Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

order to even make sense of ethics and morality. Values — and our consequent construction of meanings and purposes — are fundamental to our understanding of morality.

Value may come from innate principles, or from things held to be necessary truths or just from what we consider reasonable. Ideals, I’d suggest, are more wide-ranging. They may include values, but also include meanings perceived to be playing out in the world (or indeed, innate meanings to the universe). So we may choose to derive morals from ideals, just as much as from values.

We might cite values here to mean things like freedom, equality, the pursuit of happiness and, again, justice. Meanwhile, if someone holds a political ideal, it may include values at its base, but also some more complex ideas about what would be a good life for people and for society. E.F. Schumacher felt it necessary to see meaning in the world (in his case, via his Christian faith) before it was possible to decide what amounts to good or bad actions.

Older theories of morality — such as Aristotle’s — accepted that we would be fulfilled as a person (if not actually happy) if we could be fully and consistently ethical in our lives. Thus, for Aristotle, this was leading a ‘virtuous’ life. We now no longer feel this is the case — leading a morally virtuous life may conflict with both happiness and fulfilment in our personal lives and with the morals of the surrounding culture in which we live.

A further thought is that value emerges from the

204