Amoralism

Under amorality (lat. Amoralis , indecent ') refers to the teachings of practical philosophy , reject the moral standards derived at all, even those that recently a life at all detached from morality postulate. There is also the term immoralism , which is sometimes used in a similar way to amoralism, sometimes with a different meaning.

Philosophical classics of amoralism

Some of the sophists ( Thrasymachus , Callicles ) and Lao-tse are among the earliest sources of amoralism, which differ in content . Later sources are: Mandeville , whose main work bears the subtitle: private vices, public benefits ( private vices, public benefits ); Machiavelli , who took the position that moral behavior (only) was not applicable in politics; Marquis de Sade with the view that virtue leads to misfortune, vice on the other hand to happiness; Max Stirner , who saw the basic evil in the control of behavior through internalized moral norms (“morality”, the Freudian super-ego ). Friedrich Nietzsche described traditional morality, both Christian and secular- humanistic , as the “ slave morality ” of the weak and the “failing”. In relation to people of so-called slave morality, who would be guided by general moral values ​​and norms or the moral judgments of other people, the sovereign individuals of master morality would have the strength to make moral judgments at their own risk. Nietzsche is an “amoralist” in that he opposes all general moral provisions, since these too could only ever be perspective. He is, however, a "moralist" insofar as no thinking outside the moral conditions of the individual is possible.

Stirner was seen by Iwan Bloch intellectually close to Sade and Nietzsche. A comparison of Sade and Nietzsche to Kant was attempted by Adorno , according to her, enlightenment leads to moral-free purposeful rationality and makes an enlightenment of the enlightenment about itself necessary.

The figure of the amoralist also occurs in various ways with many ethicists who distance themselves from amoralism for the purpose of justifying morality . Thus, for example, Habermas the kohlbergsche model of moral development supplemented by stage 4½. RM Hare distinguished all possible types of moral opponents.

Contents of amoralism

Amoralism is directed against:

• the moral teachings of all religions, for example the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament, the commandments of love for neighbor and enemy in the New Testament, the ten basic ethical principles of Buddhism , the five pillars of Islam , the ethics of Confucianism , the morality of Hinduism ,
• the golden rule ,
• the categorical imperative of Kant ,
• the basic principle of utilitarianism that individuals should strive for the happiness of all,
• virtue ethics according to Aristotle ,
• Schopenhauer's ethics of compassion ,
• the reverence for the life of Albert Schweitzer ,
• the principle of the Ahimsa of Gandhi ,
• the Global Ethic project by Hans Küng ,
• Human and animal rights as action orientation for the individual,
• the eleven satanic rules of the earth ,
• the 10 offers of evolutionary humanism ,
• the ethical egoism , which regards one's own good as the highest moral value.

The logical difference to ethical egoism is mostly not reflected in the historical sources. Amoralism is also known as nihilism , although that term has a less clearly defined meaning.

Amoralists also reject all notions of sin , guilt , shame, honor, worth , duty , repentance , penance , spiritual purity, conscience , karma , solidarity, commitment and responsibility that come with notions of shoulds and not mere facts of feelings or communication structures describe. Amoralists do not see social competence, politeness, manners, consideration and compliance with social conventions as a way of treating people as an end in themselves, but only an important means of achieving other ends that can be given up at any time according to rational standards. Amoralism is therefore fundamentally different from youth rebellion, in which conventions are consciously broken.

With regard to Sigmund's Freudian psychoanalysis, amoralists forego the psychological authority of the superego or eliminate its influence. In addition, they reject Freud's idea of ​​the transformation of polymorphic-perverse sexuality towards an orientation towards heterosexual vaginal penetration as the goal of a development towards alleged personal maturity, as well as Freud's demand "Where it was, I should become", since in these ideas they are only disguised moral rules see.

A modern representative of an amoral image of man is the philosopher, neurologist and political scientist Nayef RF Al-Rodhan , who describes human nature as emotional amoral egoism and derives political concepts from it.

Amoralism and Meta-Ethics

Amoralists can simply take over the non- cognitivist meta-ethics from RM Hare , according to which moral sentences are demands and not statements and thus not truthful or scientifically testable. According to Hare, amoralists are logically consistent.

Amoralists protest against prescriptivist ethicists that they see no reason to always obey calls for moral behavior. Regarding the emotivistic direction of ethics, they think that they do not always have moral feelings, because they are also simply indifferent or uncomfortable with many people.

John L. Mackie advocates the fallacy theory , which says that moral statements are truthful but always false because the facts by which they could be verified must be extremely strange.

Amoralists who refer to a cognitivist meta-ethic are meta-ethical nihilists.

Richard Joyce represents meta-ethical fictionalism and thinks that moral sentences are analogous to sentences about fairy tale characters and claims about Santa Claus. In principle, they are truthful, but would make false assumptions similar to the sentence “The King of France is bald”. The sentence would be testable if there were a King of France. According to Joyce, however, there are no more objective moral values ​​than these monarchs, Nicholas or Frau Holle.

Practical amoralism

Amoralism is sometimes accused of the 1968 movement . For example, the turning away from Christian values ​​and the abandonment of the obedience claim of educators ( anti-authoritarian education ) have been interpreted by parts of society as a questioning of binding morality as a whole. From the rejection of certain, also valid moral rules, the rejection of morality does not necessarily follow, although this always implies rejecting the validity of valid moral rules.

Amoral figures in literature and film

• André Gide , L'Immoraliste
• Franz Moor in Friedrich Schiller , The Robbers
• Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde , The Portrait of Dorian Gray

Amoralism is usually also an implicit part of the attitudes of the negative protagonists in fantasy and science fiction stories that contain a good-evil conflict, for example the Sith from Star Wars , Khan and Shinzon from Star Trek , the master from Doctor Who , Lex Luthor in Smallville or Voldemort from Harry Potter .

Criticism of amoralism and amoralism as an accusation

Amoralism is criticized for its moral reasons .

Accusations of advocating an amoral philosophy were also made against thinkers who did not see themselves as amoralists. Objectives of such allegations were z. As the objectivism of Ayn Rand or the Ethical egoism .

literature

• Arno Baruzzi : Sade. In: Enlightenment and Materialism in France in the 18th Century , List, Munich 1968.
• Richard Joyce : The Myth of Morality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2001, ISBN 0-521-80806-5 (English).
• Johannes Gröll: The moral bourgeois subject. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 1991, ISBN 3-924550-49-2 .
• John Leslie Mackie : Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Penguin, 1977.
• Elmar Waibl: The Critique of Contractualism in Marquis de Sades erotomaniac anarchism. In: Wiener Jahrbuch für Philosophie , Volume 17, Vienna 1983.
• Slavoj Žižek : Kant with (or against) Sade? In: love your neighbor? No thanks! - The dead end of the social in postmodernity , Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1999, pp. 25–51.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Plato : Politeia
2. ^ Plato : Gorgias
3. ↑ Bernard Mandeville : Bee Fable
4. ↑ Donatien Alphonse François de Sade : Justine or the Adversity of Virtue and Juliette or the Advantages of Vice
5. ↑ Max Stirner : The only one and his property
6. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche : On the genealogy of morality
7. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche : Beyond Good and Evil
8. ↑ Cf. Matthias Politycki : Revaluation of all values? German literature in the judgment of Nietzsche. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1989; Werner Stegmaier : Fate Nietzsche? In: Nietzsche Studies. 37, 2008, pp. 62-114
9. ^ Iwan Bloch : The Marquis de Sade and his time , Heyne, 1978
10. ^ Theodor W. Adorno : Dialectic of Enlightenment (Excursus II: Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality )
11. ↑ RM Hare : Freedom and Reason. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1983
12. ↑ RM Hare : Moral Thinking. Its levels, its method, its wit. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1992
13. ↑ RM Hare : Satanism and Nihilism. In: Essays on Religion and Education. 1992 (engl.)
14. ↑ Nayef RF Al-Rodhan : Emotional Amoral Egoism: A Neurophilosophical Theory of Human Nature and its Universal Security Implications , Transaction Publishers, First Edition (March 31, 2008; Eng.)