Guilt and Its Vicissitudes: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Morality Book

Very frustrating, in the sense that the author does a far better job in attacking the views of others rather than in presenting his own. What he is doing is not so much making a case FOR amorality, as he is making a case AGAINST any sort of a priori, Natural Law, hell against sort of system of thought where specifics can be drawn from generalities.

As an example: he criticizes the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. And then criticizes it again, and then again. All fine by me, in fact I think we may even be on the same page there. But that's where he stops. Is this how you "make a case?" Isn't he supposed to be, well, presenting how the "amoral" would have gone about things in a post 09/11 world?

I felt like I couldn't evaluate amorality in this text, for the simple reason that it is never actually presented. Very odd text, indeed.

Oh, yes. And though I claim no great expertise on Daoism, I'm fairly sure they had no strenuous objection to the death penalty, had a decidedly mixed view of homosexuality, and over time degenerated into a syncretized blob of Buddhism, Chinese folk religion and who knows what else.Moeller hippity-hops past that bunny trail entirely, presuming a Daoism unchanging and ahistorical. And we never get his comments on how a leader is advised to keep his people's bellies full and minds empty (per the Tao de Jing), which is a pity.