Do we value 'wet' virtues too much?

Affable

Do we value 'virtues' such as dignity, refinement, gentility, and sentimentality too much? Shouldn't people actually be forced out of these complacent values and threatened, shaken up and confronted with more threatening ones, taught that life should be brutal?

caff

You're getting into virtue ethics I think.
The choice of people to settle on what you call "wet virtues" could be seen as what society has settled on to be "normal" and as per Mills "greatest happiness principle"

Affable

caff wrote: »

You're getting into virtue ethics I think.
The choice of people to settle on what you call "wet virtues" could be seen as what society has settled on to be "normal" and as per Mills "greatest happiness principle"

Don't you think the USA, with it's freedom ethos and economic compettion has gone some way to abolishing those European type values?

When you see the spite and blood and guts nature of their professional rivalries, politics etc? Their violence and gangs, and contempt for the effete?
Thier confrontational style? Or are these just presentational differences?

caff

I think you watch too much US television, there are just as much if not more violence gangs spite etc.. in europe as the US. Its more difficult to see here in the EU due to so many countries, distinct cultures and languages. The US is far more bland due to its mono culture.

orestes

Affable, although I appreciate that philosophy is an umbrealla under which a wide range of subjects may be discussed, I fail to see the philosophical merit of your opening post. If you have a position to put forward in order to create a philosophical debate, please do so in future, and I also suggest you have a look at the humanities forum as I feel that several of the threads you have started here would be better suited to the forum.

Thread closed.