as I have noted elsewhere, we do not have type of universal ethics/moral
theory that covers all…what we have today is situational ethics, the
situation dictates the ethics/morals…which is basically “ad hoc” ethics/morals
there are no facts I bring to bear that will allow us to justify any type of
universal ethical/moral theory…and the same is true of any type
of universal theory of justice… what is just? Socrates/Plato could never
answer this question because it required an acceptable universal theory of
justice… and we don’t have that…our theories of justice are also “ad hoc” theories,
born of the moment, to fit a specific situation… not to cover all situations of justice…
but Kropotkin, you can’t have a universal theory of justice… there are no facts which
can cover such a universal theory of justice… exactly… that is my point…
every single theory of justice has exceptions and exemptions… those exceptions
and exemptions prevent us from ever holding to a universal theory of justice…
what facts can I bring out that will allow us to ever agree to a universal theory
of justice? you may as well say, the earth is 93 million miles from the sun for
all the facts we can bring into this discussion of facts that will allow us to
create a universal theory of justice…
we can produce all kinds of pretend theories like, if human beings don’t have some
threat of punishment to force them into action, we will have chaos and anarchy…
that is an assumption based on … something but not base on facts… perhaps
that famous “gut instinct” will inform us of some facts about why we need punishment
to have a safe society…
so we have no universal/transcendental theory of ethics/moral and we don’t
have any sort of universal theory of justice and if you think about it, we don’t
have any universal theory of political or philosophical or cultural…
we are lacking all sorts of universal/transcendental theories which allow us
to hold universal theories of justice, morals, politics, philosophy, history, language,
psychology… we lack any type of universal/transcendental theories of reality…
we cannot agree as to what real, what is knowledge, what is ethics, what is aesthetics,
we can’t even agree to what is right or wrong because we have no universal theory
of right or wrong…so what exactly do we have?
a whole lot of "ad hoc’’ theories of the universe… theories of the moment, meant to
cover the situation at the time…nothing beyond the situation at hand, nothing like
a universal theory which can cover every instance of what we seek…
be it justice or ethics or morality or philosophical, or historical or social…
we simply lack any, ANY type of universal/transcendental theory to cover
what ails us, be it social, ethical, political, historical, philosophical, scientific,
aesthetical, or any type of human construct…disciplines as it were…
our entire life is made up of “ad hoc” theories meant to cover the moment,
nothing more… to deal with the situation at hand, nothing permanent…
just to deal with the here and now…
no wonder we feel adrift in the modern world… we have no universal theories
that attach us to the ground… we are nothing more then balloons floating
through the air with nothing to tie us to the ground…
hence we are alienated and disconnected… we have no universal theory to
fix us in our current lives… our entire modern existence is one that is “ad hoc”
of the moment…designed to deal with the current situation, nothing beyond that…
and so we must readjust our morals, values, philosophies, psychologies, and histories,
with every new situation because we have no universal/transcendental theories of,
well frankly, anything…
every situation requires new thinking because we have no set, universal theory to
fit or match that situation…
Kropotkin