Hyperactive Ethics

Abstract

This essay is about imposing one's sincerely held moral beliefs on others, and why this may, on many occasions, be bad. People who impose their values interfere with the behaviour of others in an attempt to promote their own values, or at least not to see them undermined. So, for example, the employer who forces her employees to give to her favourite charity, the parent who does not allow his teen-age child to take a sex education course, and the heckler who tries to prevent a communist from speaking are possible examples of persons trying to impose their values on others, though what counts as a genuine imposition will vary from context to context. There is a widespread perception that such behaviour is morally inappropriate, even from the point of view of those sharing the values in question, and that people should instead exercise moral restraint. This is puzzling, because those who try to impose moral values are only doing what they believe to be morally correct. This puzzle resembles a problem with liberalism regarding a liberal attitude to illiberal and immoral behaviour. It has been claimed that the liberal state, in tolerating the illiberal, permits behaviour which in effect undermines liberal values, and this appears self-defeating. One claim that I argue for is that liberalism is a variety of moral restraint -similar to that exercised by individuals. So the question is, why is the restraint regarding illiberal and immoral behaviour appropriate for those who disparage such behaviour? The answer to this question is that it is moral strategy which justifies non-interference, for both the liberal state and the individual. Thus the political is not as profoundly divorced from the moral as some writers would have it. Further, act utilitarianism has sometimes been accused of advocating lack of moral restraint -of being what I would call a hyperactive ethical theory. The response to critics of liberalism will also serve as a response to these critics of utilitarianism: moral restraint is a strategy which does not undermine values.

Klimamoralisme

“…( 2006) for en samling av de viktigste artiklene om moralisme i moderne moralfilosofi. Se ellers også Driver (1994Driver ( & 2005, Taylor (2012) og Archer (2018). Selv om det er lite akademisk diskusjon av moralisme i Norge, så finnes det noen få hederlige unntak.…”

A Defence of Prudential Moralism

“…The editors of a recent book entitled The Politics of Moralizing [1] are typical in claiming that "moralistic discourse gives license to the ignoble human emotions of self-aggrandizement, cruelty, and punitiveness." In an article devoted to "hyperactive ethics," the philosopher Julia Driver [2] similarly described the moralizer as "a broken air conditioner -constantly running, making a lot of noise, but helping nobody and indeed probably spouting a lot of hot air." Even Kurt Baier [3], in his classic Moral Point of View, opened his discussion by telling his readers, "moral talk is often rather repugnant," and that the "most outspoken critics of their neighbors' morals are usually men (or women) who wish to ensure that nobody should enjoy the good things in life which they themselves have missed.…”

The problem with moralism

“… Julia Driver makes a separate, though related, claim in her critique of hyperactive ethics (). Driver argues that attempts to impose one's values on other people repels people from accepting one's moral views.…”