(May 14, 2021 at 4:00 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: 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?
Agreed that people are just as virtuous today as they were in ancient times. I meant that (stood side by side) an ethicist would prefer the modern world to the ancient one. Taking out technological advances helps the ancient world, yes. But stances on women's rights and such counts as a strike against them.
I don't hold blame over an ancient nomadic tribe for their practices. When the average life expectancy is low, child marriage, for instance, becomes more understandable. It's harder to justify slavery, but I suppose it could be done along similar lines. At any rate, I don't look down upon the ancients as some kind of morally superior moderner. But I do think that Enlightenment thinking (and not just technological advances) set the stage for abolition.
I also like Nietzsche's distinction between "not doing wrong" and being "virtuous." Or as he puts it, "virtue that is free of moral acid." Of course, to him, a savage person may count as virtuous, but that's beside the point. He has some pretty good insights when it comes to pointing things out that we take to be moral thinking that really aren't. For that reason, he's really valuable to read (for the moral skeptic and moral practitioner alike). We often like to dress our resentment up like moral superiority for instance. Nietzsche calls that sort of thing a sham, and it is.
