Isn't morality a code of conduct enforced imperiously and usually arbitrary? Its basis usually irrational even where the convention is defensible-such as not defecating on the street. That is to say, morality is a method--a flawed one--of causing people to act in what is (arbitrarily, as it has to be I think) considered a socially responsible to manner. Morality is flawed fundamentally because it is irrational nature, i.e. it's disconnectedness from the reason the conventions exists, and is quantitatively flawed in that many of its conventions are out of date or are dubiously beneficial, in many cases being capitalized on by power in order to have us act against our own interests and in the interest of a small group (such as the case with the phobia of drug use)-flaws that IMO have remedies, many discussed in John Dewey's writings on education.
I don't think to say it is a "product of history" is to say more than a truism, at best. But at any rate, until it's made clear what one means by "morality" it would seem discussion a hopeless task. I think that in fact in the liberal mind morality, like religion*, is vaguely considered something "bad" and no more serious though is put into it.
*Yes, in fact most of us are very unclear what we me when we use the word religion. To my way of thinking Marxism qualifies as a religion, including what in effect is a belief God (i.e., the belief in Laws operating on history), but clearly most on LBO-Talk would disagree.
> Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:39:53 -0500
> From: mjs at smithbowen.net
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Moral Foundations
>
> On Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:58:41 -0600
> Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> > I don't understand why you need a moral foundation or where you get it
> > if you claim to have that mysterious entity.
>
> The mystery comes in with the word "foundation".
>
> Nearly everybody -- even you and I, Carrol -- has
> morals and moral responses. There are things neither
> of us would do, even if there were some advantage to
> us in doing them, because at the end of the day we
> consider them wicked things to do.
>
> But there's nothing fundamental or "foundational"
> about these impulses and reflexes. This is not to
> denigrate or belittle them, simply to relieve them
> of a burden they can't carry. Our morality is
> the product of history -- like our language and
> the categories we use to parse the world.
>
> The existing social order always claims to have a moral
> "foundation". To expose the falsity of that claim is
> one of the tasks of any critical thought worthy of the
> name. And it's not only useful (for agitational purposes)
> but truthful, to show that the existing order violates
> all the actual moral impulses that its subjects feel.
>
> --
>
> Michael Smith
> mjs at smithbowen.net
> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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