1. Lecture 2: Plato as an ethical rationalist
Ethical rationalism
Lecture 2: Plato as an ethical rationalist

2. Topics for today Review of basic ideas Nature of ethical rationalism
Plato as a rationalist

3. 3 basic concepts of morality
The right:
Which actions are right? Which institutions are just?
The good:
Which ends, goals or states of affairs are morally good ones?
Moral worth:
Which qualities make someone a morally good person?

4. Two questions: Nature of moral judgment Nature of moral motivation
What are moral judgments? How do we justify them?
Nature of moral motivation
How does moral motivation work or fail to work? How is it possible for moral concepts to influence our conduct?

5. Requirement of objectivity
The account of moral judgment should make agreement on moral issues possible and to be expected among those who follow the correct procedures of justification.

6. Three approaches: Ethical rationalism: morality as a body of knowledge
Ideal spectator approach: morality as expression of sentiment
Contractualism: morality as the content of an agreement

7. Rationalism on moral judgment
Moral judgments are factual claims about a reality independent of us
They are knowable by human reason

8. Example For the rationalist, Inflicting suffering merely for one’s
own amusement is wrong
is like
2 + 2 = 4

9. Rationalism on objectivity
Objectivity of morality is the objectivity of knowledge
Possibility of agreement guaranteed by
the existence of a single reality
common access to it through human reason

10. Rationalism on motivation
Cognition of moral truth awakens a desire in us to conform
Moral motivation is thus motivation by reason
We also have non-rational desires
We can fail to act morally when we act on these in opposition to our rational desires.

11. Plato tries to root morality in an independent reality:
to connect psychic harmony with morality as usually understood
to combat relativism
to overcome deficiencies of Socrates’s method

12. Plato’s theory of forms
Forms are the essences or natures of things
They are abstract and imperceptible, being known by thought
They include values
They form a hierarchy topped by the form of the good

13. Plato on moral judgment
Morality is based on the form of the good
What is good for us depends on the form of the good, which gives everything its special nature and value
Correct moral judgments are based on knowledge of the realm of forms.

14. Plato on moral motivation
A person in psychic harmony is motivated by reason to act morally
Psychic disharmony is motivation in opposition to reason by desires stemming from non-rational parts of our nature, thereby leading to wrong behavior.
Thus Plato is a rationalist with respect to both judgment and motivation.