Lots of people have loudly said that decent behavior is important to human life: principled behavior, self-sacrificial behavior, compassionate behavior, behavior that responds to some clear moral ideal. Unfortunately, the business news and the political news paint roughly this picture: lots of folks of modest intelligence making short term whoopee at other people's expense, and usually at their own long-term expense. The ones with foresight look maybe two years into the future. They aren't even good to themselves, or else they haven't mastered the statistics about the human lifespan. If you doubt this, try to find some moral or prudential sense in current attitudes toward universal health care, global warming, or fossil fuel depletion. A person doesn't dare read the news.
Kant had an elaborate story to tell about why one would never find an uncontroversial case of action done purely out of regard for the moral law. Lacking his metaphysics, one sort of expects that, if morality is important to human life, there should be a bit more of it in the news.
My guess is that the place to look is in the sculpting of family: that lots of people put their primary moral energy into shaping a family legacy of some sort, either carrying on something they inherited or starting something new. Until one has a way of understanding that moral project in its full reach, one will have an incomplete picture of the moral universe.
Posted by shea0017 at November 4, 2005 12:29 PM