Phenomenology of Amorality

I am forever trying to get to the bottom of (the problem of) moralism, which I view as the root cause of most serious problems between individuals, groups, and nations, and what to do about it. And these days I look to phenomenology (rather than analysis, as in analytic philosophy) for this understanding -- looking closely at what is happening and what people, including me, are feeling (and of course thinking). An excellent example for examination arose this morning when my clock alarm awoke me to a morning news report. (This is a terrible way to wake up, and somehow the dial had slipped, since I usually have it set on an all-classical music station.) The item was some Republican legislator sounding off about his bill to make abortion illegal. 

            Since I am an inveterate moralist as well as a philosophically committed amoralist, I have insight into opposing ways of feeling about particular issues like abortion. For more than half a century I felt nothing but moral fervor or outrage in my response to various matters. For the last 10+ years I have tried to suppress this and thereby allow nonmoral feelings to manifest, free of moralist overlay or amplification. My success has been partial, but sufficient to give me a taste of both alternatives. 

            Clearly the legislator is morally exercised over abortion (and more specifically its current legality)…or at least he wants his constituents to believe he is. Naturally many pro-choice advocates are morally exercised in the opposite direction. My own reaction on this occasion, however, was, I think, fairly purely amoralist. The special point I want to make right now, however, is that this did not leave me indifferent. Not at all. In fact, one of the clarifying claims I make on behalf of amoralism (and of desirism, my particular brand of amoralism) is that it leaves us largely the same as when we were (or are) being moralist – specifically, with the same desires that heretofore prompted our moralism. 

            Thus, whereas before I might have expressed, and felt, moral outrage at this legislator or his bill or his proposing it, now – as I closely examined my own thoughts and feelings at that moment of hearing his voice on the radio – I felt “only” (and I could also say “only felt,” i.e., without judging anything) that I definitely did not want abortion outlawed. I also had a crystal-clear or “pure” perception of why, namely, that I want women to be as autonomously in “control” of their body and life as men are. 

            There are many things to note, and that I did note, about this “feeling” and its reason. In no particular order: 

1.     Although I seem to be working from a principle, it is not a moral principle (and so may not even be a principle). The supposed principle is that all human beings, regardless of sex or gender (etc.), are entitled to the same rights. However, I don’t think my commitment to a woman’s legal right to abortion stems from a conviction about her (moral) entitlement but rather from a strong suspicion of pro-lifers’ (conscious or unconscious) motives for denying women this right. I have learned enough about history to be convinced of the patriarchy involved. This is not primarily about saving the lives of “babies” but rather about keeping in place a social order that subjugates women to men’s wills. But here again, this is not something I now recoil against on the basis of some presumed absolute moral truth about the evil of patriarchy; rather …I just strongly dislike the idea. 

2.    By having a nonmoral basis for my preferences, I need not be so concerned about the objection that my pro-choice stance lands me in a contradiction, namely, of being so concerned about human rights, and yet ignoring the fetus’. I found myself deliberately blurring other factors that could be relevant. For instance, I know I could be affected by more in-depth or vividly presented knowledge of gestation and the human fetus than I possess (never even having taken a biology course because of squeamishness). Also certainly relevant is my lacking first-hand experience of carrying a “baby” … or even of being closely affiliated with a pregnant woman. But I discovered myself feeling no qualms about this lack whatsoever. Why not? I ask myself. One (kind of) answer is simply that I have made up my mind on the issue of abortion; that is to say, women’s autonomy is a settled opinion with me, meaning, again, not as a principle, nor even a fact, but as a general desire I cannot imagine being overridden by concerns about the human fetus. (That is, BTW, a defeasible or falsifiable empirical prediction or hunch.) And yes, this is just like Putin giving not a thought to the suffering of non-Russian-identifying Ukrainians, in light of his idée fixe to reconstitute the Russian Empire, or Truman giving not a thought to the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in light of his desire to end the war with minimal American casualties. 

I think of an apparent counterexample to this way of my own thinking in another area: animal ethics. I am put off by animal-eaters who refuse to pay attention to verbal and video depictions of the awfulness of animal agriculture precisely because they know they will be affected by them. And yet: I myself am capable of turning away from evidence even for helping other animals, for example, accounts of animal suffering in “the wild” given to support utilitarian schemes of animal welfare, such as eliminating predators. I reject them because I like the idea of the untampered “wild.” Sure, there are also abundant arguments I could wield to support this preference, such as humanity’s wretched track record of well-intentioned interventions. But, again, my actual desire is not now sustained by such arguments but rather by a blurred-eye image of the wild I want to preserve more than I want to spare countless animals a less-than-optimal or cut-short existence. So I also give an amoral “pass” to the meat-eaters’ stubbornness, even though I myself am a conscientious vegan and wish everyone were and do my best to set an example for others to emulate and to persuade them without alienating them into an even worse defensiveness, which would likely be counterproductive to my desire for a vegan world (though of course counterarguments could be adduced for the effectiveness of righteous anger). 

3.    There are no doubt any number of causes of my having the preferences I do. Most of them are probably bound up with my autobiography, possibly including genes. There is also the “background” of the entire rest of the universe as it impinges on me, both currently and from temporally distant sources, certainly including the Big Bang. Needless to say, the vast majority of these causes are unknown to me in their particulars, and will always be so to me or anybody else. One could speculate endlessly, and revise as new knowledge is acquired or new insights or ideas pop up. 

            In sum, then, my amoralist phenomenology seems, very simply, to be a pure case of a kind of Humean desire-based ethics, according to which no amount of “facts” (nonmoral beliefs) can decide us to act or even to feel morally but only once they are “attached” to or supplemented by desire; and furthermore, the desire will determine which way one decides on the question, such that one and the same set of facts or beliefs can motivate opposing moral feelings etc. (just as one and the same desire can motivate opposing moral feelings if the facts or beliefs be different). Finally -- and my main point in this essay -- removing the moral patina will leave the desires intact, so that a person who undergoes a conversion from moralist to amoralist may very well continue to behave the same and retain the same commitments and so forth. I have herein striven to make that case by introspecting my own amoralist feelings about a particular issue.

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