In 1901, a cache of papyrus fragments were found in Hermopolis in Egypt. They were discovered to be the pieces of the book Elements of Ethics, by the 2nd century stoic Hierocles. In a portion of this book, titled Appropriate Acts, Hierocles wrote of what has been described as the circles of morality, that is, the concentric circles defining man's obligations to act towards God, fellow man, family, and self.
I've often wondered how moral principals align with one's politics. Sociologists have found that indeed partisanship correlates with one's emphasis on certain principals over others. But moral principals are broad, and can be applied differently depending on one's assumptions about the world. For instance, compassion to a liberal might mean something different to a conservative. But I an underlying consideration here is to what group, or moral "circle" one is applying their ethic. IN the chart below, I've grouped 24 common moral principals according to whether they generally apply to one's past, present and future notions of self. This might also be postulated as the ways in which one's beliefs and values are examined as to how they have been experienced in the past, present, or future. I've also created categories of how they might be applied to either one's self, one's in-group, and one's out-group. For example, the moral principal of humility is defined by a limited sense of one's importance over others. This requires a backwards looking stance in which actions and beliefs are only ever imperfect, and always allowing for the possibility of error. Humility requires an openness to the idea that what may be good for one person, in one situation, may not be good in every situation or for every person. It includes a sort of vigilance towards skeptical analysis of the truth in one's actions. Towards the self, humility involves the capacity to see one's faults or limitations. Towards one's in-group, humility involves being alert to possible flaws of the group. And finally, towards the out-group, the perspective flips and involves recognizing the possibility of flaws and limitations in perceptions towards the out-group. A crucial component in examining what Hierocles framed as how we ought to appropriately act towards these social circles, or groups, is having a robust epistemology. That is, one's ability to act according to a given moral principal is constrained by the objective assessment of what it means to act in that way, and whether we have, we are, or we plan to act in such a manner. In order to act with humility, I must have an objective understanding of my own limitations and faults, as well as those of my in-group. Yet because recognizing the flaws in an out-group is not humility (rather, the opposite), a humble stance towards the out-group is to recognize the flaws and limitations in my perceptions of the out-group. In partisanship, there seems a clear emphasis for liberals on flattening, or broadening moral circles. A liberal is always trying to extend the circle beyond self and in-group to include ever-widening out-groups with regard to nationalities, religions, ethnicities, and even species. Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to be wary of extending the moral circle beyond the in-group. One caveat here might be the case of unborn humans, where many conservatives find themselves increasing the moral circle to the fetus at earlier and earlier stages of development. However, the reasons for this seeming reversal point to the importance of epistemology underlying not just how the moral principals are acted on, but as well to whom they are enacted towards. On the issue of abortion, there are numerous epistemological framings, including but not limited to both one's valuation of female bodily autonomy as well as one's valuation of what makes life itself sacred. It has often been said that if men, within patriarchy, bore children, abortion would be more likely to be seen as a highly valued right. Yet if women are seen (either explicitly or implicitly) as lesser-status, then their rights might be weighed less against the life of a fetus. In this sense, patriarchy, by definition a systemic devaluation of women (and a traditionally conservative sentiment) , designates them as an out-group in many ways, thus making anti-abortion conservatism understandable in part as rooted in this instance in not wishing to extend the circle to women. Furthermore, to the extent that raising the status of the fetus lowers the status of women, it reinforces the conservative tendency to limit the application of moral principals to out-groups. Epistemological framing can also be seen in the determination of the sacredness of a fetus. Here, we must consider upon what basis we determine that life is sacred. That is, why is human life sacred at all? Certain religious dogma are clear on this point, in that, say, all human life is sacred, per the authority of God. The complexities that might arrive in more nuanced cases, such as when a human is a mortal danger to others and thus be removed from sanctity if their murder is thus justified, can similarly be simplified by following dogmatic authority. For those who do not find a particular religious dogma authoritative, other frameworks must be relied upon such as a belief in limiting suffering of an individual or their family. With regard to the fetus, this might mean determining how much suffering might be felt by the fetus or their immediate family in its death. Other, less direct frameworks might include an appeal to law and order in maintenance of an orderly state in which, while there is an arbitrariness in drawing a line past which the murder of a fetus is unacceptable, some line must be drawn and for some this is at a certain stage of embryonic development (e.g., a baby's ability to survive outside the womb) while for others this is at the moment of birth. In examining how our epistemologies define our application of moral principals across groups, we can better understand why partisanship correlates both with emphasis on certain moral principals, as well as with how far one's moral circle extends in various contexts.
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