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          A        "Addendum to Moral Relativism       aNAda #22   A
        A             for the Postmodern Era"                        A
     A                    by Uberfizzgig               03/03/00         A
 A                                                                          A
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        Moral Relativism is an essential postulate in the post-modern
 knowledge paradigm.  The concept of the Overman, who is able to determine
 good and bad through rational thought and empathic feeling dismisses the
 pre-modern reliance on God or Natural Law to dictate correct moral conduct.
 There is no objective Good or Evil; rather, each individual is empowered to
 make judgments based on his or her own understanding of any given situation
 in a particular environment.

        Now, assuming that there is no objective standard, any moral code of
 conduct based at the individual level is insufficient for maintaining a
 cohesive society.  Those of extreme positions would adversely affect the
 population, resulting in faction and probably death.  Currently this is kept
 in check by the law, which is supposedly enforced evenly across society.
 The law, however, being based on morality, has no legitimacy if the moral
 beliefs or tenets thereof differ from individual to individual to any
 significant degree.  Thus, there is no commonality among individuals from
 which society can survive.  Therefore, it is a mistake to set the individual
 as the seat of supreme moral authority.  At a minimum, the society itself
 (as small or large as it might be, and in whatever form) must be the base
 unit from which any truly moral principle can be made manifest.  With
 societies as the base unit of analysis, Moral Relativism accepts differing
 moral systems between groups, while simultaneously necessitating a moral
 standard within each.  What is moral is not religious nor is it invented by
 each person seperately; instead what is moral should be defined through
 social consensus.

        This argument is of course unnecessary if one of the following is
 true:

 1)     An objective-divine morality exists either handed down by God, or
        innately known by the soul, etc.

 2)     An objective-biological morality exists written into our genetic
        code that pushes us as a species to commit certain actions while
        shunning others.

 3)     A relative-biological morality exists where genes that cause us to
        commit or avoid certain actions vary from person to person.

        The fourth possibility, that a relative-divine morality exists, does
  not discount the argument, but expands it to include those divine agents
  into the society of moral actors.

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 {  (c)2000 aNAda e'zine *                     * aNAda022 * by Uberfizzgig  }
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