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A man can choose to live other than as a man, that is the nature of volition; but a man cannot live contrary to his nature and be successful, and will fail to achieve the purpose of his life, which is his enjoyment of it.

I can basically agree with your analysis, Hank, up to the point where you seem to suggest that success and enjoyment are the measures of right living. You say the autonomist "discovers" moral truths. I can even agree with that, up to a point. But you do not say anything about the source or nature of the moral truths being discovered.

This is a good discussion. I hope you'll reprise something like your take here on the "What Is Man?" thread when it goes up (hopefully tonight).

Thanks so much for writing!

I can basically agree with your analysis, Hank, up to the point where you seem to suggest that success and enjoyment are the measures of right living.

You need to be a little careful here BB, and not put words in his mouth.

He said only that enjoyment of life is the purpose of it. Not that success and enjoyment are the measures of right living.

And he's right about that.

To extend his remarks, each and every human being's premeditated actions are driven by his desire to please himself as he sees fit (i.e., act in advancement of his values, however good or corrupt they may be). Even actions to which we traditionally ascribe greater purpose (altruistic ones for example) are really subject to the same rules when analyzed honestly.

Men seek to please their gods, or care for the sick, or love their families, or smoke a rock of crack, or engage in promiscuity, or contribute to charity, or even be debaucherous drunken stumblebums... because it pleases them to do so moreso than the other alternatives they weighed in the process of choosing the path they did.

It is man's purpose.

And each wishes to act pursuant to purpose (however good or corrupt the values that determine what pleases him may be).

And the only way that ALL may act pursuant to purpose, is for each abstain from initiated force or fraud.

Man may claim the ability to act by force, subjugating others to his own pursuit of happiness if he wishes.

But he may not do so rightfully.

His ability to claim the moral authority to act by right, is contingent upon recognizing the equal claim in others.

Failure to recognize the equal claim in others, voids any claim one might make to the moral authority to act pursuant to purpose one's self.

From this site: The Philosophy of Aristotle:

Ethics, for Aristotle, has the purpose of establishing what is the end that man, according to his nature, must attain, and also from what source his happiness comes.
The end of man, as for every being, according to the doctrine established in metaphysics, is the realization of the form, the attainment of the perfection due to his nature.
Now man is a rational animal, and hence his end will be the attainment of wisdom. The actions which bring one to the realization of this perfection of living according to reason are called virtues. Virtue, for Aristotle, is not the end, but the means to attain perfection, and consists in a conscious action fulfilled according to reason.

In purely secular terms it's difficult to top that.