Moralspektakel

Morality as a Show: When it is more important to display the right attitude than to actually have it – and why this is a problem.

We want to be good people, but we also want to show that to everyone else. Our moral character earns us recognition and attractiveness. However, due to the influence of digital media, morality is increasingly becoming a status symbol, and public discourse has turned into a spectacle of morality. Especially in universities, media, innovative companies, and the cultural sector, staged morality serves as a means of differentiation from other groups and as a weapon in the competition among themselves. This has negative consequences: the morality spectacle leads to populism, symbolic politics, misguided activism, distorted research, and ineffective measures against discrimination – all at the expense of justice and solidarity.

Philipp Hübl demonstrates how we can instead follow a universal ethics that focuses on eliminating real injustices rather than profiling ourselves in showdowns. In this framework, it is not authoritarian thinking or victim groups that take center stage, but the self-determined individual.