THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING GOOD Download The Difficulty Of Being Good ebook PDF or Read Online books in PDF, EPUB, and Mobi Format. Click Download or Read Online button to THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING GOOD book pdf for free now.
Author : Daniel McInerny
ISBN : 0823226212
Genre : Philosophy
File Size : 36.13 MB
Format : PDF, ePub, Docs
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The claim that human agents are vulnerable to tragic conflict, situations in which one cannot help but do wrong, is a commonplace in contemporary moral philosophy. This book draws on Thomas Aquinas's moral thought in order to delineate an alternative view. While affirming that the human good can be attained only through difficulty, including the difficulty of moral conflict, it argues that Aquinas's understanding of a natural, hierarchical ordering of human goods allows for the rational resolution of moral conflict in a way that avoids tragic necessity.ISBN : 0823226212
Genre : Philosophy
File Size : 36.13 MB
Format : PDF, ePub, Docs
Download : 469
Read : 1231
Synopsis
'I PROTEST that if some great power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning, I should instantly close with the offer.'
These are the words of Mr. Huxley. The infinite desirability, the infinite difficulty of being good--the theme is as old as humanity. The man does not live from whose deeper being the same confession has not risen, or who would not give his all tomorrow, if he could 'close with the offer' of becoming a better man.
I propose to make that offer now. In all seriousness, without being 'turned into a sort of clock,' the end can be attained. Under the right conditions it is as natural for character to become beautiful as for a flower; and if on God's earth, there is not some machinery for effecting it, the supreme gift to the world has been forgotten. This is simply what man was made for. With Browning: 'I say that Man was made to grow, not stop.' Or in the deeper words of an older Book: 'Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate . . . to be conformed to the Image of his Son.'
Read +-These are the words of Mr. Huxley. The infinite desirability, the infinite difficulty of being good--the theme is as old as humanity. The man does not live from whose deeper being the same confession has not risen, or who would not give his all tomorrow, if he could 'close with the offer' of becoming a better man.
I propose to make that offer now. In all seriousness, without being 'turned into a sort of clock,' the end can be attained. Under the right conditions it is as natural for character to become beautiful as for a flower; and if on God's earth, there is not some machinery for effecting it, the supreme gift to the world has been forgotten. This is simply what man was made for. With Browning: 'I say that Man was made to grow, not stop.' Or in the deeper words of an older Book: 'Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate . . . to be conformed to the Image of his Son.'
Let me begin by naming, and in part discarding, some processes in vogue already, for producing better lives. These processes are far from wrong; in their place they may even be essential. One ventures to disparage them only because they do not turn out the most perfect possible work.
The first imperfect method is to rely on Resolution. In will-power, in mere spasms of earnestness there is no salvation. Struggle, effort, even agony, have their place in Christianity as we shall see; but this is not where they come in. In mid-Atlantic the other day, the Etruria in which I was sailing, suddenly stopped. Something had gone wrong with the engines. There were five hundred able-bodied men on board the ship. Do you think if we had gathered together and pushed against the masts we could have pushed it on? When one attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he is trying to make his boat go by pushing against the mast.
The first imperfect method is to rely on Resolution. In will-power, in mere spasms of earnestness there is no salvation. Struggle, effort, even agony, have their place in Christianity as we shall see; but this is not where they come in. In mid-Atlantic the other day, the Etruria in which I was sailing, suddenly stopped. Something had gone wrong with the engines. There were five hundred able-bodied men on board the ship. Do you think if we had gathered together and pushed against the masts we could have pushed it on? When one attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he is trying to make his boat go by pushing against the mast.
THE CHANGED LIFE
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THE CHANGED LIFE
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