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masque wrote (edited )

Reply to comment by ziq in Morality Vs. Ethics by ziq

I fully agree that words are just tools that we should be able to use in whatever way is actually effective for communicating our ideas, rather than adhering to some authority on the "true meaning" of words, but this essay as written is not very clear about whether you're explaining your/post-leftists' use of language, or whether you yourself are making abstract claims about the "true meaning" of these words.

I mean, consider this sentence:

'Moral' is a label applied by people to themselves and their group so they can be perceived as a pure and righteous person capable of doing no 'wrong'.

I guess I could interpret this as a definition of your usage of the word (i.e. when people describe themselves as being "a good person," they're using the concept that you refer to as morality, even if the word they actually say is "ethical" rather than "moral"), but it really reads like a claim about how other people use the word 'moral,' especially since this is the third sentence, before the reader has a lot of context to go on. And if we do read it as a claim about how other people use the word 'moral,' then I think it's a valid objection to say that this doesn't describe the full range of ways in which people use the word.

I feel like some minor changes to the intro would improve it a lot:

The difference in post-leftist thought between morality and ethics is a major misunderstanding leftists have of post-left politics. Most leftists are unaware of, or unable to grasp the distinction.

This makes it clearer that you're about to describe a distinction post-leftists make, instead of almost veering into the territory of telling other people that they are using words "wrong."

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