I just started reading Lessig’s new book Free Culture, which is generously available for download under the Creative Commons license and I’m already loving it. On page 2 he quotes a Supreme Court ruling on traditional land rights including the sky above the land and how this conflicts with the new age of flight travel. Lessig focuses in on one quote from this and adds his own comment:
“Common sense revolts at the idea.” This is how the law usually works. Not often this abruptly or impatiently, but eventually, this is how it works.
When I saw this, I was immediately reminded of my moral theory courses as an undergraduate philosophy major, and I couldn’t help thinking that, at least for the field of ethics in analytic philosophy, the above statement needs little adjustment:
“Common sense revolts at the idea.” This is how ethics usually works. Not often this abruptly or impatiently, but at the heart of every logical argument, this is how it works.
In the case of a normative field like ethics, of course, it is the “when” and “who” absent in this formulation that gives rise to so much trouble.