(Tiles' Chapter 4, pp. 73-100)

Conflict and the Search for Standards

1. Conflict: The anguish of Arjuna and the arrogance of Euthyphro

1.1. Concrete moralities and Cultural colonialism

    1.1.1. People live in concrete moralities as they live in their houses.

    1.1.2. Cultural colonialism efforts to change the concrete moralities that converts live by.

        Dilemmas caused by cultural conflict: Example: Mishima's case.                    

1.2. The confilicts shown in the Bhagavad Gîtâ (the literature of ancient India) and the Euthyphro (Plato)

    1.2.1. The dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna regarding to the war.

        Dilemmas caused by the conflict of duty/role and emotion: Arjuna's case.

    1.2.2. Euthyphro‘s worry about the murder and association with a murderer

        Dilemmas caused by the conflict of justice/reason and emotion: Arjuna's case.

    1.3. Solutions for the confilicts and moralities in their believes:

2. Standards

2.1. The conflicts of the interests of all members in the society and immediate family loyalties

2.2 Confucius’ filial loyalty and Musonius

Confucius (a Chinese philosopher) s’ doctrine: Society needs to be structured throughout and at all levels on the model of the relationship obtaining between dutiful son and caring father.

Musonius (a Stoic philosopher) says: "Do not let your father be an excuse to you for wrong-doing whether he bid you do something which is not right or forbids you to for what is right."

2.3. Standards: --Oracles?

--Parents?

--God’s will?...

3. Rational authority

3.1. Moral Dilemmas

3.2. The method of "dialectic (from a Greek word meaning "conversation")

    3.2.1. Through the dialogues, the dialecticians clarify whether any aspect of culture should be adopted or              rejected.

    3.2.2. The products of the dialectician’s efforts would help the legislator to determine right or wrong.

    3.2.3. Being clear about what one tries to achieve (a just society…), the dialecticians specify, define or give an      explicit account of what a law giver is supposed to achieve.

    3.2.4. A systematic process began by laying down criterion in the form of a definition. The definition would be     replaced by a better one and the process repeated until no further criticism was possible.

3.3.The way to define ‘the Good’ in Plato

    3.3.1. Plato’s preassumption: there is an order in the world.

    3.3.2. We have to satisfy with all our key evaluative terms co-ordinated with one another

    3.3.3. There is only one account to be given of the way everything should be.

    3.3.4. The upshot of this theory: an individual human, as well as society as a whole, functions properly only          when it is governed by rational authority.

    3.3.5. Employing the method of dialectic is the most refined uses of human capacities of reason.

3.4. The force of ‘rational authority’

    3.4.1. Plato’s educational program in Republic II-VII

3.5. A similar starting point in Confucius’ Analects about the rectification of names and order

    3.5.1. No a single general criterion (like Plato) but a practice of correct identification and unending              self-cultivation.