Ethics and Abstraction

When the definitive history of the philosophy of the twentieth century is written; the twentieth century shall be known as the "Stupid Age" and nowhere is the stupidity more in evidence than in the field of ethics. To begin our examination of ethics, we must start with a technical distinction between morality and ethics. Morality is moral activity whether it is sublated or not. Ethics is moral activity that has been sublated into an abstract system or mind. The goal of ethics is moral activity. So we need a definition of moral activity. Moral activity is activity that's purpose is to either prevent or alleviate suffering. Ethics is the training or systematization for moral activity. So how is the goal of ethics achieved? Let us look at two quotations separated by over two thousand years; one by Plato and the other by T.H. Green. The first quote by Plato should be familiar to readers of my essay "Immortality and Abstraction." Plato's Timaeus (90B) (Jowett Translation): "When a man is always occupied with the cravings of desire and ambition, and is eagerly striving to satisfy them, all his thoughts must be mortal, and as far as it is possible altogether to become such, he must be mortal every whit because he has cherished his mortal part. But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine, if he attains truth and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing immortality, he must altogether be immortal, and since he is ever cherishing the divine power and has divinity within him in perfect order, he will be singularly happy" The most important part of the above quote is that a man or person must overcome his bodily or animal drives. Let us move to T. H. Green. From T. H. Green's "Prolegomena to Ethics "Of moral development in this sense we have evidence in the result; and we can understand the principle of it; but the stages in the process by which the principle thus unfolds itself remain obscure as has been already pointed out, such an ind as provision for the maintenance of a family, if pursued not instinctively but with consciousness of the end pursued, implies in the person pursing it a motive quite different from desire either for an imagined pleasure or the relief from want. It implies the thought of a possible permanent satisfaction, and an effort to attain that satisfaction in the satisfaction of others. Here is already a moral and spiritual as distinct from an animal or merely natural interest-an interest in an object which only thought constitutes, an interest in bringing about something that should be, as distinct from desire to feel again a pleasure already felt" We shall try to make the unfolding of the moral consciousness less obscure. We see in both Plato and Green that moral activity demands a denial or suppression of the base or animal drives, in the moral agent. The early classical Greeks and Green held that morality began with military training. Although I think morality began long before military training; it is probably fair to say the first formal ethical training began in military training. So let us turn to military training and its connection to ethics. A soldier is taught to put the good of his city or country before his own good. That is the soldier must crush or suppress his own desire to survive, so his city or country can survive. When confronted with an armed mass of men that want to kill you; the natural reaction is to run and hide: to save oneself. The soldier in confronting his cities enemies is trying to prevent the suffering that his city would have to endure if conquered by a hostile force. In the example of the soldier we find all the elements commonly associated with moral activity. So now we can clarify some of the unfolding of the moral consciousness. One involved in moral activity is trying to gain power to prevent or alleviate human suffering. The moral agent is trying to gain power by denying or suppressing his own wants and desires. It is easy to see why the early Greeks and Green thought the soldier a paradigm of moral activity. The soldier must deny his natural inclination to run away from the enemy. He has to through training in martial disciplines; when he would probably would rather be doing other things than practicing with weapons, and learning to fight as part of a unit. He must put aside differences with other people in the unit or army, and learn to obey orders that are counter-intuitive and dangerous to his person. Let us apply this understanding of moral activity to ethics, Ethics is the combining of abstractions into a system or mind to promote moral activity. To stay with our example of the soldier; the ethic is the military training. The part of the individual is to embody the ethic so as to become second nature or instinct. As I have said elsewhere the constitution of minds is to turn intellect into instinct. Of course, what we are discussing is the construction of the moral part of the individual mind: the conscience. What we call conscience is the moral part of the individual mind; it usually constructed in early childhood. Not by a sublated system of abstractions (ethic), but as a part of growing up with responsible parents, and other role models. This is why in a healthy culture there is not much formal ethical training. The children of a healthy culture have plenty of good role models to help them embody the morality of their culture. The conscience is Paracelsus's homunculus: the little man in the head that approves certain emotions and actions, and alienates wther emotions and actions. When a child grows up in a healthy culture and embodies the morality of his culture in the homunculus; he has reached the moral level of what F. H. Bradley calls "My Station and its Duties." A person accepts the responsibilities to become a member of the culture. This is how a strong vibrant culture works. When a culture has to start teaching ethics, outside of specialized training such as military training, it is a culture in decline. We can now move to clearing up some of the stupidity that has gone on in moral philosophy for the last few centuries; reaching the height of absurdity in the twentieth century. the utilitarians are a good place to start. The utilitarians came about because of the triumph of empiricist metaphysics; so it is understandable that they viewed the human mind as passive. The utilitarians identified the good with pleasure. Instead of gaining power to prevent or alleviate suffering. The utilitarian argues that the reason a person practices moral activity is because of the pleasure that he gains; that pleasure is the aim of moral activity. This is of course, stupid. The moral agent often puts off or forsakes hes personal pleasure to gain the power to prevent or alleviate suffering The moral agent is not calculating the amount of satisfaction, he shall gain from the activity. Again set us return to our example of the soldier. The soldier does not even know if he shall gain any satisfaction from his sacrifice. The soldier may die in battle or his side may lose. One of the greatest military commanders in history: the Duke of Wellington did not seem to gain any satisfaction from his battlefield triumphs. Wellington is famous for saying "the only thing sadder than a battle won is a battle lost." Wellington is a perfect example of a person that accepted "My Station and its Duties." We do not have to go to such an extreme example as Wellington; the average person who accepts his responsibilities is not calculating the amount of pleasure he is gaining from being a good member of society. The only reason that a person gets satisfaction out of activities of sacrifice and alienating impulses and immediate pleasures is because he has built the homunculus or conscience. This problem has led the utilitarians to talk a lot of non-sense on hierarchies of pleasures and such. The problem of the utilitarians is they missed the central point of moral activity. The point of moral activity is gain power to alleviate and prevent suffering. This is the function of the homunculus of conscience, to discriminate or choose between actions, and pick the actions and emotions that shall lead to the moral agent gaining power to accomplish the goal of preventing and alleviating suffering. Even though much of utilitarianism is stupid there are parts that can be salvaged. J. Bentham meant utilitarianism to be a guide to social policy, more than as a guide for an individual. If the utilitarians keep some of the negative aspects and dump the positive aspects of their ethic; it may be of some use in public policy. In other words, the government should avoid inflicting pain and interfering in civil society, unless absolutely necessary. The threat of foreign invasion would be an example where government must interfere. As we have observed utilitarianism is wrong, but there are aspects than can be salvaged; this is not true for the case of the next ethic we shall observe. The height of stupidity in ethics undoubtedly belongs to John Rawls and his followers. The utilitarians tried to give their ethic some metaphysical basis in pleasure. Rawls and his followers base their ethic on a gimmick: the veil of ignorance. Yes, the Rawlsian ethic has no metaphysical basis only the cheapest gimmick as support. The Rawlsian ethic rests on a hypothetical; the veil of ignorance. Of course someone arguing using hypothetical s is analogous to a gambler using loaded dice. The idea is to construct the hypothetical so only one answer is possible. So let us examine Rawls's veil of ignorance. The moral agent is supposed to imagine himself as a soul waiting to be incarnated as a human, but with no knowledge or control as to which human that the agent shall incarnate as. The question then is what does the agent want the supreme value to be? According to Rawls the answer should be equality. That no matter who the agent incarnates as their should be an equal result. The trouble is that Rawls could not even load the dice right; as I said we are dealing with substandard intellects. The traditionalist can take up Rawls's loaded dice with no fear; for the traditionalist can still answer the supreme virtue should be reciprocity. That people should get what they deserve based on the effort and contributions they make. Thus snatching the crown of justice and fairness from the head of Rawls and his followers. Justice is reciprocity. If Rawls was right there would be no purpose to morality. An analogy should help to illustrate. No one expects nor wants a chess mater and a novice player to have equal results. That would mean time effort and self-discipline had no purpose, if the training and taming of emotions and impulses had the same result. There would be no justice or morality. We still have not exhausted the stupidity of the Rawlsian position. In the very height of stupidity Rawls and his followers think that the veil of ignorance should be used to make public policy. This is of course, ceremonial magic. It is the same as the neoplatonists using theurgy to learn the secrets of the cosmos. At least the neoplatonists could claim they seeking knowledge and not ignorance. A good example of Rawlsian thinking is the pathetic spectacle of Ezekiel Emanuel when he appeared on "CNN" and Fox News." Emanuel's arrogance was only matched by his idiocy. Emanuel seems to confirm the advice of experienced practitioners of ceremonial magic and the literature of magic, that warns the practice can lead the unwary to inflation of one's self-opinion. A danger to be guarded against. It is best to view Rawls and his followers not as a cause, but as a symptom of a decaying culture. As Julius Evola points out in his insightful book "Ride the Tiger" that when a government tries to heal the rifts in a decaying society all they do is hasten the destruction of the organic bonds between people that still exist.