Embodiment
Humans pass through Kohlberg/Gilligan's stages of moral development. Up to stage 3, these stages are compatible with embodiment. Most philosophy of law emphasizes that the fact that bodies take risk to enforce laws, make laws embodied at least to the degree they are enforced.
However, the stages become problematic when Lawrence Kohlberg posits a universal ethics - that is, a disembodied ethics. All ethical decisions are necessarily situated in a world. Carol Gilligan's view is closer to an embodied view and emphasizes ethical relationships - necessarily between bodies - over universal ethical principles that require a God's Eye view. Some ethicists emphasize the role of the ethicist to sort out right versus right in a given context. This is stage 4 but assumes that the ethicist is hesitant to damage relationships or violate principles, e.g. that survival or human rights take precedence over property rights.
Read more about this topic: Situated Ethics
Famous quotes containing the word embodiment:
“She will forever be your Miss America and she sort of becomes the embodiment of your dreams. But you also realize that it’s only her and not you. You feel a part of it—yet so far away at the same time.”
—Michele Passarelli (b. c. 1954)
“Greek is the embodiment of the fluent speech that runs or soars, the speech of a people which could not help giving winged feet to its god of art. Latin is the embodiment of the weighty and concentrated speech which is hammered and pressed and polished into the shape of its perfection, as the ethically minded Romans believed that the soul also should be wrought.”
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)
“They were right. The Soviet régime is not the embodiment of evil as you think in the West. They have laws and I broke them. I hate tea and they love tea. Who is wrong?”
—Alexander Zinoviev (b. 1922)