understand him fully, I am following somewhat blindly. He sometimes made broad claims that he intended to back up at a later date. Unfortunately he didn't live to back up all those claims with the type of clarity that he wanted.

His boldest claim that I am taking for granted is that all philosophy collapses into history, that all philosophical problems are really historical problems. To call it a historical-philosophical morality is therefore redundant. Because philosophy can only exist as a certain type of history. In the case of 'historical morality', the word philosophical is implied in the word historical.

I think I'm close to cracking this. Duty is historical morality. Hmmmm. I dunno what else.

Gotta think about how to work MacIntyre in.

I think I can do it. MacIntyre poses a problem because of his claim that we must return to an Aristotelian conception of ethics. That we must reactualize or recover a lost form of morality. This is undoubtedly a historical project to be accomplished by historical thinking. MacIntyre knows this. I haven't finished the book so I need to see what happens. But I'm entertaining the idea that perhaps the solution to the problem posed by MacIntyre lies in historical thinking itself. Perhaps historical thinking put MacIntyre in touch Aristotle and the idea that we can recover that type of moral being. But maybe the process of historical thinking is what is producing the new type of morality. Or rather, Aristotelianism is being transformed into something new by the fact of us thinking about it historically. The method, the process of historical thinking is the source of the new morality. But it also matters what we are thinking about historically. It matter that we try to repeat certain people in a certain way.

Hmmm. I'm not saying this clearly.

This has to do with historical thought as repetition of past thought. With repetition and newness.