Pragmatism and morality

The relevance of the clash between deontic ethics and concessive pragmatism requires more detailed investigation. Women's ethics in particular, according to feminists' stipulations, force the normative feature of Kant's rigorism into the background and stand on moral possibilities, which nonetheless do not appear as mutually conforming. This renders it difficult to make a moral judgement, as ethics is thus deprived of the supportive footing that applied as a general validity founded on Christian faith or on a philosophically metaphysical knowledge of thought, which joined reason with an awareness of responsibility, conscience and dignity. In pragmatic ethics the question of freedom does not appear. It has no special role in these ethics, as what is decisive for the individual and society is utility. Social sanctioning endangers and restricts that which ethics interprets to mean freedom, even though the moral decision must not be allowed to be dependent on utility nor interfered with by threat. That pragmatic ethics is capable of steering human co-existence is not subject to doubt. For that we have state institutions with corresponding laws - but how can we address the basic question: "Why must I have duty?" Without any heterogeneous consequences of sanctions, amidst support for pragmatic ethics this question remains unanswered. The article demonstrates how large a gap emerges in moral orientation if morality is determined by pragmatism, particularly if, on the basis of a negation of metaphysical postulates, the danger of nihilism becomes strengthened.