[lbo-talk] Re: Question About Moralistic Judgments

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Mar 22 14:11:03 PST 2004


BklynMagus wrote:
>
>
> Ok, naive question time. How do you avoid moralistic judgments? Isn't even saying that moralistic judments are impermissible a moralistic judgment?

It is possible to say that is an outrageous act or that is an outrageous idea _without_ judging that the person is outrageous. Also, see Bertell Ollman, Alienation. Chapter 4, "Is There a Marxian Ethic?" Judgments need not be _moralistic_ judgments: they can be political or social, with no attempt to judge the person. There is a long list of lbo posters whose posts go direct to my trash file without my ever seeing them. Were I (as Hardy speculates in a fine poem) to meet any one of those people in person, the probablity is that we'd get along fine. That doesn't mean there is any reason for me to take their political commentary very seriously. And one of the major features of the posters in my kill file is that they tend to make personal judgments on line, _of the person_ rather than of the political positions argued. That makes their posts utter bores, but it gives me no information as to what kind of a person any of them is.

Carrol



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list