A Poststructuralist Interpretation of Moral Alienation

Something about the idea of acting from duty seems cold and uncaring. When taking on a moral point of view, such as forcing ourselves to act from duty, we must divorce ourselves from our subjective feelings and our emotions. In this sense, taking a moral point of view alienates people from themselves, others, and their moral theory. In " Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality, " Peter Railton discusses these problems in the context of conventional morality and uses them to expose significant shortcomings in both consequentialism and Kantian morality. Similarly, in " Passions: An Oblique Offering, " Jacques Derrida attacks the concept of acting from duty and points out an underlying 'secret' behind language and human interaction. In this paper, I will show that Derrida's secret is precisely what Kantianism and consequentialism fail to acknowledge in their ethical formulas. To further my argument, I will discuss the moral implications in the context of drug use and relate my discussion to Derrida's " The Rhetoric of Drugs. " From this analysis, I will show that Derrida's concept of the secret flushes out deficiencies in consequentialism and Kantian morality that tend to alienate people from their emotions and prevent them from forming fulfilling relationships with others. To begin exploring the alienating problems with conventional morality, we should first look at Peter Railton's account of them. According to Railton: " Living up to the demands of morality may bring with it alienation – from one's personal commitments, from one's feelings or