The Difficulty of Moral Perfectionism

The Difficulty of Moral Perfectionism

In this paper I want to consider a kind of inexpressiveness that can characterize our moral experience. The acknowledgement of the possibility of failure in trying to word the world – to find adequate means of expression for our condition – deeply informs Cora Diamond’s conception of language and mo...

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Auteur principal: Brisco, Stefano Di
Format: Article ou chapitre numérique
Langue:Anglais
Publié: European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 2017
Accès en ligne:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
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spelling openedition-oai:revues.org:ejpap_913 https://doi.org/10.4000/ejpap.913 urn:doi:10.4000/ejpap.913 en https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/913 2017-07-22T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/fn72 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The Difficulty of Moral Perfectionism European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy Associazione Pragma info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2036-4091 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap Brisco, Stefano Di In this paper I want to consider a kind of inexpressiveness that can characterize our moral experience. The acknowledgement of the possibility of failure in trying to word the world – to find adequate means of expression for our condition – deeply informs Cora Diamond’s conception of language and moral thought as well as her philosophical method. In particular, in her paper The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy Diamond is concerned with a resistance by reality to one’s ordinary modes of thinking and talking, the feeling of a mismatch between concepts and experience in which it is the nature of experience itself that deprives one of the words suitable to contain it.In this paper I want to show how a particular kind of moral conflict can be perspicuously described as a difficulty of reality. This conflict occurs when we lose the ability to conceive the moral world we inhabit as ours, when, that is, our self-conceptions clash with the requirements of morality and we find ourselves in the position of not being able to say what “morality” means for us anymore.Stanley Cavell speaks in this vicinity of the possibility of repudiating morality when it threatens our integrity. This distance between the subject and the world, the self and morality, which, in Cavell’s account of perfectionism, is a precondition for the development of an authentic moral perspective, is nonetheless neglected by metathical analyses in which the prominent occurrences of ethical disagreements pertain principally to the correct application of evaluative terms.I sketch Cavell’s analysis of disagreement in the light of his discussion of moral rationality. Then I connect the topic with Diamond’s notion of the “difficulty of reality,” developing the link between Diamonds and Cavell’s thought by using an example taken from Richard Yates’s novel Revolutionary Road.My aim will be twofold: the focus on Cavell’s conception of moral rationality, on the one hand, is intended to show how the traditional meta-ethical debate about disagreement is deflected in that it cannot acknowledge this kind of conflict; on the other hand, to speak of a difficulty of reality in the context of a perfectionist account of moral life is a way to give content to the idea of morality as “limited,” a way of understanding morality as of human origin.
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language Anglais
format Article ou chapitre numérique
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description In this paper I want to consider a kind of inexpressiveness that can characterize our moral experience. The acknowledgement of the possibility of failure in trying to word the world – to find adequate means of expression for our condition – deeply informs Cora Diamond’s conception of language and moral thought as well as her philosophical method. In particular, in her paper The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy Diamond is concerned with a resistance by reality to one’s ordinary modes of thinking and talking, the feeling of a mismatch between concepts and experience in which it is the nature of experience itself that deprives one of the words suitable to contain it.In this paper I want to show how a particular kind of moral conflict can be perspicuously described as a difficulty of reality. This conflict occurs when we lose the ability to conceive the moral world we inhabit as ours, when, that is, our self-conceptions clash with the requirements of morality and we find ourselves in the position of not being able to say what “morality” means for us anymore.Stanley Cavell speaks in this vicinity of the possibility of repudiating morality when it threatens our integrity. This distance between the subject and the world, the self and morality, which, in Cavell’s account of perfectionism, is a precondition for the development of an authentic moral perspective, is nonetheless neglected by metathical analyses in which the prominent occurrences of ethical disagreements pertain principally to the correct application of evaluative terms.I sketch Cavell’s analysis of disagreement in the light of his discussion of moral rationality. Then I connect the topic with Diamond’s notion of the “difficulty of reality,” developing the link between Diamonds and Cavell’s thought by using an example taken from Richard Yates’s novel Revolutionary Road.My aim will be twofold: the focus on Cavell’s conception of moral rationality, on the one hand, is intended to show how the traditional meta-ethical debate about disagreement is deflected in that it cannot acknowledge this kind of conflict; on the other hand, to speak of a difficulty of reality in the context of a perfectionist account of moral life is a way to give content to the idea of morality as “limited,” a way of understanding morality as of human origin.
author Brisco, Stefano Di
spellingShingle Brisco, Stefano Di
The Difficulty of Moral Perfectionism
author_facet Brisco, Stefano Di
author_sort Brisco, Stefano Di
title The Difficulty of Moral Perfectionism
title_short The Difficulty of Moral Perfectionism
title_full The Difficulty of Moral Perfectionism
title_fullStr The Difficulty of Moral Perfectionism
title_full_unstemmed The Difficulty of Moral Perfectionism
title_sort difficulty of moral perfectionism
publisher European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy
publishDate 2017
container_title URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap
url https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/ejpap.913
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/913
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