The Moral Fool by Hans-Georg Moeller

Author:Hans-Georg Moeller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy/Ethics and Moral Philosophy
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

9 | MORALITY AND CIVIL RIGHTS

I AM GRATEFUL TO Franklin Perkins for coming up with another important challenge to my defense of amorality in connection with the issue of ethics and law. Frank acknowledges that ethical discourse can be dangerous and often quite appalling, for instance with respect to such cases as the war in Iraq, the Lewinsky scandal, or the murder of doctors who perform abortions. But he says that there are also ethical discourses that are very beneficial, such as those of civil rights movements. He suggests that the benefits of ethical discourse and moral appeals might well outweigh the dangers of the abuses of ethics. I comment on the problematic notion of abuse in the introduction, so I won’t repeat myself here. I will, however, discuss the issue of ethics and civil rights in this chapter in more detail. There is a great deal of merit to Frank’s position and it must be addressed.

My response to Frank’s challenge is very much in line with the argument that I presented in the preceding chapter. I think that the idea that ethics were an important aspect of civil rights movements is probably historically correct, but society has evolved in such a way that ethics are no longer needed to fight for rights. On the contrary, I think that civil rights movements have moved beyond ethical positions and have, to a large extent, separated morality and law. These movements have benefited from this separation and have become more successful because of it. The very term “civil rights movements” gives us a clue: Civil rights movements are not called “civil ethics movements”; they focus on rights, not on morality.

Following Niklas Luhmann, I believe that “functional differentiation” is the most important structural characteristic of contemporary society. In our globalized world, society is no longer primarily divided according to geographical or class differences (although these differences obviously still exist) but into different function systems. For the most part, what we are socially is determined by the roles we play within these function systems: We may be students in the education system, patients in the medical system, husbands at home, the opposition in parliament, a defendant at court, or a customer in a shop. How we communicate (what we actually say, how we behave socially) is determined not so much by where we live or by the family that we were born into but by the various function systems we are in at any given time. At the university, for instance, we communicate according to the communicational forms that were developed in the systems of education and science. We write exams, assign marks, write academic papers, counsel students, and write letters of reference. At court, we have to communicate in the way that one communicates within the legal system. If we do not, we are not taken seriously in the system. We are not supposed to express our love, bargain about a fine, or give a political speech in the courtroom. Under different forms

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