Will and Ethics

The Rational-Animal distinction pioneered by Plato, and radicalized by Descartes, corresponds to a split between Ethics and Psychology. For, on that model, Psychology lacks the normative dimension that is essential to Ethics. The efforts of Hume and Mill to overcome the duality, by conceiving Rationality as ancillary to Animality, are undercut by their Atomism--the definition of 'Good' in terms of 'Pleasure' in an Atomistic theory of Experience cannot explain the superiority of some 'goods' to others upon which each thinker presumes. In contrast, in Formaterialism, Will is both Motility and Excession, so, what is the source of the locomotion that the tradition regards as the essence of 'Animality', is also the principle of 'doing better', upon which any system of evaluation depends. Hence, the thesis that Will, as defined in Formaterialism, is a fundamental component of Experience, effectively overcomes the model that conceives Ethics as an extrinsic imposition upon Animality.