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Moral Compass Project

How do we know what the Good is? Is there such a thing as a ‘moral compass’ that all people share? The needle of a compass points to the north pole, but you can't reach the pole with it. Can the Good also be seen as such a pole? As something that speaks to us 'from the outside,' inescapably? The Good appeals to us in a way that gives us direction and encourages us to take concrete action. But that does not imply we are able to fully know or do the Good.

Subproject: Concern and detachment in moral life

Moralism and relativism in our times

The Moral Compass Project takes place against the backdrop of two influential phenomena in our culture: moralism and relativism. Both phenomena are rooted in what can be called our ‘moral experience’. In moral experience the world in which we live is not merely a collection of facts, but always already ‘value-laden’. We see a situation at work as unjust, experience someone's moral discipline as admirable, see the loving attention in a gesture, regard a politician’s nature policy as reprehensible, and so on. Moralism and relativism are two different reactions to such everyday experiences. Moralism can be understood as the absolutization of one’s own moral experience: the moralist sees mere injustice in the work situation and dismisses any other experience of it as nonsensical. Relativism, instead, seems to stem from an awareness of the great variety of moral experiences: the relativist believes that there are many different experiences of the same situation and that none of them can claim to be the correct one. While moral experience is completely mundane in one respect (we experience the world in terms of values constantly) it is mysterious in others and raises very fundamental questions. How is it possible that we experience the world as value-laden? What in us creates this openness to the value aspects of the world? Can we even think of values as being, in some sense, really there, or should we say that we are projecting them onto an inherently ‘valueless’ world?

A theory of moral experience

This subproject focuses on these and related issues. First, the goal is to develop a theory of our moral experience. We experience the world as ‘value-laden’ by virtue of our so-called ‘affective dispositions’. These are patterns of feeling that express what we care about (hence often referred to as our ‘cares’ or ‘concerns’ in English-language philosophical literature). For example, people are able to perceive a politician's nature policies as reprehensible because they care about nature.

Detachment in moral life

Second, this project explores the importance of detachment – conceived here in terms of distancing ourselves from our affective dispositions – for our moral experience. Detachment, on the one hand, is of great significance: by detaching ourselves (for some time) from some of our cares or concerns, we avoid the one-sidedness of our moral experience of the world. By detaching yourself for a moment from your concerns about nature, for example, you are better able to see that there are other important issues at stake in the discussion of nature policy. On the other hand, detachment also carries a fundamental risk: by putting our affective dispositions in parentheses, we risk blinding ourselves to value aspects of the world. Those who are, in this sense, without cares or concerns cannot experience the value of anything and thus threaten to fall into a form of nihilism. Finally, in light of the risks of one-sidedness and nihilism, this project aims to elaborate an ‘ethics of detachment’ that helps us navigate between detaching from and holding onto our affective dispositions.  

Researcher

Key publications

  • Rob Compaijen, Afgunst: Een filosofie van een pijnlijke emotie, Amsterdam: Boom, 2024.
  • Rob Compaijen, “Commitment and Reflection in Moral Life”, in: International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 84/5, 2023, pp. 340-346.
  • Rob Compaijen en Michiel Meijer, “The Reification of Value: Robust Realism and Alienation”, in: International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 29/3, 2021, pp. 275-294.
  • Rob Compaijen, “Detachment and Attention”, in: The Philosophy of Reenchantment, M. Meijer en H. DeVriese (red.), New York: Routledge, 2020, pp. 220-238.
  • More publicaties at the Pure research portal

Further discussion?

Does this topic appeal to you and would you like to discuss it in a group, for example through a lecture? Then invite one of the researchers to your discussion group, organisation or church for talks, interviews, advice or other contributions. Some suggestions for topics:

  • Emotions. The significance of emotions within ethics, individual emotions, particularly envy, jealousy, resentment and admiration.
  • Existentialism. From the thinking of Søren Kierkegaard, to that of Friedrich Nietzsche and the work of Albert Camus.