Abstract changes

 

 

Commutationes abstractæ in conceptis moralibus semper incoporantur in realibus atque definitis eventibus. Historia est scibenda, in qua principes Medici, Henricus VIII et Thomas Cromwellus, Fridericus Magnus et Napoleon, Walpolus et Wiberfors, Jeffersonus et Robespierus, intelleguntur actionibus suis exprimere, sæpe partim et variis modis, easdem commutationes notionales, quæ in disciplinis philosophiæ exponuntur a Machiavelle et Hobbe, a Diderote et Condorceto, ab Hume et Adame Fabre et Kante. Non debent esse duæ historiæ, una de civilibus atque moralibus actionibus aliaque de civilibus atque moralibus theoriis, quia non fuerunt dua præterita, una solis actionibus, alia solis theoriis, incolitur. Quæque actio est gerulus et enuntiatio sententiarum atque conceptorum magis minusve theoriis oneratorum; quæque theoria et enuntiatio sententiæ est actio politica atque moralis.

 

Abstract changes in moral concepts are always embodied in real, particular events. There is a history yet to be written in which the Medici princes, Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, Frederick the Great and Napoleon, Walpole and Wilberforce, Jefferson and Robespierre are understood as expressing in their actions, often partially and in a variety of different ways, the very same conceptual changes which at the level of philosophical theory are articulated by Machiavelli and Hobbes, by Diderot and Condorcet, by Hume and Adam Smith and Kant. There ought not to be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories.  Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a political and moral action.

 

—Alasdair MacIntyre, “After Virtue”