Moral responsibility can compel insubordination to socially upheld principles

Evidence

There would be no war criminals and no right to try, condemn and execute Eichmann unless there was some justification for conceiving of disciplined behaviour, totally conforming to the moral norms in force at that time and in that place, as criminal. And there would be no way to conceive of the punishment of such behaviour as anything more than the vengeance of the victors over the vanquished (a relationship that could be reverted without impugning the principle of punishment), were there no supraor non-societal grounds on which the condemned actions could be shown to collide not only with a retrospectively enforced legal norm, but also with moral principles which society may suspend, but not declare out of court. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, legal practice, and thus also moral theory, faced the possibility that morality may manifest itself in insubordination towards socially upheld principles, and in an action openly defying social solidarity and consensus. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 495

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates the anti-sociological core of the chapter: morality as grounded outside the societal consensus, which is exactly the concept the reader needs named sharply for the toolkit.
• XREF: Connects to the Milgrom/Shapiro law-merchant material on institutions as information — here Bauman claims society’s moral norms are also not self-authorizing, so resistance can claim a different ground entirely. — connects to: Individual moral judgment can remain intact without any supporting social rules — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 603; Orthodox sociology assumes social regulation produces morality and restrains savagery — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 47; Civil-servant honor substitutes discipline for individual moral responsibility — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 94 (+9 more)

Related

• Individual moral judgment can remain intact without any supporting social rules (similarity 0.86)
• Moral capacity arises socially but not from societal institutions (similarity 0.83)
• Morality precedes society and society merely manipulates an already-existing moral structure (similarity 0.83)
• Sociology reduces morality to derivative products of non-moral social institutions (similarity 0.82)
• Under modern order moral behavior often means resisting societal authority (similarity 0.82)
• Moral judgment survived the Holocaust only outside all existing rules (similarity 0.82)
• Moral resistance is personal while immorality requires social production (similarity 0.82)
• Orthodox sociology assumes social regulation produces morality and restrains savagery (similarity 0.81)
• Social organization displaces autonomous moral drive with instrumental and procedural rationality (similarity 0.81)
• Socialization manipulates but never produces moral capacity (similarity 0.80)
• Nazi rule inverted reason so that rationality demanded moral consent to crime (similarity 0.80)
• Durkheim reduces all morality to the single need for social integration (similarity 0.79)
• Modern societal organization can weaken moral drives and make immorality more plausible (similarity 0.79)
• Organizations suppress morality because it cannot be rationalized (similarity 0.79)
• Moral value is assigned externally to actions, not intrinsic to them. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Duty-based moralities subordinate the individual to maintenance of social norms. #contradicts (0.78) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 553
• Social organization displaces autonomous moral drive with instrumental and procedural rationality #expands (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 612