Individual moral judgment can remain intact without any supporting social rules

Evidence

What we have demanded in these trials, where the defendants had committed ‘legal’ crimes, is that human beings be capable of telling right from wrong when all they have to guide them is their judgment, which, however, happens to be completely at odds with what they must regard as the unanimous opinion of all these around them. … These few who were still able to tell right from wrong went really only by their own judgments, and they did so freely; there were no rules to be abided by, under which the particular cases with which they were confronted could be subsumed. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 603

Categorization

• XREF: Arendt’s formulation of judgment-without-rules is the moral-theory pillar that Bauman’s whole project stands on — it also echoes in the ‘common sense’ concept that Gramsci-reading will later supply the Islamophobia toolkit. — connects to: Morality precedes society and society merely manipulates an already-existing moral structure — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 514; Moral judgment survived the Holocaust only outside all existing rules — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 496; Moral responsibility can compel insubordination to socially upheld principles — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 495 (+3 more)

Related

• Moral judgment survived the Holocaust only outside all existing rules (similarity 0.93)
• Moral responsibility can compel insubordination to socially upheld principles (similarity 0.86)
• Morality precedes society and society merely manipulates an already-existing moral structure (similarity 0.83)
• Moral capacity arises socially but not from societal institutions (similarity 0.83)
• Moral value is assigned externally to actions, not intrinsic to them. (similarity 0.82)
• Nazi rule inverted reason so that rationality demanded moral consent to crime (similarity 0.82)
• Moral resistance is personal while immorality requires social production (similarity 0.81)
• Moral inhibitions do not act at a distance and depend on proximity (similarity 0.81)
• Moral judgments like torture’s inhumanity need no expert validation (similarity 0.81)
• No scientific method can adjudicate moral responsibility for the Holocaust. (similarity 0.80)
• Socialization manipulates but never produces moral capacity (similarity 0.80)
• Social organization displaces autonomous moral drive with instrumental and procedural rationality (similarity 0.80)
• Modern societal organization can weaken moral drives and make immorality more plausible (similarity 0.80)
• Sociology reduces morality to derivative products of non-moral social institutions (similarity 0.79)
• Orthodox sociology assumes social regulation produces morality and restrains savagery (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Moral judgment survived the Holocaust only outside all existing rules #exemplifies (0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 496
• Morality precedes society and society merely manipulates an already-existing moral structure #corroborates (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 514
• Social organization neutralizes morality by making action adiaphoric, neither good nor evil #corroborates (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 613
• Moral responsibility can compel insubordination to socially upheld principles #corroborates (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 495
• Moral inhibitions do not act at a distance and depend on proximity #complicates (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 546