[lbo-talk] RE: Morality

joanna bujes jbujes at covad.net
Tue Mar 23 10:09:49 PST 2004


Dennis P wrote: "As much as I like Goldman (her two-volume autobio is must reading), I cannot go along with this morality grafting biz. Are kindness, sympathy, empathy, forgiveness and love merely electro-magnetic impulses, or artificial constructs that we "graft" on to our true brutal selves? Watching my two kids grow, I'd have to say no."

You may be attaching a different meaning to the term "moral" than Emma does. I think her sense of "moral" is more like Nietzche's comment that "morality" is "virtue in need of justification." Many thinkers distinguish between "morality" and ethical action or virtue.

"Morality," as a normative, socially approved code for behavior advertises itself as a guarantee for "kindness, sympathy, empathy,forgiveness and love" but in fact is nothing of the kind. I think that's what Emma is objecting to.

Joanna



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