Abstract
The conception of ethical normativity emerging from the discussions of Part II is pluralistic in the sense that it is argued that there is no ethical essence but several possible sources of ethical normativity. It is contextual in so far as it is reasoned that it is the concrete situation at hand which determines what is ethically at stake. Further, an answer to what ‘the moral in moral changes is’ is offered by developing a conception of the ethical along four irreducible dimensions, namely the transcendental, the immanent, the absolute, and the transcending.
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Notes
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‘Ideal type’ and ‘Gedankenbild’ are terms borrowed from Weber (Weber 2009: 25–26, 42, 63, 132). Kuusela unfolds it like this: “[An ideal type] is used to draw attention to certain characteristics of the objects of investigation, but to what extent the latter actually correspond to the former is left open. […] the model becomes ‘a picture with which we compare reality, through which we represent how things are; […] where ‘reality’ includes anything one might want to take as one’s object of investigation” (Kuusela 2008: 125).
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The idea of having several irreducible dimensions of a concept stems from Hyman’s treatment of the concept of human agency (Hyman 2015: iv). In unfolding a contextual understanding of ethics, I am inspired by the work of Wittgenstein, Løgstrup, Diamond , Fink and Crary (see, e.g. Eriksen forthcoming).
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The use of this term here differs from (some interpretations of) Kant’s use of the term in at least two crucial ways: First, the transcendental here is not to be understood as conditioned by ‘the human mind’s setup’. No form of idealism is implied. ‘The ethical is a transcendental condition for human life’ is in Wittgenstein’s sense ‘a grammatical remark’; a remark about our practice with the word ‘human’. The other way it differs from (some interpretations of) Kant is that he seems to understand the transcendental as unchanging. The concept of human life has always been an ethical life, as far as we can tell. But concepts do change, and the ethical can thus in principle cease having the role of transcendental condition for human life. Yet, currently, this possibility lacks sense.
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Diamond elaborates on Laura Ingall’s The Long Winter along similar lines (Diamond 1999).
- 7.
This is, of course, not the first time Edmund does something ethically bad in his life. Most of us do that on a daily basis, and Edmund has never been ‘one of God’s best children’. Yet what happens here, as I read the story, is the beginning of a shift—he goes from being above average mean to sliding towards developing ‘a bad character’.
- 8.
This is in some respects similar to the method Kierkegaaard employs in his choice of writing pseudonymous works (‘indirect communication’), though not in all, as Kierkegaard has a religious aim with his work, namely to help his reader become a true Christian.
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Eriksen, C. (2020). Conclusion: Contextual Ethics. In: Moral Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61037-1_18
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