There’s Some Fetish in Your Ethics
Journal of Philosophical Research (forthcoming)
| Abstract | Call the ethos understanding rightness in terms of spiritual purity and piety, and wrongness in terms of corruption and sacrilege, the “fetish ethic.” Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues suggest that this ethos is particularly salient to political conservatives and non-liberal cultures around the globe. In this essay, I point to numerous examples of moral fetishism in mainstream academic ethics. Once we see how deeply “infected” our ethical reasoning is by fetishistic intuitions, we can respond by 1) repudiating the fetishistic impulse, by 2) “sublimating” our fetishism into liberal rationales, or by 3) accepting the fetishism on its own terms. Of these options, I argue that sublimating our fetishism is not advisable, and that embracing our ethical fetishism isn’t as obviously misguided as some suggest. | |||||||||
| Keywords | purity disgust Haidt moral foundation theory | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
  |
| External links | This entry has no external links. Add one. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesAndrew Sneddon (2007). A Social Model of Moral Dumbfounding: Implications for Studying Moral Reasoning and Moral Judgment. Philosophical Psychology 20 (6):731 – 748.
Karl-Heinz Kohl (2011). West African Fetish Cult and European Fetishism. In Wilhelm Lindemann & Joan Clough (eds.), Thinkingjewellery: On the Way Towards a Theory of Jewellery = Schmuckdenken: Unterwegs Zu Einer Theorie des Schmucks. Acc Distribution [Distributor].
Alexandra Plakias (2013). The Good and the Gross. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (2):261-278.
Louise J. Kaplan (2006). Cultures of Fetishism. Palgrave Macmillan.
Jonas Olson (2002). Are Desires de Dicto Fetishistic? Inquiry 45 (1):89 – 96.
Steve Clarke (2008). Sim and the City: Rationalism in Psychology and Philosophy and Haidt's Account of Moral Judgment. Philosophical Psychology 21 (6):799 – 820.
Donovan Miyasaki (2002). The Confusion of Marxian and Freudian Fetishism in Adorno and Benjamin. Philosophy Today 46 (4):429-43.
Jeanette Kennett & Cordelia Fine (2009). Will the Real Moral Judgment Please Stand Up? Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (1):77–96.
Terry Horgan & Mark Timmons (2007). Morphological Rationalism and the Psychology of Moral Judgment. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (3):279 - 295.
Vanessa Carbonell (forthcoming). De Dicto Desires and Morality as Fetish. Philosophical Studies.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2012-09-23Total downloads92 ( #7,392 of 549,224 )Recent downloads (6 months)35 ( #1,133 of 549,224 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
