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NOTES ON NORMATIVITY AND NORMATIVE EXPERIENCE


S. N. Balagangadhara
Unpublished notes: please do not quote without permission from the author.
1. Two questions are central to this set of notes. What is moral experience? What are moral theories, theories of? At first sight, it looks as though the current stock of moral theories theorise (or reflect about)
the moral experience. I think they do not. It is the burden of this set of notes to clarify the above remark.
Because there is no point to a continuous repetition, it must be borne throughout these notes that (a) I
talk only about the contemporary western culture; and, as a consequence, (b) the scope of moral theory
and moral experience is restricted in nature. I am presuming the difference between the western culture
and the Asian culture even at this level. I shall have very little to say about non-western moralities here:
they will be the subject of another set of notes.
1.1. In The Heathen, the universalisation of religion was treated in terms of the double dynamic
of religion: the moment of proselytisation, where religion reproduced itself as a particular religion;
the moment of secularisation, where religion reproduced itself as world view. Even at this level
of abstraction, it is clear that the dynamic of secularisation is parasitic upon the dynamic of the
reproduction of religion as a particular religion. That is to say, the secularisation of religion does not
have an independent mechanism for self-reproduction. This situation comes about because worldview,
in the human community we are, does not have content. We can speak intelligibly of world
views only to the extent we speak of different religious world views. (Remember that religion
is not only the best example of what world view is but also the only example.) In so far as
world view is the secularised variant of the term religion, one feels like fishing around for the
scientific world view without ever finding it: it is akin to the search for the Holy Grail or the
philosophers stone. World view expresses not only the problem but is also its solution when
religion (the explanatory intelligible account of the Cosmos) is present only as a particular religion. The nature of human beings is a contingent constraint upon religion and this constraint
can also take the form of the presence of a multiplicity of religions. From this optic, the universalisation of religion if I may speak using an analogy is like splitting the body from the soul,
or the content from the form. Each particular religion (the content) is dissociated from the
form, yet each particular religion is a religion precisely because of the form (it makes the Cosmos explanatorily intelligible); the form, however, requires some specific content before it can
become an explanatorily intelligible account to us human beings. In other words, world view is
the form without content; each religion has content without the form. (The sub-title of my
doctoral thesis highlighted this point: An essay on worlds without views and views without the
world.)
1.2. The moment of proselytisation, however, does have a mechanism for self-reproduction: worship is such a mechanism for the simple reproduction of religion. The believers continue to
experience the explanatorily intelligibility of the Cosmos through worship (this is what simple
reproduction means). The extended reproduction of religion occurs through the cognitive moments involved in the conversion of the heathen.
1.3. From all of this, it follows that one can only add concrete, or richer determinations to the process of secularisation of religion only by talking about the processes of proselytisation. That is
to say, only by talking about the history of specific religions can we hope to make sense of the
process of secularisation of religion. This stands to reason as well: the only way of talking about
religion without doing theology is to talk about it as an entity that brings a particular configuration of learning into being. That is because, if we investigate further into what religion is at the
earlier levels of abstraction (religion as the explanatorily intelligible account of the Cosmos or as
world view), we are forced to accept its self-description. (This is the reflexivity of religion: it is an
explanatorily intelligible account of both itself and the Cosmos; it cannot be one without being
the other at the same time.) Any scientific investigation of religion, then, can only be carried out

at the level of religion is also a description. (This is obvious, of course: the only science
that can investigate religion as the revelation of God this is what religion says it is is theology.) However, if we pitch a scientific study of religion at the level of religion is also a , the
problem of focus becomes a serious issue: given that religions are many things in human communities, focussing on which property helps us gain a scientific understanding of religion? Different research programmes give different answers. My answer is known: study the western culture as a product of Christianity (in its aspect as a religion). That is, we study a particular culture
as a configuration of learning generated by the double dynamic of the Christian religion. This is
an empirical and scientific study of the relation between a particular religion and a specific configuration of learning. In so far as it succeeds as a scientific project, it will further our understanding of both religions and cultures. My research programme, to the extent it is an empirical
study, focuses upon and is constrained in the last analysis by the empirical facts as well.
1.4. These preliminaries enable me to sound a warning note and add a methodological pointer. Neither in my book nor in my sets of notes have I spoken much about proselytisation. That is because this process has been very extensively documented in the western intellectual tradition itself. The history of the Christian churches and their theological and methodological disputes
are chronicled both widely and deeply. No individual can hope to master these details adequately, least of all a heathen like me. However, a certain understanding of this history is required in
order to tell a tale of the west. What constitutes a certain understanding? We need to keep in
mind that the history of the Churches and details of the debates are of relevance to us only in so
far as they shed light on the process of secularisation. We are not theologians any more than Church historians; therefore, our forays into theology or Church history will necessarily be amateurish. But
this is no handicap: we are not trying to achieve a correct and accurate understanding in order
to save our souls. We study proselytisation only to the extent it lends a dynamic to the process of secularisation
of religion. To do anything more is to forsake the scientific study that the research programme is.
Of course, how we describe proselytisation is not how theologians and Church historians look
at the phenomenon in question. But this is no criticism of our efforts: we do not study religion
as the believers experience it or the way it describes itself.
1.5. However, it does not follow from anything I have said so far that there is a one-to-one correlation between the developments in the western culture and the moment of proselytisation of the
Christian religions. There are other dynamics as well: think, for instance, of the dynamic of social structures and the dynamic of scientific theories. Neither is a secular translation of a religious dynamic; social and cognitive structures generate their own dynamics too. The cultural,
as I said in an earlier set of notes, enables the social, and we need to keep this firmly in mind.
In the final analysis, the only way to decide about these issues is by producing theories about
them. Until such a stage, all we can do is use heuristics in our process of investigation and be
aware of the dangers of lazy and slipshod thinking.
2. Religion has often been characterised as a search for meaning in life (e.g. Paul Tillich). The predicament of the modern man, correspondingly, is seen as the absence of such a meaning. What does the
previous statement really mean? How does one experience an absence, whether it is meaning or whatever else? Phenomena like anomie, alienation, etc., are alleged to be experiences of such absences but it
is anything but clear how one is to understand such states of affairs. Many authors suggest that one
finds such meaning in religion and that is why the predicament of the modern man be seen as a religious quest. He experiences his life as meaningless and is in search of this meaning whose absence he
experiences. I suggest we read this statement literally as a description of the experience of secularisation.
The proselytising moment of religion makes God a person and the Cosmos an expression of His Will.
This lends intelligibility to the Cosmos, including human life. The secularising moment retains the
feeling of intelligibility but removes the only entity that lends intelligibility, viz. God. Consequently, the
modern man, in so far as he searches for meaning in life, searches for it in vain in the secular world. He
can only find it in religion. His experience of absence is generated by the background availability of religions, where a meaning generating entity is present. In this sense, Tillich is absolutely right: if the modern man searches for meaning in life, he can only find it in religion. Because only religion can give
meaning to life, any such search is best called a quest for religion (or a religious quest). But we still
have not understood another part of this claim, which is that the religious quest of the modern man has

to be located in the experience of an absence. Let us keep an answer to this issue in abeyance for some
time; we do not have the resources to tackle it as yet.
3. Let us go back to the medieval Catholic religion. (I presume the difference between the Orthodox and
the Catholic church in what follows, even if some of the things I say of the latter are applicable to the
former as well.) The first and the most important thing to note about the nature of this religion is that it
is a religion of the priests. The second thing to notice is that this religion had already structured morality
normatively by then.
3.1. Christianity is, and has always been, a religion of the priests. In fact, its understanding of what
religion is (whether true or false) has always revolved round the fulcrum of priesthood. The
Church (with its functionaries) is the shepherd; the sheep, of course, are the laity. The task of
shepherding is what religion is all about. It is the case that there is no shepherd if there are no
sheep, but the sheep and their activities (like bleating, eating, copulating, etc.) do not constitute the
activity of shepherding. Religion, as Christianity has understood it, is the task of shepherding the
sheep. The laity did not indulge in religious tasks, but merely followed the religious, namely,
the priest. What the religious man (the priest that is) does is what religion is; the role of the laity consists in believing in this religion and following the shepherd. Put simply: religion is priest
craft, according to Christianity.
3.2. This is the reason why their critique of false religions revolves around the heathen priests
misguiding the gullible masses. If you look at the Christian understanding of Ancient religion,
Egyptian religion, or the Indian religion, it is striking how important the priest figure is. By the
same token, it is also understandable why they put such emphasis on the temples: whether Egyptian or Indian. The temples are like the church: they are the source of the priestly power.
(Hence the reason why the entry into temples was made into an important Harijan theme by
the Christian missionaries in India. Hence the reason too for identifying the Brahmins as the
priests of the Hindu religion.) False religion is the religion of the priests of the false god, the
way the true religion is the religion of the priests of the true God. The priest craft theory of religion, whether used by the Catholics or the Protestants or the sons of reason, tells us that it is
a self-description of Christianity as a religion. That is to say, the theory that religion is an invention of the priests is not a secular, scientific account of the origin of religion but a theological self-description of Christianity.
3.3. The Protestant Christianity does not make Christianity any less priest-centred. It merely makes
every believer into a priest. That is why it is not only able to reproduce the Catholic critique of
heathen religions but also to use the same to criticise the Catholic religion itself. The true religion that Protestantism is consists only of priests, whereas all false religions contain priesthood and a laity. Such a priestly caste is necessarily corrupt: in order to retain its power, it resorts to mumbo jumbo rituals and hides the true message of God. Making this message accessible to the masses would remove the source of the priestly power and end their corruption. (See here, in a nut shell, the theory of corruption in the modern day political science. A
transparent government will end corruption in political life: make information public.)
3.4. This is the origin of the Indological description of Brahmanism as a religion in the early medieval India. This is the alleged religion of the priests that Brahmins are supposed to be, and one
which dominated the Indian culture for some time. Buddhism, again allegedly, fought against
this Brahmanism and their struggle was a religious one. This piece of Christian theology has
been a scientific fact for generations of Indologists, both European and Indian. No wonder
that the Buddha could so easily become the Martin Luther of India!
3.5. However, it is true that anti-clericalism is as much a part of Catholic Christianity as the picture I have sketched. It is equally true that the priest that Protestantism fought against is not
its minister either. How weighty are these objections to our research programme? They are objections, if and only if one believes that there is only one true description of any phenomenon
we care to talk about. And that such a true description consists only of a collection of details
(the objective properties). With the knowledge we have today, neither can be defended: there
can be multiple true descriptions (each pitched at a different level) of any given phenomenon;

what counts as an objective property, as a consequence, is relative to the language (or theory)
one uses in describing such details. By saying this, I do not want to deny the notion of objectivity itself: but I do not see why, say, the phenomenon of anti-clericalism (a theological detail) is
any less objective than the work of a historian, who spends his entire life collecting facts to
show that anti-clericalism itself consists of indefinitely many dissimilar details and, therefore, it
is unjustified to speak of a phenomenon called anti-clericalism. Each is pitched at a certain level
of abstraction and the value of the research (the details, in other words) depends on the theories that embed them. Mutatis mutandis, the same point applies to my story about Christianity.
Not all the details relevant to a theologian are relevant to me; the value of my description lies in
the story it tells. As long as I do not concoct facts, the level at which I make use of details is
defined by the focus of my research.
3.6. I would like to return to the point that Christianity is a religion of the priests and make another
remark. It has to do with how Christianity has described religions like Islam and Judaism and
how Islam, for instance, describes the Indian religion. The Rabbi and the Imam were described as priests in Judaism and Islam. Today, we know that Rabbinic Judaism was a specific
form of Judaic religion and that the Imam represents a learned figure in Islam. Perhaps, that is
the reason why the Mogul rulers identified the Brahmins as the pundits of the Hindu religion.
(Christianity continued this practice and identified pundits with priests because only the priests
were learned men. As I remember the story, the Hindu participants in the Emperor Akbars
court for constructing a universal religion were the pundits.) In contradistinction to Christianity, the Mosque is not a house of God. It is merely a place-holder that faces in the direction of
Mecca. To the Muslims, the Mosque signifies Mecca and this symbol structures their spatial orientation. Spatiality, then, should be a salient diversity in the Islamic culture. (Of course, to a people living in a desert that does not contain obvious reference points, spatial orientation is crucial to survival.) Consequently, temples in India must have appeared as a double abomination:
the Indians not only violated the commandment not to build (and worship) images of God
but also built residences for (the false) god. Hence the Muslims destroyed the temples and disfigured the images in those temples. (This might help us understand the Islamic vandalism of
the Indian temples.)
4. There are three aspects to how the medieval Christian religion structured morality normatively. The first
is their use of the concept virtue. The second is how the vocation of the priest incorporated morality.
The third is the translation of morality as it applied to the flock.
4.1. Unlike Aristotle, the medieval Churchs determination of the notion of virtue was fundamentally normative. The non-normative good of Aristotle becomes the normative good, i.e., that
which human beings ought to pursue. This normative good was to seek God. This results in
the subordination of all pursuits to the Will of God, i.e. to His Commandments. Correspondingly, one could now ask whether what men pursued is also what they ought to pursue, i.e.,
whether the good they pursued was the real good. Consequently, some virtues of Aristotle
become vices: pride, for example. Yet others, change in both meaning and their character:
generosity, for instance, becomes charity. Some others lose their meaning altogether: magnificence, for instance. Newer ones make their appearance: frugality and obedience, for example.
What is important to realise about this transformation is that virtues retained their character in
so far they could be successfully mediated by the supreme good. But once they were so mediated, they lost everything but their names. In other words, there is no line (straight or otherwise) to be drawn between Aristotle and, say, Aquinas. To equate them both as proponents of
virtue theory is more a show of ignorance than of erudition.
4.2. The priest, of course, did not follow the Will of God abstractly but as it was revealed in the
person of Jesus Christ. The teachings of Jesus were preserved in the Church, and imitatio Christi
consisted in following the life and message of Jesus as the Church presented both. This is the
path of conversio, the endless process of transforming oneself from inside out. A virtuous life
enabled one to follow this path the way one should. Such virtues were the means towards the
end, and that end was to achieve eternal happiness. A virtuous life did not guarantee salvation
because there is no substitute to Gods Grace. But it did enable one to seek such a grace. A
moral life was thus a virtuous life and the virtues themselves were normative in nature. Morali-

ty could encompass the entire life of the priest only because of its subordination to the fundamentally normative process of conversio.
4.3. In one sense, the translation of morality retains this structure as well. The duty of the flock consists in following the shepherd, which means that virtues get a straightforward interpretation,
viz., that of completely normative commandments. One ought to obey God, which means that
one obeys the Church. This was the only path to salvation. However, there was another sense
in which morality retained its earlier, non-normative aspect. The distinction between shepherd and his Flock, religion as priest craft and making people into believers and followers (the
Christianisation), required the introduction of the distinction between the priest and the laity
in the sphere of the morality of daily life itself. I suggest that the notion of supererogation expresses both the distinction between the priest and the laity, and the obduracy of the daily life.
In what does the stubbornness of the daily life consist of? It is obvious: the daily life cannot disappear. The priest and the laity, the Pope and the peasant, both have their daily lives. The religious world, the domain of the sacred, grew through the process of contraction and absorption
of the earlier secular world, the domain of the profane. (This has been argued in The Heathen..)
Out of this process grows a secular- religious world, which though recognizably religious is
nevertheless secular in nature. To say that the distinction between the religious and the secular
is made within a religion is to say that this distinction is present within the religious world as
well. At the same time, to say that the secular world is a secular-religious world is to say that the
secular world ineluctably refers to the religious world as well. The daily life is the presence of
the secular within the religious world. And that something is experienced as the daily life with
an alleged contrast set (the extraordinary?) testifies that it refers to something Other than itself.
The (religious) distinction between the priest and the laity has to be drawn at the level of the
secular; thus transformed, this (secular) distinction must get represented in the theological consciousness at the level of the religious. The institute of indulgences is a theological representation of
the secular distinction between the priest and the laity, namely, supererogation. At the same time,
supererogation is the secular translation of the theological distinction between the priest and
the saint. (Which came first? This is a question of supreme indifference to us.) If ones duty is
to search for God, there could be no going beyond the call of duty (this is what supererogation means). If virtues assist in this duty, how can any virtue be supererogatory? (This was the
Protestant criticism against the Catholic Christianity.) However, if the priest is different from
the laity, and the former obeys the call of God to serve Him and thus be a Christian, there is a
difference in degree (surely) between these two Christians? The Protestant reformation took exception (this is putting it mildly) to the presence of the secular within the religious world: they
saw it as the profaning of the religious world. Correctly, they identified the crux of this problem
in the figure of the priest, and the distinction between the priest and the laity.
5. The translation of indulgences as supererogation in the sphere of morality required the subordination of
the latter to the structure of the duty and obligation, albeit partially. What it means to say is that ones
relationship to fellow-men fell under the overriding commandment of God. One ought to be charitable because God enjoined men to be charitable with respect to each other. One ought to be kind or
show fortitude in adversity because that is what being a Christian meant. (The structure of duties and
obligations did not bind the daily life of the flock strictly, the way one would expect it from the foregoing. This situation has partly to do with the fact that the way one goes about with fellow-human beings
has also to do with the learning processes that are invariant across cultures. However, this aspect is not
of interest to me now, whereas the differences between cultures are.) The experiencing of the actions in
daily life as though they were enveloped by the moral commandments (that came from God and the
Church) is how Catholic Christianity secularised itself with respect to morality. This is important because the Protestant Reformation could become a popular movement (meaning that it was also a
movement of the people, the laity) precisely because of this aspect of the secularisation of Christianity.
(This is what I mean when I say in The Heathen.. that the Protestant Reformation indexes the extent to
which Christianity had secularised itself.) It could find fertile ground because it was already prepared by
Catholic Christianity.

6. The secular world that the Protestant Christianity found was the secular-religious world of Catholic
Christianity. In the first phase, analogous to what happened during the emergence and triumph of
Christianity, this secular-religious world also contracts. It is absorbed into the Protestant religious world
such that matters of secular concern (like food habits, the structure of the family, etc.) become themes
for theological reflections anew. In the subsequent phase, a new secular world comes into being from
within the ambit of the religious world: a protestant-secular world. This too is recognizably Christian:
duties play a role of overriding importance here, much the way they played a role in the Catholic-secular
world. In fact, that actions in daily life could at all be conceptualised in terms of duties has to do with
the secularisation of Catholic Christianity.
7. As I have indicated in my earlier sets of notes, Protestant reformation imposes the structure of conversio
upon society. It abolishes priesthood by making everyone into a priest. In its proselytising moment,
each member of the Protestant religion is a potential priest and ought to live as one. Each has the duty
to seek God in the certainty that whether or not the process eventuates in finding God depends not on
the seeker but on the Grace of God. The only certainty one can have is that one would continuously err,
fail the trust that God places in one because of ones sinful nature. No human effort could succeed: to
think that one has tried very hard to find God was to err on the side of Pride; to give up is to surrender
oneself to the clutches of the Devil. No action is too insignificant to fall outside the overriding obligation towards God; no human action is so great (supererogatory) that it could be seen to fulfil ones duty.
Equally, no station in life is so mean that it is not a part of the purposes of God; by the same token, no
position is so exalted that it merits a special consideration. One falls short continuously, and all one can
do is pray for deliverance. The Protestant morality encompasses ones life so fully, envelopes it so completely that nothing falls outside it. It is this Protestant morality that has secularised itself.
8. As long as one speaks about the God and the Devil, this morality makes sense irrespective of where one
stands with respect to its theology. Secularisation, however, comprises of stripping away precisely these
figures who lend intelligibility to this account. Morality consists of fulfilling ones duty (towards whom?)
knowing that one always fails in doing so (what does failure consist of?). One is given over to the urges
(why are they immoral?) and one has to fight an unequal battle against them. Why battle what is a part
of you? Is it not more sensible to learn to live with all parts of you? Besides, no matter which part of
you wins, you are always the loser. The only end of morality would then consist of you losing, no matter
which part of you wins. Morality requires justification (because God is absent), whereas the structure of
morality (the ought structure) is naturalised: either as a division of the universe of statement into ought
and is statements or a postulation of a biological module of normativity or whatever else is the ruling
fashion of the day. The moral experience itself comprises of a continuous feeling of falling short, a
feeling of inadequacy or their equivalents. Guilt that one is not doing what one ought to without being able to localise the precise act of omission or even to see it as an omission; the inability, the impossibility in fact, of addressing the moral situation as a learning situation and the resultant inability to learn
morally characterise such a moral experience. In short, being moral, in the experience generated by the
secularisation of the Protestant morality, comprises of: transgression, failure, falling short, inadequacy
and the feeling of Guilt that follow these. The extraordinary thing about these experiences is that they
are all negative in nature. Not merely in the sense that they are negative emotions, though they are also
that in some senses of the term, but above all in the sense that they are emotions that express a lack or an
absence. One fails, without knowing what success could mean; one falls short without understanding the
standards; one is inadequate without having a clue about what adequacy consists of. One knows if one
knows anything at all, that one will fail in moral life: one will not be able to fulfil ones duty. (From
whence this certainty?) This certainty is not restricted to human actions alone; ones thoughts and emotions share the same fate. In simple terms: the secularised Protestant moral experience, because it is secularised, appears to involve the experience of a lack, an absence. To the extent this morality encompasses ones
life, to that extent can one begin to understand Tillichs remark that the modern man experiences a lack,
an absence.
8.1. One can try and come to grips with this experience by inscribing it in the heart of human existence. It appears to me Heidegger and Sartre have followed this route. Das Nichts of Heidegger,
or the Nothingness of Sartre that is coiled in the centre of Being are attempts to pursue this
line of thought. Though fascinating, such reflections lack a prima facie intelligibility as far as I am
concerned. I do not understand how it is possible to experience an absence or a lack. (Given

what I have said so far, it means that I have to make sense of the secularised Protestant moral
experience in a different way than describe it as a lack.)
8.2. Wittgenstein was closer to the mark when he claimed that ethical statements are not possible.
What kind of statements can one make about a lack or an absence? In so far as statements
about a lack or an absence can be made, they are like the statements that one makes about the
null-set. The only statement you can make about the null-set is that there is the null-set. Similarly, one can say that the moral domain exist, but not make moral statements. Not because of the
distinction between facts and norms but because of the kind of experience that moral experience is. Popper was both profoundly wrong and profoundly right when he gave an example of
the moral statement: do not brandish a poker at a visitor. Wittgensteins disgust at the fellow
Austrian is perfectly understandable as well.
8.3. Modern day deontic logics, which allege to make clear what moral statements mean, are
equally incomprehensible. Even though they use the formidable apparatus of model theory, or
modal logics one is not illuminated by their attempts either. Moral obligations that we incur in
the actual world are only apparent; they are real only in a deontically perfect world. Our duties are imperfect because the actual world is a deontically imperfect world whereas duties
are perfect in a deontically perfect world. We can understand the prima facie obligations or the
imperfect duties in the actual world because we have access to deontically perfect worlds,
which are the possible worlds. This possible world semantics tells us what we already know:
that the actual world is the world of absence, the world of lack. But they do not tell us how to
make sense of a deontically imperfect world without referring to the Kantian kingdom of
ends or even why our actual world is a deontically imperfect world.
8.4. There is, however, another way of looking at it. Two names, associated with two different styles
of thinking, come to mind: Rudolf Carnap and Michel Foucault. The former I am relatively familiar with and the latter I know of only derivatively. In his critique of Heidegger (in Pseudoproblems in Philosophy, if memory serves me right), Carnap speaks of a linguistic mistake. When
we say there is nothing under the table, we do not ascribe existence to nothing, even though
the sentence is existentially quantified. (In the above sentence, we do not mean that there exists
some thing under the table and that some thing is nothing.) In other words, to take common
sense statements (now I am paraphrasing Carnap) as though they are some deep insights can
give birth to pseudo-problems. Alternately put, our ways of talking can misguide us into believing
wrong things about the structure of the world. As I have understood Foucault, a similar paraphrasing is available: our discourses create their objects and there is a problematic relation between the world and the discourse. (If I am too much off the mark, scratch my claims about
Foucault.)
In other words, I want to turn my attention to our ways of talking about or the discourse about morality in order to get a grip on the moral experience of the secularised Protestant morality. As a short hand, let me use
normative experience to refer to the moral experience of the secularised Protestant morality. Our ways of
talking about this normative experience are our normative theories. Once we come to grips with the nature
of these theories, we can (hopefully) appreciate what the relation is between the normative experience and
the normative theory.
9. To us, whether in India, the Ancient Pagan culture, or the rest of Asia, one of the toughest nuts to crack
is the notion of normativity. What I intend doing now is attempt a reconstruction of sorts. That is, I
will not try to provide an overview of the different moral theories, but instead try to understand them as
a way of talking. Understanding them thus means providing them with intelligibility. I shall try to do
that from within the frame work of my research programme.
9.1. The first question that requires answering is this: where to locate the origin of normativity?
That is, what are its sources? There are a few older books in the western intellectual tradition
that have located it in human interaction. Using Game theory (the earliest attempt is by Richard
Braithwaite, somewhere in 1958 if I am not mistaken), they have located it in mutual expectations that interacting players have. (I have yet to read newer contributions on this topic.) This
is very dissatisfying: prescription of acts does not require normativity. Consider, for instance,

such a prescription regarding either a ritual or a diplomatic protocol. They describe a sequence
of acts, and inform you that some ritual or some ceremony is that particular ritual or ceremony,
if it is performed in a particular sequence. (There are mutual expectations involved in this performance, obviously.) Of course, one could also conceptualise such instructions as norms or
injunctions, but such a conceptualisation begs the question: what is normative conceptualising? I do not want to go deeper into the answers that locate the sources of normativity in
some human disposition or the other, because I do not simply believe it. The presence of nonnormative ethics (e.g. Aristotle) shows us that there is no necessity for the emergence of normative thinking in all human cultures. As a general strategy, I think it is possible to show that
any such explanation (about the sources of normativity) is ultimately question-begging: in the
course of their explanations, somewhere or the other they will have smuggled in normativity
(this is the alleged is-ought problem of Hume); or they will be pure ad hoc explanations; or it
will be an evident petitio principii.
9.2. Within the framework of my story, it is obvious where the origin of normativity is to be located: in the explanatorily intelligible account that religion is. Let me formulate it in these terms
first. The requirement of any intelligibility account we know of is that some action, event, or
whatever else (that has to be made intelligible) is an embodiment of the intention of some
agent. If the Cosmos is an explanatorily intelligible entity, its intelligibility consists in being an
embodiment of the purposes of some agent or the other. Each event (or action) in the Cosmos
inherits this property of being intelligible without requiring that such an account is also forthcoming for any particular event or action. The inability to provide such an account does not
negate the property of being (intrinsically) intelligible; partly because of the overdetermination
that most actions and events share. (Overdetermination refers to the fact that one can provide
multiple determinations to many reasons for the existence of any given event.) But this does
not affect the claim I have just put forward which merely says that because the Cosmos is an
explanatorily intelligible entity, each event and action within it is also (intrinsically) explanatorily
intelligible. The only objection I foresee is the following: the property of a macro-entity need
not necessarily be the property of its component units. (A body weighs 100 Kgs does not imply
that each part of the body also weighs the same. The answer is obvious: it is necessary that each
part of the body has a weight, even if this necessity is merely a physiological one and not a
logical one.) This objection is not purely logical in nature, even though it could be true. (It assumes that Cosmos is a macro-entity, a whole consisting of parts, which has properties that
the parts do not have. One can equally well assume that Cosmos does not name an entity other than the events, processes, actions, and existents in it.) Religions claim that this totality (in
all its individual units, etc.) is intelligible; my account tries to show how to make sense of this
claim. I am not claiming that all individual actions, events, etc. necessarily inherit the property of
the Cosmos; however, only such an assumption does justice to what these religions are. In other words, we can assume there is an inheritance of the property of explanatory intelligibility.
9.3. Keeping the foregoing in mind let me identify the source of normativity in religious beliefs
next. In plural, because I am not talking about religion in the abstract, but at the level of three
religions, viz., Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. This suggests two things. One: I do not think
that normativity can be captured in an account of religion without accepting its selfdescription. That is, I doubt whether normativity is derivable as a logical consequence of
what religion is, without making assumptions about the agency that makes the Cosmos explanatorily intelligible. (This means that the science fiction story about atheistic religiosity as recounted in The Heathen is not an appropriate level of abstraction.) Second: the elements of
contingency involved in using these three religions already suggest that a proper account of the
emergence of normativity is very likely to be empirical in nature. (Elements of contingency:
there could have been more religions; other religions; these three could have been structured
differently by having beliefs and practices different from those they factually have, etc.) Even if
one uses Game theory, or whatever else, it will have to be applied to a cluster of events in the
history of (a fragment of) mankind.
10. Common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the belief that the Cosmos expresses the Will of God,
and that believing in Him (or being religious) involves subordinating ones will to His Will. Ones purpose in life is to fulfil Gods plan and play the assigned role. That means to say that each of your actions

is at least doubly determined: in the first place, it is determined by what God has intended for you; in
the second place, your intentional actions are subordinated to Gods intention. How do you determine
Gods plan for you? is not a relevant question for my story at this moment because each of these religions provide their own (partial) answers. But it is relevant to know that the notion of subordination is
partially specified (and thus made intelligible) by each of these religions.
10.1.
Why is it necessary to provide (at least) a partial specification of the notion of subordination? It has to do with the stories these religions tell us about God and the Devil. One has to
know to whom one subordinates ones will. That is the additional reason (additional to what I say in
The Heathen..) why revelation is crucial to these three religions. God makes his Will known to
humankind (or the Jews, as the case may be), and one has to live in conformity with the expression of this Will. A transgression does not require an actual violation of some expression of
Gods Will; a mere questioning will do. (The Book of Job in the Old Testament Bible is a moving illustration of this stance.)
10.2.
The commandments of God, to use the terminology from the Old Testament Bible,
partially specify the Will of God. They are prescriptive in nature. If we look only at the commandments of God (thou shalt keep Sabbath, for example), they are indeed prescriptive. However, in
their generality as expressions of the Will of God, they are descriptive as well. One is a creature of
the Sovereign. Ones will is a part of oneself and, as such, ones will is, factually, subordinated to
Gods Will. Consequently, the act of subordination merely expresses a factual state of affairs,
viz., one is a creature of God. One cannot but obey God, even while following the Devil. (After
all, in its Christian formulation, following the false God is possible only because human beings
thirst for God.) Not only because the Devil is Gods creature but also because it is impossible not
to be Gods creature.
10.3.
The second important thing here is that the cosmic order is both a prescriptive expression of Gods Will and a description of the same. In so far as the Cosmos is an expression of
Gods Will, it is a prescriptive order. The earlier notions of Natural Law, Natural Justice express the fact the Universe is an expression and embodiment of the Sovereigns Will. However,
it is non-prescriptive too: the falling of a stone, or a cheetah eating a gazelle are not prescriptive
processes for human beings because they do not involve (or entail) any action on the part of
the human agent. Neither of these (or any other similar) processes require a subordination of
mans will to the Will of God. (Besides, all the other living creatures were objects belonging to
the domain of human beings.) Such a stance enables both a contraction and expansion of that
domain, which involves the subordination of mans will to the Will of God: it is (partially) up to
human understanding to make a judgement on this issue. In other words, this domain (where man
subordinates his will to Gods Will) is provided with a dynamic that is not its own but one derived from
human understanding.
10.4.
At the same time, the capacity of human beings to make such judgements depends on
their ability to know what Gods Will is. Apart from The Book (or through His Prophet), Cosmos also reveals the purposes of God. It is through a study of both that human beings can
make judgement calls. This suggests that this judgement (by human beings) is not arbitrary or
subjective, but founded on The Absolute: Gods Will and its revelation. That is to say, this domain restricts the dynamic it receives from human understanding.
10.5.
Man is always a moral agent and can act either morally or immorally. These specific
acts of morality and immorality cannot be made sense of without referring to a set of prescriptions. What these prescriptions precisely say, what instructions they hold for new and unforeseen situations, what additional instructions are derivable from these commandments, etc., depend on human understanding at any given moment of time. While both the moral and the
immoral belong to that domain wherein man subordinates his will to Gods Will, the totality
of these prescriptions outlines the structure of this domain.
Man is always a moral agent: this tells us that Man is always a subordinate of God and cannot be
anything else. Man can act either morally or immorally: this tells us that he has a choice of either subordinating his will to Gods Will or defying the latter. In so far as he is a moral agent, it

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is not even possible that he defies Gods Will; yet, he can be either moral or immoral only in his
capacity as a moral agent. That is to say, he cannot be a moral agent if he is immoral but he can only be
immoral because he is a moral agent.
11. The above paradox (or dilemma) is of fundamental importance to understanding the nature of morality. It is my hypothesis that this paradox is the driving force behind the universalisation of this recognizably religious idea, in a way analogous to what Christological dilemma does with respect to universalising Christianity.
11.1.
Now is the time for introducing some terminological distinctions. Let me call this religious knowledge about prescriptions (norms from now on) and its presupposition about the moral
agent (viz., as beings who subordinate their will to Gods Will) as religious morality . Any specific set of norms and reflections about them are moral theories. (Whether these reflections are
about the norms or about ways of talking about them are of no consequence: we will simply
have a moral theory and a meta-moral theory.) Secular moral theories name the secular translations of the religious morality. If you are with me so far, let me now call the process of universalisation of the religious morality as the process of creating the moral domain. That means to
say, both the secular and religious moral theories talk about the moral domain: the secularising
moment (in the process of universalising the moral system) attempts to strip the religious core
from the moral domain. The theological moment of the same process consists in (re)producing
the religious morality as a particular religious theory about the moral domain. (The terminology
to express this process: theologising and secularising.)
11.2.
Thus, one can say that the moral domain is addressed by multiple moral theories including religious and secular moral theories. The moral agent is one whose will is subordinated to
Gods Will, and a moral act is such an act. Its negation is an immoral act. That is, a moral agent
can act either morally or immorally. Whether an act is moral or immoral depends on the moral
theory in question. Moral theories are able to describe acts as either moral or immoral because
they are about the moral domain. The moral domain contains a fundamental paradox, and the
different moral theories are so many attempts to solve this paradox.
Even though all actions, events, processes in the Cosmos are expressions of Gods Will (i.e. the
universe is the domain where moral actions occur), to know whether or not some action, event,
or process is moral requires the presence of some theory that makes it moral. That is to say, the
religious morality (through one of its instances) transforms some event, process, or action into a
moral event, moral process or moral action. Yet, no action, event, or process could become moral (that is, the act of subordinating ones will to Gods Will) if it was not already susceptible to
moral judgement (that is, if one cannot know whether one is subordinating oneself to Gods Will
or not).
11.3.
You will have already noticed that I have relied heavily on recognizably Christian ideas
in formulating what is said so far. What does this suggest? Two things. One: apart from the fact
that my knowledge of Judaism and Islam is next to nothing, it suggests that when I speak of
western ethics, I speak of it primarily as a creation of Christianity. Whatever might be the influence the two other religions on Christianity, I am assuming that Christianity has already absorbed them (and continues to do so). In other words, the Christianity I speak of is already contextualised. Second: it might be the case that we have to speak of Islamic and Jewish moralities
in a (slightly) different way. Consequently, the formulation of the general properties of the
moral domain might have to be pitched at an even higher level of abstraction than my sketch.
12. In the context of a religion (from now on, I will be talking only about the Christian religion), it is understandable that a moral act refers to the act of subordinating ones will (the will of the moral agent, that
is) to the Will of God. How does this help us in understanding secular moral theories? I would like to
suggest that the condition for understanding the secular moral theories is the presence of a religious
background. That is, secular moral theories can be understood only if the religious original is present as
the background. For the sake of illustrating the above idea, let me take two moral theorists: Immanuel
Kant and Harry Frankfurt.

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12.1.
Consider the Kantian maxims (irrespective of which version is closer to Kant) that are
supposed to guide one in formulating the laws that one imposes on oneself. The maxims generate the moral laws at a second level, the first level pertaining to the particular action you execute. The moral act is subordinated to a will (call it the moral person) that is different from the
first order will (call it the natural person) that acts. Why must these two wills (persons) be different? Because the will that acts at the first level (the natural person) is alleged to act according to its passions, urges, worldly constraints, arbitrariness or whatever else. This will (the natural person) ought to be constrained by another kind of will (the moral person) that freely (i.e.
without constraints) legislates moral laws. Only then is the person acting morally. There is
something rather funny in this idea. Why should the person legislate moral laws to himself in
order to act (morally)? Why should he universalise his moral law? Why this doubling of the
human being into two wills or two persons? It enables you to have moral laws, and they tell you
that you are acting morally because you have subordinated your (natural) will to a will (the moral) that has willed a general law.
12.2.
In Frankfurt, we meet human beings with object-level preferences who have preferences about preferences. The second constrains the first. Whose preferences about preferences are these? That of the human agent, obviously. Whose preferences are we talking
about? Of the same agent, of course. Why should the moral act consist of subordinating one set
of preferences to another set of preferences? What makes this into a moral act? The answer lies
in the fact that the generality of the meta-level preferences makes them the preferences of the
moral agent, whereas the natural agent with his object-level preferences has to subordinate
them to the former.
12.3.
I am not providing a critique of these theorists, but merely pointing out how the notion of moral act retains its structure across religion and the so-called secular (i.e. non-religious)
moral theories. The two-tier structure is perfectly sensible within a religious context; and this
context provides intelligibility to secular theories that also see moral act as an act of subordination of a particular will to a general will. The only difference is that the will of the moral agent
gets split: an immoral will at a lower level that is restrained by the moral will at a higher level.
This circuitous and non-obvious route is called the moral route.
12.4.
However, it is important to note just a subordination of one will to another will not do.
(It is not enough for Christianity either.) The particular will should not be subordinated to another particular will like itself, because any system of domination would then become moral.
Rather, it must be subordinated to a disembodied (i.e. non-particular) general will. This general
wills willing must be applicable to all particular wills irrespective of their time, place or culture.
This is how the moral domain is constructed by secular moral systems. The religious moral systems name such a will and call it Gods Will. The secular theorists do not do this. It only makes
their claims more mysterious, despite leaning on the intelligibility provided to the moral domain
by religion.
12.5.
Let me summarise: the two-tier structure and a particular kind of subordination, both
spelt out in a religious moral theory but absent from its secular counterpart, constitute the fundamental structure of secular moral theorising. Taken on their own, they are opaque and unintelligible. Similar considerations hold good (this is a promissory note I will redeem in my book on
ethics) with respect to the nature of moral agency and the nature of moral rules.
13. Now we are in a position to bring moral theorising and the experience of the lack or absence together.
To do that, let me recollect two points of importance from my previous set of notes on experience occlusion. The first point is this. The proponents of the flat-earth theory and the geocentric theory rejected the claims of their opponents by saying that such claims were contra-experiential. That is, they suggested that if those theories were true, one would have other experiences than what one actually has.
The reasoning has the structure of modus ponens [Sic! Should be Modus Tollens!]: if p implies q, and it is
the case not-q, then it is the case not-p. However, this logical relation holds between statements; what
does it mean to say that a similar relation holds between experiences? Contra-experiential means exactly
what it says: contrary to experience and not contrary to some description of the said experience. In other
words, what one was doing was to contrast a theory with their experience and rejecting the former on

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the basis that such a theory was not their experience. We can only understand this contrast by suggesting that there is an induced identification between the structure of their experience and the structure of
some cognitive scheme.
The second point has to do with what this identification entails. Cognitive schemes can undergo all
kinds of logical and semantic transformations because they are linguistic entities. One such of interest to
us in the present context is that one can generate semantically equivalent descriptions, which are linguistically different from each other. (This is a rough formulation; when looked at closely, semantic equivalence turns out to be very slippery. However, the problems affecting this notion have no consequences
to my story.) Because of the identification between experience and the cognitive scheme, cognitive
schemes substitute for experiences in yet another way. Transformations of the descriptions of experiences substitute for changes in experiences themselves. That is to say, some semantically equivalent descriptions appear to
become experiences in their own right.
13.1.
Consider how my students formulated the necessity of moral rules: people do not go
around stealing, murdering, and raping each other. This is not an experience, nor could it ever
be one. This is a description of the experience of people being nice, or civil or indifferent to each
other. They do not experience the absence of immoral behaviour, even though they formulate it as
though they have such an experience. With respect to the moral domain, moral and immoral
(within the western intellectual tradition) are inter-definable: being moral is the same as not being immoral. But because one can give two (semantically equivalent) descriptions of some experience, it does not follow from this, of course, that the experience has both structures.
13.2.
Yet, we talk as though it has. One routinely talks of peace as the absence of war, evil as
the absence of good, the emergence of avoiding behaviours as though such negativities exist in
the world and constitute the furniture of the world. I cannot buy this stuff, because I do not
see how one learns absences. (Even aversion therapies do not teach you the behaviour of notdoing-something, even though it could be conveniently described that way.) One can say that one
has learnt not to express anger, but one has not learnt the act of not expressing anger.
13.3.
If one does not experience lack or absence, what is it one experiences when one is separated (whether temporarily or permanently) from the loved ones? Does not the one miss the
other? Is there no sorrow arising out of loss? The last two questions, I insist, are descriptions of
experiences and should not be confused with the experience itself. The Indian traditions, for instance, do not explain the origin of this kind of sorrow through some or another kind of absence, but through the presence of attachment (towards the absent person). That is also the reason
why one can search for a way to remove sorrow; one can learn. One can indeed say one misses
the loved one, but that does not help one cope with the situation one is in. If the feeling of
missing someone arises from the attachment one has, one can do something about it.
13.4.
I appear to be advancing a philosophical thesis about the nature of the world. (Something like the famous thesis of Wittgenstein: The world is everything that is the case.) I am
not; I am formulating a research heuristic which I use. Nothing of what I say depends on the
truth of this heuristic.
14. I want to suggest that the normative talk, the moral talk, is a way of talking about experience but is not
itself an experience. If this is the case, there could never be a biological theory of normativity any more than there
could be an evolutionary explanation for the emergence of science in the western culture. (After all, the
sciences are also a way of talking about the world.) The deception, if I may put it this way, lies in the
fact that this way of talking substitutes for experience. This is what I would like to call the norming of
experience: where some kinds of descriptions masquerade as experiences. A norm would then be a statement
capable of such a masquerade. (This is what the universalisabilty of a norm amounts to.) However,
this requires the presence of some other description of an experience whose semantic equivalent the
norm is. (I think a more precise statement is possible. I shall strive for it in my book on ethics.)
15. A moral talk, then, is not only a way of talking about experience, a description of the said experience but
also substitutes itself for experience. Such a substitution requires some kind of justification. That is why
moral talk is primarily a justifying talk about how such a talk is possible. It is difficult to conceive how

13

experience can be justified even though one can understand an explanatory clarification of (or providing
reasons for) some description of the said experience. In the case of moral language, one does not seek
clarification but justification. This suggests that there is awareness that some kind of a substitution has
taken place. It is my proposal that this awareness expresses itself as the famous transition problem
from is statements to the ought statements.
16. However, if an invitation to reflect on the ethical experience (I shall presently but briefly say what ethical experience is) in the western intellectual tradition takes the form of a justification of the moral experience, morality becomes both a description of the experience and the latters justification. It becomes both a way of talking about experience as well as the experience itself. That is to say, it is entirely
turned in on itself and is hermetically closed from any input from the world of experience or facts. This
is what I mean when I say that the moral domain receives its dynamic from human understanding. Because any reflection on human actions (i.e. the ethical domain) brings one into a hermetically sealed discourse, the normative morality occludes experience. It does so doubly in so far a description substitutes
for experience itself. Nevertheless and in so far as the moral domain alleges to be about the domain of
human actions, morality is restricted by the domain of human actions as well and is not entirely determined by the dynamic of hermetically sealed cognitive structures.
17. In the previous paragraph, I spoke of ethical experience and identified it as the domain of human actions. What kind of a dividing line am I drawing in this case? Two brief examples, taken at random, are
meant as illustrations of this difference.
17.1.
Assume a secretary in your office of the following sort: he comes in to the office at
some precisely stipulated hour (say, nine in the morning) and leaves at another precisely stipulated hour (say, four in the evening). He observes other regulations equally precisely: he closes
the office doors precisely at the stipulated lunch hour and is ready to work again at another precisely stipulated hour. That is to say, he is very conscientious in observing the regulations and
fulfils exactly what his duty demands of him. He does no less, but also no more: irrespective of
the urgency or the unimportance of the tasks that await him, he does not spend a minute longer
in the office any more than he is a minute late in beginning in his duty. As the boss, you are
suddenly confronted with an urgent task that requires immediate attention and you ask your
secretary to work late that particular day. The secretary politely refuses to do so, reminds you of
his duty (which prescribes what he should do and when), and goes home at his usual hour.
17.2.
You are on your way to the city to deliver some important forms, which carry a deadline. For some reason or the other, you are ready only on the last day and you reach the office a
quarter of an hour after the counter closes. Let us assume that this late arrival was through no
fault of your own: there was an accident on the high way because of which there was a long
hold-up as well as a forced detour. The official responsible for that particular counter is still in
the office, chatting to his colleagues and he sees you arrive breathless and sweaty. He is nice
enough to talk to you, but firmly and politely refuses to accept your forms by reminding you
that you are late. None of your pleading is of any avail because, he says, he would be violating
his obligation by accepting a late delivery.
17.3.
Would you be tempted to call these two figures as shining examples of moral persons?
They fulfil their duties as is required of them; they are not doing any blameworthy act by refusing either to work late or to accept your forms. And yet, one feels let down by both refusals:
they do not appear open to anything except to doing their duties. Let us now suppose that the
secretary and the official are willing to violate their duties: one works late because the task is
urgent, and the other accepts your form because of your story. You feel grateful and feel like
saying that what they did was ethical: they could have refused you, would have been right in
refusing you and yet they chose not to. You feel that they have done praiseworthy actions, and
this praise is an ethical praise. They have acted ethically. They did so by going beyond the
call of duty (supererogatory act). Even though, in so doing, they violated their obligation (any
going beyond the call of duty does this; in the case of the official, the dead line explicitly forbids accepting forms delivered late), you think they deserve ethical praise.

14

17.4.
These two examples are meant to illustrate the continued existence of the ethical domain even in the west and that it is a part of human experience. Even though any discussion
within the western culture about these two examples very quickly shifts terrain and becomes a
moral talk, this indicates the masking of experience but not its disappearance. That is to say, the
ethical domain continues to exist and reproduce itself even though it is understood less and less
within a culture that tries to transform the ethical domain into a moral domain.
18. The non-normative ethics, whether as exemplified in Aristotelian ethics or in the Indian traditions, are
attempts to understand the nature of ethical actions. Acting ethically, solving ethical problems, etc.
arise due to the fact that human beings need to interact with each other. Probably, the way one perceives such problems is pretty similar in all human cultures, which has partly to do with biologically inherited learning strategies. But what is specific to the western culture is its transformation of the ethical
domain into the domain of morality. This transformation was made possible through the emergence of
certain phenomena: Christianity (in its aspect as a religion), the growth of Catholic Christianity, the
emergence of Protestant reformation and such like. That is to say, under certain conditions, non-normative ethics can be transformed into normative morality. A theory of non-normative ethics, thus, not only describes and
reflects about the nature of ethical actions but is also forced to account for the emergence of normative
morality. Such an account is conditional: under certain conditions (which are given and historical in nature), ethical domain can be conceptualised as the moral domain. In one sense, the insight of many
thinkers is true: without religion, there is no morality; the former is the foundation of the latter. But they were
wrong in thinking that the truth about their culture was true of all cultures. They thought wrongly because they had no idea that cultures were different from each other not only in the way they described it
(all other cultures were pale variants of the European culture) but also in different ways. A comparative
science of cultures addresses this issue because its central question is that of cultural differences: when is
some difference, any difference, a cultural difference?
19. As I see the issue, there is not merely a place but a necessity for a theory of non-normative ethics. To
the extent that the ethical domain has been conceptualised as the moral domain, there is also a common structure to the different theories of morality. Wittgenstein was profound in his insight that there
could be no moral statements and, therefore, no theory of morality. But, as is typical of Wittgenstein
in many other aspects as well, he trivialises his own insights: he had no idea of what it meant to inhabit a
different culture. He could not see, that is, that morality is how the Christian culture addresses the ethical problems. Some typically moral problems arise because of the linguistic bewitchment: this is how
I have partially tackled the problem of the moral domain as well; but this is no condition humaine. Wittgenstein was right too in his profound disgust at the shallowness of Poppers clever answer (do not
brandish a poker at a visitor), but then Popper was right as well: his answer was a refutation of Wittgenstein except that the shallowness had nothing to do with himself. It was and is the shallowness of
the western moral theories.
20. The ethical problems are as real as anything could possibly be and hence, in this field too, is a science
possible and necessary. It will not be a moral science but a science of ethics. A linguistic analysis, as
Carnap thought, is a preliminary. It helps us identify the pseudo-problems. Having done that, there is
still the task of explaining why the pseudo-problems arose and reproduce themselves in one culture;
what the real problems are and what their solutions are. That, precisely, is the science of comparative
ethics.
21. These sets of four notes more or less chart the territory that will be partially covered in my book on ethics. Problems opened up by my previous version have found some solutions. It is now my hope to start
planning its structure concretely. Let me hope too that this suggests a (temporary) end to writing and
circulating my arguments in the form of notes.

Balu
31/5/02

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