Catholic Kermit

After our last mid-term exam, we can go “home” for one week of mid-term break.  I still, however, have a take home exam for Contemporary Philosophy that’s due by email by midnight.  Six short-answer essay question about Kierkegaard, Marx, Adam Smith, Catholic Social Teaching, and Nietzche.  Here’s a couple answers that I’m pretty confident of.

2.  (Kierkegaard) What constitutes the most significant difference between the aesthetic and ethical choice?  Explain.

The most significant difference between the aesthetic and ethical choice is whether or not someone makes a true choice ‘for the self.’  The more difficult choice is the ‘ethical’ choice, since in involves choosing to be who and what one truly and uniquely is by intimately ‘knowing himself’ with a constant ‘honesty to oneself’ and minimizing the temptations of easier, more convenient decisions.  This leads to an authentic existence.  One the other hand, ‘aesthetic’ choice leads to an inauthentic existence of compromising true selfhood in order to settle for the convenient outside (external) creating a ‘self lost in the they’ (the crowd, the mob, the inauthentic).  Aesthetic choice is lost in the forest of ‘deliberation’ because it is ultimately afraid or simply unwilling to embark on something it fears, ceaselessly jumping from one source of enjoyment to the other, hoping to postpone the inevitable call to ‘be one’s self.”  It does not make a true choice ‘for the self’ and, therefore, does not know itself but only thinks it does.

3.  Explain the relationship of the ‘individual good’ and the ‘common good’ from the perspective of (i) Marx, (ii) Smith, and (iii) Catholic Social Theory.

(i) Marx minimizes the ‘individual good’ and give priority to the ‘common good.’  Since the human person is a producing, creating person, the individual’s value and importance is defined by our social relations, primarily in terms of economics, politics and society.  His focus on the common good encourages policy to benefit ‘everyone’ in, at least, minimal personal needs, but at the expense of the wants of individuals.  In his Communist model, the guidelines evidence this emphasis.  The abolition of property and inheritances strip the individual of personal power.  State centralized credit, banking, transportation, communication, schooling, labor & business oversight creates a dependence by the people to a shared ‘common good,’ but minimizes the unique and personal dignity of the ‘individual good.’    

(ii) Smith gives priority to the ‘individual good’ over the ‘common good.’  The individual is empowered with opportunities of self-achievement through Capitalist avenues of mostly personal financial benefit.  The ‘individual good’ may compromise the ‘common good’ by gaining such personal benefits at the expense, and from the work, of the poor working class.  Even though the growth of the poor affect the individual manager, the extremely disproportional results minimize the personal dignity of needs of ‘all’ individuals.  Government measures need to be put in place to somewhat offset the extreme costs to the ‘common good’ for the sake of justice.     

(iii) Catholic Social Teaching carefully keeps a healthy balance between ‘individual good’ and the ‘common good.”  The ‘common good’ indicates the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.  A medium of ideas should constantly be pursued so as to uphold the benefits, while working for justice to maintain the dignity of everyone ‘individual good.”

There was a challenging question about how each of our studied philosophers touch on “human transcendence,” but I wasn’t inspired enough to answer with confidence.