Approach and Avoidance: Emotions and Morals

I maintain that the archetypical moral emotion is anger, and in fact that anger is impossible with moralism. My argument, such as it is, is based on two informal observations: (1) People who believe in objective right and wrong tend to feel and exhibit one or another form of anger (contempt, indignation, outrage, etc.) when forming a moral judgment or even just disagreeing with someone (about anything whatever), and (2) Under analytic inspection any instance of anger will reveal a judgment that someone has done something morally wrong. So my recommendation, as a moral abolitionist, that we all forsake moral judgment would thereby nip anger in the bud. And that is an outcome I happen to like (for reasons that are time-honored). 

There are familiar objections to this recommendation, which I have addressed on multiple occasions. But right now I simply want to contrast this conception of morals and anger to the ethics and feeling life I favor. A life without morals would not be a life without emotion. In the most general terms, I suggest compassion as the amoral alternative to anger. 

Here one objection is that compassion is itself a moral emotion. My reply is that, while of course anyone is free to label it as such according to their own conception of morality, I find it useful to recognize that someone can be compassionate without making a moral judgment … indeed, even when making a moral judgment to the contrary. A classic example of the latter (at least as I would like to interpret the example), as famously explored by Jonathan Bennett in "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn" (1974), is Huck Finn deciding to help Jim escape slavery even though his moral conscience told him it was wrong to do so. 

So my proposal is that people in general focus on cultivating compassion rather than moralism and anger. A corollary I wish especially to broach in this essay is that my promotion of this sort of amoralism suggests that moralism is about avoidance whereas amoralism is about approach. Let me “argue” the point with two simple images. An angry person is rejecting someone else; a compassionate person is embracing them. An image that especially appeals to me is the encounter of these two. Thus, when confronted by a person who is angry with you, rather than be repelled (as they are repelling you), embrace them (perhaps even literally). 

Of course this is an ideal, and would not be advised in some situations, when it could actually further incite someone’s anger and be downright. Also to be noted is that an expression of anger may sometimes itself be a(n inept and counterproductive) call for love; but then to give the angry person that love might reinforce their reliance on anger to elicit it, which seems not a good idea. 

Nevertheless, I think the image nicely captures the general attitude of the amoralist I want to be and wish everybody were.

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