The Moral Sense (Free Press Paperbacks)
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Last annotated on April 4, 2017
PrefaceRead more at location 34
Note: la virtù ha una brutta fama: x i giovani è il contrario del divertimento x i vecchi un arma politica o nostalgica. eppure il moralismo spopola. come è possibile? nascondiamo il tipico linguaggio della morale dietro il linguaggio sui caratteri... tesi: l uomo ha una sua natura morale e ad essa si appella ogni disvorso etico convincente. perchè i discorsi moralisti ci infastidiscono? forse xchè riteniamo che nn siano nè razionali nè scientifici. domanda molto fondandosi sul nulla. darwin: siamo solo degli egoisti ipocriti. così almeno la vulgata di qs autore freud: il senso di colpa è sintomo di repressione. marx: contano solo i rapporti di forza. x la moralità nn c è posto in qs autori che hanno forgiato la modernità. on loro la svienza sfida il senso comune. fallacia naturalistica: scienza e morale sono separate da un abisso. in campo etico possiamo avere solo opinioni ma nessuna conoscenza... antropologia: ci mostra quanto vari sono i costumi. nn esiste una natura umana... inoltre è sbagliato giudicare i costumi altrui... filosofia: impazza il relativismo... conclusione maggioritaria: l uomo moderno si affida unicamente alla pancia o al calcolo egoistico.. chi parla di virtù è invitato ad abbassare la voce e si becca del rozzo se nn del fanatico... conclusione del libro: l uomo moderno conserva la sua natura morale ma tenta di schermirla o sprezzarla. quando l occultamento nn è più possibile esplode in tirate moralistiche salvo utilizzare linguaggi della politica della giustizia eccetera... a volte l occultamento del senso morale deriva dalla sensazione che parlare di giusto o sbagliato faccia male e opprima, specie i bimbi... i bambini sono onvitati a discutere: value clarification. senonchè la cosa li manda in confusione più che essere un chiarimento... di fronte a tanto relativismo sbandierato è normale che un ragazzo si droghi bari ai test o? sospendiamo il giudizio. il libro non parla di qs. tema del libro: siamo veramente dei relativisti etici? e perchè ci teniamo tanto a dirci tali? è importante xchè potremmo anche diventare ciò che crediamo di essere... oggi la parola valore predomina. ma cosa si intende? si parli di divorzio figli illegittimi droga crimine media il dibattito è sempre sui valori. la parola valori ci disimpegna sviando il discorso sulle preferenze sui gusti... ma nessuno crede veramente a qs altrimenti nn difenderebbe i suoi valori con tanta forza. nn si difendono i propri gusti alzando il pugno. da un lato siamo scettici quando sentiamo pontificare sui valori dall altro scegliao la ns compagnia in base ai valori... gli studi sullo sviluppo infantile evidenziano l emergenza di un senso morale... tesi: siamo dei moralisti naturali. il giudizio morale è inevitabile... il fatto che puoi parlare di morale con tutti significa che tutti capiscano di cosa si parla... tesi: molti giudizi espressi nn sono sentiti affatto come relativi... senso morale: intuizione morale... il senso morale è una predisposizione nn si identifica con nessun obbligo specifico... esempi di senso morale: senso del dovere della correttezza della simpatia dell autocontrollo... maestri: david hume adam smith. dobbiamo integrare con biologia e nuove conoscenze... quali evidenze segnalano l esistenza di un senso morale?… i comportamenti valgono più di mille parole.. qual è la fonte del senso morale?: natura famiglia cultura... il dilemma della cultura: come è nata in occidente l idea universalista (quella x cui tutti sono formalmente uguali)??.… conclusione: esiste una natura etica umana. è fragile e va coltivata e protetta... oltre all egoismo (il ns peccato originale) esiste in moi il desiderio di essere lodati e di meritarci le lodi x la ns correttezza... analogia dell agricoltura: con lo spontaneismo nn raccoglierai mai molto tuttavia nemmeno è necessario fabbricare nulla in laboratorio. tutto è già presente in natura. nè spontaneismo nè uomo nuovo... PREFA@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Edit
Virtue has acquired a bad name. To young people it is the opposite of having fun, to older ones it is a symbol of lost virtue that politicians now exploit for partisan purposes,Read more at location 34
Yet the daily discourse of ordinary people is filled with oblique references to morality.Read more at location 36
This preoccupation, like the adjectives with which we express it—loyal, kind, or nice; disloyal, selfish, or rude—is with the language of morality, even though we often disguise it in the language of personality.Read more at location 41
I endeavor to show that mankind has a moral natureRead more at location 45
I believe it is because we have learned, either firsthand from intellectuals or secondhand from the pronouncements of people influenced by intellectuals, that morality has no basis in science or logic. To defend morality is to defend the indefensible.Read more at location 47
Charles Darwin taught us, we suppose, that a person is the isolated product of a competition for survival among selfish genes coping with material circumstances; his or her morals are entirely utilitarian and selfcentered.Read more at location 50
Sigmund Freud taught us, we suppose, that guilt is an unhealthy expression of a repressed impulse;Read more at location 52
Karl Marx taught us, we suppose, that we are driven entirely by economic impulses;Read more at location 53
That spirit has been one of skepticism. Science has challenged common sense;Read more at location 56
Anthropologists have shown how various are the customs of mankind;Read more at location 57
the dominant tradition in modern anthropology has held that those customs are entirely the product of culture, and so we can conclude that man has no nature apart from his culture.Read more at location 58
Many people have persuaded themselves that no law has any foundation in a widely shared sense of justice;Read more at location 67
Many people have persuaded themselves that children will be harmed if they are told right from wrong;Read more at location 68
they should be encouraged to discuss the merits of moral alternatives. This is called “values clarification,”Read more at location 69
I think it a recipe for confusion rather than clarity.Read more at location 70
Many people have persuaded themselves that it is wrong to judge the customs of another society since there are no standards apart from custom on which such judgments can rest;Read more at location 70
people who have persuaded themselves to embrace nonmoral standards should not be surprised if young people who have heard these ideas grow up taking drugs, cheating on tests, and shooting their enemies.Read more at location 77
Do we really want to have the utterly malleable, slightly cynical, superficially tolerant, wholly transparent human nature that we claim we have?Read more at location 81
We must be careful of what we think we are, because we may become that.Read more at location 83
When they speak of virtue, they must do so privately, in whispers, lest they be charged with the grievous crime of being “unsophisticated” or, if they press the matter, “fanatics.”Read more at location 85
When we try to explain the high rate of crime, some argue that it is the result of young people’s no longer having the right values and others claim that it is caused by social barriers that have prevented young people from attaining their values by legitimate means.Read more at location 89
Hardly anyone can discuss the problems of public schools without claiming or denying that these failures are the result of the schools’ teaching the wrong values, or no values.Read more at location 93
We are engaged in a cultural war, a war about values. It is not a new war; it has been going on for centuries as part of a continuing struggle at national self-definition. Once the issues were slavery, temperance, religion, and prostitution; today they are divorce, illegitimacy, crime, and entertainment.Read more at location 96
But what do we mean by a “value”? A taste? A preference? A belief? A moral principle? A binding obligation?Read more at location 100
beneath that tolerance there lurks among many of us a worrisome uncertainty—some of us doubt that we have a defensible philosophy or credible conviction that we would want to impose.Read more at location 102
The word “values” finesses all of the tough questions. It implies a taste or preference and recalls to mind the adage that there is no disputing tastes.Read more at location 103
But of course we don’t really mean that our beliefs are no more than tastes, because when we defend them—to the extent we can—our muscles tighten and our knuckles grow white.Read more at location 104
That is not the way we discuss our taste for vanilla ice cream. We are aware, then, that some values are more important than others,Read more at location 106
We suspect that “values clarification” is not the best way to teach the young but lack the confidence to assert a value that ought to be defended.Read more at location 110
Students of child development have observed the emergence of the moral sense and given respectful and thoughtful accounts of it. However much the scientific method is thought to be the enemy of morality, scientific findings provide substantial support for its existence and power.Read more at location 114
tries to make clear that people necessarily make moral judgments, that many of those judgments are not arbitrary or unique to some time, place, or culture,Read more at location 121
By a moral sense I mean an intuitive or directly felt belief about how one ought to act when one is free to act voluntarily (that is, not under duress).Read more at location 124
you cannot discuss morality with someone who is devoid of any moral sense.3 The fact that you can discuss morality with practically anyone suggests to me that the word “ought” has an intuitively obvious meaningRead more at location 128
This effort is a continuation of work begun by certain eighteenth-century English and Scottish thinkers, notably Joseph Butler, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith.Read more at location 142
What I seek to add to this tradition is a knowledge of what the biological and social sciences have since learned about what they were the first to call the moral sense.Read more at location 143
what is the evidence for the existence of a moral sense?Read more at location 157
Much of what we know about the moral senses has to be inferred from how people behave. For example: We observe somebody helping somebody else. Is the explanation a desire for a reward, hope for a reciprocal favor, or genuine compassion for the other fellow? The best one can do is to try to make a plausible inference from the factsRead more at location 159
how did it happen that in the West people were induced to believe that our moral sentiments should extend to many, perhaps all, people, and not just to family, close relatives, and ethnic kin?Read more at location 171
In the concluding chapter I bring together the arguments I have been advancing and draw out some of their larger implications.Read more at location 173
To anticipate and oversimplify the conclusion, it is that an older view of human nature than is now current in the human sciences and moral philosophy is the correct view;Read more at location 176
Beneath our wars, crimes, envies, fanaticisms, persecutions, snobberies, and adulteries; beneath, that is to say, all of those human traits that might be said to constitute our original sin, there is a desire not only for praise but for praiseworthiness, for fair dealings as well as for good deals, for honor as well as for advantage.Read more at location 180
