day no. 15,452: the summum bonum and the three ships

"Ancient ethics always dealt with three questions. Modern ethics usually deals with only one, or at the most two. The three questions are like the three things a fleet of ships is told by its sailing orders. (The metaphor is from C.S. Lewis.) First, the ships must know how to avoid bumping into each other. This is social ethics, and modern as well as ancient ethicists deal with it. Second, they must know how to stay shipshape and avoid sinking. This is individual ethics, virtues and vices, character building, and we hear very little about this from our modern ethical philosophers. Third, and most important of all, they must know why the fleet is at sea in the first place. What is their mission, their destination? This is the question of the summum bonum, and no modern philosophers except the existentialists seem even to be interested in this, the greatest of all questions. Perhaps that is why most modern philosophy seems so weak and wimpy, so specialized and elitist, and above all so boring, to ordinary people" -- Peter Kreeft, The Three Philosophies of Life

We must concern ourselves with (1) staying afloat, (2) staying away from contact with other boats and most of all with (3) staying the course, which presupposes an intended destination and course for arriving there.

If any of these subjects arrests our attention, it is typically the matter of staying away from contacting other ships. We are particularly interested in making sure other boats don't bump into ours and as a result we're often interested in making sure other boats get out of our way so that we don't bump into them.

If we are particularly reflective, we may consider being shipshape and our responsibility to stay afloat irrespective of other ships or not. 

But rarely do we spend much time considering where we're sailing in the first place. And if we do, we often lose steam quickly in wondering if anyone could really know that, assuming the question is bigger than any answer that could be provided. So we avoid the subject and we settle for boring, uninspired lives of desperation consumed with looking over our leaks and barking at ships we perceive to be bullying us. But if you have no intended destination, then swerving to avoid a collision doesn't take you off course. If you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter which direction you sail. Any course is good enough to get you anywhere and any current may work as well as another; but only a specific course can get you to a particular where and this never comes by drifting along or assuming seaworthiness.