Monthly Archives: January 2016

The Morality Trap

Suppose that you are worried that human moral ways of thinking do not express some human independent standards of what to do and how to be. You fear, or perhaps hope, that moral thinking is simply a way in which human beings have evolved to think. Moral thinking has some survival value. But that is all. So, you ask whether or not we can simply set it aside; forget about asking moral questions. Here is where we encounter the “moral trap.”

If we have doubts about the legitimacy of our moral thinking, we ask ourselves whether or not we ought to discard thinking morally. This “ought” reveals that we do not avoid thinking morally by thinking about whether or not we should take morality seriously.

We can still set aside moral thinking – be amoralists. If we want to be amoralists we have to ignore the moral ways of thinking which includes ignoring the question whether or not we can ignore morality. The price of amoralism is that we cannot find a meaning in life without moral thinking. Avoiding raising the question of whether or not we ought to be moral requires continually distracting ourselves from facing moral questions. To have a meaning for our life, we need a way we ought to be. If we hold fast to amoralism, we have to suppress all thoughts of how we ought to be with the result of becoming nihilists.

I have written a book in which I develop the theme that this moral trap is a blessing because if we turn away from distracting ourselves from morality, we start thinking seriously of morality. I make a case that taking morality seriously leads to traditional sexual morality.

My book arguing that sexual neutrality leads to nihilism is Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. The publisher’s listed price is $26.99. Printed copies can be purchased here by credit card for $12.99, plus $3.71 for shipping and handling.





To purchase the printed book by check, send check of $16.70 per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.
Columbus, Ohio 43214
Include your shipping address.