TY - JOUR
T1 - There's some fetish in your ethics
T2 - A limited defense of purity reasoning in moral discourse
AU - Demetriou, Dan
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Call the ethos understanding rightness in terms of spiritual purity and piety, and wrongness in terms of corruption and sacrilege, the "fetish ethic." Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues suggest that this ethos is particularly salient to political conservatives and non-liberal cultures around the globe. In this essay, I point to numerous examples of moral fetishism in mainstream academic ethics. Once we see how deeply "infected" our ethical reasoning is by fetishistic intuitions, we can respond by (1) repudiating the fetishistic impulse, by (2) "sublimating" our fetishism into liberal rationales, or by (3) accepting the fetishism on its own terms. Of these options, I argue that sublimating our fetishism is not advisable, and that embracing our ethical fetishism isn't as obviously misguided as some suggest.
AB - Call the ethos understanding rightness in terms of spiritual purity and piety, and wrongness in terms of corruption and sacrilege, the "fetish ethic." Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues suggest that this ethos is particularly salient to political conservatives and non-liberal cultures around the globe. In this essay, I point to numerous examples of moral fetishism in mainstream academic ethics. Once we see how deeply "infected" our ethical reasoning is by fetishistic intuitions, we can respond by (1) repudiating the fetishistic impulse, by (2) "sublimating" our fetishism into liberal rationales, or by (3) accepting the fetishism on its own terms. Of these options, I argue that sublimating our fetishism is not advisable, and that embracing our ethical fetishism isn't as obviously misguided as some suggest.
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U2 - 10.5840/jpr20133820
DO - 10.5840/jpr20133820
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84902082298
SN - 1053-8364
VL - 38
SP - 377
EP - 404
JO - Journal of Philosophical Research
JF - Journal of Philosophical Research
ER -