!E for Ethics
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agk's diary
1 October 2021 @ 17:14
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written on Pinebook Pro
instead of stressful final papers
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It's hard to decide what to do in the world as it
is, given who I am and what I've done. Anyone who
wants to be decent can probably relate. Ethics is
about this problem.
Ethics? What's that?
====================
I like how Gillian Rose explained ethics in *The
Broken Middle*, her Kierkegaard book. Ethical
statements are answers waiting for someone to
ask, "What should I do?" They're half a dialogue
awaiting a partner.
The ten commandments of Moses (well, Mosaic law)
united the twelve tribes under something arguably
neither civil nor criminal law---something that
answers ethical questions. Answers wait for a
faithful person to struggle with what to do in a
situation.
"God, may I kill him?" is a question "Thou shalt
not kill" waits to answer. More ethical questions
follow when it's so hard to live together murder
seems like a solution.
What makes ethical people possible?
===================================
"Good, decent persons exist now," Agnes Heller
wrote in *Beyond Justice*. "What makes them poss-
ible?" From *An Ethics of Personality*, a partial
answer:
At birth, people are thrown (as they are) into the
world (as it is). Potential capabilities encounter
expectations. There's always a gap between what I
can and should be. But good people already exist.
I'll meet them. They chose themselves to be decent.
Knowing them will confront me with the same choice.
This is Kirkegaard-thought too, really. Kirkegaard
made a way to ethics without a universal ethical
standard. That's needed in (Western) modernity.
The choice of myself is a leap that starts from me,
not the ground from which I leap. "A self-chooser
cannot refer to her life conditions, psyche,
parents, times, and so on in case of her failure,
for she has re-chosen it all"[^1]. Given every-
thing as it is, I may choose myself to be decent,
and begin to become decent.
Ok so...
========
Not much to think about here. In Alcoholics Anon-
ymous, an ethical society of people who've been
unethical, they say: "You don't think your way to
right action. You act your way to right thinking."
Ethical systems and ethical people exist. Most
people will be challenged to choose to be decent.
Some guidance for decency in rough situations
exists. That's good, and enough for now.
======
[^1]: *A Short History of My Philosophy*, p.93.
