ABSTRACT
What kind of knowledge is moral knowledge? What is the desired goal of participant-observation-philosophy-as-a-way-of-life (‘living-with philosophy’ or ‘symbiotic ethics’)? Appreciating value, even in a circumspect, uncertain or moderate way, is something which happens away from moral debate, and the place of aesthetics in ‘symbiotic ethics’ will be important to appreciate if the concept is going to grant insight. This concluding chapter in the methodological, epistemological and metaphysical section of this book will discuss how we can find wisdom (and what wisdom is); it will explore the way in which narrative and aesthetic qualities are analogous to and continuous with ethical qualities. When we are trying to find out what matters we need to understand the world as being composed of persons and stories and it is by tending to these persons and stories that we can better appreciate and be moved by important things. The objects of moral understanding are poetic and narrative, lives are aesthetic things at the same times as (and because they are also) ethical things.
