On Ethics & Morals

Ethics are not the same as morals. One of the problems with our post-modernist society is the conflation of the two, which I believe to be the basis of our culture war today.

For starters, let’s define the two terms.

Ethics:  A set of principles of right conduct; A theory or a system of moral values; The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy; The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession.

Morals: Of or concerned with the judgment of right or wrong of human action and character; Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behavior; Conforming to standards of what is right or just in behavior; virtuous; Arising from conscience or the sense of right and wrong; Having psychological rather than physical or tangible effects; Based on strong likelihood or firm conviction, rather than on the actual evidence.

Ethics are based on a moral system, however ethics can neither exist without nor supplant morality. This is the mistake made during the French Revolution that led to public guillotines and a regression to a dictatorship with Emperor Napoleon. This is the same mistake we are making today with the loss of religion, the desecration of tradition, and the rise of ‘wokeism’. 

One way to understand the insidiousness of post-modern ethics is through the rise of history revisionism, allowing for past events to be recategorized or recontextualized using a post-modernist lens. History revisionism is not merely the rewriting of history to fit a narrative, although that tends to be the layman’s interpretation like with the 1619 project. The core of it is the post-modernist ethics which emphasize that history is not relegated the the past, that through their concept of alterity, it also exists it the present and future, thus allowing and demanding alternative versions to be exposed.

What is alterity? Alterity is a philosophical and anthropological term meaning "otherness", that is, the "other of two". It is also increasingly being used in media to express something other than "sameness", or something outside of tradition or convention. By analyzing ethics through alterity, it allows “alterity to mark its radical or unrepresentable difference.” In conclusion, “without this ethic openness, difference could not be carried out as difference” and would “submit to the power of representation.” (1)

Not only does this pervasive theory allow for history revisionism, it opens up the can of worms in all sectors of society - identity, politics, economics, competency, privacy - to name a few. Transgenderism, wokeness, equity, intersectionalism, and degradation of privacy all stem from this post-modernist interpretation of ethics. A cornucopia of genders exists because gender must be analyzed through alterity. Equality of opportunity doesn’t guarantee equitable outcome, so with a post-modernist ethical lens, is unethical and a focus on equity has replaced it.  

What cued me into this was reading What Happens to History: The Renewal of Ethics in Contemporary Thought, ed. by Howard Marchitello. It discusses ethics through a contemporary, post-modern lens and through various post-modernists such as Heidegger, Derrida, and Levinson. While I am all for a renewal of ethics in contemporary thought, I reject the ongoing ethics revisionism and the eradication of morals for ethics.

For instance, one moral we have is thou shall not kill. It is immoral to murder. However, depending on the context and intent of that murder, the law may find you innocent. Why? Because the law is ethical, not moral. If the murder was in self-defense, you will be found not guilty as the law is interested in why you murdered someone, not the action of murder. 

However, this is where post-modernist ethics come in. It refuses to acknowledge the morality of murder. Instead, if a white man kills a black man in self-defense or vice-versa, the race of the individuals (intersectionality & equity) comes into question rather than the why or the action itself. The redefining of what is ethical based on alterity has usurped morality.

I highly recommend reading What Happens to History: The Renewal of Ethics in Contemporary Thought. It is a bit of a slog, especially with the circularity of thoughts and the redefining of what is ethics in order to explain the essayists’ positions. But it will increase your understanding of the culture war happening today and how to make some of these post-modernist arguments moot.