I agree with Jeremy. I have to re-read Badiou, but the idea of arguing Truth in terms of ethics can't be universal. Ethics dictates a method or proper mode of behavior or 'manual', if you will, of what one should do. This, hence, presupposes the idea of what one shouldn't do. Ethics (I am not defining it here for that is another discussion) would have to be subjective based on the aforementioned should or should not ideals. And everyone knows that the little word 'should' carries with it the huge idea of morality and all it encompasses and no matter how hard the two try to be demarcated many problems are encountered.

This definitely makes it a subjective (not necessarily perspectival) ideal which obviates the idea of Universal. It wouldn't be perspectival from the person acting or thinking the act, for they would not know whether it is ethically right or wrong. I am willing to go so far and say that they may think it is ethically/morally right. Or 'should' I say they may feel that they 'should' and 'would'.

The system failed them. They have no milk for their baby. They are just setting things 'right'.(Starving baby, steal milk for baby, self-moral perspective is either 1)clouded, 2)right, or 3)not right or wrong). However, being veiwed from someone else or perceived by someone else not walking in their shoes, it would automatically be stamped one way OR the other. As long as the 'OR' exists, there can be no universal system of ethics. Everyone's perspective is different but with regards to two aspects just explained.

The second I would also agree with. It's choosing the lesser of two evils, for a lack of better words. Limiting negative defects, which you know would occur, necessarily decreases the probability of the negative defects occurring and hence increases the positive ones. So proportionally speaking, the percentage is a 2 point swing. Every negative defect averted automatically equals a positive and vice-versa. However, the former is the hopes of the entire 'ethical system'. As Jeremy says indirectly to create a positive change.

Now the idea that rule-based systems are morally bankrupt in that they do not create positive change may and probably is true as power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But this is just one of life's paradoxes. Freedom is not free. In order for order to be maintained because of the idiots that don't want to pull their own share, we needed to invent currencyway back in the caveman days instead of we all work doing what we are good at and provide for each other.But that would be Utopia he we have rules, laws, police, judges, and everything that follows down that road that all evolved from the archaic fiefbecause of the simple idea of property and what's mine is mine and what's your's is your's.

Not to offend anyone, I never read anything by Kant that was worth while except for his Critique of Pure Reason and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Simply put, he argues that the human being is an end in himself, not to be used as a means by others and has the capacity for self-government and autonomy and hence morality. (Well duh, his own which>>> Even though, here I find problems with his Categorical Imperative. But that's, once again, another discussion.

-Sweet Wheat