I am no expert on the historical question here, but I remark that an adherent of Christianity may have motives other than the obvious for spreading the idea that morality as generally understood is a Christian creation, and that Anscombe was certainly a Christian and I suspect Chappell is too. (And on the other hand a philosopher who doesn’t share their religion may have other motives for not being convinced.)
Cautiously weighing in on the historical question despite my non-expertise, here is a brief quotation from Plato’s Euthyphro:
But tell me, Euthyphro, do you really believe that you understand true ruling of the divine law, and what makes actions pious and impious, that in the circumstances that you describe you have no misgivings?
Unless this is a severe mistranslation, it seems to indicate a concept of ethics in terms of (1) actions rather than just character and (2) a moral law, which is exactly what Anscombe and Chappelle age saying the ancient Greeks didn’t have. On the other hand, as Anscombe says this is about a specific defect, namely impiety—though Socrates’s argument, aiming to show that piety can’t mean simply “what the gods like”, seems to me to suggest that Plato was thinking more broadly, and indeed the same translation quoted above also has Socrates asking this:
Now consider whether it doesn’t seem to you that everything pious must be morally right.
He isn’t claiming that the two are the same; a little later he goes on to suggest that piety is one variety of “moral rectitude” and to inquire just what sort. There’s at least a hint of virtue ethics in what he says about this, but the impression I get is not that virtue ethics was the only sort anyone understood, but rather that Plato’s Socrates is something of a virtue ethicist unlike many of the people with whom he argues.
Unless this is a severe mistranslation, it seems to indicate a concept of ethics in terms of (1) actions rather than just character and (2) a moral law, which is exactly what Anscombe and Chappelle age saying the ancient Greeks didn’t have.
I’m not familiar with the context of the quote, but it talks about a divine law, not a moral one. Today most people hold that the two are distinct: for instance if a divine law orders a fasting day, disobeying it is not a moral failure. (Otherwise morality would be indistinguishable from piety and obedience, and we wouldn’t need a separate word.)
I think that if Chappelle (who says recent conceptions of ethics are very different from those of the ancient Greeks) and Anscombe (who says the same and adds that the key change between the ancient Greeks and us is that Christianity brought with it the idea of right and wrong as obedience to a divinely given law) were both right, we would not expect to find ancient Greek texts connecting right and wrong with obedience to a divinely given law. But in the Euthyphro we do find that; in the first quotation I took from the Euthyphro Socrates talks about piety as adherence to “divine law”, and in the second he suggests that “everything pious must be morally right”.
This doesn’t by any means prove that Socrates or Plato or anyone else at the time thought about ethics in the way people tend to now. But it seems to indicate that the key ingredient Chappelle says was lacking wasn’t really lacking.
in the first quotation I took from the Euthyphro Socrates talks about piety as adherence to “divine law”, and in the second he suggests that “everything pious must be morally right”.
The first part is just the definition of “piety”, at least in modern English. The second part may contradict the quotes from Chappelle and Anscome; what word does Plato use for “morally right” and what does he mean by it? Can you shed more light on this?
(I should have asked this question to begin with. I find I didn’t read your comment carefully enough at first.)
See here for an answer to the related question “what did some experts circa 1940 think classical Greek writers generally meant by it?”.
Can you shed more light on this?
Not in the sense of having great expertise of my own, as I acknowledged from the outset. It looks fairly clear to me that “dikaios”, as Plato’s Socrates and Euthyphro use it in this dialogue, has at least a large overlap with terms like “morally right” in contemporary English. Anscombe may be right to say that the ancient Greeks had no word meaning “wrong” or “illicit”, but it is difficult for me to look at the LSJ lexicon entry for “dikaios” and deny that they had one for more or less the exact opposite. But it’s also hard to believe that Anscombe wrote what she did in simple ignorance of this; perhaps I am missing something important.
C. I don’t really understand the glosses here; they seem to refer to justification or lawfulness: bound to; have a right to.
This is woefully insufficient for me to understand the matter on my own. Just from this, it’s not clear to me that the word means moral and not simply right or just, or perhaps what we might call “proper behavior”. These things are certainly related to morality, but they also seem consistent with descriptions like “excellence of character,” not “moral virtue”.
I am no expert on the historical question here, but I remark that an adherent of Christianity may have motives other than the obvious for spreading the idea that morality as generally understood is a Christian creation, and that Anscombe was certainly a Christian and I suspect Chappell is too. (And on the other hand a philosopher who doesn’t share their religion may have other motives for not being convinced.)
Cautiously weighing in on the historical question despite my non-expertise, here is a brief quotation from Plato’s Euthyphro:
Unless this is a severe mistranslation, it seems to indicate a concept of ethics in terms of (1) actions rather than just character and (2) a moral law, which is exactly what Anscombe and Chappelle age saying the ancient Greeks didn’t have. On the other hand, as Anscombe says this is about a specific defect, namely impiety—though Socrates’s argument, aiming to show that piety can’t mean simply “what the gods like”, seems to me to suggest that Plato was thinking more broadly, and indeed the same translation quoted above also has Socrates asking this:
He isn’t claiming that the two are the same; a little later he goes on to suggest that piety is one variety of “moral rectitude” and to inquire just what sort. There’s at least a hint of virtue ethics in what he says about this, but the impression I get is not that virtue ethics was the only sort anyone understood, but rather that Plato’s Socrates is something of a virtue ethicist unlike many of the people with whom he argues.
I’m not familiar with the context of the quote, but it talks about a divine law, not a moral one. Today most people hold that the two are distinct: for instance if a divine law orders a fasting day, disobeying it is not a moral failure. (Otherwise morality would be indistinguishable from piety and obedience, and we wouldn’t need a separate word.)
I think that if Chappelle (who says recent conceptions of ethics are very different from those of the ancient Greeks) and Anscombe (who says the same and adds that the key change between the ancient Greeks and us is that Christianity brought with it the idea of right and wrong as obedience to a divinely given law) were both right, we would not expect to find ancient Greek texts connecting right and wrong with obedience to a divinely given law. But in the Euthyphro we do find that; in the first quotation I took from the Euthyphro Socrates talks about piety as adherence to “divine law”, and in the second he suggests that “everything pious must be morally right”.
This doesn’t by any means prove that Socrates or Plato or anyone else at the time thought about ethics in the way people tend to now. But it seems to indicate that the key ingredient Chappelle says was lacking wasn’t really lacking.
The first part is just the definition of “piety”, at least in modern English. The second part may contradict the quotes from Chappelle and Anscome; what word does Plato use for “morally right” and what does he mean by it? Can you shed more light on this?
(I should have asked this question to begin with. I find I didn’t read your comment carefully enough at first.)
“dikaios” (δίκαιος).
See here for an answer to the related question “what did some experts circa 1940 think classical Greek writers generally meant by it?”.
Not in the sense of having great expertise of my own, as I acknowledged from the outset. It looks fairly clear to me that “dikaios”, as Plato’s Socrates and Euthyphro use it in this dialogue, has at least a large overlap with terms like “morally right” in contemporary English. Anscombe may be right to say that the ancient Greeks had no word meaning “wrong” or “illicit”, but it is difficult for me to look at the LSJ lexicon entry for “dikaios” and deny that they had one for more or less the exact opposite. But it’s also hard to believe that Anscombe wrote what she did in simple ignorance of this; perhaps I am missing something important.
I don’t know any Greek, either modern or ancient, so I can’t judge the LSJ entry for myself. Here’s a summary of the English glosses:
A. Observant of customs or rules, especially social rules; civilized.
A-2. Observant of duty to gods and men; righteous.
B. Equal, even, well-balanced, fair, impartial; legally exact, precise; lawful, just, right; fitting.
C. I don’t really understand the glosses here; they seem to refer to justification or lawfulness: bound to; have a right to.
This is woefully insufficient for me to understand the matter on my own. Just from this, it’s not clear to me that the word means moral and not simply right or just, or perhaps what we might call “proper behavior”. These things are certainly related to morality, but they also seem consistent with descriptions like “excellence of character,” not “moral virtue”.