Report: Principles
Hinman Course
Basic
Moral Orientations: Overview
Ethical
Relativism, Absolutism, and Pluralism
Immanuel
Kant and the Ethics of Duty
Immanuel
Kant and the Ethics of Respect
Justice
in Action: Just War Theory
An
Introduction to Aristotelian Virtue Theory
The
Ethics of Character: Virtues and Vices
Courage:
An Aristotelian Analysis
The
Ethics of Diversity: Race, Ethnicity, and Culture in Moral Theory
==============================
http://ethics.sandiego.edu/Courses/Theory/Fall2003/Phil_%20120,%20Fall,%202003%20Schedule.html
· “Do what the Bible tells you”--Divine Command Theories
· “Follow your conscience”--The Ethics of Conscience
· “Watch out for #1”--Ethical Egoism
· “Do the right thing”--The Ethics of Duty
· “Don’t dis’ me”--The Ethics of Respect
· “...all Men are created ...with certain unalienable Rights”--The Ethics of Rights
· “Make the world a better place”--Utilitarianism
· “Daddy, that’s not fair”--The Ethics of Justice
· “Be a good person”--Virtue Ethics
· Being good is equivalent to doing whatever the Bible--or the Qur’an or some other sacred text or source of revelation--tells you to do.
· “What is right” equals “What God tells me to do.”
· Conscience tells us what is right or wrong
· Often has a religious source
· May be founded in a notion of human nature
· Is often negative in character, telling us what is not right
· Says the only person to look out for is yourself
· Ayn Rand, The Ethics of Selfishness
· Well known for her novel, especially Atlas Shrugged
Begins with the conviction that ethics is about doing what is right, about doing your duty.
Duty may be determined by:
· Reason
· Professional role
· Social role
· Human interactions should be governed by rules of respect
· What counts as respect can vary from one culture to another
o Examples:
· What is it that merits respect?
· The most influential moral notion of the past two centuries
· Established minimal conditions of human decency
· Seeks to reduce suffering and increase pleasure or happiness
· Demands a high degree of self-sacrifice—we must consider the consequencs for everyone.
· Utilitarians claim the purpose of morality is to make the world a better place.
· Begins early in the family with fairness to all family members
· What is fair for one should be fair for all.
· Treating people equally may not mean treating them the same.
· Seeks to develop individual character
· Assumes good persons will make good decisions
· Developed by Plato and Aristotle
· Integral to the Jesuit tradition
§
The Spiritual Exercises
· Provides a way of integrating all the theories
==============================
Moral concerns are unavoidable in life.
Analogy: morality is a lot like nutrition.
· Principal concern: health
· The role of experts
· Disagreement
Professional discussions of ethical issues in journals.
We come back to ideas again and again, finding new meaning in them.
Morality: first-order set of beliefs and practices about how to live a good life
Ethics: a second-order, conscious reflection on the adequacy of our moral beliefs.
The goal of ethical reflection is moral health.
Thus we seek to determine what will nourish our moral life and what will poison it.
Take the ethical inventory on pp. 8-10 now or on the web at:
http://ethics.sandiego.edu/ActiveWebSurvey/theory/ .
Return to your answers after finishing each chapter.
What makes something a moral issue?
· Content:
o duties, rights, human welfare, suffering, character, etc.
· Perspective:
o impartial, compassionate, etc.
Imagine a situation in which you see a classmate cheating. There are several elements from a moral point of view:
· Some people are hurt by the cheating
· There is deception in the situation
· Cheating seems to be unfair to those who don’t cheat
· There are conflicting values—honesty, loyalty, etc.
· There are questions of character.
Some philosophers have argued that moral issues are characterized by a particular kind of language—terms such as duty, obligation, right, and good.
Many philosophers have argued that the moral point of view is characterized by impartiality, that is, I don’t give my own interest any special weight.
· Immanuel Kant
· John Stuart Mill
Other philosophers have seen the origin of the moral life to be in compassion, feeling for the suffering of other sentient beings.
Josiah Royce: “Such as that is for me, so is it for him, nothing less.”
Moral obligations, some philosophers maintain, are universally binding and that is what gives them their distinctive character.
Kant: morality is a matter of categorical imperatives.
· Distinguish between hypothetical and categorical imperatives.
Philosophers from Aristotle onward have seen the primary focus of morality to be character.
Two questions:
· What ought I to do? (Kant and Mill)
· What kind of person ought I to be? (Aristotle)
Ethics as the Evaluation of Other People’s Behavior
· We are often eager to pass judgment on others
Ethics as the Search for Meaning and Value in Our Own Lives
Ethics often used as a weapon
Hypocrisy
Possibility of knowing other people
The right to judge other people
The right to intervene
Judging and caring
Positive focus
Aims at discerning what is good
Emphasizes personal responsibility for one’s own life
· Functions of theory:
· Describe
· Explain
· Give strength (Stockdale)
· Prescribe
o Open new possibilities
o Wonder
What is ethics like?
· Physics
o Clear-cut, definitive answers
· Engineering
o Several possible ways of doing things, many ways that are wrong
Ethics is like nutrition
· One studies bodily health, the other moral health
· Significant disagreement in both fields
· Still there is a significant common ground.
==============================
This presentation arises out of two distinct sources:
· In ethics, I have been interested in sketching out a middle ground between absolutism and relativism.
· In teaching, I have been interested in exploring ways in which we visualize knowledge.
As a teacher, I found that neither relativism nor absolutism was satisfactory.
I found myself looking for something in between these two extremes
Ethical relativism has several important insights:
· The need for tolerance and understanding
· The fact of moral diversity
· We should not pass judgment on practices in other cultures when we don’t understand them
· Sometimes reasonable people may differ on what’s morally acceptable
Descriptive ethical relativism
· Claims as a matter of fact that different cultures have different moral values
Normative ethical relativism
· Claims that each culture is right unto itself
What part of morality is relative?
· Behavior
· Peripheral values
· Fundamental values
How much of morality is relative?
· All
· Most
· Some
Relative to what?
· Individuals
· Cultures
· Nations
· Groups
Descriptive ethical relativists say that moral values are relative, but to what:
· Culture
· Nation
· Group
· Individual—subjectivism
How do we individuate cultures?
Behavior
· Different behaviors may exemplify the same value
· The same behavior may exemplify different values in different culture
Peripheral values
· Obviously some culturally-specific values
Core values
· Are there central values found in all cultures?
Presupposes an epistemological solipsism
Is unhelpful in dealing with overlaps of cultures--precisely where we need help.
· Commerce and trade
· Media
· World Wide Web
Is self-defensive: if we can’t judge others, neither can they judge us
Sometimes we say that we can’t judge other cultures because we can’t fully understand them.
Do we need full understanding to judge something?
Do we even have full understanding of ourselves?
Would this eliminate anthropology as a discipline?
Does it deny a main goal of multiculturalism?
Ethical relativism suggests that we let each culture live as it sees fit
This is only feasible when cultures don’t have to interact with one another.
The challenge of the coming century is precisely overlapping cultures:
· Multinational corporations
· International media--BBC, MTV, CNN
· International sports--Olympics
· World Wide Web
The actual situation in today’s world is much closer complex overlapping.
Ethical relativism maintains that we cannot make moral judgments about other cultures
The corollary of this is that we are protected in principle against the judgments made by other cultures
Shares this characteristic with absolutism
Absolutism comes in many versions--including the divine right of kings
Absolutism is less about what we believe and more about how we believe it
Common elements:
· There is a single Truth
· Their position embodies that truth
Ethical absolutism gets some things right
· We need to make judgments (at least sometimes)
· Certain things are intolerable
But it gets some things wrong, including:
· Our truth is the truth
· We can’t learn from others
Combines insights of both relativism and absolutism:
· The central challenge: how to live together with differing and conflicting values
· Fallibilism: recognizes that we might be mistaken
· Sees disagreement as a possible strength:
o checks and balances government analogy
Ethical pluralism offers three categories to describe actions:
· Prohibited: those actions which are not seen as permissible at all
o Absolutism sees the importance of this
· Tolerated: those actions and values in which legitimate differences are possible
o Relativism sees the importance of this
· Ideal: a moral vision of what the ideal society would be like
For each action or policy, we can place it in one of three regions:
· Ideal--Center
· Permitted--Middle
o Respected
o Tolerated
· Prohibited--Outside
What is the present state?
What is the ideal state?
What is the minimally acceptable state?
How do we get from the present to the minimally acceptable state?
How do we get from the minimum to the ideal state?
Here’s a way of visualizing these issues:
present state >> (laws) >> minimally acceptable state >> (incentives) >> ideal state
1) Overall, the actual state of race and ethnicity in American society is:
a) Excellent
b) Very good
c) Good
d) Poor
e) Terrible
2) List three important facts that support your evaluation in #1
a)
b)
c)
#3. What are the three most important issues facing us in regard to race and ethnicity today?
a)
b)
c)
What are the minimum conditions necessary for a just society in regard to race and ethnicity? List at least three characteristics or conditions.
#1
#2
#3
What are the ideal conditions necessary for a just society in regard to race and ethnicity? List at least three characteristics or conditions.
#1
#2
#3
How should we get from the actual state to the minimally acceptable state? List specific ways of getting from the actual state of society to the minimal conditions listed earlier.
· Examples: laws, taxes, regulations, protests, civil disobedience
How should we get from the actual state to the ideal state? List specific ways of getting from the actual state of society to the ideal conditions listed above.
· Examples: Public relations campaigns, education, tax incentives, laws
This presentation is available at:
http://ethics.acusd.edu/presentations/Hinman/theory/relativism/
http://ethics.acusd.edu/socialethics/
Additional resources:
http://ethics.acusd.edu/relativism.html
Goals
· Understanding
o ourselves
o others
o the issue
· Common Ground
o agreement where appropriate
o living with some disagreements
o changing the situation
==============================
1. The Christian Worldview
2. The Navajo Worldview
3. Islam
4. Buddhism
It’s helpful to begin by contrasting the Christian and the atheistic world views.
In order to answer the question of how reason and religion are related, let’s begin with Socrates’ question to Euthyphro.
Then we will consider some positions on the relationship between religion and ethics.
Creation of the universe: Universe comes from God and thus is fundamentally good. The natural order, because it is created by God, is fundamentally good.
Revelation: God affects human history through revelation
Incarnation: God intervenes human history through incarnation
Final cause: God is the telos or goal toward which creation strives.
In this view, God interacts with the world in several ways:
· God creates the world
· God is in contact interaction with the world
· God’s creative act (esse) continually sustains the world in its existence
· God gives the world a final purpose or goal or telos toward which it strives
As a result of these interactions, the world has:
· Unity
o This is a single world with structure
· Purpose
o Beings on earth have a goal or purpose ordained by God
· Value
o The world is good because:
§ It comes from God, who is all good
§ It is aiming toward God, who can only establish good purposes
For Bertrand Russell, existence has no unity, no value, and no purpose in the Christian sense of these terms.
“That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving;
“That his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms;
“That no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave,
“That all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are all destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system,
“And that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins
“--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
“Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
The contrast between these two worldview could not be sharper.
· No place for preordained purposes in Russell’s view
· No goodness inherent in the world for him
· No privileged place for humanity within his view
The implications of these differences for ethics are profound
· No ultimate purpose for humanity
· No ultimate reward or punishment
o Nietzsche’s question: if God is dead, is everything permitted?
· No guarantee that nature is good or bad
o “Unnatural” becomes a purely descriptive term
Now let’s expand the discussion beyond Christianity.
Navajo
· An Ethic of Harmony
Islam
· An Ethic of Law
Buddhism
· An Ethic of Compassion
Navajo
· A plurality of gods, not necessarily in agreement with one another
Islam
· One God
Buddhism
· No personal God
Tradition and Society
· Oriented toward how Navajo treat one another
· Small society
· Practical, not theoretical
Dualisms and Antagonisms
· No Western mind-body split
· Don’t choose one side of the dualism
Western view
· mind/body split (Descartes)
· heal the body
· Stamp out disease
Navajo view
· Mind and body together
· Heal the whole person
· Seek harmony
Western attitude:
· stomp it out
Navajo
· Evil is a part of life; it just “is”
· Avoid it instead of eliminate it
Hozho - harmony, beauty, peace of mind, goodness, health, well-being or success
Morality guides an individual back into a state of harmony with all that surrounds the individual
Three levels to harmonize:
· natural
· human
· supernatural
Create harmony rather than domination
· Example: moving to higher ground rather than building a dam
· Respecting the rattlesnake
The wind is both:
· physical (we feel it on our faces);
· ephemeral (we cannot see it).
The wind is both:
· one
· many
The wind comes from the four principal directions, the four mountains
Is local
Acts like Christian conscience
· Swirls around an individual through a hidden point in the ear
· Warns individuals of impending disruptions of hozho
· Does not punish
Basic premise: life is very, very dangerous
Maxims:
· “Maintain orderliness [i.e., harmony] in those sectors of life which are little subject to human control;”
· “Be wary of non-relatives;”
· “Avoid excesses;”
· “When in a new situation, do nothing;”
· “Escape.”
Rituals are intended to reestablish or insure hozho, harmony
The Blessingway is one of the ceremonies performed to reestablish harmony when there has been a disruption
Ultimately, the Navajo way suggests an ethics of harmony among the natural, human, and supernatural world.
Rejects traditional Western distinctions between
· Church and state
· Religion and ethics
Islam: “surrender to the will of God”
Concerned with all behavior
belief or faith
· imam
practice or action
· islam
virtue
· ihsan
“What should I do?” = “What is Allah’s will?”
“What is right” = “What Allah wills”
The will of Allah is embodies in Shari’ah, divine Islamic law
Note primacy of the will
Covers all areas of human behavior
Tells what is:
· required
· recommended
· permitted
· discouraged
· forbidden
Two areas of law:
· How Muslims act toward God
o Described in the Five Pillars
· How Muslims act toward other human beings
o Describes in civil law
Shahadah: the profession of faith that “there is no god but God (Allah) and that Mohammed is the Messenger of God;”
Salah: ritual prayer and ablutions, undertaken five times a day while facing the holy city of Mecca;
Zakah: the obligatory giving of alms (at an annual rate of approximately 2.5% of one’s net worth) to the poor to alleviate suffering and promote the spread of Islam;
Saum: ritual fasting and abstinence from sexual intercourse and smoking, especially the obligatory month-long fast from sun-up to sun-down during the month of Ramadan to commemorate the first revelations to Mohammed;
Hajj: a ritual pilgrimage, especially the journey to Mecca which traditionally occurs in the month after Ramadan and which Muslims should undertake at least once in a lifetime.
Ihsan, or virtue
· worshipping God
o Strictly religious
· pursuing an aim
o Similar to Aristotle
The Ulama, or clergy, give the definitive interpretation of Allah’s will
No separation between church and state
The Ulama also have an executive role in implementing Allah’s will
Literally means “striving”
Focus on resisting, overcoming evil
Greater Jihad:
· focus on internal striving
Lesser Jihad
· focus on external striving
Islam, like many religions, has various factions.
· Fundamentalist factions see little room for compromise with other religions
o Leads to attacks against others, including attacks against the United States and against Hindus
· Moderate factions see Islam as coexisting with other major religions.
An Ethic of Compassion for all
An Ethic of renunciation for monks
An Ethic of reincarnation for lay persons
The Four Noble Truths deal with
· The inevitability of suffering
· The sources of suffering
· The elimination of suffering
· The paths to the elimination of suffering
Suffering arises from a discrepancy between desire and actuality
· change the actual world--Western technology
· change the desire, extinguish the individual self--Buddhism
Personal self moves through the wheel of existence like a flame being passed from one candle to another
Karma: each individual action helps to set free or bind us to the personal self
Moral commandments are generated by demands of karma
|
right views; |
Wisdom |
Prajna |
|
right intention; |
Wisdom |
Prajna |
|
right speech; |
Wisdom |
Prajna |
|
right action; |
Morality |
Sila |
|
right livelihood; |
Morality |
Sila |
|
right effort; |
Morality |
Sila |
|
right mindfulness |
Concentration |
Samadhi |
|
right concentration |
Concentration |
Samadhi |
Theravada Buddhism stresses an ethic of self-renunciation, self-purification, detachment
Mahayana Buddhism stresses an ethics of compassion for all living things
|
|
Christianity |
Navajo |
Islam |
Buddhism |
|
Ideal |
Love |
Harmony |
Law |
Compassion |
|
View of God |
One God, Three Persons |
Many Gods |
One God |
No personal/individual God |
==============================
We will consider three different accounts of the relationship between religion and reason in ethics:
Religion takes priority over reason:
· Divine command theories
· Teleological suspension of the ethical
Compatibilist theories
Autonomy of reason theories
These theories claim that something is right because God will it.
· Augustine and the voluntarist tradition
· Clear in Islam, where the will of Allah is the measure of all that is right
Also characteristic of much of fundamentalism in all religions.
How can we know God’s will?
Does divine command theory undermine human autonomy?
Can be used to subjugate the masses.
In the old Testament, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac.
Genesis, 22:1-10
And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt
Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get
thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one
of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of
his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt
offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.
Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.
And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the
lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his
son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them
together.
And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here
am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb
for a burnt offering?
And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering:
so they went both of them together.
And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an
altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him
on the altar upon the wood.
And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
Genesis, 22:11-19
And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and
said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him:
for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son,
thine only son from me.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught
in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him
up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this
day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.
And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,
And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done
this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:
That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed
as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and
thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;
And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou
hast obeyed my voice.
So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together to
Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba.
God’s command that Abraham should kill his only son as a sacrifice to God seems to go against reason and morality
The issue: can God ask us to do things that go against reason and morality? Which takes precedence, God’s command or reason?
According to Søren Kierkegaard, sometimes it is necessary to suspend the ethical for the sake of God
Kierkegaard sought to heighten the tension between faith and reason, rather than try as Hegel had done to minimize it.
The case of Abraham in Fear and Trembling
Either/Or
Compatibilist theories say that reason and religion can never contradict one another
· Strong: they are saying the same thing
· Weak: they say different things, but not contradictory things
G. W. F. Hegel thought that reason and religion could be completely reconciled.
Religion presents same truths as reason, but under a different form, as myth rather than as reason.
Thomas Aquinas believed that reason and faith could never contradict one another, but faith may reveals truths beyond the react of reason.
Bertrand Russell thought that religion was simply wrong, and reason was the role guide for action.
Immanuel Kant believed in God, but felt that even God was subject to the dictates of reason.
The heritage of the Enlightenment: belief in reason and autonomy and individualism
Challenges to the Enlightenment belief:
· Human acts of irrationality: the Holocaust, enslavement of African-Americans, etc.
Distinguish two questions:
· Content. Can reason provide us with adequate guidelines about how we should act? The answer appears to be “yes.”
· Motivation. Can reason provide us with adequate motivation to do the right thing? Here the answer appears to be “no.”
|
|
Supremacy of Religion |
Compatibilist Theories |
Supremacy of Reason |
|
Strong version |
All morality based on divine commands > Fundamentalism |
Reason and religion are identical > Hegel |
Ethics based only on reason; atheistic or agnostic > Russell |
|
Weak version |
Teleological Suspension of the Ethical > Kierkegaard |
Reason and religion may be different but do not conflict > Aquinas |
Even God must follow dictates of reason > Kant |
Key question: Is religion harmful or helpful to the moral life?
Karl Marx: Religion as the opiate of the masses, used to enslave them
For Marx, religion was only a tool for oppression.
Friedrich Nietzsche
· The Death of God
· Nihilism
· Slave morality and ressentiment
Supporters of religion point out the way in which the religious consciousness allows individuals to transcend the oppression of their times.
Oscar Romero of El Salvador
Is religion necessary to insure ultimate justice, that those who suffer in this world will be recompensed and that those who gain in this world through treachery will be punished in the next?
==============================
Two types of egoism:
· Psychological egoism
o Asserts that as a matter of fact we do always act selfishly
o Purely descriptive
· Ethical egoism
o Maintains that we should always act selfishly
Our concern here is with psychological egoism
Part One. Analyzing the psychological egoist’s claim
Part Two. Reconceptualizing psychological egoism
The psychological egoist claims that people always act selfishly or in their own self-interest.
One of the earlier advocates of this view was Thomas Hobbes, who saw life as “…nasty, brutish, and short.”
Folk psychology
· There is a widespread belief that people are just out for themselves
· Social Darwinism: everyone is just trying to survive.
Social sciences
· Economics: rational agent theory
Foreign policy
· Belief that other nations will always act solely in terms of self-interest
What exactly does the psychological egoist maintain? Two possible interpretations:
· #1: We act selfishly, or
· #2: We act in our self-interest
In addition, we need to clarify:
· Genuine or apparent self-interest? If we act out of self-interest, is it genuine self-interest or only apparent self-interest?
· Maximizing or non-maximizing? Are we saying that we always seek to maximize self-interest, or simply that self-interest is always part of the picture
· Exclusive or non-exclusive? Are we saying that we act only out of selfishness, or that selfishness is always one of our motives?
· Causally determined? Are we saying that human beings are causally determined to act this way or that we choose to do so?
There is a fundamental ambiguity at the heart of psychological egoism.
· #1: We act selfishly, or
· #2: We act in our self-interest
We can distinguish these in the following way:
· #1: A claim about our motives
· #2: A claim about the objective consequences of our actions
If we are selfish, do we only do things that are in our genuine self-interest?
· What about the chain smoker? Is this person acting out of genuine self-interest?
· In fact, the smoker may be acting selfishly (doing what he wants without regard to others) but not self-interestedly (doing what will ultimately benefit him).
If we are selfish, do we only do things are we believe are in our self-interest?
· What about those who believe that sometimes they act altruistically?
· Does anyone truly believe Mother Theresa was completely selfish?
Think of the actions of parents. Don’t parents sometimes act for the sake of their children, even when it is against their narrow self-interest to do so?
There are two ways in which the psychological egoist’s claim may be interpreted:
· #1: We act selfishly
o If the psychological egoist is saying that we act selfishly, then how do we explain apparently altruistic people like Mother Theresa? Two possible answers:
§ People are unconsciously selfish. But what do we mean by unconscious intentions? This devolves into a second claim.
§ People are unconsciously self-interested. Without realizing it, our actions are self-interested. This leads to interpretation #2
· #2: We act in our self-interest
o If the psychological egoist is saying that we act in our self-interest, then how do we explain the fact that people sometimes do self-destructive things?
o We could draw a distinction between genuine and apparent self-interest, but:
§ It is obviously false that people in fact always act in their own genuine self-interest (the smoker)
§ If people are said to act in their apparent self-interest, this then becomes a claim about intentions (apparent to whom?), and this is then subject to all the objections about the claim that we act selfishly.
Is psychological egoism an unfalsifiable hypothesis?
· Karl Popper first formulated this notion to distinguish science from non-science
· Apparently very powerful
· Actually not empirical: no counter-instances
Psychological egoists, as we have seen in the preceding analysis, often confuse motives and consequences
The fact that we may get something back as a result of a particular action does not entail that we did the action in order to get something back.
· We may experience great rewards in love, but that doesn’t mean we do it solely or even primarily in order to obtain those rewards.
Ambiguity #1: Do we act exclusively out of selfishness?
·
Exclusive
vs. Non-exclusive psychological egoism.
· If we act selfishly all the time, how could we prove this?
· If we act selfishly only part of the time, this is true but uninteresting
· What counts as counter-evidence?
Ambiguity #2: Do we act to maximize self-interest or simply to increase it?
· Maximizing vs. Non-maximizing psychological egoism.
· Maximizing psychological egoism seems interesting but false
· Non-maximizing psychological egoism may be true but uninteresting.
Ambiguity #3: Are we causally determined to act this way or do we choose to do so?
· If this is a causal claim, it is presumably about consequences. Yet this causal claim (that in fact people always act [solely] in ways that promote their self-interest) seems empirically false.
· If this is not a causal claim, then it implies that people freely choose to act this way. But how do we explain the counter-evidence of people’s claims about their own intentions and motivations?
Ambiguity #4: Is there really such a sharp division between self-interest and the interests of others, especially the interests of those we love?
· Psychological egoism is founded on an Enlightenment view of the autonomy self.
· In reality, this strict separation is misleading, as we will now see.
Psychological egoism rests on ambiguities and false dichotomies, as we have seen.
We need to re-conceptualize this area to understand what is true and what is false in psychological egoism.
The standard view of human motivation embedded in discussions of psychological egoism sees egoism and altruism as opposite poles of a single scale:
Human Motivation: Egoism << === >> Altruism
The premise is that an increase in egoism automatically results in a decrease in altruism, and vice versa.
Instead of seeing this one a single scale, we can see egoism and altruism as two independent axes:
4 axes: High Egoism, Low Egoism, High Altruism, Low Altruism
Conceptualizing the issue in this way allows some actions to be done both for the sake of others and for one’s own sake, and avoids falling into a false dichotomy between altruism and egoism.
However, an additional distinction remains to be draw.
In addition to having two independent axes, we must distinguish between the intentions of actions and their consequences. Thus we get two graphs:
(1) Intentions: 4 axes: Strongly intended to help others, Strongly intended to harm others, Not intended to benefit self, Strongly intended to benefit self
(2) Consequences: 4 axes: High beneficial To others, Highly harmful to others, Highly harmful to self, Highly beneficial to self
This double grid suggests that any given action can be ranked according to both:
· Intentions
· Consequences
And that, for each of these two issues, each act can be ranked along two independent axes, concern/consequences for self and concern/consequences for other.
Given the preceding grid for understand human behavior, we can see that psychological egoism gains its apparent plausibility by trading on ambiguities (selfishness vs. self-interest) and false dichotomies (self-interest vs. altruism).
As we have seen, we can accept psychological egoism as a partial truth and see recognize that there is more to human behavior than selfishness.
==============================
“Love, we are repeatedly taught, consists of self-sacrifice. Love based on self-interest, we are admonished, is cheap and sordid. True love, we are told, is altruistic. But is it?
“Genuine love is the exact opposite. It is the most selfish experience possible, in the true sense of the term: it benefits your life in a way that involves no sacrifice of others to yourself nor of yourself to others.”
--Gary Hull
Valentine’s Day, 1998
Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey
Selfishness is extolled as a virtue
· Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness
May appeal to psychological egoism as a foundation
Often very compelling for high school students
Personal Ethical Egoism
· “I am going to act only in my own interest, and everyone else can do whatever they want.”
Individual Ethical Egoism
· “Everyone should act in my own interest.”
Universal Ethical Egoism
· “Each individual should act in his or her own self interest.”
There are at least three principal arguments in support of ethical egoism:
· Altruism is demeaning.
· Acting selfishly creates a better world.
· It doesn’t result in such a different world after all.
Friedrich Nietzsche and other philosophers argued that altruism was demeaning because it meant that an individual was saying that some other person was more important than that individual. Nietzsche saw this as denigrating oneself, putting oneself down by valuing oneself less than the other. This, the heart of altruism, is demeaning in Nietzsche’s eyes.
Ethical egoists sometimes maintain that if each person took care of himself/herself, the overall effect would be to make the world a better place for everyone.
· Epistemological: Each person is best suited to know his or her own best interests.
· Moral: Helping others makes them dependent, which ultimately harms them.
Reply: this justification ultimately appeals to utilitarian principles, not the principles of ethical egoism.
This argument presupposes the people in fact already act selfishly (i.e, psychological egoism) and are just pretending to be altruistic.
If psychological egoism is true, then we should admit its truth and get rid of our hypocrisy.
Reply: it may not make a big difference in a world of independent adults, but in a world with children and people at risk or in need, they would be put in further jeapardy.
Cannot be consistently universalized
· But see Kalin: This works in sports.
Presupposes a world of strangers indifferent to one another.
Difficult to imagine love or even friendship from the altruist’s standpoint.
Seems to be morally insensitive
Can the ethical egoist consistently will that everyone else follow the tenets of ethical egoism?
· It seems to be in one’s self-interest to be selfish oneself and yet get everyone else to act altruistically (especially if they act for your benefit). This leads to individual ethical egoism.
Some philosophers such as Jesse Kalin have argued that in sports we consistently universalize ethical egoism: we intend to win, but we want our opponents to try as hard as they can!
Some philosophers have argued that ethical egoism is, at best, appropriate to living in a world of strangers that you do not care about.
Can ethical egoists be good friends?
· If friendship involves (among other things) being concerned about other people for their own sake, then this seems something beyond the reach of the egoist.
· Ethical egoists can help their friends if they believe there is a long-term payoff for doing so.
Can the ethical egoist be sensitive to the suffering of others?
· Such sensitivity seems to presuppose caring about other people for their own sake.
· Moral sensitivity presupposes that the suffering of others exerts a moral “pull” on the individual—something that the ethical egoist does not recognize.
Sometimes self-interest masquerades as altruism
Ethics should not deny the importance of self-interest
Self-love is a virtue, but it is not the only virtue Ethical egoism mistakes a part of the picture for the whole picture
Ideally, we seek a society in which self-interest and regard for others converge—the green zone.
Egoism at the expense of others and altruism at the expense of self-interest both create worlds in which goodness and self-regard are mutually exclusive—the yellow zone.
No one want the red zone, which is against both self-interest and regard for others.
· Green: top right: High altruism and High egoism: Self-interest and regard for others converge; Aristotle, Tocqueville’s “self-interest highly understood”
· Red: bottom left: Low altruism and Low egoism: No benefit either to self or others; Drug addiction, alcoholism, etc.
· Yellow 1: top left: High altruism and Low egoism: Self-sacrificing altruism; Kant
· Yellow 2: bottom right: Low altruism and High egoism: Self-interest at the expense of others; Hobbe’s State of Nature, Nietzsche?
==============================
Fundamental Tenets of Utilitarianism
Standards of Utility/History of Utilitarianism
The Utilitarian Calculus
Act and Rule Utilitarianism
Criticisms of Utilitarianism
Concluding Assessment
The purpose of morality is to make the world a better place.
Morality is about producing good consequences, not having good intentions
We should do whatever will bring the most benefit (i.e., intrinsic value) to all of humanity.
The utilitarian has a very simple answer to the question of why morality exists at all:
· The purpose of morality is to guide people’s actions in such a way as to produce a better world.
Consequently, the emphasis in utilitarianism is on consequences, not intentions.
The fundamental imperative of utilitarianism is:
Always act in the way that will produce the greatest overall amount of good in the world.
· The emphasis is clearly on consequences, not intentions.
We often speak of “utilitarian” solutions in a disparaging tone, but in fact utilitarianism is a demanding moral position that often asks us to put aside self-interest for the sake of the whole.
Utilitarianism is a morally demanding position for two reasons:
· It always asks us to do the most, to maximize utility, not to do the minimum.
· It asks us to set aside personal interest.
Utilitarianism offers us a powerful vision of the moral life, one that promises to reduce or eliminate moral disagreement.
· If we can agree that the purpose of morality is to make the world a better place; and
· If we can scientifically assess various possible courses of action to determine which will have the greatest positive effect on the world; then
· We can provide a scientific answer to the question of what we ought to do.
Many things have instrumental value, that is, they have value as means to an end.
However, there must be some things which are not merely instrumental, but have value in themselves. This is what we call intrinsic value.
What has intrinsic value? Four principal candidates:
· Pleasure
o Jeremy Bentham
· Happiness
o John Stuart Mill
· Ideals
o G. E. Moore
· Preferences
o Kenneth Arrow
Bentham believed that we should try to increase the overall amount of pleasure in the world.
Definition: The enjoyable feeling we experience when a state of deprivation is replaced by fulfillment.
· Advantages
o Easy to quantify
o Short duration
o Bodily
· Criticisms
o Came to be known as “the pig’s philosophy”
o Ignores higher values
o Could justify living on a pleasure machine
Bentham’s godson
Believed that happiness, not pleasure, should be the standard of utility.
Advantages
Disadvantages
G. E. Moore suggested that we should strive to maximize ideal values such as freedom, knowledge, justice, and beauty.
The world may not be a better place with more pleasure in it, but it certainly will be a better place with more freedom, more knowledge, more justice, and more beauty.
Moore’s candidates for intrinsic good remain difficult to quantify.
Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel Prize winning Stanford economist, argued that what has intrinsic value is preference satisfaction.
The advantage of Arrow’s approach is that, in effect, it lets people choose for themselves what has intrinsic value. It simply defines intrinsic value as whatever satisfies an agent’s preferences. It is elegant and pluralistic.
Math and ethics finally merge: all consequences must be measured and weighed.
Units of measurement:
Hedons/dolors may be defined in terms of
For any given action, we must calculate:
Utilitarians would have to calculate:
Pleasure and preference satisfaction are easier to quantify than happiness or ideals
Two distinct issues:
Utilitarianism doesn’t always have a cold and calculating face—we perform utilitarian calculations in everyday life.
Act utilitarianism
Rule utilitarianism
Imagine the following scenario. A prominent and much-loved leader has been rushed to the hospital, grievously wounded by an assassin’s bullet. He needs a heart and lung transplant immediately to survive. No suitable donors are available, but there is a homeless person in the emergency room who is being kept alive on a respirator, who probably has only a few days to live, and who is a perfect donor. Without the transplant, the leader will die; the homeless person will die in a few days anyway. Security at the hospital is very well controlled. The transplant team could hasten the death of the homeless person and carry out the transplant without the public ever knowing that they killed the homeless person for his organs. What should they do?
· In particular cases, act utilitarianism can justify disobeying important moral rules and violating individual rights.
· Act utilitarianism also takes too much time to calculate in each and every case.
· Following a rule in a particular case when the overall utility demands that we violate the rule is just rule-worship. If the consequences demand it, we should violate the rule.
· Furthermore, act utilitarians can follow rules-of-thumb (accumulated wisdom based on consequences in the past) most of the time and engage in individual calculation only when there is some pressing reason for doing so.
1. Responsibility
2. Integrity
3. Intentions
4. Moral Luck
5. Who does the calculating?
6. Who is included?
Utilitarianism suggests that we are responsible for all the consequences of our choices.
The problem is that sometimes we can foresee consequences of other people’s actions that are taken in response to our own acts. Are we responsible for those actions, even though we don’t choose them or approve of them?
· Discuss Bernard Williams’ example of Jim in the village
· Imagine a terrorist situation where the terrorists say that they will kill their hostages if we do not meet their demands. We refuse to meet their demands. Are we responsible for what happens to the hostages?
· Imagine someone like Sadam Hussein putting children in targets likely to be bombed in order to deter bombing by the United States. If we bomb our original targets, are we responsible if those children are killed by our bombing?
Utilitarianism often demands that we put aside self-interest. Sometimes this means putting aside our own moral convictions.
· Discuss Bernard Williams on the chemist example.
· Develop a variation on Jim in the village, substituting a mercenary soldier and then Martin Luther King, Jr. for Jim. Does this substitution make a difference?
Integrity may involve certain identity-conferring commitments, such that the violation of those commitments entails a violation of who we are at our core.
Utilitarianism is concerned almost exclusively about consequences, not intentions.
· There is a version of utilitarianism called “motive utilitarianism,” developed by Robert Adams, that attempts to correct this.
Intentions may matter is morally assessing an agent, even if they don’t matter in terms of guiding action.
By concentrating exclusively on consequences, utilitarianism makes the moral worth of our actions a matter of luck. We must await the final consequences before we find out if our action was good or bad.
This seems to make the moral life a matter of chance, which runs counter to our basic moral intuitions.
· We can imagine actions with good intentions that have unforeseeable and unintended bad consequences
· We can also imagine actions with bad intentions that have unforeseeable and unintended good conseqeunces.
Historically, this was an issue for the British in India. The British felt they wanted to do what was best for India, but that they were the ones to judge what that was.
· See Ragavan Iyer, Utilitarianism and All That
Typically, the count differs depending on who does the counting
· In Vietnam, Americans could never understand how much independence counted for the Vietnamese.
When we consider the issue of consequences, we must ask who is included within that circle.
· Those in our own group (group egoism)
· Those in our own country (nationalism)
· Those who share our skin color (racism)
· All human beings (humanism or speciesism?)
· All sentient beings
Classical utilitarianism has often claimed that we should acknowledge the pain and suffering of animals and not restrict the calculus just to human beings.
Utilitarianism is most appropriate for policy decisions, as long as a strong notion of fundamental human rights guarantees that it will not violate rights of small minorities.
==============================
More than any other philosopher, Kant emphasized the way in which the moral life was centered on duty.
Duty as following orders
· The Adolph Eichmann model
· Duty is external
· Duty is imposed by others
Duty as freely imposing obligation on one’s own self
· The Kantian model
· Duty is internal
· We impose duty on ourselves
The second conception of duty is much more morally advanced than the first.
“I had known the Categorical Imperative, but it was in a nutshell, in a summarized form. I suppose it could be summarized as, ‘Be loyal to the laws, be a disciplined person, live an orderly life, do not come into conflict with laws’—that more or less was the whole essence of that law for the use of the little man.”
Adolph Eichmann
The example of Edmund Ross
· He voted against Jackson’s impeachment as a matter of duty.
The Grocer Example
· The grocer with regular customers might be honest just out of self-interest.
Duty and Utility: The Suicide Example
Kant was mistrustful of inclinations (Neigungen) as motivations
· This was part of his view of the physical world as causally determined
Saw feelings as
· Unreliable
· Passive
· Phenomenal
“Suppose then that the mind of this friend of man were overclouded by sorrows of his own which extinguished all sympathy with the fate of others, but that he still had power to help those in distress, though no longer stirred by the need of others because sufficiently occupied with his own; and suppose that, when no longer moved by any inclination, he tears himself out of this deadly insensibility and does the action without any inclination for the sake of duty alone; then for the first time his action has its genuine moral worth. Still further: if nature had implanted little sympathy in this or that man’s heart; if (being in other respects an honest fellow) he were cold in temperament and indifferent to the sufferings of others—perhaps because, being endowed with the special gift of patience and robust endurance in his own sufferings, he assumed the like in others or even demanded it; if such a man (who would in truth not be the worst product of nature) were not exactly fashioned by her to be a philanthropist, would he not still find in himself a source from which he might draw a worth far higher than any that a good-natured temperament can have? Assuredly he would. It is precisely in this that the worth of character begins to show—a moral worth and beyond all comparison the highest—namely, that he does good, not from inclination, but from duty.”
--Groundwork of a Metaphysics of Morals
Moral Minimalism
· Requirements are not heartfelt
Moral Alienation
· Alienated from feelings
Duty and “Just Following Orders”
· This is not Kant’s genuine position
Central insight:
· What is fair for one is fair for all
Most of us live by rules much of the time. Some of these are what Kant called Categorical Imperatives—unconditional commands that are binding on everyone at all times.
Hypothetical Imperative:
· “If you want to drive to UCLA from San Diego, take the 405 freeway.”
· Structure: if…then…
Categorical Imperative
· “Always tell the truth”
· Unconditional, applicable at all times
Maxims, according to Kant, are subjective rules that guide action.
· Relevant Act Description
· Sufficient Generality
All actions have maxims, such as,
· Never lie to your friends.
· Never act in a way that would make your parents ashamed of you.
· Always watch out for number one.
· It’s ok to cheat if you need to.
“Always act in such a way that the maxim of your action can be willed as a universal law of humanity.”
--Immanuel Kant
“Always treat humanity, whether in yourself or in other people, as an end in itself and never as a mere means.”
--Immanuel Kant
Always act in such a way that you would not be embarrassed to have your actions described on the front page of The New York Times.
--Probably not Bill Clinton
“I know the questions to ask. It’s the answers I’m after. And what about learning how to live? Isn’t that philosophy too? What’s yours?”
The reply had come easily but, she had thought, with honesty. “To get as much happiness as I can. Not to harm others. Not to whine. In that order.”
Adam Dalgliesh, in reply to Kate Miskin’s question
P. D. James, A Certain Justice
Most of us live by rules, obedience to which we take as a duty.
· What are the most important rules you live by?
· What were the most important rules in your family?
· What rules have you rejected as you have gotten older?
Is it possible to universalize a maxim that permits lying?
What is the maxim?
· It’s ok to cheat when you want/need to?
Can this consistently be willed as a universal law?
· No, it undermines itself, destroying the rational expectation of trust upon which it depends.
Cheating involves not playing by the rules. Is it possible for the cheater to will his/her maxim as a universal law?
No, because then others (including the teacher) could refuse to follow the rules as well, failing the cheater even with a good grade.
Are exceptions possible for Kant?
· Yes, as long as they can be consistently universalized
Examples
· The speeding car
o We can universalize an exception for something like ambulance drivers
· The Gestapo example
o Can we universalize a maxim to deceive in order to save innocent lives?
In an essay written near the end of his life, Kant maintained that you are never justified in telling a lie.
· Franco-Prussian rivalry
· Beliefs about causality—if you do the right thing, you are not responsible for bad outcomes.
Kant saw that morality must be fair and evenhanded.
The Kantian path offers a certain kind of moral safety in an uncertain world.
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One of Kant’s most lasting contributions to moral philosophy was his emphasis on the notion of respect (Achtung)
Respect has become a fundamental moral concept in contemporary America
· Rodney Dangerfield
· “Don’t dis’ me.”
· There are rituals of respect in almost all cultures.
Two central questions:
· What is respect?
· Who or what is the proper object of respect?
“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”
Kant brought the notion of respect (Achtung) to the center of moral philosophy for the first time.
To respect people is to treat them as ends in themselves. He sees people as autonomous, i.e., as giving the moral law to themselves.
The opposite of respecting people is treating them as mere means to an end.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments
· More than four hundred African American men infected with syphilis went untreated for four decades in a project the government called the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.
· Continued until 1972
What are the characteristics of treating people as ends in themselves?
· Not denying them relevant information
· Allowing them freedom of choice
Plant Closing
Firing Long-Time Employees
Medical Experimentation on Prisoners
Medical Donations by Prisoners
Medical Consent Forms
For Kant, the proper object of respect is the will. Hence, respecting a person involves issues related to the will--knowledge and freedom.
Other possible objects of respect:
· Feelings and emotions
· The dead
· Animals
· The natural world
Is lack of proper self-respect a moral failing?
· The Deferential Wife
o See article by Tom Hill, “Servility and Self-Respect”
· Servants
o See movie of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day
§ Stevens the servant: “I don’t believe a man can consider himself fully content until he has done all he can to be of service to his employer.”
· Aristotle and Self-Love
o What is the difference between self-respect and self-love? Clearly, there is at least a difference in the affective element.
What does it mean to respect students?
· Are there any common classroom practices that you see as disrespectful of students?
What does it mean to respect teachers?
· Are there any common school practices that you find are disrespectful to teachers?
Respect for other people (including not using other people as a means) remains a key concept in contemporary moral philosophy.
What Kant Helped Us to See Clearly
Where Kant Missed the Mark
The Admirable Side of Acting from Duty
· The person of duty remains committed, not matter how difficult things become.
The Evenhandedness of Morality
· Kantian morality does not play favorites.
Respecting Other Persons
· The notion of treating persons as ends in themselves is central to much of modern ethics.
The Neglect of Moral Integration
· The person of duty can have deep and conflicting inclinations and this does not decrease moral worth—indeed, it seems to increase it in Kant’s eyes.
The Role of Emotions
· For Kant, the emotions are always suspect because they are fickle and causally determined and passive.
The Place of Consequences in the Moral Life
· In order to protect the moral life from the vicissitude of moral luck, Kant held a very strong position that refused to attach moral blame to individuals who were acting with good will, even though some indirect bad consequences could be foreseen.
Overall, after two hundred years, Kant remains an absolutely central figure in contemporary moral philosophy, one from whom we can learn much even when we disagree with him.
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History of rights theory
Justifications of rights
Two concepts of rights: negative and positive
Fundamental Issues
Criticisms of rights theories
Conclusion
· Many of the great documents of the last two centuries have centered around the notion of rights.
o The Bill of Rights
o The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
o The United Nation Declaration of Human Rights
The notion of human rights has changed the course of history in the United States in the past fifty years.
Many of the great movements of this century have centered around the notion of rights.
· The Civil Rights Movement
· Equal rights for women
· Movements for the rights of indigenous peoples
· Children’s rights
· Gay rights
· Rights for people with disabilities
There have been several ways in which theorists have tried to justify the notion of rights:
· Self-evidence
· Divine Foundation
· Natural Law
· Human Nature
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
Self-evident truths are conceptually “rock bottom,” there is nothing more fundamental in terms of which they can be justified.
“We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for us and our Heirs for ever, That the Church of England shall be free, and shall have her whole rights and liberties inviolable. We have granted also, and given to all the freemen of our realm, for us and our Heirs for ever, these liberties underwritten, to have and to hold to them and their Heirs, of us and our Heirs for ever.” The Magna Carta, 1297
A divine foundation for rights was necessary to trump the divine right of kings.
Within the Christian tradition, fundamental human rights are seen as being guaranteed not only by God, but also by the order of nature.
Natural law in this context is a normative concept.
Arguments for natural rights that appeal to human nature usually involve the following steps:
· Establish that some characteristic of human nature, such as the ability to make free choices, is a rights-conferring property, i.e., a property that is:
o essential to human life; and
o either morally good or morally neutral;
· Establish that certain empirical conditions, such as the absence of physical constraints, are necessary for the existence or the exercise of that characteristic;
· Conclude that people have a right to those empirical conditions.
The distinction depends on the obligation that is placed on those who must respect your rights.
· Negative Rights: Rights to Noninterference
o Obliges others not to interfere with your exercise of the right
· Positive Rights: Rights to Well-Being
o Obligates others to provide you with positive assistance in the exercise of that right
Negative rights simply impose on others the duty not to interfere with your rights.
· The right to life, construed as a negative right, obliges others not to kill you, but it does not obligate them to come to your aid if you are starving.
· The right to free speech, construed as a negative right, obliges others not to interfere with your free speech, but it does not obligate anyone to provide you with a microphone.
Negative Rights: Rights to Noninterference
· The Right to Liberty
· The Right to Life
· The Right to Property—especially important in the Lockean tradition
· The Right to Equal Treatment
· Is a right something real if the conditions for exercising it are absent?
o For example, if the right to health care is available only to those who can afford to pay, is it really a right for the poor?
· Negative rights are modeled on the paradigm of private property.
Positive rights impose on others a specific obligation to do something to assist you in the exercise of your right
· The right to life, construed as a positive right, obliges others to provide you with the basics necessary to sustain life if you are unable to provide these for yourself
· The right to free speech, construed as a positive right, obligates others to provide you with the necessary conditions for your free speech--e.g., air time, newspaper space, etc.
· Welfare rights are typically construed as positive rights.
Who is obligated to provide positive assistance?
· People in general
· Each of us individually
· The state (government)
Libertarians maintain that rights are only negative.
· Who has rights?
· Rights and duties
· Rights and respect
· Rights, Community, & Individualism
· Rights and Close Relationships
· The Limits of Rights Talk
Possible rights holders:
· Living human beings
· Future generations
· Animals
· The natural world
Kant emphasizes that duty comes first, and rights are the correlate of duties
All statements about rights can thus be translated into statements about duties
Respecting humanity is respecting the rights of autonomous, rational beings
Hill: servility is a failing because a person does not respect his or her own rights.
Joel Feinberg, in “The Nature and Value of Rights,” asks us to image a world with no rights.
Rights entitle claiming.
Without rights, for Feinberg, there is no respect for persons.
Rights talk is often founded on an atomistic view of human beings
· The Autonomous Rights-Holder
· The Right to Liberty
· The Right to Privacy
Contrast with non-Western societies such as China, where there is much less emphasis on the isolated individual.
Are rights the appropriate moral vehicle for adjudicating conflicts within close relationships?
See Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk
Jeremy Bentham and Alasdair MacIntyre both have argued that talk about rights is simply “Nonsense on stilts”
· Rights are impressive-sounding fabrications that in fact correspond to nothing.
Rights establish the minimum standards for our interactions with other people, a moral “floor” below which we do not want to sink in our interactions with other people.
Rights do not tell the whole story of morality, especially in the area of personal relationships
==============================
· All of us have been the recipients of demands of justice.
o My daughter protesting, “Daddy, it’s not fair for you to get a cookie at night and I don’t.”
· All of us have also been in the position of demanding justice.
o I told the builder of my house that, since he replaced defective windows for a neighbor, he should replace my defective windows. “It’s only fair. You did it for other people in the same situation.”
Consider the opening paragraph’s of John Rawls’ classic A Theory of Justice (1971):
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice. Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising.
These propositions seem to express our intuitive conviction of the primacy of justice.
Part One:
· Plato: Models of Justice
· Distributive justice
Part Two:
· Retributive justice
· Justice and reconciliation
· Justice and War
· Justice and Peace
· In Plato’s Republic, we find an analysis of four distinct conceptions of justice:
o Athenian
o Conventional
o Cynical
o Platonic
· Cephalus, an Athenian elder, presents the first view of justice.
· According to this first definition, justice is “to speak the truth and to pay your debts” and honor the Gods.
· Socrates objects: aren’t there times when it’s better not to tell the truth and pay debts? If so, this is not a good definition of justice.
· Polemarchus states that the just man is the one who helps his friends and harms his enemies.
o “And are enemies also to receive what we owe to them?
o “To be sure, he said, they are to receive what we owe them, and an enemy, as I take it, owes to an enemy that which is due or proper to him -- that is to say, evil.”
· Thrasymachus:
o “Listen, then, he said; I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger. “
· This view carries over into the present day as legal positivism and Realpolitik.
· Question to Glaucon and Adiemantus: Why be just, apart from reward and punishment?
· Justice as harmony
o of the soul (internal) and
o of the state (external)
§ the just soul and the just man will live well
§ he who lives well is blessed and happy
§ The just man is happy
According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, [359e] and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible [360a] to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result -- when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared.
Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers [360b] who were sent to the court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, [360c] or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. [360d] For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the lookers -- on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.
· Distributive Justice
o Benefits and burdens
· Retributive Justice
o Criminal justice
o See Lecture #2 on theories of justice
· The central question of distributive justice is the question of how the benefits and burdens of our lives are to be distributed.
o Justice involves giving each person his or her due.
o Equals are to be treated equally.
· What is to be distributed?
o Income (income tax)
o Wealth (inheritance tax)
o Opportunities (equal opportunities)
· To whom are good to be distributed?
o Individual persons
o Groups of persons
o Classes
· On what basis should goods be distributed?
o Equality
o Individual needs or desires
o Free market transactions
o Ability to make best use of the goods
· Basic principle: every person should have the same level of material goods and services
· Criticisms
o Unduly restricts individual freedom
o May conflict with what people deserve
· Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971) has set the stage for contemporary discussions of justice.
· Justice as Fairness
· Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
· Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
o to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and
o attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
· #1 must be satisfied prior to 2, and 2b prior to 2a
· If a system of strict equality maximizes the absolute position of the least advantaged in society, then the Difference Principle advocates strict equality.
· If it is possible to raise the position of the least advantaged further by inequality of income and wealth, then the Difference Principle prescribes inequality up to that point where the absolute position of the least advantaged can no longer be raised.
· Strict egalitarians: don’t treat anyone differently
· Utilitarians: doesn’t maximize utility
· Libertarian: infringes on liberty through taxation, etc.
· Desert-based theorists argue to reward hard work even when it doesn’t help the disadvantaged
· Does not provide sufficient rewards for ambition
· People should be made to accept the consequences of their choices
o people who choose to work hard to earn more income should not be required to subsidize those choosing more leisure and hence less income
· People should not to suffer consequences of circumstances over which they have no control
o people born with handicaps, ill-health, or low levels of natural endowments have not brought these circumstances upon themselves
· Seeks to maximize well-being of society as a whole
· Utilitarian in inspiration: it seeks to maximize welfare for everyone.
· People should be rewarded for their:
o Actual contribution
o Effort
· Seeks to raise the overall standard of living by rewarding effort and achievement
· May be applied only to working adults
· Distributive justice attempts to answer the question of how goods and opportunities in society can be distributed fairly.
==============================
Three principal areas:
· The just conditions for entering into a war.
o When is it just to go to war?
· The just conditions for conducting a war.
o What are we permitted to do in carrying out a war and what is forbidden as unjust?
· The just conditions of peace.
o What are the conditions of peace that insure the just conclusion of a war?
· This presentation is based on the excellent article by Brian D. Orend, “War ,” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
· Just cause
· Right intention
· Proper authority and public declaration
· Last resort
· Probability of success
· Proportionality
· Protection from external attack is the first and foremost—and in the eyes of some, the only--just cause of war; based on the right of self-defence.
· Some have maintained the humanitarian intervention is also justified, where we go to war to save the lives of innocent people who are being attacked by an aggressor.
· The war must be pursued for a just cause.
· Unacceptable intentions:
o Revenge
o Political expansion
o Land acquisition
· Traditionally, only nations have the authority to declare war.
· Wars must be publicly declared, not pursued in secret.
· Question: Can terrorist groups be said to declare war? If not, is the response to terrorism really war?
· If there are other means of achieving the same objectives, such as negotiations or economic blockades, they should be pursued exhaustively first.
· The rationale here is clear and simple: war is a great evil, and it is wrong to cause such killing, suffering, and destruction in a futile effort.
o Question: what about countries that feel they are resisting evil even when there is little or no chance of success? For example, small European countries being invaded by the Nazis.
· Are the possible benefits (especially in terms of a just peace) proportional to the death, suffering, and destruction that the pursuit of the war will bring about?
Three principal conditions:
· Discrimination
· Proportionality
· No means that are evil in themselves.
· The key requirement here is to discriminate between those who are engaged in harm (soldiers) and those who are not (civilians).
· This has increasingly become an issue as countries such as the United States have turned to high altitude bombing campaigns that are more likely to put civilians at risk.
· One should only use the amount of force that is proportional to the (just) ends being sought.
· This raises interesting issues in the use of massive air strikes against bin Laden by the United States.
· Orend lists a number of means that count as evil in themselves.
o “mass rape campaigns;
o “genocide or ethnic cleansing;
o “torturing captured enemy soldiers; and
o “using weapons whose effects cannot be controlled, like chemical or biological agents.”
Brian Orend gives 5 conditions for a just peace:
· Just cause for termination.
· Right intention.
· Public declaration and legitimate authority.
· Discrimination.
· Proportionality.
· Orend: “a reasonable vindication of those rights whose violation grounded the resort to war in the first place.”
o Unjust gains from aggression have been eliminated
o Victims’ rights reinstated
o Formal apology
o Acceptance of reasonable punishment
· Excludes motives such as revenge
· Prosecution of war crimes needs to be applied to all, not just the vanquished.
· This requirement is fairly straightforward and uncontroversial.
· Differentiate between
o Political and military leaders
o Military and civilian populations
· Punish the elite responsible for prosecuting the war, not the uninvolved civilians.
· The vanquished do not lose their rights
o No ‘witch hunts’
· Proportional to reasonable rights vindication
==============================
Concern for character has flourished in the West since the time of Plato, whose early dialogues explored such virtues as courage and piety.
The Structure of Virtue
Particular Virtues
· Courage
· Compassion
· Self-love
· Friendship
· Forgiveness
Concluding Evaluation
The Question of Action:
· How ought I to act?
The Question of Character
· What kind of person ought I to be?
Our concern here is with the question of character
As a country, we place our trust for just decisions in the legal arena in two places:
· Laws, which provide the necessary rules
· People, who (as judge and jury) apply rules judiciously
Similarly, ethics places its trust in:
· Theories, which provide rules for conduct
· Virtue, which provides the wisdom necessary for applying rules in particular instances
Strength of character (habit)
Involving both feeling and action
Seeks the mean between excess and deficiency relative to us
Promotes human flourishing
|
Sphere of existence |
Deficiency |
Mean |
Excess |
|
Attitude toward self |
Servility Self-deprecation |
Proper self-love Proper pride Self-respect |
Arrogance Conceit Egoism Narcissism Vanity |
|
Attitude toward offenses of others |
Ignoring them being a doormat |
Anger Forgiveness Understanding |
Revenge Grudge Resentment |
|
Attitude toward good deeds of others |
Suspicion Envy Ignoring them |
Gratitude Admiration |
Over indebtedness |
|
Attitude toward our own offenses |
Indifference Remorselessness Downplaying |
Agent regret Remorse Making amends Learning from them Self-forgiveness |
Toxic guilt Scrupulosity Shame |
|
Attitude toward our friends |
Indifference |
Loyalty |
Obsequiousness |
|
Sphere of existence |
Deficiency |
Mean |
Excess |
|
Attitude toward our own good deeds |
Belittling Disappointment |
Sense of accomplishment Humility |
Self-righteousness |
|
Attitude toward the suffering of others |
Callousness |
Compassion |
Pity “Bleeding heart” |
|
Attitude toward the achievements of others |
Self-satisfaction Complacency Competition |
Admiration Emulation |
Envy |
|
Attitude toward death and danger |
Cowardice |
Courage |
Foolhardiness |
|
Attitude toward our own desires |
Anhedonia |
Temperanace Moderation |
Lust Gluttony |
|
Attitude toward other people |
Exploitation |
Respect |
Deferentiality |
We can contrast two approaches to the moral life.
· The childhood conception of morality:
o Comes from outside (usually parents).
o Is negative (“don’t touch that stove burner!”).
o Rules and habit formation are central.
· The adult conception of morality.
o Comes from within (self-directed).
o Is positive (“this is the kind of person I want to be.”).
o Virtue-centered, often modeled on ideals.
Both of these conceptions of morality are appropriate at different times in life.
Adolescence and early adulthood is the time when some people make the transition from the adolescent conception of morality to the adult conception.
The clever person knows the best means to any possible end.
The wise person knows which ends are worth striving for.
Aristotle draws an interesting contrast between:
· Continent people, who have unruly desires but manage to control them.
· Temperate people, whose desires are naturally—or through habit, second-nature—directed toward that which is good for them.
· Weakness of will (akrasia) occurs when individuals cannot keep their desires under control.
Moral education may initially seek to control unruly desires through rules, the formation of habits, etc.
Ultimately, moral education aims at forming rightly-ordered desires, that is, teaching people to desire what is genuinely good for them.
Strength of character (virtue), Aristotle suggests, involves finding the proper balance between two extremes.
· Excess: having too much of something.
· Deficiency: having too little of something.
Not mediocrity, but harmony and balance.
See examples below.
For Aristotle, virtue is something that is practiced and thereby learned—it is habit (hexis).
This has clear implications for moral education, for Aristotle obviously thinks that you can teach people to be virtuous.
· Courage
· Compassion
· Self-love
· Friendship
· Forgiveness
To have any single strength of character in full measure, a person must have the other ones as well.
· Courage without good judgment is blind, risking without knowing what is worth the risk.
· Courage without perseverance is short-lived, etc.
· Courage without a clear sense of your own abilities is foolhardy.
|
Excess |
Mean |
Deficiency |
|
Underestimates actual danger |
Correctly estimates actual danger |
Overestimates actual danger |
|
Overestimates own ability |
Correctly estimates own ability |
Underestimates own ability |
|
Undervalues the means, what is being placed at risk |
Properly values means that is being placed at risk |
Overvalues the means, what is being placed at risk |
|
Overvalues goal, what the risk is being taken for |
Properly values goal that is being sought |
Undervalues goal, what the risk is being taken for |
Pity looks down on the other.
· Consequently, no one wants to be the object of pity.
Compassion sees the suffering of the other we something that could have happened to us.
· Consequently, we welcome the compassion of others when we are suffering.
Etymology: to feel or suffer with…
Both cognitive and emotional
Leads to action
Excess: the “bleeding heart”
Deficiency: moral callousness
Contrast with pity
Emotion is often necessary:
· to recognize the suffering of others
o emotional attunement
· part of the response to that suffering
o others often need to feel that you care
Example from Le Chambon
“Later in the week they captured an Austrian Jew named Steckler—he had made the mistake of going to a pharmacy without all of his papers. The police put him—their only prisoner—in one of the big buses. As he sat there, the villagers started gathering around the periphery of the square. The son of Andre Trocmé [the village pastor], Jean-Pierre, walked up to the window of the bus at which Steckler sat and gave him his last piece of rationed (imitation) chocolate. This started the closing of the circle of villagers. They brought their most precious foodstuffs and put them through the window into Steckler’s arms. Soon the quiet little man had a pile of gifts around him about as high as he sat in the seat.
“When the buses left with their one Jew the villagers sang a song of affection and farewell to him.”
Involves feeling, knowing, and acting
Characteristics of loving another person:
· Feelings of tenderness, care, appreciation, respect toward that person
· Knowing that person (infatuation usually does not involve knowledge)
· Acting in ways that promote the flourishing of that person
Characteristics of self-love
· Having feelings of care, appreciation, and respect for others
· Valuing yourself--flows from feelings of self-love
· Knowing yourself--a long, often arduous, and never completed task
· Acting in ways that promote your genuine flourishing
Deficiency
· Too little feeling: self-loathing
· Too little self-valuing: self-deprecating
· Too little self-knowledge: unwilling or unable to look at one’s own motivations, feelings, etc.
· Too little acting: not taking steps to insure one’s own well-being
Excesses of self-love take many forms: arrogance, conceit, egoism, vanity, and narcissism are but a few of the ways in which we can err in this direction.
· Too much caring: self-centeredness
· Too much self-valuing: arrogance, conceit
· Too much self-knowledge: narcissistic
· Too much acting for self: selfishness
For Aristotle, there is no necessary dichotomy between self-interest and concern for others.
Without friends, in Aristotle’s view, we cannot achieve happiness:
· “…without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all…” EN, VIII, 1.
“We may describe friendly feeling towards any one as wishing for him what you believe to be good things, not for your own sake but for his, and being inclined, so far as you can, to bring these things about. A friend is one who feels thus and excites these feelings in return: those who think they feel thus towards each other think themselves friends. This being assumed, it follows that your friend is the sort of man who shares your pleasure in what is good and your pain in what is unpleasant, for your sake and for no other reason.”
--Rhetoric, Book II, Chap. 4; 1380b36-1381a5
Friendship may have three possible aims:
· Utility: ends when the useful purpose is no longer present.
· Pleasure; ends when the pleasure disappears.
· A shared commitment to the good: “Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves.” EN, VIII, 3.
“It is true of the good man too that he does many acts for the sake of his friends and his country, and if necessary dies for them; for he will throw away both wealth and honours and in general the goods that are objects of competition, gaining for himself nobility; since he would prefer a short period of intense pleasure to a long one of mild enjoyment, a twelvemonth of noble life to many years of humdrum existence, and one great and noble action to many trivial ones. Now those who die for others doubtless attain this result; it is therefore a great prize that they choose for themselves. They will throw away wealth too on condition that their friends will gain more; for while a man's friend gains wealth he himself achieves nobility; he is therefore assigning the greater good to himself.”
EN, IX, 8
“The same too is true of honour and office; all these things he will sacrifice to his friend; for this is noble and laudable for himself. Rightly then is he thought to be good, since he chooses nobility before all else. But he may even give up actions to his friend; it may be nobler to become the cause of his friend's acting than to act himself. In all the actions, therefore, that men are praised for, the good man is seen to assign to himself the greater share in what is noble. In this sense, then, as has been said, a man should be a lover of self; but in the sense in which most men are so, he ought not.”
EN, IX, 8
This, too, is a virtue indispensable for human flourishing
· In any long-term relationship (friendship, marriage, etc.), each party will do things that must be forgiven by the other.
· Long term relationships are necessary to human flourishing.
· If we cannot forgive, we cannot have continuing long term relationships
Excess: the person who forgives too easily and too quickly
· may undervalue self
· may underestimate offense
Deficiency: the person who can never forgive
· may overestimate his or her own importance
· usually lives a life of bitterness and anger
Virtues are those strengths of character that enable us to flourish
The virtuous person has practical wisdom, the ability to know when and how best to apply these various moral perspectives.
==============================
Concern for character has flourished in the West since the time of Plato, whose early dialogues explored such virtues as courage and piety.
The Question of Action:
· How ought I to act?
The Question of Character
· What kind of person ought I to be?
Our concern here is with the question of character
As a country, we place our trust for just decisions in the legal arena in two places:
· Laws, which provide the necessary rules
· People, who (as judge and jury) apply rules judiciously
Similarly, ethics places its trust in:
· Theories, which provide rules for conduct
· Virtue, which provides the wisdom necessary for applying rules in particular instances
Strength of character (habit)
Involving both feeling and action
Seeks the mean between excess and deficiency relative to us
Promotes human flourishing
|
Sphere of existence |
Deficiency |
Mean |
Excess |
|
Attitude toward self |
Servility Self-deprecation |
Proper self-love Proper pride Self-respect |
Arrogance Conceit Egoism Narcissism Vanity |
|
Attitude toward offenses of others |
Ignoring them being a doormat |
Anger Forgiveness Understanding |
Revenge Grudge Resentment |
|
Attitude toward good deeds of others |
Suspicion Envy Ignoring them |
Gratitude Admiration |
Over indebtedness |
|
Attitude toward our own offenses |
Indifference Remorselessness Downplaying |
Agent regret Remorse Making amends Learning from them Self-forgiveness |
Toxic guilt Scrupulosity Shame |
|
Attitude toward our friends |
Indifference |
Loyalty |
Obsequiousness |
|
Sphere of existence |
Deficiency |
Mean |
Excess |
|
Attitude toward our own good deeds |
Belittling Disappointment |
Sense of accomplishment Humility |
Self-righteousness |
|
Attitude toward the suffering of others |
Callousness |
Compassion |
Pity “Bleeding heart” |
|
Attitude toward the achievements of others |
Self-satisfaction Complacency Competition |
Admiration Emulation |
Envy |
|
Attitude toward death and danger |
Cowardice |
Courage |
Foolhardiness |
|
Attitude toward our own desires |
Anhedonia |
Temperanace Moderation |
Lust Gluttony |
|
Attitude toward other people |
Exploitation |
Respect |
Deferentiality |
We can contrast two approaches to the moral life.
· The childhood conception of morality:
o Comes from outside (usually parents).
o Is negative (“don’t touch that stove burner!”).
o Rules and habit formation are central.
· The adult conception of morality.
o Comes from within (self-directed).
o Is positive (“this is the kind of person I want to be.”).
o Virtue-centered,often modeled on ideals.
Both of these conceptions of morality are appropriate at different times in life.
Adolescence and early adulthood is the time when some people make the transition from the adolescent conception of morality to the adult conception.
Aristotle draws an interesting contrast between:
· Continent people, who have unruly desires but manage to control them.
· Temperate people, whose desires are naturally—or through habit, second-nature—directed toward that which is good for them.
· Weakness of will (akrasia) occurs when individuals cannot keep their desires under control.
Moral education may initially seek to control unruly desires through rules, the formation of habits, etc.
Ultimately, moral education aims at forming rightly-ordered desires, that is, teaching people to desire what is genuinely good for them.
Strength of character (virtue), Aristotle suggests, involves finding the proper balance between two extremes.
· Excess: having too much of something.
· Deficiency: having too little of something.
Not mediocrity, but harmony and balance.
See examples below.
For Aristotle, virtue is something that is practiced and thereby learned—it is habit (hexis).
This has clear implications for moral education, for Aristotle obviously thinks that you can teach people to be virtuous.
The strength of character necessary to continue in the face of our fears
· Deficiency: Cowardice, the inability to do what is necessary to have those things in life which we need in order to flourish
o Too much fear
o Too little confidence
· Excess
o Too little fear
o Too much confidence
o Poor judgment about ends worth achieving
What is terrible is not the same for all men; but we say there are things terrible even beyond human strength. These, then, are terrible to every one- at least to every sensible man; but the terrible things that are not beyond human strength differ in magnitude and degree, and so too do the things that inspire confidence. Now the brave man is as dauntless as man may be. Therefore, while he will fear even the things that are not beyond human strength, he will face them as he ought and as the rule directs, for honour's sake; for this is the end of virtue. But it is possible to fear these more, or less, and again to fear things that are not terrible as if they were.
Of the faults that are committed one consists in fearing what one should not, another in fearing as we should not, another in fearing when we should not, and so on; and so too with respect to the things that inspire confidence. The man, then, who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and from the right time, and who feels confidence under the corresponding conditions, is brave; for the brave man feels and acts according to the merits of the case and in whatever way the rule directs.
Now the end of every activity is conformity to the corresponding state of character. This is true, therefore, of the brave man as well as of others. But courage is noble. Therefore the end also is noble; for each thing is defined by its end. Therefore it is for a noble end that the brave man endures and acts as courage directs. Of those who go to excess he who exceeds in fearlessness has no name (we have said previously that many states of character have no names), but he would be a sort of madman or insensible person if he feared nothing, neither earthquakes nor the waves, as they say the Celts do not; while the man who exceeds in confidence about what really is terrible is rash. The rash man, however, is also thought to be boastful and only a pretender to courage; at all events, as the brave man is with regard to what is terrible, so the rash man wishes to appear; and so he imitates him in situations where he can.
Hence also most of them are a mixture of rashness and cowardice; for, while in these situations they display confidence, they do not hold their ground against what is really terrible. The man who exceeds in fear is a coward; for he fears both what he ought not and as he ought not, and all the similar characterizations attach to him. He is lacking also in confidence; but he is more conspicuous for his excess of fear in painful situations. The coward, then, is a despairing sort of person; for he fears everything.
The brave man, on the other hand, has the opposite disposition; for confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition. The coward, the rash man, and the brave man, then, are concerned with the same objects but are differently disposed towards them; for the first two exceed and fall short, while the third holds the middle, which is the right, position; and rash men are precipitate, and wish for dangers beforehand but draw back when they are in them, while brave men are keen in the moment of action, but quiet beforehand.
As we have said, then, courage is a mean with respect to things that inspire confidence or fear, in the circumstances that have been stated; and it chooses or endures things because it is noble to do so, or because it is base not to do so. But to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome, and such a man endures death not because it is noble but to fly from evil.
The strength of character necessary to continue in the face of our fears
· Deficiency: Cowardice, the inability to do what is necessary to have those things in life which we need in order to flourish
o Too much fear
o Too little confidence
· Excess
o Too little fear
o Too much confidence
o Poor judgment about ends worth achieving
Both children and adults need courage.
Without courage, we are unable to take the risks necessary to achieve some of the things we most value in life.
· Risk to ask someone out on a date.
· Risk to show genuine vulnerability.
· Risk to try an academically challenging program such as pre-med.
To have any single strength of character in full measure, a person must have the other ones as well.
· Courage without good judgment is blind, risking without knowing what is worth the risk.
· Courage without perseverance is short-lived, etc.
· Courage without a clear sense of your own abilities is foolhardy.
|
Excess |
Mean |
Deficiency |
|
Underestimates actual danger |
Correctly estimates actual danger |
Overestimates actual danger |
|
Overestimates own ability |
Correctly estimates own ability |
Underestimates own ability |
|
Undervalues the means, what is being placed at risk |
Properly values means that is being placed at risk |
Overvalues the means, what is being placed at risk |
|
Overvalues goal, what the risk is being taken for |
Properly values goal that is being sought |
Undervalues goal, what the risk is being taken for |
Fears, dangers, and rightly-ordered fears
Seeking out danger: mountain climbing
Courage and nonviolence: Gandhi
Courage and gender
· Women’s courage is often undervalues
· Men’s courage is tied to their gender identity
Pity looks down on the other.
· Consequently, no one wants to be the object of pity.
Compassion sees the suffering of the other we something that could have happened to us.
· Consequently, we welcome the compassion of others when we are suffering.
Etymology: to feel or suffer with…
Both cognitive and emotional
Leads to action
Excess: the “bleeding heart”
Deficiency: moral callousness
Contrast with pity
Emotion is often necessary:
· to recognize the suffering of others
o emotional attunement
· part of the response to that suffering
o others often need to feel that you care
Example from Le Chambon
“Later in the week they captured an Austrian Jew named Steckler—he had made the mistake of going to a pharmacy without all of his papers. The police put him—their only prisoner—in one of the big buses. As he sat there, the villagers started gathering around the periphery of the square. The son of Andre Trocmé [the village pastor], Jean-Pierre, walked up to the window of the bus at which Steckler sat and gave him his last piece of rationed (imitation) chocolate. This started the closing of the circle of villagers. They brought their most precious foodstuffs and put them through the window into Steckler’s arms. Soon the quiet little man had a pile of gifts around him about as high as he sat in the seat.
“When the buses left with their one Jew the villagers sang a song of affection and farewell to him.”
The clever person knows the best means to any possible end.
The wise person knows which ends are worth striving for.
Involves feeling, knowing, and acting
Characteristics of loving another person:
· Feelings of tenderness, care, appreciation, respect toward that person
· Knowing that person (infatuation usually does not involve knowledge)
· Acting in ways that promote the flourishing of that person
Characteristics of self-love
· Having feelings of care, appreciation, and respect for others
· Valuing yourself--flows from feelings of self-love
· Knowing yourself--a long, often arduous, and never completed task
· Acting in ways that promote your genuine flourishing
Deficiency
· Too little feeling: self-loathing
· Too little self-valuing: self-deprecating
· Too little self-knowledge: unwilling or unable to look at one’s own motivations, feelings, etc.
· Too little acting: not taking steps to insure one’s own well-being
Excesses of self-love take many forms: arrogance, conceit, egoism, vanity, and narcissism are but a few of the ways in which we can err in this direction.
· Too much caring: self-centeredness
· Too much self-valuing: arrogance, conceit
· Too much self-knowledge: narcissistic
· Too much acting for self: selfishness
This, too, is a virtue indispensable for human flourishing
· In any long-term relationship (friendship, marriage, etc.), each party will do things that must be forgiven by the other.
· Long term relationships are necessary to human flourishing.
· If we cannot forgive, we cannot have continuing long term relationships
Excess: the person who forgives too easily and too quickly
· may undervalue self
· may underestimate offense
Deficiency: the person who can never forgive
· may overestimate his or her own importance
· usually lives a life of bitterness and anger
The clever person knows the best means to any possible end.
The wise person knows which ends are worth striving for.
Virtues are those strengths of character that enable us to flourish
The virtuous person has practical wisdom, the ability to know when and how best to apply these various moral perspectives.
==============================
· We have seen a great increase in books, movies, and documentaries about courage recently.
· Stephen Ambrose has documented stunning cases of unparalleled courage in his books, especially Undaunted Courage and Band of Brothers.
Aristotle gives us a sophisticated analysis of courage as consisting of three principal elements:
· Proper Fear
· Proper Confidence
· Proper Value Judgments
· Aristotle approaches his analysis of the virtue of courage in a way that is typical of his ethics:
o Courage is a strength necessary to face a particular kind of challenge in life.
o Courage is a habit or disposition of the soul.
o Courage aims at the mean between excess and deficiency, between too much and too little.
· The strength of character necessary to continue in the face of our fears
o Deficiency: Cowardice, the inability to do what is necessary to have those things in life which we need in order to flourish
§ Too much fear (too little fearlessness)
§ Too little confidence
o Excess
§ Too little fear (too much fearlessness)
§ Too much confidence
§ Poor judgment about ends worth achieving
· Let’s look at Aristotle’s own words.
What is terrible is not the same for all men; but we say there are things terrible even beyond human strength. These, then, are terrible to every one—at least to every sensible man; but the terrible things that are not beyond human strength differ in magnitude and degree, and so too do the things that inspire confidence. Now the brave man is as dauntless as man may be. Therefore, while he will fear even the things that are not beyond human strength, he will face them as he ought and as the rule directs, for honor’s sake; for this is the end of virtue. But it is possible to fear these more, or less, and again to fear things that are not terrible as if they were.
· Aristotle clearly says that the brave man feels fear; he is not fearless.
· Bravery is about how one responds to fear, not about the absence of fear.
· Aristotle also notes the it is possible to fear things that are not terrible as if they were.
o Example: phobias.
Of the faults that are committed one consists in fearing what one should not, another in fearing as we should not, another in fearing when we should not, and so on; and so too with respect to the things that inspire confidence. The man, then, who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and from the right time, and who feels confidence under the corresponding conditions, is brave; for the brave man feels and acts according to the merits of the case and in whatever way the rule directs.
· Proper fear:
o The right object
o The right way
o The right time
· Proper confidence
o The right object
o The right way
o The right time
· Thus we see Aristotle’s definition of the brave man:
o “The man, then, who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and from the right time, and who feels confidence under the corresponding conditions, is brave.”
· Notice that this includes feeling as well as acting; although Aristotle doesn’t mention it, it also includes valuing.
Now the end of every activity is conformity to the corresponding state of character. This is true, therefore, of the brave man as well as of others. But courage is noble. Therefore the end also is noble; for each thing is defined by its end. Therefore it is for a noble end that the brave man endures and acts as courage directs. Of those who go to excess he who exceeds in fearlessness has no name (we have said previously that many states of character have no names), but he would be a sort of madman or insensible person if he feared nothing, neither earthquakes nor the waves, as they say the Celts do not; while the man who exceeds in confidence about what really is terrible is rash. The rash man, however, is also thought to be boastful and only a pretender to courage; at all events, as the brave man is with regard to what is terrible, so the rash man wishes to appear; and so he imitates him in situations where he can.
· Courage is always in the pursuit of a noble end.
· Excess: too much fearlessness
o No name, perhaps madman or insensible person
· Excess: too much confidence
o Rash, overconfident of his own abilities, but backs out at the last minute.
Hence also most of them are a mixture of rashness and cowardice; for, while in these situations they display confidence, they do not hold their ground against what is really terrible. The man who exceeds in fear is a coward; for he fears both what he ought not and as he ought not, and all the similar characterizations attach to him. He is lacking also in confidence; but he is more conspicuous for his excess of fear in painful situations. The coward, then, is a despairing sort of person; for he fears everything.
· Aristotle sees the coward as having too much fear and lacking in confidence, but we should keep these two factors distinct, since each has a different remedy.
o Increasing confidence: help people to become more competent and to recognize their own competence.
o Decreasing fear: distinguish between rational and irrational fears, teach people to continue on course in the face of fear—”fear the fear and do it anyway.”
· Courage is a complex virtue, and its development involves:
o Proper fearing
o Proper self-confidence
o Proper valuing
· We can teach people how to attain each of these three things.
The brave man, on the other hand, has the opposite disposition; for confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition. The coward, the rash man, and the brave man, then, are concerned with the same objects but are differently disposed towards them; for the first two exceed and fall short, while the third holds the middle, which is the right, position; and rash men are precipitate, and wish for dangers beforehand but draw back when they are in them, while brave men are keen in the moment of action, but quiet beforehand.
· Notice how the virtue is the mean between two extremes.
· The rash man wishes for dangers beforehand and then pulls back when danger actually arrives.
As we have said, then, courage is a mean with respect to things that inspire confidence or fear, in the circumstances that have been stated; and it chooses or endures things because it is noble to do so, or because it is base not to do so. But to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome, and such a man endures death not because it is noble but to fly from evil.
· In this passage, we begin to see clearly the valuing element in courage: the genuinely courageous man needs to know what is worth dying for.
· In fact, this valuing seems to be two-fold:
o Valuing the objective;
o Valuing your self.
· One type of excess occurs when a man overvalues a particular goal; another type may occur because the man undervalues his own life.
· The strength of character necessary to continue in the face of our fears.
o Deficiency: cowardice, the inability to do what is necessary to have those things in life which we need in order to flourish.
§ Too much fear.
§ Too little confidence.
o Excess:
§ Too little fear.
§ Too much confidence.
§ Poor judgment about ends worth achieving.
· Both children and adults need courage.
· Without courage, we are unable to take the risks necessary to achieve some of the things we most value in life.
o Risk to ask someone out on a date.
o Risk to show genuine vulnerability.
o Risk to try an academically challenging program such as pre-med.
· To have any single strength of character in full measure, a person must have the other ones as well.
o Courage without good judgment is blind, risking without knowing what is worth the risk.
o Courage without perseverance is short-lived, etc.
o Courage without a clear sense of your own abilities is foolhardy.
|
|
Excess |
Mean |
Deficiency |
|
Fear |
Underestimates actual danger |
Correctly estimates actual danger |
Overestimates actual danger |
|
Confidence |
Overestimates own ability |
Correctly estimates own ability |
Underestimates own ability |
|
Valuing, 1 |
Undervalues the means, what is being placed at risk |
Properly values means that is being placed at risk |
Overvalues the means, what is being placed at risk |
|
Valuing, 2 |
Overvalues goal, what the risk is being taken for |
Properly values goal that is being sought |
Undervalues goal, what the risk is being taken for |
· Fears, dangers, and rightly-ordered fears
· Seeking out danger: mountain climbing
· Courage and nonviolence: Gandhi
· Courage and gender
o Women’s courage is often undervalued
o Men’s courage is tied to their gender identity
Courage is often associated with military prowess, but Gandhi’s nonviolence certainly exhibited great courage as well.
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· Part I. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development
· Part II. Gilligan and Moral Voices
· Part III. Four Models of the Place of Gender in Ethics
Disobeying the law for a higher cause:
· The Founding of Israel
Why do some people feel they must obey the letter of the law while others believe that there is a higher law?
· Most countries, including the United States, are founded through illegal acts of rebellion or revolution.
· In order to answer this question, Kohlberg began to look at the ways in which people develop morally.
Eventually, Kohlberg suggested a stage theory of moral development:
· Preconventional Morality
Punishment-obedience
Personal reward orientation
· Conventional Morality
The “good boy/nice girl” Orientation
The “law and order” orientation
· Post-conventional Morality
Social contract orientation
Universal ethical principle orientation
Preconventional Morality
· Stage 1: Punishment-Obedience Orientation
o Avoid (physical) punishment
o High school example: One middle school teacher has latecomers do pushups--50 of them--in front of the class.
· Stage 2: Personal Reward Orientation
o “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”
o High school example: A group of high school students involved in a cooperative learning activity get upset because one of their group members is repeatedly absent and did not do any work.
Conventional Morality
· Stage 3: The “good boy/nice girl” Orientation
o In an inner city high school student's journal, she wrote "I am going to work harder in school so I won't let you down because if you think I can make it then I can make it"
· Stage 4: A “Law and Order” Orientation
o "Move carefully in the halls". This rule reinforces the fundamental purpose of government to protect the health and welfare of its citizens
Post-conventional Morality
· Stage 5: Social Contract Orientation
o Example for a handout in a high school class: "Please remember that this is your room and your class. The behavior and participation of each person will shape the type of learning that will occur. Since one person's behavior affects everyone else, I request that everyone in the class be responsible for classroom management. To ensure that our rights are protected and upheld, the following laws have been established for this classroom..."
Post-conventional Morality
· Stage 6: Universal Ethical Principle Orientation
o an orientation toward universal ethical principles of justice, reciprocity, equality, and respect
o Very rare. ExampleS: Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jr.
o High school teacher: "I will not tolerate any racial, ethnic, or sexual slurs in this classroom. It is not fair to erase someone's face. In this room, everyone is entitled to equal dignity as a human being.”
In order to determine which stage of moral development a person was at, Kohlberg presented the person with moral dilemmas
· “The Case of Heinz and the Druggist.”
o Mr. Heinz's wife is dying. There is one drug that will save her life but it is very expensive. The druggist will not lower the price so that Mr. Heinz can buy it to save his wife's life. What should he do? More importantly, why?
· Moral dilemmas were judged, not according to the respondent’s position (to steal the drug or not), but on the basis of the kind of reasoning the answer exhibited.
Initially, Kohlberg administered his test to people all over the world, being careful to include all races, to include rural as well as urban dwellers, etc.
· a Malaysian aboriginal village,
· villages in Turkey and the Yucatan, and
· urban populations in Mexico and the United States
There was only one thing he forgot:
· He only administered his dilemmas to males!
When Kohlberg’s instrument was administered on a large scale, it was discovered that females often scored a full stage below their male counterparts.
The moral reasoning of women and girls was more likely to value looking for a solution that preserved connections. This often looked like the “good girl” orientation, Stage 4.
Gilligan began with an interest in moral development
· She had been a teaching assistant for Erik Erikson
She was particularly interested in the issue Kohlberg raised: why do some individuals recognize a higher moral law, while others simply are content to obey the rules without question?
Here initial research project was directed toward draft resisters during the Vietnam war.
Nixon cancelled the draft just as her project was getting started.
She switched to study women who had made difficult moral choices about abortion.
Not originally concerned about gender issue.
In light of the differences between the scores of males and females on the Kohlberg scale, one could draw either of two conclusions:
· females are less morally developed than males, or
· something is wrong with Kohlberg’s framework.
Gilligan began to look more closely at the responses she was receiving in her work, and began to suspect that Kohlberg’s framework did not illuminate the responses she was encountering. It was like trying to put round pegs into square holes.
The metaphor of “voice” replaced orientation and theory.
· Concrete and specific
· Allows harmony without imposing sameness
· Not competitive or combative but collaborative
· Combines both emotion and content
· Voices may be described in a wide vocabulary that has nothing to do with right or wrong, true or false
· Voices may be different without excluding one another.
|
Men |
Women |
|
Justice |
Care |
|
Rights |
Responsibility |
|
Treating everyone fairly and the same |
Caring about everyone’s suffering |
|
Apply rules impartially to everyone |
Preserve emotional connectedness |
|
Responsibility toward abstract codes of conduct |
Responsibility toward real individuals |
|
Men |
Women |
|
Autonomy |
Relatedness |
|
Freedom |
Interdependence |
|
Independence |
Emotional connectedness |
|
Separateness |
Responsiveness to needs of others |
|
Hierarchy |
Web of relationships |
|
Rules guide interactions |
Empathy & connectedness guide interactions |
|
Roles establish places in the hierarchy |
Roles are secondary to connections |
|
Men |
Women |
|
Sense of gender identity grounded in initial act of separation from mother |
Sense of gender identity grounded in initial act of identification with mother |
|
Threatened by anything that threatens sense of separation |
Threatened by anything that undermines sense of identification |
|
Being at the top of the hierarchy is appealing |
Experience top of hierarchy as isolated and detached |
Concern for individual survival
· Transition from selfishness to responsibility
Goodness equated with self-sacrifice
· Transition from self-sacrifice to giving themselves permission to take care of themselves
Goodness seen as caring for both self and others
· Inclusive, Nonviolent
· Condemns exploitation and hurt
Four possible models:
· Separate but equal
o Men and women have different but equally valuable moral voices
· Superiority thesis
o Women’s moral voices are superior
· Integrationist thesis
o Only one moral voice, same for both men and women
· Diversity thesis
Separate but equal: Men and women have different but equally valuable moral voices
Criticisms:
· Reinforces traditional stereotypes
· Hard to retain the “...but equal” part
· Suggests that men and women have nothing to learn from one another, since each has its own exclusive moral voice
· Devalues men with a “female voice” and women with a “male voice”
Superiority thesis
· Women’s moral voices are superior
Criticisms
· Inversion of traditional claims of male superiority
· Exclusionary
· Demands that one side of the comparison be the loser
Integrationist thesis
· Only one moral voice, same for both men and women
· Morality is androgynous
Criticisms
· Loses richness of diversity
· Tends to be assimilationist in practice, reducing other voices to the voice of the powerful majority
Diversity thesis
· Suggests that there are different moral voices
· Sees this as a source of richness and growth in the moral life
· External diversity
o Different individuals have different, sex-based moral voices
· Internal diversity
o Each of us have both masculine and feminine moral voices within us
o Minimizes gender stereotyping
There are two ways of thinking about the relationship between masculinity and femininity within each individual
· Exclusive
· Inclusive
Traditionally, we have thought of gender in exclusionary terms
· The more masculine a person is, the less feminine that person is
· The more feminine a person is, the less masculine that person is
In this model, which is the most common traditional model, an increase in masculinity is bought at the price of a decrease in femininity, and vice versa.
In Sandra Bem’s conceptualization of gender, an increase in femininity is not bought at the price of a decrease in masculinity and vice versa
4 axes: More female, less female, more male, less male
Thinking about gender in Bem’s framework allows us to to appreciate both the feminine and the masculine moral voices within each of us and to avoid traditional stereotypes.
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Increasing interest in diversity in the past two decades
Fundamental question: what place, if any, do race, ethnicity, and culture have in moral theory?
The Identity Argument
Minority Rights
The Virtues Necessary for Living Well in a Diverse Society
The basic claim of the identity argument is that race, ethnicity, and culture are central to moral identity
The argument has two parts:
· Negative: The Critique of Impartiality
· Positive: The Situatedness of the Moral Agent
The premise of modern moral theory has been that the moral agent ought to be impartial
· Utilitarianism: The Impartial Calculator
· Deontology: Acting according to the duty of any rational agent
o See especially Alasdair MacIntyre, “How the Moral Agent Became a Ghost.”
Which to choose to rescue in a burning building?
· The Bishop of Cambray (Fenelon)
· His chambermaid
Version #2:
· The Bishop of Cambray
· Your mother
“Suppose the valet had been my brother, my father, or my benefactor. This would not alter the truth of the proposition. The life of Fenelon would still be more valuable than that of the valet; and justice, pure, unadulterated justice, would still have preferred that which was most valuable. Justice would have taught me to save the life of Fenelon [the Bishop of Cambray] at the expense of the other. What magic is there in the pronoun "my," that should justify us in overturning the decisions of impartial truth? My brother or my father may be a fool or a profligate, malicious, lying or dishonest. If they be, of what consequence is it that they are mine?”
--Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Chapter 2
Godwin’s dilemma poses two distinct questions to us:
· Behavior: What should I do?
· Motivation: Why should I do it?
Sometimes what is morally required in a situation is acting out of a particular moral motivation
· e.g., visiting a sick friend.
· Michael Stocker has argued that modern moral theory has a kind of “schizophrenia,” a split between motivation and justification
o Video interview with Michael Stocker on this topic.
· Bernard Williams has pointed out the problem of “one motivation too many”
Considerations of rights establish the boundaries within which considerations of partiality may play a role:
· In acting on the basis of particularity, people may not violate rights.
· Thus, in Godwin’s example, we should not violate someone’s right to be saved.
Critics of impartiality often claim that claims of impartiality often mask power relationships of dominance:
· Impartiality is really just the partiality of the powerful.
For the dominant group in a society, their particular identity is transparent, i.e., not perceived by them as a specific identity
· Supermarket example
For non-dominant groups, their identity is always experienced as particular, as specific to them as members of a group.
Premise 1 What is morally right depends (at least in part) on one’s identity as a moral agent;
Premise 2 One’s race (or ethnicity, or culture) is central to one’s identity as a moral agent;
Conclusion Thus, what is morally right depends (at least in part) on that person’s race, ethnicity, or culture.
What is morally right depends (at least in part) on one’s identity as a moral agent.
· Kantians would argue that moral identity is purely rational, and that it does not involve any elements of particularity.
· Supporters of this premise point to special obligations characteristic of particular cultures and ethnicities, e.g., placing a high value on family commitments.
One’s race (or ethnicity, or culture) is central to one’s identity as a moral agent.
In order to evaluate this premise, we first must ask: What exactly do we mean by race, ethnicity, and culture?
Race
· Initially appears to be biological
· Eventually is seen as socially constructed
Ethnicity
· An individual’s identification with a particular cultural group to which they are usually biologically related
Culture
· Set of beliefs, values and practices that define a group’s identity
Externalist accounts:
· Ethnic identity is formed by certain external events, e.g., slavery, persecution, discrimination;
· This even fits within utilitarianism
Internalist accounts:
· Ethnic identity is formed by certain shared experiences, often of oppression, which bind a people together
· Separatist—seeks to preserve identity by maintaining a separate existence.
· Supremacist—seeks power and superiority over all other groups.
· Assimilationist and Integrationist--seeks a common identity, the “melting pot.”
· Pluralist—preserves particularity in a shared framework, the “crazy quilt.”
· May be:
o Partial
o Complete
· Examples
o Amish and Mennonites
o Orthodox Jews
o Acoma Pueblo
· Seeks power and superiority over all other groups.
· See Jim Crow laws in the United States, which tried to retain white supremacy.
· Predominant American metaphor: the melting pot.
· Classic philosophical source: Richard Wasserstrom, “On Racism and Sexism.” Wasserstrom argues that race and gender should be no more significant than eye color.
· Rejects ideal of impartiality
· Seeks to preserve and strengthen group identity.
· Sources:
o Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference.
o Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice.
Principle of Understanding
· We seek to understand other cultures before we pass judgment on them.
Principle of Tolerance
· We recognize that there are important areas in which intelligent people of good will will in fact differ.
Principle of Standing Up to Evil
· We recognize that at some points we must stand up against evil, even when it is outside of our own borders.
Principle of Fallibility
· We recognize that, even with the best of intentions, our judgments may be flawed and mistake.
Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (1989) and Multicultural Citizenship (1995)
Thesis: liberalism entails minority rights
Following Rawls, Kymlicka argues that the ability to develop and pursue a life plan is a very important good
One’s own culture is necessary for achieving that good
Many minority cultures need special protection if they are to continue to exist
Thus minority cultures must be given special protection so that all members of society have an equal opportunity to pursue a life plan.
· Indigenous Peoples
· Formerly Enslaved Peoples
· Immigrant Minorities
Compensatory Justice
· Backward-looking
· Redress past harms
Rights of Indigenous Peoples
· Language
· Religion
· Land
· Self-determination
Do we owe a special debt to those who have been forcibly brought to our shores and enslaved?
To their descendants?
How is such a debt measured? Repaid?
One way of providing special protection to groups that have been the object of persecution is to provide special legal sanctions against persecutory acts--in other words, against hate crimes.
What special rights, if any, do immigrant minorities have if they have freely come to the United States in search of a better life?
· Language
· Support
Lawrence Blum indicates there are three virtues necessary for living wel in a diverse society
· Opposition to racism
· Multiculturalism
· Sense of community, connection, or common humanity
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