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Articles

On Panic

by Bernard Baboulène

I should like to applaud and contribute to the debate about morality which began in Issue No.6. The editorial discussed the ‘moral panic’ that has been in the news this summer. It seems to me that the panic stems partly from a quite simple confusion and partly from an artificial intellectual barrier erected by academia, and the editorial went to the root of both in referring to “the question which many people think must come before ethical debate: what manner of creatures are we?”.

“Moral and spiritual” is a phrase that trips off the tongue (like law’n’order) in the world of education and every other concerned area with scant regard to any distinction between them, and academic moral philosophers must take responsibility for drawing a line in the sand marked ‘religion’ (or ‘theology’) which you are not supposed to cross.

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