Sunday, February 22, 2015

C.E.M. Joad

I have left my mark though not my signature on an upcoming journal essay on the philosopher C.E.M. Joad (pictured). Core to his thinking was this:  When one asks after our motives, one can keep pushing back the question. Yet one reaches a point where one throws up one's hands and says, you're not serious are you? That's just how it is!  (His example:  Why do you take quinine?  To reduce fever.  Why reduce fever?  And so on).  At the final question, some would say that we have discovered the baselessness of ethics.  Joad says that, at this point, we have discovered the true axioms of ethics.  Then the task is to sift ultimate from penultimate axioms, over which he takes great care. OBSERVATION: Shortly before his death in 1953, he wrote The Recovery of Belief, about his return to Christian faith. Joad, today, has gone out of fashion.

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