Towards a Democratic Liberatory Ethics

Abstract

The object of this article is threefold. First, to critically assess the approaches to liberatory ethics particularly those developed in early modernity which aimed at deriving an 'objectively' grounded liberatory ethics. Second, to explore the reasons why today's liberatory ethics should avoid both the Scylla of 'objective' ethics as well as the Charybdis of irrationalist ethics or unbounded moral relativism. Third, to show that a democratic liberatory ethics, which could only be derived through a process of democratic rationalism, should necessarily express those moral values which are intrinsically compatible to the democratic institutions themselves.