This paper is an inquiry into the theoretical, ethical and social implications of the adoption of the rationalist attitude to the understanding of the world, aka critical rationalism. It is structured around four tightly connected claims. The first claim equates the distinction between morality and economics to the distinction between values and interests. The second claim relates the theoretical connotation of critical rationalism - a secular world-view - to its ethical connotation - the secular ethics of individual freedom, independence and responsibility commanded by the ‘belief’ in reason alone, showing them to be the two non-separable sides of a single way of conceiving human existence. The third claim highlights the crucial civic role of such secular ethics vis à vis the non-secular moral messages of religion and ideology, and the secular non-moral message of wellbeing, social success, and power. It holds a unique individual sentiment of social solidarity, as well as the requirement of a liberal social order without the slightest trace of fundamentalism. The fourth claim distinguishes moral from social justice. The former is only about values: the protection of the secular value of the individual sentiment of self-respect, or freedom-independence, and has nothing to do with the distribution of wellbeing among people. The latter is only about interests: the equality-inequality of such distribution, and has nothing to do with morality.
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