!E for Ethics --- agk's diary 1 October 2021 @ 17:14 --- written on Pinebook Pro instead of stressful final papers --- 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.