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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Nature of Inalienable Rights
Message-ID: <28200974@inmet>
Date: Sat, 6-Sep-86 10:29:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.28200974
Posted: Sat Sep  6 10:29:00 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Sep-86 06:07:37 EDT
References: <3281@umcp-cs.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:umcp-cs.UUCP:-328100:inmet:28200974:000:1775
Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!janw    Sep  6 10:29:00 1986


[Presumably by Piotr Berman]
>While Wingate chooses to believe in super-natural and an
>absolute 'good and evil', you deny the super-natural and conclude
>that  the  notions of 'good and evil' fully relative, i.e.  fully
>dependend on 'social-political structure'. But that makes it  im-
>possible to critisize an existing structure.

I do not know the context, but would like to introduce a
distinction. 'Good and evil' being relative is not the same
as being fully dependent on the 'social-political structure'.
In a fully relative ethics, where good and evil are a matter
of individual taste, social-political structure can *still*
be criticized - not from the position of natural rights,
but from the position of personal convictions.

"Here I stand, I cannot otherwise" - this stance doesn't
require *any* external sanction, natural or supernatural.

Two persons of the same ethical tastes could still band
together to change the social order. Moreover, tastes can
be educated: i.e., change through an exchange of information.
E.g., when netter A says to netter B : but would you stick
to your principle in the following extreme situation ? -
it is a legitimate attempt to help B's *personal* morality
evolve in A's direction. No appeal to natural rights
or revealed principles is involved.

I am not arguing against general ethical  principles  -  I  think
them  necessary.  I don't think, however, they *precede* all par-
ticular moral judgements.  They evolve from particular cases; the
system  grows  bottom-up  as much as top-down. And they evolve in
*individuals*, by different, though somewhat convergent, paths.

"Society" as a whole needn't enter into this at all.
Neither need supernatural entities.
Neither need a "natural order of things".

		Jan Wasilewsky