>If morality shouldn't be
>communal, then why wouldn't it be moral for me to kill you? Or gouge out
>the eye of a passerby? Not in the legal sense, since obviously both would
>be felonies, but in the moral/ethical sense.
You seem to put far too much attention on this question of morality than it
deserves. Foucault is not attempting to undo all forms of moral thinking
(which you seem to assume would lead to an irrational impulse to kill) but
instead exhibiting skepticism with regards to the universal character of
moral codes. In other words, his histories show that the rationality of
universal moralities has also produced immoralities, violations, and that
it is the blindness of the practitioners' acceptance of moral codes as
universal which can produce unintentional dangerous effects. His suspicion
is more focussed on claims to universality, rather than on morality. I
guess in this sense, of detaching morality from universalism, he is "more
moral" in paying particular attention to the specfic historical effects,
the blindspots of universal moral thinking, moral rationality. That is
what i take as his point here: "That the search for a form of morality
acceptable to everybody in the sence that everyone should submit to it,
strikes me as
catastrophic".
>Nietzsche might not have a
>problem with answering this, since there's one morality for slaves and
>another for masters. Presumably most of us don't accept that.
>
>Doug
In regards to Nietzsche, remember that each moral "perspective" sees itself
as universal and all other moral claims as inferior or evil. Ignoring the
particularity of one's morality in relation to other moralities can produce
"immoral" effects on the practitioners of other moralities. The conquering
of one morality by another is in no way a justification of itself as
universally applicable. Yet what morality could admit that it is but a
"perspective"? Each morality seeing itself as universal furthers the
"struggle unto the death" like Hegel says, along the way blindly producing
violations and violence. For Foucault, an ethical practice is possible
which avoids blind dangers of domination if it avoids lapsing into the
claim of "universal"; what he conceives as a "reactivation of a critical
attitude".
sean
>communal, then why wouldn't it be moral for me to kill you? Or gouge out
>the eye of a passerby? Not in the legal sense, since obviously both would
>be felonies, but in the moral/ethical sense.
You seem to put far too much attention on this question of morality than it
deserves. Foucault is not attempting to undo all forms of moral thinking
(which you seem to assume would lead to an irrational impulse to kill) but
instead exhibiting skepticism with regards to the universal character of
moral codes. In other words, his histories show that the rationality of
universal moralities has also produced immoralities, violations, and that
it is the blindness of the practitioners' acceptance of moral codes as
universal which can produce unintentional dangerous effects. His suspicion
is more focussed on claims to universality, rather than on morality. I
guess in this sense, of detaching morality from universalism, he is "more
moral" in paying particular attention to the specfic historical effects,
the blindspots of universal moral thinking, moral rationality. That is
what i take as his point here: "That the search for a form of morality
acceptable to everybody in the sence that everyone should submit to it,
strikes me as
catastrophic".
>Nietzsche might not have a
>problem with answering this, since there's one morality for slaves and
>another for masters. Presumably most of us don't accept that.
>
>Doug
In regards to Nietzsche, remember that each moral "perspective" sees itself
as universal and all other moral claims as inferior or evil. Ignoring the
particularity of one's morality in relation to other moralities can produce
"immoral" effects on the practitioners of other moralities. The conquering
of one morality by another is in no way a justification of itself as
universally applicable. Yet what morality could admit that it is but a
"perspective"? Each morality seeing itself as universal furthers the
"struggle unto the death" like Hegel says, along the way blindly producing
violations and violence. For Foucault, an ethical practice is possible
which avoids blind dangers of domination if it avoids lapsing into the
claim of "universal"; what he conceives as a "reactivation of a critical
attitude".
sean