----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2002 2:10 PM Subject: Re: Tedious metaethical discussion
> Ethics is never prior to politics, for two reasons. The first is that
there
> are political positions we have that no ethical argument could ever make
us
> give up.
You also argue that there are certain ethical principles that cannot be undermined by any ethical argument.
> I have argued here for the priority of democracy, for example. For
> many of us, socialism is like that two. Oh in the abstract I suppose you
> could say, suppose therew ere iron-clad, irrefutable arguments that
> democracy or socialism led to the Gulag and universal poverty.
What if our actual circumstances brought about these consequences in the ways that the arguments suggested?
> The second is that ethics and politics are all mixed up with each other
and
> with lots of empirical assumptions about how the world worlds. You can't
> isolate the ethical element and say, it's prior.
I suppose that if you insist that ethics and politics are inseperable, it would indeed be nonsensical to claim that one is prior to the other.
-- Luke
> Sure, I think we need moral
> principles to navigate politically. And we need political principles to
> navigate ethically, and lots of empirical knowledge to make sense of both
> ethics and politics. We go backa nd forth, trying to explain our
considered
> moral judgments in terms of principles we accept and rejected principles
or
> judgements to make thgings fit. Pragmatism isn't one choice among many, or
> something you can reject. It's called thinking. That's why metaethics is
> boring.
>
> jks