Divergent Paths: A Critique of Maliandi's Convergethics

Abstract

The Argentine philosopher Ricardo Maliandi has devoted his long career to developing an original ethical proposal called «convergent ethics» and renamed here as «convergethics». It has sparked a series of debates among ethicists in the Spanish-speaking world. Our work is based on those debates, but it seeks to provide a perspective from within the convergent theory. This theory is reconstructed in three convergences: one of preceding ethical theories (N. Hartmann's axiological ethics and K. O. Apel's discourse ethics), one of ethical principles (the four cardinal principles enunciated by Maliandi) and one of the two spheres of humankind (the rational sphere or logos and the emotional sphere or pathos). By a thought experiment named «the Latvian spaceship» we will question the core ideas of the first two forms of convergence towards sustaining the primacy of the third form of convergence. Our hypothesis is that if the convergethics leaves the apriority of two of the principles apart ―those we link to emotional and practical human dimension— it will save theory's internal coherence and provide a better guide for moral agents.