The Irony of Metaethics Humility & the Quasi-Divine Imagination

Richard Harry

Date of Award

2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Michalson, Gordon

Keywords

Ethics, Humility, Quasi-Divine Imagination

Area of Concentration

Religion

Abstract

This thesis joins recent trends in contemporary ethical theory by pushing towards a historicist and pragmatic approach to understanding the contingency of our moral ideals, while simultaneously confronting the longrunning essentialist debates about man's allegedly universal and fundamental moral identity. The latter focus is a quasi- metaphysical obsession that can be traced historically from theological sources, manifesting itself in radically diverse ways throughout the philosophies of both Kant and Nietzsche. This essentialist search is characterized by a vocabulary that limits man's intrinsic moral identity to an ahistorical 'essence', the bottom of the self, a core that is rigid and non-fluctuating. My analysis suggests that this essentialist impulse easily pulls in two equally undesirable directions: at one extreme, the 'moral law' and an abstract supra-human vision of the 'good in-itself' offers us a quasi-divine conception of the self; conversely, the intrinsically cruel and 'selfdestructive' nature of the 'will to power' leads us to a hopeless and nihilistic conception of man's moral identity. By contrast, the pragmatic approach concentrates on the various ways of sustaining and perpetuating our utopian dreams and shared moral ideals. This view holds that language is the primary force in shaping our self-image and moral identity, and it asks us to be self-conscious and critical about our use of different vocabularies. This anti-essentialist approach abandons static debates about man's essential and universal nature, instead opting for an ungrounded practical hope that learns to deal without guarantee or certainty on such irresolvable 'eternal questions'. This thesis takes a theological stance insofar as it is willing to give priority to love over knowledge in sustaining the hope that is necessary to breath life into our moral dreams.

Rights

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