Perfectionist premises of the thesis on the convertibility of the existing and the Good and Their possible subjectivist critique

Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия

Andrei Seregin¹ 

[1] Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences;

关键词: axiology;    being;    good;    goodness;    hedonism;    Moore;    objectivism;    perfectionism;    Sidgwick;    subjectivism;    Thomas Aquinas;   

DOI  :  http://dx.doi.org/10.15382/sturI201877.72-85

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This paper puts forward and provides grounds for the two following statements: 1) The thesis about the convertibility of the existing and the good formulated in scholastic tradition can be regarded as quite a natural inference from the perfectionist conception of good, which was one of the most infl uential axiological theories in the history of European thought from Plato up to the Enlightenment; 2) Since this classical version of perfectionism is a radically objectivist axiological theory, this thesis can also be characterised as radically objectivist and, therefore, its relevance depends on the basic choice between objectivism and subjectivism in axiology. In order to substantiate the fi rst statement, I off er a brief outline of the basic principles of perfectionist axiology. Then I demonstrate that the thesis about good and being being convertible can be rather easily deduced from these premises. In order to substantiate the second statement, I argue that despite some general diffi culties in distinguishing between objectivism and subjectivism in axiology, one can rather unambiguously single out what may be called “radically objectivist” theories (i.e. those implying that at least some values can exist without any subjective consciousness whatsoever), and, since classical perfectionism belongs to this type of theories, the inferences from them, such as the thesis in question, can make no sense within subjectivist axiological framework.

【 授权许可】

Unknown