We're listening to Partially Examine Life, Episode 363, Part 2.

We've been discussing Franz Brentano's lecture, The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong from 1889.

This has 40-some sections in it, and we were up to the magical section 15.

Yeah, so, you know, after in 14 telling us we need to revert to the insights of descriptive psychology

in order to understand moral sanction, and in particular understand how we know how we could know

right from wrong or the good from the bad so getting into that descriptive psychology means

talking about the will and it's in 15 that right because moral and immoral actions pertain to the

will and then the question is about ends. So some of our

ends, right, are means to other ends. And we know when we make choices that something is right,

if it fits the end in particular, right? You know, if my end is satisfying my hunger, then going to the fridge,

right might be the right means to that. I can answer that question. But ultimately,

that chain of connections between means and ends will come to an end. I will have an

ultimate goal, right? Which for Aristotle was eudaimonia or flourishing or happiness.

There's at some point I won't be able to say why I'm doing exactly what I'm doing because it's no longer a means to anything.

It's desired for its own sake.

Yeah.

So section 15, he switches the conversation.

So we're not talking about right and wrong action anymore,

or at least what we would typically think of as the subject of ethical discourse,

what have you is, what's the right thing to do, what's the good?

So it becomes the discourse changes.

First, in the sense that he associates the notion of acting ethically with willing.

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