Editorial
The issue of the possibility and desirability of an
objectively grounded ethics still remains a critical one with respect to both
‘orthodox’ and liberatory ethics. However, few doubt the serious crisis in
which modern ‘objective’ ethics has entered in the last quarter of a century
or so, despite the fact that the vast majority of the world population is still
guided by various forms of pre-modern religion-based ethics. But, although the
rise of neoliberal modernity was associated with the development of what some
call a ‘postmodern morality’ and—correspondingly-- a postmodern ethics, as
several contributors to this theme attempt to show, the postmodernist critique
of modern ‘objective’ ethics, particularly of liberatory ethics, is also
unsatisfactory for several reasons. Furthermore, postmodern ethics gas led to
either unbounded moral relativism or irrational ethics. Yet, as two contributors
show, it is possible to derive an alternative liberatory ethics, which can only
come from within the autonomy-democracy tradition.
The object of
my
contribution (Takis Fotopoulos)
is
threefold. First, to critically assess the
approaches to liberatory ethics particularly those developed in early
modernity which aimed at deriving an ‘objectively’ grounded liberatory
ethics. Second, to explore the reasons why today’s liberatory ethics should
avoid both the Scylla of ‘objective’ ethics as well as the Charybdis of
irrationalist ethics or unbounded moral relativism. Third, to show that a
democratic liberatory ethics, which could only be derived through a process of
democratic rationalism, should necessarily express those moral values which are
intrinsically compatible to the democratic institutions themselves.
Chamsy Ojeili’s
point of departure in his bright contribution to the ethics issue is the crisis
of socialist values, which culminated with the decline of the socialist project,
after the collapse of socialist statism in all its versions (‘actually
existing socialism’ in the East and social democracy in the West).
He rightly stresses that although most socialists have adopted nowadays
liberal values (an inevitable by-product of the Left’s shift from an
antisystemic discourse), liberalism has not achieved complete hegemony, nor
could ever achieve such a hegemony
with its individualism and its partial conception of freedom. Similarly, neither
relativistic postmodernism with its withdrawal from universals, nor
communitarianism with its inward-looking particularism and localism and its
adoption of the market economy system, which would predispose any communitarian
society to any number of dominations and exclusions, can provide a solution to
the present deep crisis of values. His accurate conclusion is that the solution
could only be found, as the Inclusive Democracy project also suggests, through
‘the establishment of a political community within which a solution
to the current tensions between equality and freedom and community and
individual might be found’.
Brian Morris
offers an insightful contribution on the
crucial issue of the basis of a libertarian ethics with reference to
Kropotkin’s naturalistic approach to ethics. As the author points out,
Kropotkin saw an ethic focussed around the basic moral concepts of sociality,
justice and magnanimity, as a pre-requisite to the creation of an anarchist-
communist society, and as an alternative to the
dominant ethic of capitalism, which sanctioned self-interest, avarice,
profit, and a disregarded for others. However, although Morris rightly stresses
that Kropotkin never saw moral principles as conveying absolute truths but only
as "guides" to help as to live an ethical life, still, the crucial
issue remains whether such ‘guides’ can be derived unambiguously from the
study of nature. Particularly so if one takes into account that the study of
nature can also yield opposite conclusions like the ones derived by social
Darwinists and others. This does not imply of course, as many assume today, that
we have to resort to some kind of irrationalism (based on religion, or mysticism
etc) in order to derive the moral guides
on
which an autonomous democratic society will be based. Instead, one may argue,
that there is a need for a democratic rationalism, beyond the ‘objectivist’
rationalism of science, which will attempt to derive moral guides from the
institutional framework of the liberatory society itself. This is particularly
important if one takes into account the significance of the socialisation
process in the internalisation of values—the main factor through which
individualistic values are internalised and reproduced in today’s society. Of
course, even if one follows this path, the question still remains which form of
institutional framework is better suitable to ‘fit’ the traditional
liberatory values.
As
Steven Best
and Douglas Kellner stress in
their brilliant essay on the ethics of cloning, the validity of the
cloning project is highly questionable within the context of a global capitalist
economy and a Western sensibility organized around the concept of the domination
of nature. The conclusion they draw is that ‘until science is recontextualized
within a new holistic paradigm informed by a respect for living processes, by
democratic decision making, and by a new ethic toward nature, the genetic
sciences on the whole are in the hands of those governed by the imperatives of
profit’. As the authors point out, this requires a postmodern metascience that
grounds the production of knowledge in a social context of dialogue and
communication with citizens, and of responsibility and accountability on the
part of scientists, as well as of regulation by government and democratic debate
and participation by the public. However, one may raise serious reservations as
to whether a similar metascience and democratic accountability, as well as a
democratic biopoliotics and reconstruction of education, are possible in the
framework of a market economy and representative ‘democracy’ or even whether such
a metascience could somehow evolve ‘from below’ within the existing
institutional framework, which crucially conditions the scientific process and
the corresponding culture. Although Best and Kellner advocate the contestation
of dominant forms of science, culture, and education in order to provide more
emancipatory and democratic alternatives, it is doubtful whether
such an enterprise is feasible outside an antisystemic movement to
replace the present institutional framework and dominant paradigm with one in
which scientific research and technological innovations will not be constrained
by the criteria that the system of the market economy imposes.
Finally,
Steve Nwosu, in an insightful discussion from an Afrocentric viewpoint of
the ethics of the traditional African society, aims to challenge
the feasibility of liberal democracy as a veritable
model for justice and good governance. In the process he shows why the
individualistic liberal ethics on which Western liberal ‘democracy’ is based
is incompatible with the community-based ethics of traditional African society.
Takis Fotopoulos,
Editor