Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by John Kleinig

Quote by John Kleinig

“I remember Stanley Benn remarking that one needed to be a certain age to engage with problems in political philosophy - I think he had in mind a certain breadth of understanding and experience - and so my political interests developed more slowly than the others.”

Quote by John Kleinig

Create image

Author

John Kleinig

John Kleinig, born in 1942, is an individual whose profession and category are unknown. His biography and contributions are limited to available information, and further details are awaited. more

You May Also Like

“As for the ethics, law, and politics relationship, there has always been a tension for me as I try to keep them distinct while recognizing their interactions. A valuable contribution to my thinking there and elsewhere was Ellen Meiksins Wood's Mind and Politics, which reinforced for me the ways in which seemingly disparate philosophical endeavors were/are interconnected, and although I have tended to give a certain priority to ethical considerations as part of practical reasoning, I am reminded often enough that this position makes some contentious presumptions .”

ThinkingGivingTryingMindEnoughEthicsPhilosophicalValuablePrioritiesTensionConsiderationEthicalElsewherePresumption
Author:John Kleinig
Create image

“In separating out, say, legal and moral requirements, I tend to work with paradigms rather than strict divisions - eg, paradigmatically, legal requirements are jurisdictionally bound whereas ethical requirements are aspirationally universal; ethical requirements focus especially on intentions whereas legal requirements focus primarily on conduct; ethical requirements take priority over legal requirements; and so on.”

MoralFocusIntentionPrioritiesEthicalParadigm
Author:John Kleinig
Create image

“In later years, when I started working in police ethics, I was professionally drawn back to the topic but as well was better able to see two sides to loyalty - its importance for certain central human relations such as friendships, but also its corruptibility in the sense that loyalty could be invoked against other moral constraints: it sometimes function as something of a moral Trojan horse, undermining other moral considerations.”

SometimesMoralEthicsImportanceHorseRelationPoliceLoyaltyConsiderationHuman Relations
Author:John Kleinig
Create image

“Whistleblowing constitutes a nice test case for the evaluation of loyalty. Loyalty also appears at the intersection of many major philosophical debates: general ones such as those between consequentialism and deontology, reason and feeling, virtue and principle, as well as more specific ones such as nationalism and patriotism, morality and obedience, particularism and universalism.”

ReasonFeelingsVirtueNiceMoralityPhilosophicalLoyaltyDebateObedienceNationalism
Author:John Kleinig
Create image

“Loyalty saves us from the self-advantaging compromising of important relations - such as friendship, marital and professional commitments, group memberships, and so on. But as the Aristotelians would put it, its expression requires phronesis - wisdom not to allow it to compromise other important virtues ,there is something to the ancient doctrine of the unity of the virtues. I believe that is true of all virtues, but especially of the executive virtues - such as industriousness, sincerity, conscientiousness, and courage - which may become detached from substantive goods.”

BelieveImportantI BelieveVirtueCommitmentRelationUnityAncientLoyaltyCompromiseSincerity
Author:John Kleinig
Create image

“My view of ethics and of its priority is connected to my view that we are fundamentally relational beings - both the product of human interactions, as well as committed as part of the expression of our own humanity to various social involvements. I see ethics as having two places in the maintenance of these relational activities - first as providing the basic coinage of our interactions qua humans and second as mediating the various roles we assume as humans.”

HumanityEthicsAssumingCommittedVariousPrioritiesInvolvement
Author:John Kleinig
Create image