John Carroll - Moral Quotes

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The possibility of a genuine metatheory of morality is not available. Even psychology has its ethical presuppositions. … A metatheory of morality would be legitimate only if the existence of a hierarchy of absolute, and hence unconditioned, truths were established. They would then provide a framework of supra-ethical categories. The primary ambition of Nietzsche's critique of knowledge is to expose just such an exercise … as sleight of hand, an efficacious deception. This critique sets out to demonstrate that 'truths' are fictions masking moral commitments

John Carroll
The virtual suppression of ethical discussion after 1845 produces the semblance of purely descriptive analysis, dressed in the mantle of positivist objectivity, analysis which is, in fact, strung to a framework of crude, because unexplicated, moral assumptions.

John Carroll
The egoist … destroys the universal importance accorded to moral law by showing that life independent of it is possible. Secondly, and even more intolerably to the pious, he manages to do so with shameless enjoyment.

John Carroll
By punishing the criminal the moral man hopes to dissuade the evil imprisoned in his own breast from escaping. Fear of self is projected in hatred of the immoral other.

John Carroll
The original of morals lies with the thought that 'the community is more valuable than the individual' (Menschliches 2.1.89)

John Carroll
The enemies of Christ … could not bear his independence; his Give the emperor that which is the emperor's showed a contempt for the affairs of state and its politics—for the moral order—that their self-respect would not let them tolerate.

John Carroll