What is subjectivism ? Is it a threat to morality ?

Résumé du document

Today, more and more people pretend to be subjectivist. That is why it is necessary to consider in detail subjectivism, studying its meanings and justifications; and then study its impacts on morality.

Extraits

[...] Furthermore, in each culture the moral judgements made by members of that culture are correct (they are internally justified or legitimated). J. L. Mackie gave a second argument[2]: the “argument of queerness”, which makes the objectivist thesis implausible. If moral values were to exist as described by moral objectivism, then they would be qualities or entities peculiar to those found in the World. The only things for which there are independent and objective procedures or mechanisms to determine the presence of are natural properties. [...]

[...] Indeed, Atheism was,-as well as subjectivism- regarding as a threat to morality, whereas today atheist can be considered as moral people. The attitude that we ought to believe things simply because they have better social consequences –despite the fact there are true or not- will be strongly opposed by those moralists who believe that knowing the truth is a value in and of itself. Bibliography Victor Grassian, Moral Reasoning: Ethical Theory and Some Contemporary Moral Problems (London, Prentice- Hall, 1981) J. [...]

[...] One cannot do so because in order to rationally believe something, the proposition must first be justified, and as a moral relativist you know that no moral proposition is true before you believe it, so you would not have any justification for accepting it. The thesis that moral principle derive their validity from individual choice seems plausible at first glance, but when examined closely is seen to have some serious difficulties with regards to morality[10]. However Subjectivism can be considered as a danger as we have noticed above. But is it a reason to reject that theory? This essay focused on subjectivism, and it has not really opposed it to objectivism. [...]

[...] Whatever else it does, morality has the minimal aim of preventing a state of chaos morality is objective then anything is permissible” or on an objectively independent set of norms that bind all people for the common good. Subjectivism is in a way an “emotivist”[5] theory. This view maintains that, when Winston Churchill called Hitler “that bad anyone who really understood the situation would realise that he was not attempting to describe Hitler but was expressing or describing a characteristic of his own mind. And when Goebbels would reply that Hitler was not a bad man he too was saying nothing about Hitler but describing or revealing something about himself. [...]

[...] Pojman, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977) Louis P. Pojman, Ethics, discovering Right and Wrong 2nd edition (California, Wadsworth publishing company, 1994) Stephen Toulmin, Reason in Ethics (Great Britain, Cambridge University Press, 1964) Blaise Pascal, Les Pensées, J. L. Mackie, Ethics : Inventing Right and Wrong, (Great Britain, Penguin Books, 1977) Pojman, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977) Stace, The concept of Morals as referred to in Victor Grassian, Moral Reasoning: Ethical Theory and Some Contemporary Moral Problems (London, Prentice- Hall, 1981) p 32 J. [...]