"Ethics beyond moral theory" - Love Calls

I have written elsewhere of my personal problems with both ethics and aesthetics - too much theory and too little attention to what happens down here on the ground, in our cities and trailer-parks and in our concert halls and clubs. As Joy says to Darnell (characters on my favorite TV show, My Name is Earl): "Darnell are you trying to make a point? You know I don't like points!" You know I don't like the scientism found in philosophical ethics and aesthetics. And with respect to aesthetics. my stance is that of professing "anti-aesthetics" - theory-theory scientism parallels are to be found in ethics and aesthetics.
     Timothy Chappell of the Open University has written a beautiful paper entitled, "Ethics beyond moral theory" (linked below). Prof Chappell writes,

The characteristic trouble with moral theories starts when each of them tries to take over the party. Or, to take a more scientific metaphor, the trouble starts when we forget that our theoretical idealisation is just that—an idealised model and no more—and try and treat it as if it was a complete and literal description of reality. The moment where we forget that we are talking about an idealised system, and start imagining we are talking about reality as it is, is the moment where scientism emerges from science; at the moment in ethics, moral theory emerges from moral thought. [pps. 3-4]

Chappell runs down the supposed explanatory benefits of ethical theory-construction and finds them illusory or otherwise wanting. In his closing remarks, Chappell writes about the need to account for love in our ethical outlook. He writes,

I said ... that love (of people, or prized possessions, or pet projects, or pets, or...) is central to any adequate and liveable ethical outlook. And ... I stressed the central role of love, within any such ethical outlook, in motivation and deliberation (and hence in explanation and prediction too). As I said there, love is something that can take us “beyond good and evil”, beyond the whole idea of morality (though to say that love transcends the moral need not be to say that love is immoral). [25]

Time spent with Timothy Chappell's thoughts on our ethical outlook will be worthwhile.

http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/philosophy/docs/ethics_beyond_moral_theory.pdf