Temporal structures lie at the center of ethics

Evidence

The popularity of non-European, esoteric-mystical, and alternative quantumor astrophysical concepts of time is due to the hope that they might provide a foothold for the development of a normative critique of late modern, late capitalist society on the basis of its treatment of time. As I have argued, this move has an initial plausibility because temporal structures carry fundamental normative implications. Insofar as the basic ethical question of the good life is the question how human beings desire to or should spend “their” time, time structures and horizons, which are always social in nature, lie at the center of ethics. So it is hardly surprising that even empirical studies of time tend to discuss questions of the good life and alternative ways of living. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 149

Categorization

• DEFINE: Captures Rosa’s core premise that the good-life question is fundamentally a question of how to spend one’s time, making social time structure an ethical object.
• XREF: Plausibly ties to work on time poverty, temporal autonomy, and degrowth arguments that critique capitalism via its time discipline. — connects to: A society’s time structures impose normative expectations that shape agents’ moral identities — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 29; The temporal structures of a society shape our sense of being in the world — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 65; Moral trust requires temporally stable social contexts to operate (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• A society’s time structures impose normative expectations that shape agents’ moral identities #expands (0.88) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 29
• Temporal structures mediate between individual life-plans and systemic requirements. #expands (0.85) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 46
• The temporal structures of a society shape our sense of being in the world #qualifies (0.82) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 65
• Moral trust requires temporally stable social contexts to operate #corroborates (0.78)