[Aiwendil]

I've been away for a bit and I see that the discussion has moved on considerably from where I left off. Nonetheless, a few scattered remarks:

Arwen1858 wrote:

The definition given in the dictionary for fulfill that goes along with this discussion it 'to satisfy.' Are those people, who are living the immoral lives, satisfied? Do they have everything they desire? Are they completely happy with everything they have and everything they've done? I doubt that.

Substituting "satisfied" for "fulfilled" doesn't help. I can still ask precisely what you mean by it - and I think it will still come down either to being a simple state of mind or a tautology.

Lord of Angmar wrote:

I think, happily, that one can rationally justify what we would call a life of morality and virtue.

How? I ask in all seriousness. Kant tried to do this and failed, and I know of no one else who has done better. Note that what I mean by "rationally justify" is to provide a purely rational argument that people should behave morally.

Since I think we can all agree that nobody wants to be killed, and that we can all agree that it inherently makes us feel worse having been stolen from, lied to or cheated out of something, as I think has always been the case for civilized humanity, then we can sum up those things (murder, thievery, etc.) as being immoral.

But this does not provide any rational argument for why I - or anyone - should be moral. All it does is categorize actions as moral or immoral.

mark12_30 wrote:

I think Tolkien would heartily disagree, since his worldview was deeply and staunchly Catholic.

Undoubtedly. I was discussing the real world. But you are certainly right that, insofar as we analyze the morality of things in Middle-earth, we must accept Tolkien's views.

Mister Underhill wrote:

Kant disputes the notion of a morality in which happiness is the highest ethical goal, but he also writes: “I class the principle of moral feeling under that of happiness, because every empirical interest promises to contribute to our well-being by the agreeableness that a thing affords, whether it be immediately and without a view to profit, or whether profit be regarded.”

I'm at school so, alas (and ironically), I don't have any Kant with me. But I quite distinctly remember a passage in "Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals" where he says that one's inclination is irrelevant; one must perform moral actions out of duty rather than out of desire.

Again, I’m a bit out of my depth here, but I don’t think Plato asserts a system in which personal happiness is the highest goal either. Happiness, fulfillment, inner peace, and so on are rather side effects of virtue, not its goals.

Fair enough. I may have mischaracterized Plato's views. Nonetheless, Plato's theory does require that unhappiness inevitably accompanies immorality, so he still does draw a fundamental connection between the two concepts, of a kind completely different from any made by the Enlightenment thinkers.

To argue that perfect immorality can equal perfect happiness has a rather Orwellian twang to it. If it is easier, more expedient, and more profitable to be immoral, and yet through an immoral lifestyle you can still be happy and fulfilled and at peace, isn’t it logical to live an immoral lifestyle?

Alas, it seems so. Unless a purely rational justification for morality can be derived. But I will never choose to believe something simply because I prefer it or because I do not wish to face the consequences of some other view.

But note that, even in the case where morality is a fiction, a course of action can be rationally justified only with respect to certain ends. It might then be rational to be "immoral", with respect to the end of personal pleasure. But there could be nothing like moral force to such a rational argument. Someone who criticized LotR on these grounds could not say that the book was morally wrong, because in this world there is no such thing as moral wrong.

I suppose I don’t require the absolute rational justification of morality that some of you require, so I am unable to provide it for you on your terms.

The problem that I see with this is that without a rational justification, morality has no force. If I want to be immoral, you would not be able to give me a good reason not to be. And one's condemnation of an immoral person would be limited to a kind of "Tsk, tsk, that person will never be fulfilled."

There have been several other great posts here, but I don't have time to give them all the well-considered responses they deserve, so I'll stop at this.