MORALITY AS A FUNCTION OF POWERLESSNESS
Draft
This paper addresses a prospective argument concerning the nature of morality and volition, and other subjects, such as politics, principle, and determinism, including principles interpreted as deterministic ones. The effort is to refute one primary argument, one involving relative morals, in order to support the primary thesis that morality is a function of powerlessness rather than some other principle.
The primary statement made by a relativist is that power is relative. According to this argument, morality is interpreted as a power, and consequently determined to be relative. The rebuttal to this view involves some level of subtlety. It is the argument that if power were relative, it would be a relative power. Surely ‘relative power’ is not the only power, and consequently it cannot be argued that this form of power is a universal refutation of morality, or confirmation of the relativity of moral powers.
The question raised by this position is the question of whether one would say that power IS relativity. Someone might mistakenly believe, according to a kind of atomic bomb argument, that all powers are relative. But this can be shown to be fallacious.
For example, it can be argued that an atomic bomb is as achievable as it is unachievable. In other words, it is as valid to argue that atomic properties are universally like suns as it is to argue that suns are universally like atoms. And the consequence, logically, is not really that atoms behave like atomic bombs. Indeed, there is a difference between an atom and an atom that is split by nuclear fission. Just because it is a power doesn’t make it useful power, and some forms of power must be useful. But we would not say that the only form of utility is blowing things up--?
The arguer may still attempt to push the point that atoms do what atoms do, as though to say, what else could an atom do but be atomized. But that is a dead end, for we would not argue according to the atom bomb argument that power exists in degrees. Instead we are saying that atoms always atomize. Indeed, this is no way to believe that the earth has clay or flesh.
Now it seems that there are several options in determining morality, since we have determined that atoms are not inherently atomized. For we have also determined that power is not relative, for it exists in real degrees. There is a difference between trying to live on the sun, and trying to live on the earth, for instance. Well, if power isn’t relative, then morality must be self-causing, or a function of power, or self-destroying, or a function of powerlessness. This follows from the conventional position that either might-makes-right, or it doesn’t, or there is a power latent in morality, or there isn’t. There could be other views, but they tend to be re-formulations of these. For example, someone who believes that morality is semantic might argue that semantics has power, or that semantics has an inherent moral, or that semantics is powerless, or that semantics destroys its own moral. No matter what position is taken, these points remain interesting. And so, these points remain meaningful measurements of what it means to take a position on morality.
Nonetheless, morality is not a function of self-determination, because it depends on a practical constructiveness, a reference to something exterior. It has been argued that when this is not accomplished, religion produces a form of spiritual alienation, that is, a kind of ecclesiastical , un-moored, and purely dogmatic view of reality. Morality is also not a function of power, since it has been determined that power corrupts, and morality is partially defined as a force that cannot corrupt. To add to this, it is not self-causing, sine we know that morality is contingent upon choices and frames of mind, which render it to be good or evil morality. It would be objectively dubious to isolate morality from outside the frame of prospective rational judgments.
Thus, what has been determined, is that morality, to some extent, is a function of powerlessness, since powerlessness is the remaining option for morality.
Nathan Coppedge, SCSU September 30, 2013