by Chris Alexion, Copyright May 14, 2006, all rights reserved. 361 views
Why do moral rebellion and philosophical autonomy fail to get past surface issues? A line from Anna Nallick's "Breathe" got me thinking about this. The line goes, "When we walk through the doors, so accusing their eyes / Like they have any right at all to criticize…" Nallick's beef with unfair criticism (which is true enough, taken by itself) is a basic part of our cultural mindset today; moral as well as literal finger-pointing is considered impolite. The same thing is true with regard to ethics in general–you can do anything you want to do, but you can't tell me what to do.
Yet here we have an illustration of how deeply our underlying precommittments influence our thinking. It is wrong to criticize others unfairly. But why? Why can't one person tell another person what to do? When we dig deeper, we find a whole web of philosophical and ethical beliefs that flag actions as either right or wrong. We all have presuppositions. We're all committed to a worldview. We all make moral judgments.
The question is whether we've got all these right.
1 • jpe • May 22, 2006 • 1:48 PM
I think you're right, and that reticence to criticize is probably why we fall back into internalist, metaethical criticisms. For instance, rather than calling someone wrong, secularists (often wrongly) call others hypocritical, and Christians (often wrongly) call others relativists.
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