Showing posts with label "acknowledging both the ideal and the limits of reality". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "acknowledging both the ideal and the limits of reality". Show all posts

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

If War Can Have Ethics, Wall Street Can, Too; New York Times, 10/3/16

Nathaniel B. Davis, New York Times; If War Can Have Ethics, Wall Street Can, Too:
"To demand moral perfection or to succumb in the face of seeming futility is to turn our backs on what can be achieved by acknowledging both the ideal and the limits of reality. Applied ethics guide our interactions in the world as it exists while nudging us incrementally closer to the normative ideal and the world we seek to create.
War is inherently unjust, but the Just War Ethic has made it more just. The economy is not moral, but a foundational ethics of the economy could make it more moral. The product of such ethics would be decidedly imperfect, but it would be better than no ethics at all."