@dreary.bsky.social: "geuss has a good chapter in reality and its dreams that fleshes it out (cont.)"

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@dreary.bsky.social

geuss has a good chapter in reality and its dreams that fleshes it out (cont.)

guess, reality and its dreams, 29

Moralism is a quasi-technical term describing in the first instance a complex consisting of a conception of morality, and a particular set of assumptions about the motivational force and the explanatory value of appeals to (this) morality. There are, I will claim, two slightly different but related dimensions to moralism, or contexts within which moralism needs to be located. First, it must be seen as a set of attitudes and views in a "practical" context, in a very general sense of "practical" that is one of exhortation, advice, and the justification or legitimation of action. But second it is associated with a set of beliefs and attitudes in the theoretical context of understanding and explaining our human world. A lot of what makes this whole domain problematic is connected with our tendency to flip back and forth between the "practical" context of exhortation and the justification of action, on the one hand, and the "theoretical" context of trying to understand and explain, on the other, and this discussion will unfortunately have to instantiate this complexity. To start, let us try to understand what moralizing as an approach is by looking first at its
"practical" dimension, at a specific social practice in which its nature emerges particularly clearly.

September 15, 2025 at 5:08 PM

@dreary.bsky.socialSep 15, 2025

but yea even for his purposes it’s ideal typic, and ofc not everyone using the term has his conception

raymond guess, reality and its dreams, 26

call "moralism." I should make it clear to start that I mean by "mor-alism" something very specific, and something I wish to distinguish very clearly from the simple employment of moral judgments. Moralism means, roughly speaking, a kind of moralized preaching and an associated assumption about the causal efficacy and cognitive significance of making moral judgments. One can, however, make moral judgments without thereby being committed to what I call
"moralism." "Moralism" as I use it, is, however, also something like a Weberian ideal type. That is an artificial construct of a number of elements chosen partly to illustrate a possible internal consistency or affinity these elements have. The construct will be useful if the elements of which it is composed are widely distributed in society and do have the affinities the model tries to exhibit, even if no individual ever held precisely all the views and attitudes I attribute to the moralist.