by postodave » August 29th, 2008, 9:13 pm
I've finished 'The Ethical Primate' She raises some very good points especially the one about abstraction being necessarily relative or partial truth. Her point about the various enlightenment views of ethics involving a dualism placing one aspect of human nature considered as an abstraction over and against our supposedly causally determined animal nature is also very much to the point. However I'm left wondering if she is still not reductive in her own view of ethics in that she reduces it to the affective. That is she regards ethics as a quest for psychological harmony, as a way of finding inner peace in the midst of conflicting desires. This raises the question why ought we to seek this kind of peace. Can we get beyond the purely descriptive and in some measure determined desire to do so? Is the ethical choice sometimes the most upsetting?
I would also like to see how she would fit her ideas in with forms of therapy more recent than Freud. A comparison with Carl Rogers would be very interesting.
So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown