Ethics

But yes, you're right that often theologians tend to focus or specialize maybe in one of those areas, certainly in academic theology.

And Spinoza, I think, just really doesn't recognize those distinctions because if you think about his book, The Ethics, it's a thoroughly metaphysical book.

It begins with metaphysical concepts of substance and the idea of God, metaphysical concept, and the idea that We are all in God.

We're all sort

part of nature, he says.

So he's a very metaphysical thinker.

But the book's called The Ethics, and where he's really heading to is a vision of human happiness, a vision of what joy is.

actually quite an ambitious attempt to attain true, lasting joy, peace of mind.

You know, you can, you can have a sort of transhumanism that's very, um, you know,

Ethical.

You can have, you can have an ethical version, but you can also have this nightmarish version as well.

Right.

i attempted mathematics and even went during the summer of eighteen twenty eight with a private tutor a very dull man to barmouth but i got on very slowly the work was repugnant to me chiefly from my not being able to see any meaning in the early steps in algebra this impatience was very foolish and in after years i have deeply regretted that i did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense but i do not believe that i should ever have succeeded beyond a very low grade with respect to classics i did nothing except attend a few compulsory college lectures and the attendance was almost nominal in my second year i had to work for a month or two to pass the little go which i did easily Again, in my last year I worked with some earnestness for my final degree of B.A. and brushed up my classics, together with a little algebra and Euclid, which latter gave me much pleasure, as it did in school.

In order to pass the B.A. examination, it was also necessary to get up Paley's Evidences of Christianity and his Moral Philosophy.

This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of the evidences with perfect correctness, but not, of course, in the clear language of Paley.

The logic of his book and, as I may add, of his natural theology, gave me as much delight as did Euclid.

And that is the ultimate goal of this entire season.

Ethics is not a memory test.

It is an exercise in pattern recognition.

If you see an undisclosed conflict, you immediately walk to the room for standard six.

I had spoken to you a little bit earlier about how we use an interteach tool.

In the book, it's a free resource that basically is eight sessions on interteaching on ethics.

And we believe what that does is it highlights the big name from the original thing in interteaching.

I was one of his students when he was doing interteaching in the classroom.

And then I kind of read up on the articles because when you go through it, you don't always have the great vision that you have after when you read about what it is I actually did.

Eight sessions on ethics.

And the goal of that is to get people, the supervisees, talking about ethics, get them arguing over and teaching each other ethics.

Because we believe that practicing that gives them a chance to say, wait a minute, I knew this before.

First, simply, I would say, if you are so inspired, read Aristotle.

I would recommend first The Ethics.

Um, I translated, co-translated with my friend, Susan Collins, also available to Chicago.

Um, but want to use another edition by all means, use another edition.

We're kind of really just wanting to open up debates and discussion.

So a lot of discussions in relation to climate change, particularly the academic discussions on the ethics of climate change, particularly in philosophy, which is, despite talking a lot about history, my discipline is philosophy rather than history.

And a lot of the focus is on what ought to happen, what would be the ideal solution, or what would be a fair and just solution transitioning it to a different kind of use of energy and that kind of thing and none of that's happening right so we're not actually seeing that so part of the so as I say I'm not a historian despite my kind of taking this approach but I was just maybe finding myself a little bit frustrated with some of the philosophical discussions like what's actually going to work and I kind of just thought well Part of that might be saying, well, what's worked in the past? And the abolition of slavery looked like maybe the most obvious example of the biggest social and economic changes that we've seen, that we have actually managed to make that progress.

The move from the ideological thought that, okay, maybe we should change, to it actually happening.

We're not actually saying this is something we should have done or something we should not have done.

Or in relation to climate change, we're not taking a position there either.

We're again just emphasising that these are debates that are happening in the ethics of climate change.

As I say, there's a lot more focused on this is what a just transition should look like.

but i got on very slowly the work was repugnant to me chiefly from my not being able to see any meaning in the early steps in algebra this impatience was very foolish and in after years i have deeply regretted that i did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense but i do not believe that i should ever have succeeded beyond a very low grade with respect to classics i did nothing except attend a few compulsory college lectures and the attendance was almost nominal in my second year i had to work for a month or two to pass the little go which i did easily Again, in my last year I worked with some earnestness for my final degree of B.A. and brushed up my classics, together with a little algebra and Euclid, which latter gave me much pleasure, as it did in school.

In order to pass the B.A. examination, it was also necessary to get up Paley's Evidences of Christianity and his Moral Philosophy.

This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of the evidences with perfect correctness, but not, of course, in the clear language of Paley.

The logic of his book and, as I may add, of his natural theology, gave me as much delight as did Euclid.