Ethical Life
Ethical Life
Here is an interesting fact about the ethical life: it is not optional. Any satisfactory ethical theory ought to explain this fact, and I’m not sure any do. It isn’t a life-style choice, or a personal preference, or even a vocation; it’s non-negotiable. You have to be moral—no ifs, ands, and buts. You can choose to be unconventional, or conformist, or lazy, or imprudent, or even insane—but you can’t choose to be a morally bad person. That is, you can’t defend such a choice, to yourself or others. No one ever says, “I decided to be immoral”, even when they are. People always justify what they are doing by citing some ethical point of view, even when it is absurd. The imprudent person can say, “I just can’t be bothered to take care of myself”, but the unethical person can’t say, “I just can’t be bothered to be a decent person”. Has any human being ever said this to himself? Morality is not like a suit of clothes you can either put on or not. Everyone must accept the demands of morality, it seems; there is no escape from it. A person can even decide he is sick of logic and proposes not to think logically anymore, but he can’t think he is sick of being good and proposes to be bad instead, knowing what the good is. You have no choice in the matter. Nor is this a matter of divine punishment; it is written into our understanding of what ethics is. What kind of obligation is this? What is its psychology? Are psychopaths also subject to it? It seems not to be compatible with moral relativism, because we can choose not to obey the edicts of our society. We could choose to disobey all such rules, but we can’t choose to reject the very idea of morality. Even the most evil of characters has his value-system, perverted though it may be. The ethical egoist believes his system is the morally right one—he can’t declare that it isn’t. You can’t wake up in the morning and think, “I’m not going to be ethical today”. Kant spoke of the categorical imperative, but there is also the absolute imperative to be moral; it doesn’t depend on what you happen to feel like. Morality is like a black hole with an inexorable pull. We are not free with respect to it. We are not conditioned to feel that way, having it drummed into us at an early age; we arrive at this perspective spontaneously. Morality seems engraved on our souls. You don’t choose to be a moral being. In this respect morality is more powerful than prudence. Even the moral nihilist thinks his position is ethically correct. You can’t do without some ethical principles.[1]
[1] We might call this the puzzle of ethical authority: why is ethics conceived as authoritative, mandatory, indispensable? It is almost as if we are hypnotized by it, under its control.
Depends on what you mean by moral. Is serving the Id moral? If i can commit sexual and financial crimes, and have a reasonable chance of getting away with it (let’s say pre-DNA testing), how is that moral? Because it satisfies my basest desires?
What? Of course those things are not moral! No one would think them moral; they are the opposite of moral!
Thanks – I read again what you presented.
Eg “Even the moral nihilist thinks his position is ethically correct. You can’t do without some ethical principles”
I don’t know if the person I described thinks it’s ethical or moral. Probably knows it’s immoral but feels he can get away with it.
Does he justify it as moral? Or just enjoss it too much and thinks he’s smarter than the cops.
Many such people evade justice.
I don’t think you are seeing the philosophical point.
In “the Italian job” the crew of thieves were singing “we are the self preservation society”. Is your argument that they effectively have their own ethic?
Yes. I have a new paper on the same topic upcoming.