Materialist Ethics and Life-Value
Materialist Ethics and Life-Value
Jeff Noonan
Series: McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Ideas
Copyright Date: 2012
Published by: McGill-Queen's University Press
Pages: 256
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24hm4b
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Book Info
Materialist Ethics and Life-Value
Book Description:

Current patterns of global economic activity are not only unsustainable, but unethical - this claim is central to Materialist Ethics and Life-Value. Grounding the definition of ethical value in the natural and social requirements of life-support and life-development shared by all human beings, Jeff Noonan provides a new way of understanding the universal conception of "the good life." Noonan argues that the true crisis affecting the world today is not sluggish rates of economic growth but the model of measuring economic and social health in terms of money-value. In response, he develops an alternative understanding of good societies where the breadth and depth of life-activity and enjoyment are dependent on dominant institutions. The more social institutions satisfy the necessary requirements of human life, the more they empower each person to develop and enjoy the capacities that make human life valuable and meaningful. A well-reasoned synthesis of traditional philosophical concerns and contemporary critiques of global capitalism, this book is a forward-looking treatise that defends political struggle and reconsiders what is most important for a happy life.

eISBN: 978-0-7735-9095-3
Subjects: Philosophy
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-viii)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. ix-x)
  3. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. xi-2)
  4. INTRODUCTION: Ethics and Materialist Philosophy
    INTRODUCTION: Ethics and Materialist Philosophy (pp. 3-14)

    Alain Badiou argues that it is not possible to ground ethical thinking “on the self-evidence of what is harmful to man.” “Considered in terms of its mere nature alone,” he contends, “the human animal must be lumped in the same category as its biological companions. This systematic killer pursues ... interests of survival and satisfaction neither more nor less estimable than those of moles or tigers or beetles.”¹ Badiou reserves the terms good and evil for actions that serve commitments to higher truths of science, politics, art, and love, actions that elevate us above our animal nature.

    Badiou’s arguments are...

  5. PART ONE MATERIALISM, HUMAN FINITUDE, AND ETHICS
    • 1 Materialism
      1 Materialism (pp. 17-45)

      Although the origins of materialism extend back to the awakening of philosophical consciousness West and east, it is not easy to state the shared principles of materialist philosophy. Nothing in its history is analogous to Hegel’s Science of Logic. Hegel’s masterpiece, if not an uncontroversial canon of idealism, provides a systematic and comprehensive exposition of idealism’s basic principles. In contrast, abstract ontological principles describing materialism as “an acknowledgement that physical matter pre-exists all human thought and actions and exerts its particular determinations upon the latter,” taken as free-standing assertions about nature treated as if human beings themselves were not part...

    • 2 The Life-Ground of Value in Human Life-Requirements
      2 The Life-Ground of Value in Human Life-Requirements (pp. 46-86)

      Chapter one concluded that the fundamental concern of life-grounded materialist ethics is the extent to which ruling value systems recognize and satisfy the comprehensive requirements for the free development of human sentient, emotional, cognitive, imaginative, and creative capacities. Thus the first step in explicating the life-grounded materialist ethical conception of the good life is to inquire into the full range of human life-requirements. Before the full range of life-requirements can be explicated, the distinction between life-requirements in general and consumer demands needs to be rigorously drawn. Once this core distinction has been established, the comprehensive set of human life-requirements can...

  6. PART TWO LIFE-GROUNDED MATERIALIST ETHICAL CRITICISM
    • 3 The Emergence of System-Requirements
      3 The Emergence of System-Requirements (pp. 89-106)

      Chapter two concluded that the requirements of system reproduction (system-requirements henceforth) and the ruling value system can be in contradiction with people’s life-requirements and life-value. If that is the case, it might be objected at the outset that such a contradiction would destroy the society.¹ If people depend on their societies to satisfy their life-requirements, but the ruling value system prioritizes the satisfaction of system-requirements which are not life-valuable, then it would seem that such a society could not survive even two generations. The conclusion, however, is contrary to all historical evidence: a society that survived for only two generations...

    • 4 The Life-Blind Logic of Social Expansion
      4 The Life-Blind Logic of Social Expansion (pp. 107-133)

      Chapter three explained the emergence and structure of the general ethical contradiction between system-requirements and ruling value systems, on the one hand, and shared life-requirements and life-values, on the other. Wherever this contradiction develops, conflicts can arise between the group or groups whose life-interests are damaged and the group that benefits from the damage that prevailing system-requirements cause and the ruling value system justifies. These conflicts can arise either within or between societies. The history of colonialism and its contemporary analogues are paradigm cases of the latter. In what follows I use “colonialism” to refer to a general process by...

    • 5 The Instrumentalization of Life-Value: The Material Irrationality of Global Capitalism
      5 The Instrumentalization of Life-Value: The Material Irrationality of Global Capitalism (pp. 134-180)

      As i argued in chapter two, no society can persist for a historically relevant length of time if it does not regularly satisfy at least the physical-organic life-requirements of the majority of its members. However, it does not follow that in satisfying these requirements the human good of its members is intended. Oppressive and exploitative societies can satisfy life-requirements not because it is life-valuable to do so but because the reproduction of the system requires that there be sufficient numbers of people healthy enough to perform the socially necessary labour. Slave economies are the extreme expression of this form of...

  7. PART THREE LIFE-GROUNDED MATERIALIST ETHICS AND THE HUMAN GOOD
    • 6 The Human Good as Free Life-Capacity Expression and Enjoyment
      6 The Human Good as Free Life-Capacity Expression and Enjoyment (pp. 183-210)

      In part one i began the construction of a life-grounded materialist ethics by arguing in favour of a complex materialist ontology. In contrast to reductionism, a complex materialist ontology understands the universe as a continuum of nested levels of organization and complexity. The continuum ranges from the fundamental forces and elements of physical reality to the self-conscious symbolic constructions of human social life. These levels are mediated by emergent properties and properly form a continuum since no transcendent ideal power or entity is posited as an explanation for higher-level structures of organization or the capacities appropriate to them. Simpler levels...

  8. CONCLUSION: Institutional and Political Implications
    CONCLUSION: Institutional and Political Implications (pp. 211-218)

    In chapter 6, I argued that life-grounded materialist ethics is concerned with both the principles which must be obeyed in a good individual life and the principles that define a good world. In contrast to modern, egocentric traditions of ethical thought which are concerned solely with abstract rules of individual conduct, life-grounded materialist ethics, like the ethical philosophy of classical Greece, is concerned with the principles and institutions that structure collective life. Insofar as life-grounded materialist ethics necessarily concerns itself not only with criticism of existing social dynamics and institutions and the ruling money-value system that legitimates them but equally...

  9. Bibliography
    Bibliography (pp. 219-230)
  10. Index
    Index (pp. 231-238)
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