> Obviously, you are acting as though you know here.
We wouldn't be having this conversation if I knew.
> Now, pace left-Hegelians like you, X & -X are not symmetrical mirror images,
so your inversion above is just an evasion of my question. While it is likely
that some women avoided having an abortion because of their religious beliefs, I
don't think there has been any woman who had an abortion because she believed
it to be God's command. Why? There is no existing religion that says that a
woman who aborts is acting according to God's will. I am saying that your
theory of ethical choices is entirely disregarding reality.
God, Nation, Father, Voice in the head... in short - The BIG OTHER.
> Suppose one is not actually tortured at present but has a good reason to
> believe that such will be the consequence of the refusal to do as
> commanded? Further, what if one has a good reason to fear such a
> consequence but no way to prove it to others? Many non-feminists wonder
> why women stay in abusive relationships, but that's because they don't
> understand that such women have a good reason to fear what may happen if
> they leave. Simplistic Lacanian-Zizekian theories of "ethical choices"
> can't accommodate reality.
Don't your comments above actually illustrate my point? If you have two choices - to be or not to be tortured, both will undesirable results (for whatever eason), doesn't this count as an ethical decision? (a choice between two radical evils - and I'm not saying this is symetrical). Consider voting: there are two idiots running to be elected. Who do you vote for? You compromise - and vote for the 'lesser' of two evils.
I've talked about the recent CUPE 3902 agreement. We had a vote: yes or no. If we voted no, the union would likely be decertified. If we vote yes, we screw over several of our membership. So both choices are undesirable. Timing aggravates the issue. Not voting here isn't a desirable option either... there were other options... but for all intents and purposes - they weren't all that realistic. So there was an ethical decision: a necessary but impossible choice. We can debate the necessity of it, but at some point - everyone had to take a position on the matter - and there was no hope for reconciliation. In other words - it was ethical: two radical evils.
> I'm simply saying that it is ridiculous to conceive of everything one does as
an ethical choice, as you are doing here. Why is it ethical to take
"responsibility" for "trauma," fear, and other responses to violence? What
can "responsibility" possibly mean in this context? I think you are more
committed to "personal responsibility" than even Justin & Rob are, really.
Well, it is easy enough to do away with morality, as a concept, or ethics for that matter. It is much more difficult to work with the ideas, whatever problems they might have. My point in all of this is a relatively simple one, and perhaps somewhat trivial (although I don't think so). Ethics isn't about "doing the right thing." It's about *failure* to do the right thing, because the right thing in the wrong world is impossible. Call it an ethics beyond the good, or an ethics of the real, or negative dialectical ethics, or minima moralia... whatever. Responsibility, subjectivization... are terms used to describe what happens to us when we live in tangent with materialistic law-like structures, within imperatives, and within ideal or imaginary models of freedom and autonomy or agency. I'm open to the idea of doing away with ethics altogether - but I think this simply substitutes one set of problems for another.
ken