Before Ethics

What lies beneath the words and theories people use to make ethical decisions? Under the manicured landscape of modern philosophy, in which ideas are arranged for passive evaluation, lie deeply rooted problems that continue to devastate the world today. The gardeners who cultivate our modern philosophical, ethical and political conversations, might have us believe that the weeds of ancient oppression can be eliminated from the surface. The steady presence of racism, colonialism, sexism, ableism, and much more, are repeated reminders that we cannot eliminate the roots of oppression without rigorous deconstruction of the language, culture and history of the ideas we use to engage these problems. People today take up the study of ethics in the midst of devastating inequality. Severson insists that ethical reasoning attack the roots of the moral problems that plague our modern world. This is a book about what comes before ethics, about the deeply rooted assumptions and leanings that repeatedly influence the practice of ethical reasoning. Among the most dangerous of these is a passive dispositions toward moral problems, a default to neutrality and innocence. Presented with a deluge of options for thinking about their decisions, students hunt for the theory that seems to confirm their prior suspicions, rather than lead them to be changed. Through a series of excavations - of ideas, stories, cultures, practices, and language - this book prepares readers to think critically and deeply about the ideas they bring into ethical reasoning, and the theoretical approaches they use to engage the moral problems of our time.Severson traces modern problems back to ancient roots, deconstructing the ethical leanings of Plato's Meno, Homer's Odyssey, Old English poem Beowulf, Indian classic text The Bhagavad Gita, the Jewish legend of the Golem, and dozens of other sources. American chattel slavery, and its devastating aftermath, does not appear in a vacuum but as a manifestation of very old ideas that are continually refashioned to support oppression in new times. The United States abolished slavery, plucking up a weed from its garden, but left in place the forces, systems, power structures and ideas that made slavery possible. In seven related ""digs,"" this book excavates the roots of modern ethical theories and moral problems. Severson writes with urgency; there is a great cost to passive, disengaged, neutral approaches to ethics. He offers, here, not a new ethical theory but a relentless insistence that ethics help us address the deeply rooted problems that continue to inflict suffering today. This is an impatient book, for it presses the discipline of ethics away from passivity and neutrality and toward activated work against racism, against oppression, and for justice.