Series of Moral Phenomenology
Written by Johanes Narasetu
Cover image Wondering Wandering Girl by Bung Carol
Examining the morality of Exploration is not as clear as it may seem. While historical and geographical research on the facts back then can always be found in some 5 minutes of Google Search or a quick glance at Britannica, separating the idea of Exploration from the historical events from the Age of Exploration requires a more critical approach. That being said, the primary philosophical question which can also serve our judgement is pivoted on the morality of exploration. Is there such a thing? How do we lay it out?
Exploration as a moral necessity
First and foremost, it should be made clear that not all events during the Exploration Age are moral. In fact, some horrible things such as exploitation of indigineous people, slavery, violence, and so on, did happen. However, generalisation of some events, no matter how major they are, is hardly sufficient to make up for a thorough moral investigation. In order to do the latter, it will be important to embark from exploration as a series of events to Exploration as an act; a human action, if you will.
So the big question is: in what sense is Exploration as a human action moral?
The morality of exploration lies in the idea of expansion and development of oneself and his knowledge about the world. Knowledge is bound to expand, and its expansion comes alongside with a certain worldview. Following this notion, the philosophy behind the Exploration is to expand one’s worldview through physical exploration. Deeper still, the ethos of exploration is to better oneself through the expansion of experiential knowledge about the world.
Following this ethos, it is safe to say that not only is Exploration as an idea not bad, but also it is recommended to do; or in the the language of virtue ethics, virtuous. The old adage Gold, Glory, Gospel might have worked as a political-economical propaganda. They were indeed motivational. However, This slogan contains some morality, namely, that going out venturing to the horizon is so much more meaningful than staying at the comfort of continental couch.
What precisely is the moral derivation from the Ethics of Exploration? It is certainly righteous to explore, but what sort of righteousness are we talking about? If we take a deeper look at Exploration as human action and draw the connection between the act of exploring and its motivation and purpose, we can at least say that its drive is rooted in an intuition for life in both its organic sense – to proclaim wealth and better priced goods – and, more importantly, existential sense, that is, to be human. It is at this point that we get the humanistic sense of exploration: just like art and science, venturing for a purpose is so much deeper than an animalistic act to expand a territory (despite the heavy territorial dispute historically noted in the events of exploration). To explore is to be more human.
In this regard, some human centered virtues can be derived. Exploration offers virtues related to self-cultivation, knowledge expansion, and constant rejection of personal comfort. And since these three morals are firmly rooted in an existential drive to live and grow, Exploration is inevitable. Notwithstanding the actors, time, or space in history, the Age of Exploration is bound to happen; were it not by the Europeans, it would have been by someone else.
In order to make an ethical exploration
When Exploration is inevitable due to its morality, the concrete act of exploration is not bound to be moral. As shortly mentioned above, cruel, horrible things did follow the Age of Exploration. What is important to know now is the necessary conditions to make Exploration ethical, or to be precise, to make it pro of human lives..
The solution for this matter can actually be seen in the aforementioned explanation. Exploration needs to remain to its virtues for it to be ethical. In other words, it needs to hold on to self cultivation, knowledge expansion, and constant rejection of personal comfort. In simpler terms, act with a full consideration of our limited knowledge about the world in which we live. Do not go out there with some narrow belief that we are some sort of saviour trying to construct or deconstruct the world. Quite the contrary, we set off to a great distance because we need to to construct or deconstruct our world. It is the self-centred messianism which brought about the series of wrongdoings during that time, and it will certainly do the same should we approach the world with similar dispositions nowadays.
Another moral standpoint is equally useful here. Think of Exploration as a way to test our worldview and not the other way around. The world does not need saving, we do. Anything beyond our worldview is there as a moral instrument to test ourselves as beings who continually develop. Self cultivation goes hand-in-hand with self-trial through the unknown named the World. Some narcissistic ‘save the world’ mentality clearly leads towards an immoral, and therefore, unethical Exploration.
Moral questions to judge events in the Age of Exploration
Therefore, going back to the Age of Exploration, now with some sharpened moral questions derived from Exploration as human action, we can judge the events from that time period more clearly as we also prepare for future explorations. Three questions can be formulated here. First, were human beings cultivated from a particular action? Second, was human knowledge expanded from that particular action? Finally, did the particular action require the agent to break his personal comfort? The more affirmative answer we get from each question, the more ethical one particular action is. On the other hand, an event or action morally deteriorates along with the negative answer for those questions.
In the end, Exploration is a moral necessity and it is inevitable. However, it does not always entail moral actions as the events during the Age of Exploration have shown. It is important to throw away the self-centred ‘save the world’ mentality to ensure that the Ethical idea of Exploration can properly translate into moral acts of exploration.
