In 1959, A Philosopher Warned Ethics Are Obsolete
Thursday, March 13, 2008 | Labels: Culture, Relativism | || If you have been following my posts this week we have been going through the past of well known philosophers warning western society of the direction it is heading. Today I take you to 1959, where Robert Fitch wrote an article entitled "The Obsolescence of Ethics." in it he depicts a more vivid image relating to the direction of modern day ethics. |
“Ours is an age where ethics has become obsolete. It is superceded by science, deleted by philosophy and dismissed as emotive by psychology. It is drowned in compassion, evaporates into aesthetics and retreats before relativism. The usual moral distinctions between good and bad are simply drowned in a maudlin emotion in which we feel more sympathy for the murderer than for the murdered, for the adulterer than for the betrayed, and in which we have actually begun to believe that the real guilty party, the one who somehow caused it all, is the victim, and not the perpetrator of the crime.”
- Robert Fitch, Christianity and Crisis: A Journal of Opinion, 1959
As one journeys through the wisdom of these writers this week they may tend to find a pattern here. Chesterton tells us the dangers of relativism, and that the overall skeptic is constantly questioning their own answers. Robert Fitch gives us a more existential illustration of the after effects of relativism. The embracing of and manipulation of science, philosophy and psychology to undermine the perspective of the skeptic and draw sympathy to excuse that which is unexcusable. The slow deterioration of a moral framework.
Amazing that in 1959 this was espoused. This is ever evident in the courtroom today.
Craig Chamberlin