Moral Investigations - 4.0 Saying what I want t say.
I seem to have a fantastic knack for writing everything but what I want to say. Hopefully this will clear things up.
Let's consider a few other moral fields, or possible moral fields. First of all, ourselves. Do we have moral obligations to ourselves? Nietzsche seemed to think so (!) and I must say, I agree with him. We really can talk about better or worse actions "to" ourselves. However bizarre it is to divide ourselves into Subject-Object like this, I think it might be profitable. We all know that some actions will disappoint us in ourselves, that they will make us feel bad or that they will improve us.
Now, what else are we going to say is included in our moral field? Right now it's rather wide. It involves, seemingly, every human being that we can with reason believe would be affected by our actions, including ourselves. It includes animals, but only nature in a second hand relation. It includes the unborn, and the dead in a second hand relation. But I believe we shall be even more radical.
The ethico-political:
Consider all your relations with people as a vast web, spinning outwards from you. Some you will never meet, some you will only know periphereally but affect quite a lot (such as the parents of your girlfriend, perhaps). Now, whenever you come into contact with a human being you're going to find a nexus of acceptable "moves" (as in a game) that are based on common etiquette. These are things like suitable greeting phrases, topics of conversation, etc. But the question is, really, do you have some sort of obligation to yourself or others when involved in these social nets? It really does seem as if you do, considering how we judge peoples moral character and actions.
I'm not going to say what it is you should do: but I merely want to point to it. You're always going to be involved in these moral, or ethico-political situations. I say ethico-political because there is a strain between what is both perhaps socially acceptable, what you should do and the fact that you're not involved in Kantian reasoning or utilitarian mathematicism when you're involved in this: rather, you're always playing ethics off the cuff. It is far more important to think about our virtues in social life, like the Greeks did, than who to save when a ship you're on sinks. Most of our moral actions are immediate. Some you may have time to think about, but I believe they might be able to be reduced down to virtues. Ie, an action can be valued on a basis of the virtues it promotes or hinders.
So we have a social sphere that closely resembles the virtue ethics of the ancient Greeks, a political (do NOT think of organized political parties/ideologies, but rather any human interaction where we mix the ethical, resources and etiquette and whatever else in one)/ethical network that we consider. These are the center of our moral universe. As social animals, virtues are obviously important to us. Perhaps we may find a better grounding in the world rather than be "thrown into it" as the phenemonologists believed human beings to be.
No idea if this actually helped in clearing up things, but I have a post to make about Truth. I am sure 5.0 will come soon with even more attempts to clear things up.
Let's consider a few other moral fields, or possible moral fields. First of all, ourselves. Do we have moral obligations to ourselves? Nietzsche seemed to think so (!) and I must say, I agree with him. We really can talk about better or worse actions "to" ourselves. However bizarre it is to divide ourselves into Subject-Object like this, I think it might be profitable. We all know that some actions will disappoint us in ourselves, that they will make us feel bad or that they will improve us.
Now, what else are we going to say is included in our moral field? Right now it's rather wide. It involves, seemingly, every human being that we can with reason believe would be affected by our actions, including ourselves. It includes animals, but only nature in a second hand relation. It includes the unborn, and the dead in a second hand relation. But I believe we shall be even more radical.
The ethico-political:
Consider all your relations with people as a vast web, spinning outwards from you. Some you will never meet, some you will only know periphereally but affect quite a lot (such as the parents of your girlfriend, perhaps). Now, whenever you come into contact with a human being you're going to find a nexus of acceptable "moves" (as in a game) that are based on common etiquette. These are things like suitable greeting phrases, topics of conversation, etc. But the question is, really, do you have some sort of obligation to yourself or others when involved in these social nets? It really does seem as if you do, considering how we judge peoples moral character and actions.
I'm not going to say what it is you should do: but I merely want to point to it. You're always going to be involved in these moral, or ethico-political situations. I say ethico-political because there is a strain between what is both perhaps socially acceptable, what you should do and the fact that you're not involved in Kantian reasoning or utilitarian mathematicism when you're involved in this: rather, you're always playing ethics off the cuff. It is far more important to think about our virtues in social life, like the Greeks did, than who to save when a ship you're on sinks. Most of our moral actions are immediate. Some you may have time to think about, but I believe they might be able to be reduced down to virtues. Ie, an action can be valued on a basis of the virtues it promotes or hinders.
So we have a social sphere that closely resembles the virtue ethics of the ancient Greeks, a political (do NOT think of organized political parties/ideologies, but rather any human interaction where we mix the ethical, resources and etiquette and whatever else in one)/ethical network that we consider. These are the center of our moral universe. As social animals, virtues are obviously important to us. Perhaps we may find a better grounding in the world rather than be "thrown into it" as the phenemonologists believed human beings to be.
No idea if this actually helped in clearing up things, but I have a post to make about Truth. I am sure 5.0 will come soon with even more attempts to clear things up.
posted by Björn at 2:01 PM
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