[Serious] Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds

[Neo-Scholastic]

I tend to want to say "in the act." There are right and wrong actions, and even responsible moral agents commit wrong acts.

Yeah, I have tended to consider the question “What does it mean to be virtuous?” more basic than “What is right action?” and usually take it for granted that the virtues of a moral agent is a pre-condition for his or her right action. Unless of course there are paradoxical situations in which someone can face a circumstances with sound judgement, courage, and competency…and despite such virtue, make morally reprehensible choices.

I find it difficult to come up with one, which could just be a failure of imagination. A lot of comedy IS based on accidental fortunes and unlikely successes of seriously-flawed protagonists. And all of tragedy is about bad things happening to good people. And yet even, maintaining the distinction between guilt and culpability seems to undo any paradox. Oedipus may have been guilty but he wasn’t culpable for Apollo’s wrath.

Do you think there is such a thing as "moral progress" Neo? I think there is. And I think slavery is a fine example. While it was once inconceivable to abolish slavery, now it is inconceivable to reinstate it.

I’m not entirely convinced it was moral progress - independent of technological changes - that made the abolition of chattel slavery achievable. So with all due respect to my Quaker ancestors, I do not see this as a purely moral triumph. IMHO, individual human beings are about as virtuous as they have always been, it’s just that modern humans face different moral dilemmas than pre-historic, ancient, or pre-industrial men and women. For example, I’ll never be faced with the possibility of my brother’s widow wanting me to impregnate her so she has children to care for her in old age.

I suppose the modern world can boast that our institutions often mitigate the consequences of our more common individual moral failures. For example, while chattel slavery has been explicitly abolished and many Western countries have at least some workplace protections, the impulse to dominate and exploit one’s fellow man and/or indifference to the suffering of strangers still expresses itself. In the West, have we not off-shored exploitation to repressive governments, communist nations, and/or desperate populations? As Nietzsche might have said, we think we are good because our claws are blunt. Lack of vice is not the same as virtue. And there have been trade-offs, the ancients did not stockpile weapons capable of destroying all life as we know it. Can we truly say that today’s geo-political order which puts the world in danger of total annihilation is morally superior to scattered tribes raiding each other for resources?