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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!!
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To: epicure who wrote (74742)2/21/2000 7:30:00 PM
From: jbe  Read Replies (2) of 108807
 
"Morally ambiguous contextual relativism"??

That is not what I was talking about, X. Perhaps I did not make myself clear. The kind of relativism (or relationism) I had in mind is not in the least "morally ambiguous"; if anything, quite the contrary. But it recognizes that many -- perhaps most -- of the situations we find ourselves in, and must resolve by making choices, are morally ambiguous.

Ethical (I prefer that term to"moral")principles do not exist in an abstract void; they can only be applied in a concrete context. And very often, the various ethical principles that could be applied in a particular context, a particular situation, conflict with one another. That is why we so often dither over what is "the right thing to do." We are forced to make hard choices about which ethical principles should have priority in that particular situation. (In that sense, no one of them can be considered an "absolute.") This is not a question of "self-justification" after the fact, but of choosing the "right" alternative before the fact.

I once dipped into a little book on everyday ethics which gave a number of examples of the kind of real-life situations I have in mind. Pity I can't remember the name of the author or the title of the book, or I would cite an example from it.
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