KnowingChoosingDoing

A few decades ago, Henry Veatch wrote Rational Man, a retelling and exploration of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. One of Veatch's key themes revolved around the trio of knowledge, choice, and action:

• One must know the good in order to distinguish it from the indifferent or the bad.
• Knowing the good, one must choose the good by a free act of will.
• Knowing and choosing the good, one must do the good to lead a worthy life.

Omit any of these three, and personal merit evaporates. Without knowledge of the good, one can choose and achieve it solely by chance. Without free choice, knowing and doing good deserve no credit. Without actual achievement of good, knowledge and choice are reduced to feckless (albeit nice) intentions. The result is a tragic failure rather than a successful, virtuous life.

Saturday, May 29, 1999 at 06:55:40 (EDT) = 1999-05-29

TopicLife

(correlates: UniversalInstant, DarkGlory, DefensiveQuestions, ...)