Historical-Philosophical Morality

I'm totally just rambling towards some idea of a historical-philosophical morality.

I guess the idea of morality or ethics is the best way to move thought towards action.

I hope that I can soon make an extended statement about historical morality.

I'm still too confused.

Alasdair MacIntyre, I think, will set me free.

I think finishing After Virtue will put me in a position to write.

It took me about a month or so to read the first 100 pages. But then I read 50 or so in the last week.

I'm moving through it and I intend to keep moving.

I find it to be a remarkable book. So remarkable that I don't even know how to deal with it. So remarkable that I wonder how many contemporary thinkers are dealing with it. Its conclusions are, as the author claims, quite radical.

Anti-modernity? What the hell does that mean?

How is one anti-modern? How does one reject much of our modern intellectual and personal inheritance?

How does one engage in the most radical form of cultural recovery?


Mind blowing.

Oh!

I love love love when I take intellectual things as seriously as I can.

They change my breathing. They empty my chest.

They make me so emotional. So unsure about what is going to happen. In my own life and in the world.

Which is great!

But MacIntyre is definitely making me work.

I am thankful that he is reminding me of how hard thinking is.

And how many different directions my interests can expand.

Also, John Gray's Enlightenment's Wake makes a lot more sense in light of MacIntyre. Gray is definitely responding to MacIntyre, at times explicitly, and now I'm thinking perhaps implicitly as well.

Either way, a new essay is still in the works. The tentative title is still 'Duty, Agonistic Pluralism, and Historical Pedagogy'.

But that title must certainly be changed.

It will not do.

MacIntyre presents a new challenge. A new perspective to synthesize into this image I have of a historical-philosophical morality.

The title will have to be something like 'Duty, Anti-Modern Morality, and Historical Thinking'.

The actually feels pretty good.

Anti-Modern morality is a clumsy phrase. But the change from historical pedagogy to historical thinking is clutch. Seems like it hones in on the issue. Because it is fair to say that our concern is thinking. What history is like as a form of thought.

Besides, the word pedagogy, as useful as it is, has too many syllables in it.

And we all know that we should make fun of words with lots of syllables.

And all those poly-syllable addicts who love to talk about the historicity of ontological accounts of subjectivity. Or some shit like that.

I, undoubtedly, talk that way sometimes.

But I always laugh at myself. I'm always embarrassed (alone in my room) to be writing that way.

I always know that I revert to jargon because I don't know how to say it in any other way. That is, I don't really understand it outside that abstract world.