Thanks @Banno for your summary (post 63). An excerpt:
Thought I’d use this as an entry point to express some thoughts re: ‘etiquette’, societal and moral expectations and their interplay in terms of ‘binding’ or ‘acceptance’.
The different ways of ‘falling’ - how we are ‘held’ tightly close or pushed away, as in ‘punished’. The psychological need for certainty found in strong, formal absolutism. The apparent attraction or ‘inescapability’ of a categorical imperative.
Foot, like others, is caught up in the changing winds of war. Not only in Oxford, England, but in France, post-WWII, society is changing. May 68 - Wikipedia
Foot had an aristocratic and privileged background with the usual expectations of what it meant to be a woman or should I say ‘lady’. How to be and act to catch the proper and fitting gentleman. Not to look intellectual, for starters.
Foot knows about the workings of ‘etiquette’ as a compelling norm of power and control. A social guide but more than that. It can be action‑guiding, — and yet not binding in the Kantian sense.
Foot studied and worked alongside others who were not part of the mould, who were not ‘comme il faut’ - conformists to the status quo.
Conscientious objectors of war were prime examples testing and breaking social expectations and mores. Women’s roles were shifting. Such perceived ‘failure’ in showing a ‘fitting’ character, nature or sexuality, came with penalties.
In this context, ‘etiquette’, is not trivial. It’s a way of showing how people are held by norms — by class, by religion, by ‘how things are done’ — and yet, can refuse them without falling into chaotic irrationality, even when so accused.
We can see the political undercurrent of radicalism. Foot is perhaps more subtle in her philosophical argumentation. Gently dismantling the idea that moral authority must be absolute.
We might call her a ‘conscientious objector’ who does not ‘fall’ into obedience but stands against the prevailing winds.
This article can be viewed as a subtle defence of moral pluralism and moral courage, smuggled in through an apparently trivial example of ‘how it’s done’.
Moral action, then, is not obedience to an abstract law but taking a certain stance or approach to living — getting on with human life in a humane manner.
There is more to be said about, e.g. the civilisation or criminalisation of the ‘fallen’ or those who would have them fall in battlegrounds. The civility of wearing suits in the White House…