Ethical Health: Managing Our Moral Impulses

This book argues that moralism is a troublesome emotion of the sort one might seek help with from a psychotherapist. Its focus is on how to disabuse ourselves of the illusion that our values are objective, as well as how to manage the manifestations of its residual presence.

This thesis may seem odd at first blush because morality is commonly conceived as an antidote to our baser impulses. Desire makes us want to do something, but the voice of conscience urges us not to. If morality is conceived as a myth, as the author contends, then how shall we conduct our lives? The form of abolitionism put forward by the author goes beyond proposing the mere elimination of moral beliefs, attitudes, vocabulary, and institutions to encouraging their replacement by the rational vetting of our desires. He suggests that moralism, conceived as being motivated by belief in objective values, be treated similarly to, or even as, an emotional problem, akin to, or perhaps even identical to, the sort addressed by anger management programs in psychotherapy. By exposing our beliefs and desires to rational scrutiny, we can achieve our rational goals without the adverse side effects engendered by a fictitious moral overlay.

Ethical Health will principally appeal to scholars and students working in metaethics and moral psychology, and will also be of interest to clinical practitioners and inquiring laypersons.

Joel Marks is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of New Haven, and a Bioethics Center scholar at Yale University. His previous books include Ethics without Morals, Hard Atheism and the Ethics of Desire, and Reason and Ethics. His Website is www.docsoc.com.