Is there such a thing as bad character?

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Post Reply

Is there such a thing as bad character?

yes
5
83%
no
1
17%
 
Total votes: 6

User avatar
Doc
Posts: 12561
Joined: Sat Nov 24, 2012 6:10 pm

Is there such a thing as bad character?

Post by Doc »

I am just curious as to how people would answer this
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
Simple Minded

Re: Is there such a thing as bad character?

Post by Simple Minded »

Yes. sometimes it is genetic, sometimes it is created by POS parenting.
User avatar
NapLajoieonSteroids
Posts: 8390
Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2011 7:04 pm

Re: Is there such a thing as bad character?

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Without a command ethic, it is seemingly impossible to distinguish a bad character from a good one. As GEM Anscombe said in her 1958 paper, Modern Moral Philosophy, "In present-day philosophy an explanation is required how an unjust man is a bad man, or an unjust action a bad one; to give such an explanation belongs to ethics; but it cannot even be begun until we are equipped with a sound philosophy of psychology. For the proof that an unjust man is a bad man would require a positive account of justice as a “virtue.” This part of the subject-matter of ethics, is however, completely closed to us until we have an account of what type of characteristic a virtue is – a problem, not of ethics, but of conceptual analysis – and how it relates to the actions in which it is instanced: a matter which I think Aristotle did not succeed in really making clear."
User avatar
Nonc Hilaire
Posts: 6168
Joined: Sat Dec 17, 2011 1:28 am

Re: Is there such a thing as bad character?

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

I think we can say a good character tends to favor service to others and to futurity over hedonistic pleasure. I would not want to reduce command ethics to a preference for societal prosperity over personal gain, but I think obvious societal benefits can be found in Christian command ethics.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

Teresa of Ávila
Post Reply