Quotes
“The actual institutions in which we live, as opposed to ideal-typical
ones, are both structurally and ideologically mixed. In each social
situation and institution we actually experience, we have all these
ethical styles and traditions in our heads, however fragmentarily or
unevenly represented, ringing more or less true to the practical
activities, roles and relations of that situation and of our own history.
The distinctions of ethical outlook we actually adopt, then, are rarely
all-or-nothing, mutually exclusive matters. They are more nearly matters
of mixture: Which ethical style will predominate in which situation? Which
style will order the interrelation of other styles and the elements of
tradition in a given situation and for whom? Particular persons and groups
combine and recombine moral traditions and styles in mixtures of meaning
specific to particular social situations and problems.
“This perspective rebuts ethical absolutism without confirming ethical
relativism. For in each situation and with each problem, institutionally
arranged and enacted as they are, persons frame practical moral questions
and answers in search of alternative responses that are intelligible,
justifiable, and therefore public in their cultural coherence. To guide my
moral decisions, I am seeking criteria that I can communicate coherently
and persuasively to others, not rationalizations I can use to mask my
arbitrariness. I am seeking moral guidance not just for myself, but for
anyone in my situation. Institutionally embedded and dramatically enacted
as it is, such guidance is not simply a matter of universalizing from each
person to every rational subject or free citizen, abstractly conceived,
but neither is it simply a statement of personal intent or group interest.
For we cannot make the modes of moral discourse and the moral drama of
institutions mean whatever we wish and still make sense to ourselves and
others, which is what we must do in order to live as social beings.”
Tipton, Steven. “Social Differentiation and Moral Pluralism.” pp. 15-40.
Madsen, Richard & William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, Steven Tipton. Meaning
and Modernity: Religion Polity and Self. University of California Press.
2002. pp. 38-9.
“The mythology of the war of all
against all that threatens to engulf civilization if morality is not
enforced is told only by those who have withdrawn from the people the
basic morality that sociability has imposed for millions of years on
animals in groups. This should be obvious but is not–because,
unfortunately, moral philosophy is a narcotic as addictive as
epistemology, and we cannot easily kick the habit of thinking that the
demos lacks morality as totally as it lacks epistemic knowledge.” Latour,
Bruno. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard
University Press. 1999. p. 255.
“On the one hand, the diversity of
moral outlooks surrounding each individual in a modern society encourages
her to distance herself from any single outlook and relativize all of them
in order to enact each one in the social role and practices specific to
it: efficient worker, expressive lover, law-abiding citizen, lifestylish
consumer, authoritative yet caring parent, faithful believer, and so on.
The institutional multiplication of moral ideals accounts for the
apparently inconsistent and self-contradictory cosmologies modern
individuals hold simultaneously, and the ‘eccentric’ moral hybrids they
compose from various traditions.” Tipton, Steven. “Social Differentiation
and Moral Pluralism.” pp. 15-40. Madsen, Richard & William Sullivan, Ann
Swidler, Steven Tipton. Meaning and Modernity: Religion Polity and Self.
University of California Press. 2002. p. 33.
"When we turn to the famous, now
classic critiques of epistemology, we find that they have, in fact, mostly
been attuned to this interpenetration of the scientific and the moral.
Hegel, in his celebrated attack on this tradition in the introduction to
the Phenomenology of Spirit, speaks of a 'fear of error' that 'reveals
itself rather as fear of the truth,' and he goes on to show how this
stance is bound up with a certain aspiration to individuality and
separateness, refusing what he sees as the 'truth' of subject-object
identity. Heidegger notoriously treats the rise of the modern
epistemological standpoint as a stage in the development of a stance of
domination to the world, which culminates in contemporary technological
society. Merleau-Ponty draws more explicitly political connections and
clarifies the alternative notion of freedom that arises from the critique
of empiricism and intellectualism. The moral consequences of the
devastating critique of epistemology in the later Wittgenstein are,
naturally, less evident. Wittgenstein was strongly averse to making this
kind of thing explicit. But those who have followed him have shown a
certain affinity for the critique of disengagement, instrumental reason,
and atomism.
"It is safe to say that all these critics were largely motivated by a
dislike of the moral and spiritual consequences of epistemology and by a
strong affinity for some alternative." K. Baynes, J. Bohman, & T.
McCarthy. After Philosophy: End or Transformation? MIT Press, 1987.
Charles Taylor. "Overcoming Epistemology." pp. 472-3.
Examples
Statement of Point
Interlocking
both primary societies fosters a morality that respects both the larger society (the conceptscape) and the particular of the individual so that neither is
imposed on the other. This avoids the asphyxiation of the individual or
the relativizing of all values, and it promotes real aesthetics of living
so that beautiful moral societies can take shape. By avowing the open
beauty of societies morality is not just a “personal code” because the
society of the code is brought out as a public entity and meshed with
other social concerns.
Bibliography
Further
Considerations