Subject: Re: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 17:34:36 -0500


Hi Mervyn--

I see your point, but it's a pretty indirect route -- one first has to say
to oneself, "I want to flourish, but I'll flourish even more if other people
also flourish."  That's a weak social responsibility, since one can easily
say "I've flourished enough for my needs, why bother worrying about others?"
And in fact, beyond a certain point a lot of people don't worry much about
other people.  I don't think we're really disagreeing, but I do think that
the statement that one's own flourishing outright depends on other people
flourishing makes the responsibility unambiguous.

T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-mail.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mervyn Hartwig" <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Thursday, 06 November 2003 2:50 AM
Subject: Re: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.


> Hi Tobin, Howard,
>
> If the flourishing of each is indeed a condition of the flourishing of
> all, then it is in everyone's interest that everyone else flourishes,
> and an ethic of social responsibility is in fact entrained. This is at
> the heart of the dialectics of freedom as I understand them in the
> second half of DPF.
>
> Mervyn
>



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