tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635734994409696565.post184717451876061634..comments2023-09-13T06:41:50.851-07:00Comments on a peculiar unity: Absorption & Reflection (part 2: or, On the prospects for moral phenomenology)a peculiarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11693606628937515457noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635734994409696565.post-42066102937789109682010-07-25T09:22:09.166-07:002010-07-25T09:22:09.166-07:00Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
Suppose someo...Thanks for the thoughtful comment. <br />Suppose someone was born who lacked this sort of other-awareness, would that exempt her from the demands of morality? Would we see how she remains absorbed in her own world--everything IS insofar as it IS-for-her--and thus acknowledge the impossibility of her being moral? Or, at least of OUR morality applying to her situation? Or more far-fetched, aliens land on earth who have a totally different sensory apparatus. Their modalities of consciousness are so far removed from ours that relating to them is extremely difficult if not impossible. Do they demand moral recognition? These are the sorts of questions that lead me away from any 'naturalized' morality and toward Kantian transcendental philosophy. <br />Your Heideggarian description of ethical experience rings true, but as I ended the last post, I wonder if phenomenology can really serve as a foundation for ethics and not merely a description. Surely we could imagine other ways of recognizing the other as morally significant that are completely foreign to our modalities of consciousness- and these other ways would nonetheless count as moral.a peculiarihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11693606628937515457noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635734994409696565.post-56468884614692523172010-07-25T05:22:55.986-07:002010-07-25T05:22:55.986-07:00In your first post you said, "As we are incre...In your first post you said, "As we are increasingly able to step back to reflect, we are increasingly moral." This strikes me as at once true and deeply problematic, and I think the attempt in your second post to introduce a modality of being in which absorption is not purely self-centered is a fascinating thought.<br /><br />I'm inclined to think that the play between them is necessary, that requires morality needs not just self-awareness and distance but also engagement with the world on its own terms, by which I mean physical interaction with the land and with other people. <br /><br />Further, it seems that the barrier between the two is quite fluid. I can be absorbed in swinging a pickaxe but still be aware enough not to hit anyone with it. It is impossible to kill a chicken or anything else in my experience in a state of pure absorption. I think the act is so visceral that it paradoxically forces reflection on the other. As an aside, this is why I suspect slaughterhouses are evil. It is not something that should be done without reflection and awareness in the moment, let alone turned into a (dis)assembly line.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12449452173636791089noreply@blogger.com