Philosophy Now Forum

Ethical Relationships
There is an unfortunate tendency to reduce ethics to relationships between individuals. And from this the vanity that it is all about personal freedom and tolerance. The root of anarchist belief. In reality everything that we do and society does, has ethical significance, and pragmatism is the main restraint on what can be achieved.
We relate together individually. We relate to people in aggregate. We relate to social-politcal groups of people. Social-political groups relate together and to the global whole as an aggregate and holistically.
The most important aspect of ethics is that within altruist society, and our responsibility to it and it to us.
Our relationship with ‘god’ is merely a verbal nonsense, until we have defined ‘god’ in terms of ethical values. It is the values that bind us and not any thing in which they are manifested. It tantamount to worshipping the Pope or Buddha because of his clothes.

Particular values can be accepted or rejected. It is the relationship to values that determines the intent which guides the actions which define relationships with people, and all intent can be distilled to an essence of good or evil, although without knowledge of conditions and without skillful means good intent may result in bad (evil) action.

I support the simplification of explanations but can't the effort to simplify go too far?

Consider that ethics could be one idea but also the change in society has relations to rights, morals, control, contracts, risk management, safety, protection, promotion of interests, subjugation, politics, etc., etc.

RWStanding wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:14 am Ethical Relationships
There is an unfortunate tendency to reduce ethics to relationships between individuals...We relate together individually. We relate to people in aggregate. We relate to social-politcal groups of people. Social-political groups relate together and to the global whole as an aggregate and holistically.
The most important aspect of ethics is that within altruist society, and our responsibility to it and it to us.

Problem, RW:

You are correct that we live in social groups and aggregates of various kinds. But a group is a collective noun, and fails to single out individuals. Because of this, it addresses no individual in particular.

A "raft" may be a group of ducks (on the water); but there are no particular ducks needed in order for there to be a raft...any ducks will do. A "flock" may be a group of sheep; but there is not one single sheep necessary in order to make the flock; any sheep will do. And when you startle the raft or call the flock, they will all move as one, but unthinkingly -- as a response to moving in the same way all the others do, not because any of them are engaging themselves in an ethical reflection. They are acting mindlessly, together, conformistly...not ethically.

That's why ethical appeals to the collective don't work. The collective and the mob are incapable of feeling with any conscience, let alone a harmonious, coordinated one. Only the individuals within the collective, if they can be singled out and addressed as individuals, are capable of ethical response. That's why addressing individuals at the level of their consciences is basic to ethical relationships.

The mass cannot be morally addressed. For all our talk about things like "movements" and "institutional" problems, we cannot locate them reliably, because they keep shifting constantly. And within them, no individual feels himself singled out and addressed. Moreover, they do not even have an institutional nervous system that can be activated by our appeals.

When we say, "We have an institutional racism problem here," whom are we addressing? Who is the racist, in that sentence? How do we locate this "institutional" problem, and how do we subdue it without appealing to individuals to act on our behalf? We can't. We're blaming concepts and chasing ghosts.

So to speak to individuals is not to "reduce" ethics; rather, it's to sharpen the ethical appeal to a precise point, and to direct it where it needs to be addressed. Blaming masses for things gets us no ethical response at all; the mass will only turn to the extent that individuals within it are each prompted to react. And if none is singled out, and no one feels himself personally responsible, the masses simply will not turn.

RWStanding wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:14 am Ethical Relationships
In reality everything that we do and society does, has ethical significance, and pragmatism is the main restraint on what can be achieved...We relate to people in aggregate. We relate to social-politcal groups of people. Social-political groups relate together and to the global whole as an aggregate and holistically.
The most important aspect of ethics is that within altruist society, and our responsibility to it and it to us.

What you are describing is nothing more than identity politics. Identity politics is factitious by nature. As such, how can you say that all persons of the same identity will live the good life with respect to another identity?

God (Zeus, Theos, Deos) in the western rationalist and Catholic tradition means that there is a best way of living or best ethos. Ethos is the region in which we all live. God seeks to find man. The way to find him is in understanding. Thus, the Catholics speak of "faith in search of understanding." Under the explication that intellectus or rational understanding is adaequatio or able to grasp rei or the case of existence as it is to the eyes.

The great, not to say supreme, presupposition is that the universe is good, which means good for man as man (any actual or future/possible human being), and that it can be known through the logos/talking.

The current attitude is that all that can be known is that the post-Hobbesian arrangements which allow public discussion more power than official doctrine are superior. The danger of the current view is visible in America, the decent into emasculated or philistine debate devoid of intellect or rational potency. On the other side, a society ruled by the best whose loving views are endowed by the gods or God may suppress even intelligent descent.