Abstract
The general conceptualisation of the dynamics and structures of moral change this book argues for has the following three characteristics. Firstly, that there is no particular type of dynamic necessary for moral change, and that the dynamics of moral change are irreducibly pluralistic. Secondly, that moral changes do not unfold in a uniform way. They can have different structures and thus be understood through metaphors like the dawn, the bargaining table, a shift of tide, the rebellion or the meteor strike. Lastly, some moral changes unfold in holistic and organic manners, the former challenging the universal usefulness of the idea of distinct dynamics creating a change and the latter challenging the general meaningfulness of the need for an explanation of moral change.
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Notes
- 1.
A preliminary way of explaining the term ‘dynamic ’ is to say that the dynamics of a change are what can be presented as the answer to the question ‘Why did this change happen?’ (or, as we shall see, a possible part of what can be so presented).
- 2.
The term ‘theory’ has no unison use in academia, and it covers what seems to be several different concepts. Schiller (2016) describes the diversity of the term’s meanings in anthropology. To that can be added the various uses of it in the social sciences and all of the humanities (and probably also a variety of uses in the natural sciences). What we are left with is a very complex picture. My critique and rejection in the following of a theory of moral change is therefore not directed at everything called ‘a theory of moral change’, but only a general explanatory theory of fundamental and recurring dynamics of moral change. I use terms like ‘a general account’, ‘metaphors of’, ‘a conceptual overview’, ‘knowledge of’, and ‘a conception of’ to designate some of the forms of conceptualisations I believe we can develop of moral changes. These are things often also referred to as ‘a theory’ in academia. But for heuristic reasons, I choose not to do so. For two different defences of the use of the term ‘theory’ in the humanities, see Nussbaum (2000) and Hämäläinen (2006).
- 3.
- 4.
See, for example, Hopf (2018) for similar considerations. To try to counter over-rationalistic understandings of human life, and, for example, carve out a space for the spontaneous, or the religious, or the instinctive, is not, of course, to argue for an irrational understandings of human life or to be ‘against science’ or anything if this sort.
- 5.
- 6.
The word is borrowed from Burian (2001: 399), but it has a different meaning in his article.
- 7.
See Pitt (2001: 378) for a similar line of reasoning in the philosophy of science.
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Eriksen, C. (2020). Conclusion: Army of Metaphors. In: Moral Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61037-1_10
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