Simplify this text: The problem is to accommodate inside moral philosophy, and suggest methods of dealing with the
fact that so much of human conduct is moved by mechanical energy of an egocentric kind. In the
moral life the enemy is the fat relentless ego. Moral philosophy is properly, and in the past has
sometimes been, the discussion of this ego and the techniques (if any) for its defeat...
What is a good man like? How can we make ourselves morally better? Can we make ourselves
morally better? These are questions the philosopher should try to answer. We realize on reflection that
we know little about good men. There are men in history who are traditionally thought of as having
been good (Christ, Socrates, certain saints), but if we try to contemplate these men we find that the
information about them is scanty and vague, and that, their great moments apart, it is the simplicity
and directness of their diction which chiefly colours our conception of them as good...
It is significant that the idea of goodness (and of virtue) has been largely superseded in Western
moral philosophy by the idea of rightness, supported perhaps by some conception of sincerity. This
is to some extent a natural outcome of the disappearance of a permanent background to human
activity: a permanent background, whether provided by God, by Reason, by History, or by the self.
The agent, thin as a needle, appears in the quick flash of the choosing will... The agent’s freedom,
indeed his moral quality, resides in his choices, and yet we are not told what prepares him for the
choices...Moral choice is often a mysterious matter... But should not the mystery of choice be
conceived of in some other way? (51-52)