I love the idea of new vocabulary to express a moral system beyond right and wrong. There are many places where this language has already been created, and I’m only drawing from English. In other languages there are sure to be concepts that provide further clarity to personal expression of morals.
The most obvious example is Utilitarianism, where morally “right” actions are those which lead to the greatest utility. This allows a framework of objective analysis from the perspective of the utility of society. This is already easy to apply to our existing laws and establishes a center of truth for the wavering.
Game theory in the sense of Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene” provides another alternative to objective morality. In contrast to utilitarianism, the focus is the individual, and anything they do which is optimal to their well-being and the passing down of their genes could be considered morally right. The important distinction from anarchy is that you assume everyone else is also acting in their selfish interests, hence the game theory.
Kierkegaard provides very clear examples of how to express yourself with the Ethicist and the Aesthetic. I (and probably most people on this site) am a strong ethicist and believe that I am defined not by my beliefs but by my actions and words, and that those can be used to judge me. The greatest moral failure in the case of the ethicist is to act in a way that contradicts your beliefs.
Finally, you mentioned that we inherited Nihilism from Nietzsche, but we also inherited existentialism, which is much easier to work towards and see the positive results of. I think the language you seek has been created, the harder work is disseminating it.
I love the idea of new vocabulary to express a moral system beyond right and wrong. There are many places where this language has already been created, and I’m only drawing from English. In other languages there are sure to be concepts that provide further clarity to personal expression of morals.
The most obvious example is Utilitarianism, where morally “right” actions are those which lead to the greatest utility. This allows a framework of objective analysis from the perspective of the utility of society. This is already easy to apply to our existing laws and establishes a center of truth for the wavering.
Game theory in the sense of Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene” provides another alternative to objective morality. In contrast to utilitarianism, the focus is the individual, and anything they do which is optimal to their well-being and the passing down of their genes could be considered morally right. The important distinction from anarchy is that you assume everyone else is also acting in their selfish interests, hence the game theory.
Kierkegaard provides very clear examples of how to express yourself with the Ethicist and the Aesthetic. I (and probably most people on this site) am a strong ethicist and believe that I am defined not by my beliefs but by my actions and words, and that those can be used to judge me. The greatest moral failure in the case of the ethicist is to act in a way that contradicts your beliefs.
Finally, you mentioned that we inherited Nihilism from Nietzsche, but we also inherited existentialism, which is much easier to work towards and see the positive results of. I think the language you seek has been created, the harder work is disseminating it.
Have you heard about constitutivism in metaethics?
Stay tuned :)