In Search of Lost Happiness. Onthe Contlict of Paradigms in Contemporary Ethics

Abstract

Following Hegel's revealing judgment concerning the ambivalence of modern morals ,it could be contented that the consensus looked for in contemporary ethical debates oscillates between utopia and nostalgia, invention and tradition. The idea of a harmonious agreement of everybody's interests that could act as a binding moral norm is usually searched for in the projection of an ideal community orin the retrieval of a lost paradise. Itis, with all the ambiguity of this expression, a quest for lost happiness. But an oscillating quest like this, inevitably faces argumentative paradoxes as the aporetical moraldebates of the last decades show, and also as this essay intends to show.