Moral Rigidity as Rule-Adherence Wrong Attractor: Deontological Capture, the Cost of Context-Blindness, and the Return to Phronetic Ethics

This paper applies the Displacement Framework to moral rigidity, analysing it as a wrong-attractor state in which adherence to rules has become an end in itself rather than a means to ethical outcomes. Using displacement cost D(ξ), accumulated displacement Φ, and basin geometry, we show how the displacement cost of contextual deviation from a rule-set is elevated even when context clearly requires it.

Aristotle's phronesis represents the ground state: context-sensitive ethical reasoning using rules as guides rather than absolutes. Nine propositions formalise deontological capture, context-blindness costs, religious fundamentalism and authoritarian personality structure, clinical manifestations in OCD/OCPD/scrupulosity, and return paths through virtue ethics and phronesis cultivation.

Published as part of The Phronesis Issues preprint series.