Historicity of Jesus - 2

[dhu]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->One of the running threads in Western ethical thought is Glaucon’s challenge to Socrates in Plato’s Republic: “Why ought I be moral?” Like all threads running through a rich tapestry, at times it has been prominent and at others nearly invisible: here the picture and there the ground. Whatever the case, in this or that ethical theory at some place and time, it could be reasonably said of the Western ethical systems that they presuppose the necessity for giving reasons (whatever they might be) why human beings ought to behave morally. That is, the idea is that the self requires a reason (or reasons) for behaving morally. ‘Reason’, as I use it here, need not be restricted to mean ‘rational argument’. It merely refers to some kind of plausibility consideration which, as we know only too well today, is contextually dependent.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>My suggestion is that Glaucon’s challenge is not intelligible within our intuitive world models. </b>The reason why this is so is because moral actions and moral relations are constitutive of that very entity which is supposed to make moral choices, viz., the ‘self’ or the moral agent.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->