El Oso » Archive » The Abosolute Versus The Relative

Posted 5 years, 8 months ago in the early afternoon by oso

In my outreach effort to get both more conservatives and more liberals to be part of the conversation, many of my fellow liberals are writing back to say that they will discuss economics when we get there, but that they can’t discuss moral issues because they do not believe in morality.

I was afraid that would happen and in fact, it’s been in the back of my own head for quite a while now. HispanicPundit even brought it up in his latest response to my latest response in the abortion debate. And so I wonder, is it all really so black and white like everyone is arguing? Does it all boil down to the absolute versus the relative in the end?

A political world view is a way of looking at how power is organized and how conflict emerges across the globe. It is a pardigm for how we should enact international policy given our current ideological, political, and economic situation.

The two most famous world views of the 1990’s were Francis Fukuyama’s End of History and Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. Fukuyama essentially argued that after communism, the ideological divide was over and that the entire world would globalize under liberal capitalism and that the only quibbles of the 21st century would be over “trade wars.” Huntington argued that cultural differences trump ideological ones, that they always have, and that conflicts in the 21st century will be caused by “civilizations” who feel threatened by a hegemonic, materialistic, global culture.

Obviously, both have been write so far. We are engaged in both trade wars and cultural wars. Benjamin Barber has made a sophisticated argument that the two are in fact related and interdependent.

But what has occured to me is that beneath both Fukuyama and Huntington’s world views, is a deeper divide, which is not restricted to what Huntington calls “civilizations” or Fukuyama’s nation states and trading blocs. And that is the divide between the absolute and the relative. It’s Nietzche versus God. Humanism versus Moralism. Liberals versus Conservatives.

Since 9/11 a whole new set of emerging world views have been put forth by policy experts to accomodate what has happened in the world since the Twin Towers fell. (Do yourself a favor and listen to Thomas Barnett’s provocative presentation at Pop!Tech 2004 about his post 9/11 world view)

But I can’t help but wonder if the real point of contention beneath it all is this great schism which Nietzche opened up by arguing that morality is arbitrary, that there is no great list of true commandments of what thou shall do and shal not do. That creates two sides of policy makers – those who see policy as a fluid, dynamic framework of utilitarian guidelines to maximize collective well-being and those who see policy as a legal code to enforce an absolute morality. So while today’s world views discuss trade wars and cultural wars, I wonder if tomorrow’s won’t examine the real root of contention: The Abolute versus The Relative.

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1Abogado from says:Thursday, November 18th, 2004 at 4:11 pm

Kant vs. Rawls; Nietzche vs. just about anyone else. Yes, I think, as should be obvious by most of my posts, that nearly everything boils down to a series of basic premises we hold. liberty vs. equality (Dworkin vs. Nozak), public vs. private (Marx vs. Smith) etc. Nearly everything can be analyzed out from a few basic premises; even if you have no basic premises (relativism) that equates to a premise of sorts, and probably leads to pragmatism. I’ve always been interested on the theoretical because I think it is the only way to really understand the practical. Funny how we always end up back here. I want to develop this more, but alas, law school memo is calling.
2 HispanicPundit from says:Thursday, November 18th, 2004 at 7:00 pm

Great perception. It fundamentally is a war of axioms. At that level nothing can truly be proven in the strict sense on either side. It truly is a war of presuppositions.

“The greatest question of our time is not communism versus individualism; not Europe versus America; not even the East versus West. It is whether men can live without God.” –Will Durant

PS: Your biases toward the relative side show through clearly since you seem to have a hard time spelling absolute (joking, of course).
3 LatinoPundit from says:Thursday, November 18th, 2004 at 8:08 pm

Morality Vs. Values
There is a discussion over at El Oso, El Moreno, and El Abogado, about morality and it’s place in politics….
4 Oso from says:Friday, November 19th, 2004 at 12:09 am

Something occurred to me this afternoon which felt like a major breakthrough in my understanding of the world. For the first time, I understood the difference between ethics and morals. I’m not saying this is agreed upon by everybody or anybody but here’s the difference to me:

Morals are innate and learned emotional responses to events, situations, and ideas. We often call it moral revulsion. As in, we are uneasy when we see a man beating his wife, a worker kicking a chicken, or when we see an entire population killed in genocide. Morals obviously exist. They exist for everybody, but they are not the same for everyone. As HP perceived, I do not believe in moral absolutism.

Ethics on the other hand are what Rushworth Kidder called the balances between “right versus right.” In other words, ethics are not behavioral, they are not theological, they are not cultural, but they are all these things. They are the balance between competing moral systems.

Wikipedia has a very good article entitled Simple View of Ethics and Morals.

Maybe the distinction is obvious to you guys, but for me it was revolutionary. Culture Jam gave me a lot to think about concerning rationality and morality. His posts convinced me that rationality and morality are both necessary when making policy. That without morality guys like Adolf and Benito can make appealing rational arguments for genocide.

Do I want genocide? I do not want genocide.

I think it’s fair to call World War II a moral war. We fought it because we were morally revulsed at the mass killing of the Jews and the prospect of what would follow.

And so I figured in my simple little brain that morality is just as necessary as rationality in setting policy.

But today I realize that Fascism is not morally wrong. It obviously wasn’t for the morals of all those who fought under Hitler and Mussolini. But it was ethically wrong because it did not accomodate human behavior, theological tradition, and cultural values.

So this is a very important distinction to me because I no longer believe that policy must take into consideration both rationality and morality, but rather rationality and ethics.

That makes an important foundation for my life-thesis: aruing for a transnational system of governance.
5 ISOU from says:Friday, November 19th, 2004 at 11:24 am

The PBA today
Looks like Aldon had quite a day yesterday. Goose makes a good point about hypocrisy. Ray has a report on yesterday’s Clinton Library opening. Pesky Apostrophe is seeking comments. Want a comprehensive update of the election fraud theories, go here….

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