[Xmca-l] Ethics as Once and Future Discipline

[David Kellogg]

In HDHMF, Vygotsky makes the point that a good deal of our "character
education" proceeds outside-in. That is, we focus on the behavior
(especially the sexual behavior) of children (especially adolescents) and
then we speculate about the effect this might have on their thinking, and
this putative effect, more of a hope or a pious wish than a scientific
fact, is called "ethics" (or "morals"). But Vygotsky says that unless the
child is genuinely in control of his or her own behavior, so-called
"ethical" acts are not ethical at all. There are many reasons for not
bullying or beating or betraying fellow humans that have very little to do
with ethics; there is nothing moral about living in fear of punishment.

Treated historically, ethics is, as Mike referred to cultural psychology, a
once and future discipline. In the early eighteenth century, it actually
DID form part of political economy--Adam Smith taught both subjects, and he
saw the latter as an offshoot of the former ("we trust our livelihood not
to the generosity of the baker but to his self-interest"). As we've
discussed on this list, Marx was also anxious to establish political
economy as a separate science (as Durkheim was to do with sociology), and
so he didn't often invoke "ethics" as such. It's important to remember,
though, that Marx doesn't evoke "historical materialism" or "dialectical
materialism" as such either, and that Vygotsky's own name for his
cultural-historical psychology was "the historical theory of the higher
psychic functions", at least according to the recently published notebooks.
Names are often late-emerging in the development of any science.

Yet it seems to me that there is another good reason for not invoking
"ethics" as such. Having "turned the tables" on nature, human beings are
able to adapt the environment to their own behavior instead of the other
way around. But, like the child who must act ethically before she or he is
really has any ethics worth speaking of, humans as a species are not yet
able to design and plan their own economics, politics, or even their
scientific and military behavior. When Sakharov detonated the Moab, there
was serious worry that it might start a chain reaction that engulfed all
matter in the solar system and possible the universe, but the test went
ahead anyway. Similarly, the effects of Starfish Prime were completely
unknown when my father's idle speculations to a New York Times reporter
were actually carried out. I'm not even sure if this kind of reckless
scientism should be called "experimental". But I am sure of one thing:
Ethics as such is actually a long-ago yet-to-come.

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New in *Early Years*, co-authored with Fang Li:

When three fives are thirty-five: Vygotsky in a Hallidayan idiom … and
maths in the grandmother tongue

Some free e-prints available at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7I8zYW3qkEqNBA66XAwS/full
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