Can one be moral without the negative parts? (Part 1)

This could well be the main question for a self-proclaimed amoralist like myself. My argument has been that the belief in morality motivates attitudes and behaviors that work against the kind of world I would like to live in … or at least make the world significantly less to my liking or more to my disliking than would an amoral world having the features I have characterized as desirism.[1] But of course my entire line of argument presumes a particular characterization of morality. The rest of the argument consists of empirical claims about how the belief in such a morality would affect individuals and society. But even the characterization involves empirical claims or hunches about how the word “morality” is used and intended or meant. Could it be that the features I find benign in desirism are or could be found in morality, or a particular sort of morality? Clearly the answer is “yes” in the very weak sense that any word can be used to mean anything. But the serious question has, as I say, an empirical component, meaning that the use of the word “morality” that is relevant, is one commonly encountered … or is plausibly extrapolated from common usage. Otherwise you are simply talking about something else and not morality. 

The features I want to see in an ethics, and which I have therefore stipulated to be part of desirism or are implied by these stipulations, include the following: 

Desirism is practical and forward-looking: I see no beneficial use in, and indeed much baneful consequence from, labeling things that a person or people have done, as bad or wrong (or good or right) or deserved (or merited), etc., and that a person or people shouldn’t have (or should have) done something, or had a responsibility to do (or refrain), or is guilty (or innocent) of, etc. To me it seems that what really matters is: What to do now (and in future)? Granted, one could use the same, moralist terms to indicate what is to be done or how to be, etc. But those terms have such heavy implications for the past as well, are simply not needed to direct present or future actions, and can positively interfere with helpful action and change (not to mention, gratuitously make oneself and others miserable), for example by inspiring emotional resistance to being thought, or believing oneself is, morally deficient, that I would have us dispense with them. 

Desirism is inherently motivating: Believing that one ought or ought not to do something is commonly observed to be a weak motivator (hence expressions like “weakness of will” and “I know I shouldn’t but…”). Desirism, by stipulation, is what one would actually do (ceteris paribus) after reasonable vetting of one’s desires. 

Desirism is based on reality: On those occasions when morality is (or appears to be) a strong motivator, my empirical hunch is that the morally right thing to do turns out to be what one desires on nonmoral grounds. So on those occasions the moral component is either superfluous or, worse, adds a fictitious imprimatur and authority to what one wants to do anyway. I want the authority of desire to come from its having been rationally vetted, not from the invocation of a mythical power. 

Desirism is a recommendation not a command: I promote desirism in a desirist fashion, which is to say, I am moved to be desirist, and to recommend desirism to others, by my rational reflections (to date), and ask only that others consider it in the same way (and hope they will then become desirists). Morality, by contrast, not only makes categorical demands on us, but is itself conceived as a categorical imposition. A moralist does not typically recommend that we do the right thing but rather insists that we ought to, period. 

            I now leave it an open question for you to ponder whether the features I consider to be positive ones and ascribe to desirism could be found in morality (or moralism, which is the embrace of morality), or might even be considered the proper features of morality.[2]


[1] In brief summary in “Beyond Amorality.”

[2] See “Why not Moral Relativism?” for one suggestion.

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