>One might consider, moral for whom? For Hegel, the Absolute, the
>Althusser, the Subject, for Habermas, the Unlimited communicative community.
>In short - the Other.
The communicative community is only 'the other' on some accounts, Ken. What about that 'co-origination' stuff H goes on about in BFN? Ain't we essentially social? Doesn't he say in BFN: 'To the extent that we become aware of the inter-subjective constitution of freedom, the possessive-individualist illusion of autonomy as self-ownership disintegrates'? Is this the insight that really annoys the anarcho-individualist in you?
Ain't Habermas's idea of 'the moral point of view' that it concerns itself with questions of justice in which criteria of justification must be universalisable? Ain't the ethical choice then the one a real person makes in a real place and time within this moral context? And ain't abortion one where the pregnant woman sorts out imperatives in terms of her apprehension of the constraints and opportunities that confront her (ie her self-perceived locus in the web of power relations)?
So I reckon abortion IS decisively to do with a bunch of moral imperatives (borne of universalisable justifications). But those imperatives meet in a myriad particular settings, of which the necessarily imagined subject of moral discourse necessarily knows nothing, of which the lifeworld knows a little, and in which the woman in question apprehends the material circumstances and prospects of herself and the as-yet-non-communicative being within.
To afford the state the discretion to disallow abortion is to privilege the moral over the ethical - which has its virtues, but also produces a formalistic equality which serves to disguise a material inequity (people invariably inhabiting differential locii in society, among which man/woman is but one instance). And to afford social norms the discretion to sanction an action or otherwise is inevitable - but at least the lifeworld takes the ethical as its point of departure, and has a capacity for change that would have astonished other generations (at 42, I've seen it go all over the place on many an issue, including this one).
In short - and my understanding is spotty in these things - you need a moral dimension to house the ethical dimension. No moral dimension necessarily means no ethical dimension, or so it seems to me.
Did any of that make the slightest bit of sense?
Cheers, Rob.
The rest of your message was:
>In this way, moral imperatives law any substantial
>content, because they are always tautological. "Goodness for the sake of
>goodness alone" - "duty for the sake of duty alone" - that sort of thing
>(the moral core is the Master Signifier). There is no content, no
>substance of
>the good or of duty in this imperative. In order to bring substance into the
>imperative, the abstract tautology must be translated into practical
>advice or
>action. "I ought to do X in this particular situation." But this translation
>*always* contradicts the imperative - because the imperative is nothing more
>than that - an imperative. In the translations then, one *fails* to
>accomplish
>a moral act and is left with an ethical choice. An ethical choice is
>constituted by less than perfect solutions, in Kantian terminology, two
>radical
>evils. As such, ethical decisions are matters of praxis and
>contingent judgement.
>
>In this way, we could say that the legalization of abortion is an ethical
>judgement. But, strictly speaking, it would not be a moral one. In one were
>to actuall fulfill their moral obligation, the Other, the objective cause of
>their morality would disappear. The self would be assimilated into the Other
>(as is the case in psychosis). As ethical judgements, we are always
>called to
>be responsible for our transgression - and the power contained / manifest
>within such choices.
>
>ken