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What would you consider a viable alternative to "majority-is-right" morality? I've always personally taken a moral action to mean the one that a majority of pe

by maldeh 12y ago

What would you consider a viable alternative to "majority-is-right" morality? I've always personally taken a moral action to mean the one that a majority of people, over and by whom the action is to be judged, consider to be the right one. If there is an absolute set of morals, what principles would they have to be evaluated by? (Not to say that your argument about democratic morality doesn't have its merits, I'm just curious about your take on it)

natural219 12y ago
I'd say there's a specific "populist" train of thought that elevates immediate mob judgment above more nuanced principles of justice developed and agreed upon by philosophers that spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff. In the US specifically, a huge basis of our political history is based on circumventing this particular view of morality. A lot of this sentiment is captured in the phrase "Tyranny of the majority"[1], and was formally laid out in the Federalist papers, which form a strong underpinning of American political thought [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
- Excavator 12y ago
  This may have just been in the communities I visit but in the after-math there was a lot of people who expressed regret at their extreme reaction, which makes me think that the "spiral of silence"¹ may have also played its part. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence
  - natural219 12y ago
    Great reference, I hadn't heard of this before. Thanks for the link!
- calibraxis 12y ago
  Yes, the government's implementors were rabidly anti-democracy. Which is is what we'd expect from some rich slaveowning elites, who looked down aristocratically on their fellow countrypeople as "the mob". John Adams wrote: "if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables. [...] if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? [...] the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted." This is the "tyranny of democracy" they feared, an Orwellian notion. I recommend Graeber's "The Democracy Project". He was one of the many Occupy founders, and is every bit as "American" as any of these government guys.

by maldeh 12y ago

natural219 12y ago

I'd say there's a specific "populist" train of thought that elevates immediate mob judgment above more nuanced principles of justice developed and agreed upon by philosophers that spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff. In the US specifically, a huge basis of our political history is based on circumventing this particular view of morality. A lot of this sentiment is captured in the phrase "Tyranny of the majority"[1], and was formally laid out in the Federalist papers, which form a strong underpinning of American political thought [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

Excavator 12y ago
This may have just been in the communities I visit but in the after-math there was a lot of people who expressed regret at their extreme reaction, which makes me think that the "spiral of silence"¹ may have also played its part. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence
- natural219 12y ago
  Great reference, I hadn't heard of this before. Thanks for the link!
calibraxis 12y ago
Yes, the government's implementors were rabidly anti-democracy. Which is is what we'd expect from some rich slaveowning elites, who looked down aristocratically on their fellow countrypeople as "the mob". John Adams wrote: "if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables. [...] if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? [...] the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted." This is the "tyranny of democracy" they feared, an Orwellian notion. I recommend Graeber's "The Democracy Project". He was one of the many Occupy founders, and is every bit as "American" as any of these government guys.