Some moral theories have zero “slack”: everything that is not mandatory (morally good) is forbidden (morally evil). It seems that yours is not one of them, but they do exist.
I suppose that people who adhere to them think that any other system is morally repugnant, and they can have that opinion if they want, but it seems completely impractical and downright counterproductive even if there was some absolute standard by which they could be said to be “correct”.
One way of understanding these “zero slack” theories is not that they approve/condemn things as morally good vs morally evil, but rather that they provide a single ordering of actions from best to worst. There is no negative (evil) half of the spectrum. Some things are just worse than others, and you should aspire to the best that you can, an idea which I don’t think is counterproductive at all.
Some moral theories have zero “slack”: everything that is not mandatory (morally good) is forbidden (morally evil). It seems that yours is not one of them, but they do exist.
I suppose that people who adhere to them think that any other system is morally repugnant, and they can have that opinion if they want, but it seems completely impractical and downright counterproductive even if there was some absolute standard by which they could be said to be “correct”.
One way of understanding these “zero slack” theories is not that they approve/condemn things as morally good vs morally evil, but rather that they provide a single ordering of actions from best to worst. There is no negative (evil) half of the spectrum. Some things are just worse than others, and you should aspire to the best that you can, an idea which I don’t think is counterproductive at all.