It is first shown that, contrary to Maclntyre, human rights are not 'fictions'. I then summarize my own argument for human rights, and reply to Maclntyre's objections. Turning to his own positive doctrine, I indicate that it is confronted with 'the problem of moral indeterminacy', in that it allows or provides for outcomes which are mutually opposed to one another so far as concerns their moral status. I then take up Maclntyre's triadic account of the virtues and show that each (...) phase - practice, narrative order of a single life, and moral tradition - is morally indeterminate, as are also his accounts of the morality of law and the virtue of justice. My conclusion is that moral virtues must be based on human rights if the virtues are to have morally justified contents. (shrink)

It is first shown that, contrary to Maclntyre, human rights are not ‘fictions’. I then summarize my own argument for human rights, and reply to Maclntyre’s objections. Turning to his own positive doctrine, I indicate that it is confronted with ‘the problem of moral indeterminacy’, in that it allows or provides for outcomes which are mutually opposed to one another so far as concerns their moral status. I then take up Maclntyre’s triadic account of the virtues and show that each (...) phase - practice, narrative order of a single life, and moral tradition - is morally indeterminate, as are also his accounts of the morality of law and the virtue of justice. My conclusion is that moral virtues must be based on human rights if the virtues are to have morally justified contents. (shrink)

It is often noted, by philosophers concerned with being, that problems arise for the articulation of being in English from the fact that the infinitive “to be” often cannot—without enormous awkwardness—be used to translate such counterpart infinitives as the Greek einai, the Latin esse, and the German Sein. Hence, to translate two distinct terms from those other languages—einai and to on, esse and ens, Sein and Seiende—English must often make do with the single term “being.” The term “being” is indeed (...) ambiguous. As a first step toward disambiguating it—and a first step in my rearticulation of being—I introduce the technical term “be-er.” This term is comparable to such terms as “runner,” “swimmer,” “writer,” and “philosopher.” According to the structural-systematic philosophy (SSP), systematic philosophies require theories of be-ers—the SSP calls such theories “ontologies”—but they also require theories of being. Virtually throughout the history of philosophy, the status of theories of be-ers is far clearer than the status of theories of being. Philosophers disagree about which theory of be-ers is best, but it is at least relatively clear what they are disagreeing about. With theories of being, on the other hand, there is so little clarity about what a theory of being that is not a theory of be-ers could or should be that the majority of philosophers—including virtually all analytic philosophers—do not recognize developing theories of being as a genuine task for philosophy. (shrink)