Moral Nihilism Research Articles

Rejecting Supererogationism

AbstractEven if I think it very likely that some morally good act is supererogatory rather than obligatory, I may nonetheless be rationally required to perform that act. This claim follows from an apparently straightforward dominance argument, which parallels Jacob Ross's argument for ‘rejecting’ moral nihilism. These arguments face analogous pairs of objections that illustrate general challenges for dominance reasoning under normative uncertainty, but (I argue) these objections can be largely overcome. This has practical consequences for the ethics of philanthropy – in particular, it means that donors are often rationally required to maximize the positive impact of their donations.

Handlingens logik

Alenka Zupančič’ work on Immanuel Kant (Ethics of the Real, 2000) marks her entrance onto the international philosophical scene and places her among the three giants of contemporary Slovenien philosophy. In this article, Zupančič’ investigation of Kantian ethics is presented with a particular focus on the so called ‘logic of the act’, which Zupančič claims has been forgotten or repressed in recent Kant scholarship. By reading Kant with Lacan and showing how any act worthy of the name has a characteristic similar to Lacan’s concept of the drive, Zupančič brings forward a new, much more radical and a bit scary Kant – one that also represents a way of overcoming the moral nihilism of contemporary society.

Violence, Morality, and Religion

Violence, Morality, and Religion

ANTI-VALUES OF VIRTUAL SPACE: PhILOSOPhICAL ANALYSIS

Investigated the features of the existence of anti-values in the modern virtual space. One of these anti-values is violence, which represents itself in various forms. In particular, cyber-bulling and cyber-grooming have become widespread in the global network. Described the main types of virtual aggression. Manifestations of violence in the virtual reality are directly correlated with the types of aggressive behavior of subjects in the virtual world, which is realized with the help of one or another means.Revealed the phenomenon of cyber-addiction of human as a demonstration of its lack of freedom. The paradox lies in the fact that on the one hand, the virtual world is a field of freedom, and on the other – in consequence of the formation of human cyber-addiction, it ceases to be free by narrowing its living space by concentration on the virtual being. Accordingly, computer-addiction does not allow the subject to qualitatively expand the horizons of their own information culture. Generalized the factors and types of cyber- addictive human behavior. It is noted that the behavior of cyber-addicted personality is characterized by the following basic criteria: the depreciation of all living things, including himself; the disappearance of the habit of working and finding pleasure in it; the fall of cognitive interests and the sabotage of educational activity; self-restraint, indifference and coldness to people.Determined the essential characteristics of cybercrime. It is emphasized that legal and moral nihilism, which has become widespread in the virtual world, is a world-view ground for cybercrime. Nihilism as an anti-value destroys the foundations of informational, legal and moral cultures. To increase the level of information culture of Internet users, it is important to increase educational and educational work, especially among young people, as well as to establish strict liability for committed cybercrimes. The fight against cybercrimes requires special legislation, trained law enforcement officers in this area. However, certain restrictions on the Internet should not turn into censorship, narrowing the field of individual freedom for artificial reasons. It is argued that cybercrime from an axiological point of view is based on anti-values that are rooted in the consciousness of the subject of the virtual world. It is substantiated that virtual reality is a field of struggle of values and anti-values, high samples of informational culture and immoral and anti-legal ways of activity. Anti- values of the virtual world is a continuation of the real world, but at the same time, their interpretation and embodiment have their own particularities in the virtual space. To the anti-values of the virtual world, it is worth mentioning violence and aggression, the restriction of individual freedom because of various forms of cyber-addiction, loss of responsibility for their actions, etc.

EXISTENTIAL VACUUM AND IDENTITY CRISIS

It is shown that on way of forming the meaning of life the existential vacuum can get, mechanism of getting out of which must be sought in the service of an important cause, love for another human being, self-realization of man.Noted that it is necessary to demark it from the concept of «happiness» to analyze the meaning of life. In this context, it is necessary to indicate what goals we want to achieve when we talk about the realization of the «meaning of life», and also to determine condi- tions that are worthy of greater pride or admiration, as well as the values that determine them.Emphasized that the opposite concept of nihilism arises when we try to isolate the meaning of life and determine its characteristic features. Pessimism is often associated with extreme pessimism and radical skepticism. Nihilism aims at the destruction of moral, religious and metaphysical beliefs and can fuel an anthropological crisis. And falling into an existential vacuum – to find there fertile soil. Various types of nihilism are considered, such as: political nihilism, which is based on the belief that the destruction of all existing political, social and religious institutions is an indispensable condition for any further improvement of the political system; Ethical nihilism or moral nihilism, which rejects the possibility of absolute moral or ethical values (it is considered that it is not possible to distinguish between good and evil, because their demarcation is nothing more than a product of social and cultural context); Existential nihilism, which postulates the idea that life has no intrinsic meaning or value.Asserted that humanism confirms our ability to self-realization of the individual and responsibility for the sake of the common good for all people. The happiness of an indi- vidual is inseparably linked with the well-being of mankind as a whole, in part because we are «social animals» and develop in a «cultural context». Losing the meaning of life leads to a psychological crisis, internal conflict, loss of self-identity, which leads to a new crisis – the identity crisis. The crisis of identity is actualized against the background of the disorientation of its social role, continuity as a result of conflicting expectations and un- certainty about itself and its role in society. The identity crisis is generated by many factors, including economic instability, negative images in the media, as well as the lack of role models, clear ideological programs and blurred values.Reported that in the context of the developed multiculturalism in the globalization world, the question of the hierarchy of values and the system of personal identification becomes particularly difficult, since in recent years the identity crisis, instigated by social divisions, economic difficulties, cultural ill-treatment and political oppression, is becoming an actual problem requiring Attention. The various moods that arise in society, and emo- tional upheavals provoke an identity crisis in large-scale structures. By personal self- identification, it is suggested to understand the idea that people create meaning through social interaction with other people-that is, the position of symbolic interactionism, in which the individual’s identity acts as a social product formed as a result of social interac- tions within specific social contexts.

Augustine Deformed: Love, Sin, and Freedom in the Western Moral Tradition.

How did we arrive at “the systematically anti-Christian, indeed anti-religious, world-view which most opinion formers of the Western Establishment now profess” (6)? Several major studies in recent years have challenged the default position that this is simply the inevitable result of the progress of science, and have instead argued for the importance of contingent historical factors that could have gone otherwise. Notably, Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation argues that the Reformation and the doctrinal “hyperpluralism” and religio-political conflicts to which it gave rise ultimately led to modern Western secularism, moral subjectivism, and consumer capitalism. John Rist's Augustine Deformed now joins the ranks of those studies. Rist, professor emeritus of classics and philosophy at the University of Toronto, expresses much agreement with Gregory but faults him for failing to reach back to the early medieval period—in fact, to Augustine—for the causes of our present “intellectual, moral and cultural nihilism” (4).

An Ecocritical Reading of Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky

Landscapes are not simply something objective and unchallenged out there but the work of the mind made by the strata of memory. This paper attempts to show that an ecocritical reading of Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky (1949) helps one in better understanding of this novel of post-colonial alienation and existential despair. Bowles is an American writer and a composer who is undoubtedly the most arresting example of cross-cultural influence concerning a Western author and the Middle East and North Africa. His fiction mostly focuses on American expatriates travelling in exotic locations. The Sheltering Sky is an encounter with the Sahara, not only the physical one but the desert of moral nihilism into which one may wander blindly. The boundless desert acts here as a metaphor and the journey symbolizes one’s own journey into the depth of his/her soul. The desert also projects an apocalyptic vision in the struggle between the West and the East and the Sahara becomes in fact a Conradian Heart of Darkness, an Eliotian Waste Land, and a Sartrean No Exit. In the novel the actual environment becomes in some ways pale and covert under the psyche of the writer. Consequently we come to know that Bowles's own knowledge and awareness of the same environments left traces in his work. Accordingly we may wrap up that the environment bears a direct impact on our understanding of it.

Toward a psychoanalytic theory of violence, fundamentalism and terrorism

Why would a group of people behave in ways that appear to us as moral nihilism, such as the events of 9/11? One cause is an affective one that underlies all violent behavior, namely, narcissistic injuries severe enough to threaten the survival of the self or of the group with which the self identifies, in the absence of non-violent means of maintaining or restoring individual or collective self-esteem. But there is also a uniquely modern cognitive reason for this uniquely modern form of violence, and of the apocalyptic fundamentalism that legitimizes it: namely, that terrorists see themselves as destroying the nihilism that they perceive as coming from us, that is, from the modern Western scientific mentality that destroys the credibility of the traditional sources of moral, legal and political authority and legitimacy, God and religion. Fundamentalism originated in the United States and has spread throughout the world as a rebellion against modernity. This suggests means of curing it: by facilitating access to modern education, psychological awareness, socio-economic equality and political democracy, to help protect all societies from the affective threats of shame and humiliation, and the cognitive threats of nihilism, anomie and anarchy (and their alternatives, nationalism, dogmatism and theocracy).

Identity, legitimacy, and chaste widows

ABSTRACTI will sketch an evolutionary map of the four versions of Chineseness and explore the corresponding changes in the ideologies of the Chinese culture. A focal point is to diagram the shifting currents of moral realism vs. nihilism, cultural universalism vs. particularism and to explain how political legitimacy becomes entangled with personal identity and, as an example, how chaste widows can constitute a potent political rhetoric.

Interpreting from the Interstices: The Role of Justice in a Liberal Democracy—Lessons from Michael Walzer and Emmanuel Levinas

Interpreting from the IntersticesThe Role of Justice in a Liberal Democracy—Lessons from Michael Walzer and Emmanuel Levinas Nicholas R. Brown (bio) 1 As anyone who is familiar with more recent theological debate can attest, the appraisal of the liberal democratic tradition has undergone a radical reevaluation in the wake of Stanley Hauerwas’s and Alasdair MacIntyre’s scathing critiques. As a result of their blistering assault, religious ethicists and philosophers now find themselves operating within a discursive milieu that is almost the photo negative of the one they previously inhabited. For what has followed After Virtue and After Christendom is a situation in which compliance with liberal democratic norms is now perceived as actively inveighing against justice rather than as an integral prerequisite to its pursuit. There are cracks, however, beginning to emerge in the MacIntyre/Hauerwas edifice. For what is becoming disputed and increasingly so among a growing chorus of religious ethicists and philosophers is whether their critical reading of liberal democracy offers the most [End Page 155] helpful or even the most biblical way to think through its own moral dimensions as well as those undergirding its relationship with justice. It is the emergence of these criticisms that forms the basis for this essay. For the thesis that I wish to advance below is that liberal democracy offers religious ethicists and philosophers alike a moral framework and vocabulary from which it is possible to comprehend and enact the normative precepts encapsulated within a biblical understanding of justice. Accordingly, some aspects of my argument will build upon the rhetorical trajectories that have been already charted by the ethicists and philosophers I mention above. What distinguishes my approach, however, is that I will proceed from a more focused examination of some of the ethical and political undercurrents found within contemporary Jewish thought. More specifically, I want to probe the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and the political philosophy of Michael Walzer, for I believe the juxtapositional methodology of interpretation which informs each of their perspectives is illustrative of an interstitial hermeneutic that helps further illuminate the moral compatibility between biblical and democratic accounts of justice. 2 By now, MacIntyre’s and Hauerwas’s critiques of the liberal democratic tradition have been so thoroughly documented, discussed, and dissected that a review of their perspectives cannot help but have a certain pleonastic quality. Probably the most significant and disturbing problem that MacIntyre and Hauerwas see belying the liberal democratic tradition stems from its conception of time and space, or more precisely, its lack thereof. For what they discover upon a more careful probing of its moral and epistemological underpinnings is a pursuit of transcendence not dissimilar to Gnostic metaphysics. In the case of liberalism, however, the existential encumbrances to be excised are not corporeal and carnal in nature, but historical and social. [End Page 156] Such conditionalities, surmise liberal theorists, are so shot through with conceptual prejudices that they comprise an interpretative straight-jacket that vitiates against the kind of objectivity necessary to engage in a nonparochial process of moral and political discernment. For it is precisely this ability “to be able to stand back from any and every situation in which one is involved, from any and every characteristic that one may possess, and to pass judgment on it from a purely universal and abstract point of view that is totally detached from all social particularity” which MacIntyre sees as constituting “the essence of moral agency” of modern liberalism (AV 31–32). Therefore, “liberalism is successful,” maintains Hauerwas, “exactly because . . . [it] provide[s] that philosophical account of society designed to deal with” the moral and political implications such a social and historical denuding portends, namely “a system of rules that will constitute procedures for resolving disputes as they pursue their various interests.”1 However, what liberalism defines as success MacIntyre and Hauerwas see as anything but. Instead, both judge its “system of rules” to be an insidious prescription for a particularly virulent form of moral nihilism and political bankruptcy. For by stripping moral and political discourse of their historical and social referents, liberalism, ironically and tragically, eviscerates itself of the very heuristic and discursive practices necessary to make those...

Climate Change Inaction and Moral Nihilism

The effects of anthropogenic climate change may be devastating. Nevertheless, most people do not seem to be seriously concerned. We consume as much as we always did, drive as much as we always did, eat as much meat as we always did. What can we do to overcome this collective apathy? In order to be able to develop effective measures, we must first get clear about the causes of climate change inaction. In this paper I ask whether moral nihilism (the denial of moral truths) is a significant cause of climate change inaction. The answer to this question depends mainly on the extent to which being a moral nihilist reduces one's likelihood of taking action against climate change. At first sight, the extent seems to be considerable. I argue, however, that this assumption is false. Only slightly more non-nihilists than nihilists are led to climate-friendly actions by moral considerations. And in absolute terms, morality plays such a minor role in leading people to act that the difference is barely noticeable.

Les enjeux du dualisme chez Hans Jonas

This paper summarises the issues of dualism in the philosophy of Hans Jonas. Dualism was a central topic for him to understand gnosticism in late antiquity, and it became also a key concept to understand moral nihilism of the XXth century. Jonas demonstrates that Heidegger’s thought in Sein und Zeit ‑ which enables him to elaborate the heuristic method to shed light on gnostic dualism ‑ was in fact itself based on a dualistic anthropology. On the one hand, Jonas attempted to reply to it with a philosophical biology ; on the other hand, his reply to the cosmological dualism thanks to his speculative and mythical concept of the weak God.

Buddhist Non-Cognitivism

The purpose of this essay is twofold. First, I plan to argue that in light of Buddhist epistemology and metaphysics, it would be an inherent contradiction to the Buddhist tradition as whole to defend the cognitivist view that moral knowledge is possible. Quite the contrary, this essay will demonstrate that, in light of Buddhist theories of knowledge and metaphysical philosophies of no-self and emptiness, Buddhist ethics only makes coherent sense from a standpoint of non-cognitivism. Second, from the arguments that support a non-cognitivist reading of Buddhist ethics, I plan to show that such a standpoint does not entail moral nihilism. Rather, what we find in Buddhism is a middle-way ethic of pluralism. Herein I shall argue that the moral life of Buddhism non-cognitively arises within skandha of feelings, yet is conditioned by the cognitive nature of Buddhist wisdom.

Dear Killer by Katherine Ewell (review)

Reviewed by: Dear Killer by Katherine Ewell Karen Coats Ewell, Katherine. Dear Killer. Tegen/HarperCollins, 2014. 359p. ISBN 978-0-06-225780-2 $17.99 R Gr. 7-10. Kit’s mother began training Kit to be an assassin when she was only nine years old; now, at sixteen, she is known as the Perfect Killer, the most feared serial killer in London since Jack the Ripper. Unlike most serial killers, though, Kit murders for hire, collecting requests and fees through a secret mailbox that some dismiss as the stuff of urban legend, but others use to convey their desire to have those who have hurt them eliminated. The moral nihilism that her mother has ingrained in her protects her from any pangs of conscience and her careful precision protects her from the law, but both these protections begin to unravel as she accepts a job too close to home and befriends a handsome young police officer who is investigating the Perfect Killer. While the teenaged author’s writing is occasionally amateurish, the premise and the working out of Kit’s wavering commitment to her unusual upbringing are grimly fascinating as they probe deeply into profound questions of moral relativism and human value. Kit is believably caught between a desire to please her mother and believe in the rightness of the teachings of her childhood, and a growing awareness that she can no longer psychologically bear her occupation. The reasons people want other people dead are unexpectedly banal, but Kit doesn’t seem to pass judgment, and that becomes part of a consistency in her motivations that readers will need to tease out: she kills because other people [End Page 514] want her to, first her mother, and then the letter-writers, but that simplicity begins to fray as she starts to want things for herself and question her place in the larger world. Underneath the dark sensationalism thus lurks a complex framing of moral questions that thoughtful teens will want to grapple with. Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Face Values: Optics as Ethics in Joseph Conrad’s <em>The Secret Agent</em>

In a sense the is equipped to lie the most and leak the most, and thus can be a very confusing source of information during deception.-Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, Nonverbal Leakage and Clues to Deception (1969)'He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keeP a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his finger-tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. And thus the task °f waking the most hidden recesses of the mind is one which it is quite possible to accomplish.-Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905)2What are you that for? You see, you can't even bear the mention of something conclusive? am not a face. -Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907)3For Freud, secrets are destined to leak, if not from mismanaged bodily conduct, then from inevitable slips of the tongue. Prior to this conception of unintentional self-disclosure, Charles Darwin, writing in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), identified the as the primary vehicle of self-expression, both intentional and otherwise, arguing that our faces, while responsive to our control, inevitably betray our wills.4 Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, drawing from this physiognomic tradition, termed such unguarded disclosures micro leakage[s], clues that thwart the liar's attempt to perpetuate deception through his face.5 Admittedly, Ekman and Friesen are writing here about telling lies, and Freud is writing about keeping secrets, two acts that carry ostensibly different moral valences, since lying is almost always unethical, and secret keeping is more ambiguous. Despite this difference, both theories of leakage posit an observer who reads these bodily and facial surfaces as a means of making conscious the subject's interior.This confidence in the ability to determine the meaning or intent behind presumably unintentional acts of disclosure stands in contrast to the third epigraph, taken from Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel, The Secret Agent. In a scene that foregrounds the thematic importance of legibility in the novel, along with the epistemological uncertainty of the face, Comrade Ossipon, a member of a secret anarchist cell, meets with the explosivewielding anarchist known only as the Professor. The former hopes to the inside of this confounded affair, a bombing in Greenwich Park, in which a man has died (ST, 52). The Professor chastises Ossipon for believing that any such knowledge could be a matter of inquiry to others, and this profound skepticism regarding the ability to continues into the conversation when he accuses Ossipon of making a face (ST, 53, 58). Ossipon misunderstands the charge, contradictorily suggesting that he can intentionally control his because his is not something he is intentionally making. Suggesting that there is something to know about his face, he subscribes to physiognomic logic, defensively declaring that he has nothing to hide.Ironically, the very notion of concealment runs counter to the Professor's entire philosophy; the distinction on which concealment turns-between intention and action, the interior and its expression-is, according to the Professor, characteristic of morality, which governs your thought, and your action too, and thus neither your thought or action can ever be conclusive (ST, 59). According to this logic, a does not offer its reader an inside to be known. It thus cannot function (as conventional morality and physiognomic logic would have it) as a potential arbiter of trust, transparency, and mutual accountability or, alternatively, as a mask or tool of concealment. Having a does not give one an interior, a psychology, or depth capable of being explained, read, discussed, analyzed, or even hidden. Rather than corroborating the Professor's moral nihilism, this failure of the to mean in the novel, as I suggest here, is the source of its ethical potential. …

Skeptical hypotheses and moral skepticism

Moral skeptics maintain that we do not have moral knowledge. Traditionally they haven't argued via skeptical hypotheses like those provided by perceptual skeptics about the external world, such as Descartes' deceiving demon. But some believe this can be done by appealing to hypotheses like moral nihilism. Moreover, some claim that skeptical hypotheses have special force in the moral case. But I argue that skeptics have failed to specify an adequate skeptical scenario, which reveals a general lesson: such arguments are not a promising avenue for moral skeptics to take. They're ultimately weaker when applied to morality compared to perception.

Destruction, Moral Nihilism and the Poetics of Debris in Jia Zhangke's Still Life

Jia Zhangke's 2006 digital feature Still Life exhibits two impulses in its creation process: one is moral admonition, the other is aesthetic meditation. Jia's moral preoccupation is mainly mediated through the sound effects while his aesthetic obsession is prominently conveyed through visual spectacles. The aestheticization of the bare materials, as pre-linguistic existence, creates a “poetics of debris” which constantly disrupts and subverts the narrative flow of the film. The poetics of debris exceeds the narrative intention of the displaced, enchanted director but, unexpectedly, brings his social critique to a more profound level.

Morality and Religion: Some Questions about First Principles

AbstractChallenged by moral nihilism we have three options: some sort of “Protagorean” conventionalism, a transcendentally rooted version of “naturalism” originally identified by Plato and fleshed out by Augustine, and a “virtual” morality cynically marketed as objective. Conventionalism, however, fails to ground obligation, which could thus be justified only by “Augustine's” alternative, which he developed from its original in three ways: by proposing a personal first principle, thus emphasising respect for every individual; by deepening our awareness of evil in reinforcing the notion of “crime” by that of “sin” against the nature and consequent commands of a personal God; and by locating us in no timeless sphere of pure rationality but in our particular historical space. Religion (so understood) and moral obligation stand or fall together.

The universal sentiment of Daoist morality

Daoism has often been misunderstood as moral nihilism or anti-moralism, but the true Daoism indeed adopts a positive attitude towards morality. At the foundation of its universal sentiment is an affirmation of morality. Daoism takes all things as the starting point of its values in moral philosophy, and ziran 自然 (sponstaneously so) as the foundation of its philosophy with the universal commitment. Daoism hopes to use “Dao” to create the best environment for survival, and to fulfill individual responsibility for all things in the world. This is a universal and open attitude towards values. The attraction of Daoist universal sentiment is that it takes ziran as its path, and “objectless desire”, “unprincipled knowing”, “non-coercive action” as ways and means to ensure the transfer of the universal value to all things, while ensuring that they realize their true values and make contributions to the whole society.

Do We Have Any Justified Moral Beliefs?*

In this fine book, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues for a "moderate Pyrrhonian" skeptical view about justified moral belief.1 His argument rests on the thesis that the justification of a belief is a relation between that belief and a class of alternatives (83-87). On this thesis, the "contrast-class view," we can assess the justification of a belief relative to various contrast classes. Sinnott-Armstrong argues that there is no showing that any particular class has epistemological priority (97-103; 117-129); because of this we should suspend belief about whether any moral beliefs are justified "without qualification" (130; 251). This is his "Pyrrhonian moral skepticism." Sinnott-Armstrong also argues that moral nihilism cannot be ruled-out (99, 133); given this, no positive moral belief is justified relative to contrast classes that include moral nihilism. Nevertheless, he thinks, some moral beliefs may be justified relative to alternatives that are taken seriously in ordinary deliberation (130-131). This is his "moderate moral skepticism." Sinnott-Armstrong's arguments are rich and subtle. His book includes a sophisticated assessment of debates in epistemology as well as a thorough examination of the epistemological resources of metaethical theories. I cannot do justice to all of this. I will attempt merely to raise problems for the contrast-class view and for Sinnott-Armstrong's position that nihilism cannot be ruled-out.