Ethics as Scales of Forms

by Richard Allen

This book is an important contribution to moral philosophy, and also to moral theology. It overcomes the dichotomising fragmentation of much contemporary moral philosophy which tends to take one aspect or component of moral activity, such as the consequences of actions, rules or intentions, and to make it the only one. The book employs an adaptation of Collingwood's scheme of 'scales of forms' to provide a synthesis which does justice to all aspects and components by placing each aspect, or component, on a scale in which each lower one presupposes the next higher and each higher one needs to be appropriately enacted and expressed in the next lower one. The lowest of all is that of the consequences of single actions and the highest, in which all the others are fulfilled, is that of the unique person as essential1y an ens amans, a loving being. That scale is itself insufficient, for it in turn presupposes a scale of values and ends to be realised and pursued, and thus overcomes another false dichotomy, that of deontological (duty) versus axiological (value) ethics, for duties without values and ends are pointless and arbitrary, and values and ends without duties are of no moral significance. The order of types of love, from mere liking and enjoyment to love of the unique person, provides an appropriate scale, integrated with one of various types of fulfilment, pleasure-happiness-virtue, whose summit, love itself, is also that of the previous scale. Thus insofar as we become what we ought to be, then, ceteris paribus, we shall also find our true fulfilment. At each point, relevant texts from Greek to contemporary European philosophy, along with mentions of some other world- and life-views, are cited to illustrate and give substance to the argument.

210 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Richard William Allen is the Dean of School o­­f Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong and Chair/Professor of Film and Media Art. Previously he was a Professor of Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He is author and editor of 9 books on film theory and aesthetics. He is author of Projecting Illusion and the editor of two volumes on the philosophy of film and the arts: Film Theory and Philosophy, and Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts. He is a leading authority on Hitchcock and wrote an influential book, Hitchcock’s Romantic Irony. He is currently completing Bollywood Poetics and beginning a longer-term project on The Passion of Christ and the Melodramatic Imagination. He is a fellow of the Society for the Cognitive Study of Moving Image, and was for many years an editor of the Hitchcock Annual.

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Allen, Richard, 1959-
from Library of Congress website