AI Snips
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Mississippi Summer That Changed His View
- Leon Kass recounts living with Black farmers in Mississippi in 1965 and contrasts their moral decency with his Harvard peers.
- That experience, plus reading Rousseau, launched his inquiry into tensions between intellectual progress and moral character.
Rousseau's Challenge To Enlightenment Faith
- Rousseau argues arts and sciences can undermine morality, produce inequality, luxury, and loss of freedom.
- Kass uses this to question whether intellectual progress and moral virtue necessarily align.
Practical Wisdom Complements Good Intentions
- Intellectual virtues include practical wisdom (phronesis), which guides good intentions toward effective action.
- Kass insists moral goodness must be paired with clear sight and sound judgment to avoid harm.