“From the perspective of environmental ethics, astrology might seem irresponsibly otherworldly and anthropocentric, not unlike other spiritual traditions. Even if it touts a stewardship ethic or ecofeminist care ethic that would mitigate it’s anthropocentric focus, wouldn’t such an astrological application of such a caring ethic entail ethical attention to planets other than Earth, and couldn’t such extra-planetary care distract from more immediate concerns here on Earth (e.g., mass extinction, immigration, global warming, and poverty)? Speaking of poverty, there are issues of wealth and knowledge distribution involved in access to empirical astrological data (this overlaps with the epistemic exclusion problem mentioned above). Who gets access and how? Is it a field for medical ethics or religious ethics or both? Medically or religiously, a key issue is that it would probably be inappropriate for someone to impose their practice on you, which would mean that asking someone “what’s your sign” would be less like a friendly conservation starter and more like asking for someone’s medical history or asking them if they’ve heard the Good News of Jesus Christ. Telling me that my computer malfunctioned because of the retrograde movement of Mercury would be similar to telling me that my computer malfunctioned because God is angry with me.

Furthermore, another ethical challenge that goes unaddressed is that astrology and esoteric traditions more generally tend to reflect conservative values; they’re not progressive, not liberal, not anarcho-communitarian. The secretive, initiatory, and traditional nature of esoteric spiritualities renders them inherently conservative. That has political implications, but for now I’ll leave those aside and just mention the ethical problem that comes with it, which is something like group narcissism or in-group bias, what Pierre Bourdieu described as “the sort of collective narcissism affecting intellectual groups…inclining them to turn a complacent gaze on themselves” (The Rules of Art, 385).”

The above passage comes from a blog post by philosopher Sam Mickey. He raises some good questions about astrology, particularly archetypal astrology. I’m with Sam in that I don’t have super-duper strong feelings about astrology (I think it’s fine for the most part, actually, and generally pretty cool and fun), but I’m also not super-duper obsessively into it like some people that I know (which is fine). But the second ethical/political implication Sam mentions above (the one about esotericism in general reflecting conservative values) is one that I’ve sort of run into myself while exploring various esoteric traditions and it has caused me to raise an eyebrow here and there… Anyway, good stuff to think about!

Tags:archetypal astrologyastrologyesotericismhoroscopesphilosophySam Mickey