Synthesis philosophica, Vol. 27 No. 2, 2012.
Preliminary communication
More Than Tolerance: Ethics for a Multicultural Society
Patrick Giddy
orcid.org/0000-0002-6804-3731
; University of Kwazulu-Natal, School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics, Durban, South Africa
Abstract
Contemporary multicultural societies for the most part frame themselves in terms of a procedural rather than substantive ethics, by emphasizing rightness rather than goodness, and elevate tolerance to key value. But this cannot of itself replace a substantive and motivating norm of the good life and can be experienced as a loss, disaffecting citizens. It will also fail to confront the limits of acceptable action, the unconditionality associated with the moral point of view. The classical tradition in ethics, proposing a norm of human flourishing, can be re-expressed to bring out this unconditionality. I point to the counter tradition of ethical reasoning in terms of proportionality, exampled in the case of war ethics, as useful and draw on an alternative concept of democracy in terms not of formal or substantive rights but of an ethic of participation.
Keywords
ethics; classical Greek philosophy; rightness/goodness; multiculturalism; tolerance; Spaemann; unconditionality; proportionalist reasoning
Hrčak ID:
101735
URI
Publication date:
19.2.2013.
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