The Good Society: Lenn E. Goodman's Some Moral Norm
The Good Society
Volume 19, Number 1, 2010
E-ISSN: 1538-9731 Print ISSN: 1089-0017
DOI: 10.1353/gso.0.0097
Some Moral Minima
Lenn E. Goodman
Some years ago I took part in an international meeting of philosophers. Around 180 thinkers attended. Many took the occasion to showcase their values. Socialism was still much bruited in those days, and several speakers scrapped their prepared remarks to sing its praises. I admired Hilary Putnam's courageous confession when he branded the socialist ideal as "now universally discredited." For many still imagined that civil rights and human flourishing were adequately served only when a single-party state controls law and politics, the media and means of production, science, inquiry, and the arts, …show more content…
There are too many violations of any norm to make any practice or linguistic usage comprehensively authoritative.5 And ideas of the divine are far too fluid and responsive to our norms to allow much criterial work to be offloaded in that direction. Why else, did Norsemen and Homeric Greeks have gods of war; and Vikings, a god of mischief? I would rather save the sanctity and absoluteness of norms to point toward the divine, and reveal just what sort of being we find worthy of …show more content…
State Department estimates that between 700,000 and four million persons are trafficked annually across international borders, including some 50,000 into the United States.10 Men are trafficked most often for agricultural or construction labor; women and children, for prostitution, domestic servitude, or sweatshop labor. False promises of employment, imposed debt, sequestered identity documents, and fear of immigration authorities are frequent. So are violence and threats of violence, unsafe and unhealthy workplaces and living conditions—and, for women and children in brothels, the risk of AIDS and other
Volume 19, Number 1, 2010
E-ISSN: 1538-9731 Print ISSN: 1089-0017
DOI: 10.1353/gso.0.0097
Some Moral Minima
Lenn E. Goodman
Some years ago I took part in an international meeting of philosophers. Around 180 thinkers attended. Many took the occasion to showcase their values. Socialism was still much bruited in those days, and several speakers scrapped their prepared remarks to sing its praises. I admired Hilary Putnam's courageous confession when he branded the socialist ideal as "now universally discredited." For many still imagined that civil rights and human flourishing were adequately served only when a single-party state controls law and politics, the media and means of production, science, inquiry, and the arts, …show more content…
There are too many violations of any norm to make any practice or linguistic usage comprehensively authoritative.5 And ideas of the divine are far too fluid and responsive to our norms to allow much criterial work to be offloaded in that direction. Why else, did Norsemen and Homeric Greeks have gods of war; and Vikings, a god of mischief? I would rather save the sanctity and absoluteness of norms to point toward the divine, and reveal just what sort of being we find worthy of …show more content…
State Department estimates that between 700,000 and four million persons are trafficked annually across international borders, including some 50,000 into the United States.10 Men are trafficked most often for agricultural or construction labor; women and children, for prostitution, domestic servitude, or sweatshop labor. False promises of employment, imposed debt, sequestered identity documents, and fear of immigration authorities are frequent. So are violence and threats of violence, unsafe and unhealthy workplaces and living conditions—and, for women and children in brothels, the risk of AIDS and other