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From: berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Nature of Inalienable Rights
Message-ID: <2280@psuvax1.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Sep-86 01:48:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: psuvax1.2280
Posted: Mon Sep 15 01:48:15 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Sep-86 07:25:01 EDT
References: <3281@umcp-cs.UUCP> <28200974@inmet>
Organization: Pennsylvania State Univ.
Lines: 45

> [Presumably [and, indeed] 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'.

I may be dumb, but not that dumb.  The quoted text referrred
to 'social-political structure' as the only (possibly by omition)
source of values.

> 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.
> 
I do not know what to do with the phrase 'fully relative ethics'.
Personal value of the day?  It reminds me a student of mine who
tried to convince me that I should weight tests more, and homeworks
less than I promised in my syllabus.  After the second test, he
modified his proposal: first test should count more than the second.
(Competitiveness, what a nice virtue!)  It sounds like no ethics.

> 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

I fully agree here with Jan.  In mine point of view, general ethical
principlea should change slowly, and should be beyond the scope of
manipulations of a single individual.  Indeed, the evolution described
by Jan must be rather slow, and yet it inevitably occurs.  

		Piotr Berman