Pain, Taboo and Contingency

© 2018 by Tijdschrift voor Filosofie. All rights reserved. Firstly, we show that a morality focused on the limitation of pain is reductionist and severely misleading. This is because (1) pain cannot be understood apart from a broader context to which humiliation also belongs; (2) those whom we rightly commiserate for having suffered some harm have not necessarily experienced any harm; and (3) more generally, strict prohibitions, normally called 'moral taboos', are not at all guided by an attempt to avoid pain. Secondly, we argue that a morality that takes moral taboos into consideration is necessarily culture-dependent, and therefore contingent and devoid of universality. But, thirdly, it is argued that this contingency is never by itself a sufficient reason for rejecting a moral norm.

Jaar van publicatie:2018

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Authors from:Higher Education