Ratio Juris

Utopian Thought & Imagination: An Introduction

2009-11-06T17:11:00.011-05:00

‘A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.’—Oscar Wilde

‘Utopias are images of ideal communities; utopian thought tries to make explicit and to justify the principles on the basis of which communities are said to be ideal. [….] [T]he philosophical importance of utopias rests on utopian thought, although the practical effect of a utopia may be quite independent of its philosophic merits.’—William A. Galston

‘Utopian thought performs three related political functions. First, it guides our deliberation, whether in devising courses of action or in choosing among exogenously defined alternatives with which we are confronted. Second, it justifies our actions; the grounds of action are reasons that others ought to accept and—given openness and the freedom to reflect—can be led to accept. Third, it serves as the basis for the evaluation of existing institutions and practices. The locus classicus is the Republic, in which the completed ideal is deployed in Plato’s memorable critique of imperfect regimes.’—William A. Galston

‘Utopian thought attempts to specify and justify the principles of a comprehensively good political order. Typically, the goodness of that order rests on the desirability of the way of life enjoyed by the individuals within it; less frequently, its merits rely on organic features that cannot be reduced to individuals. Whatever their basis, the principles of the political good share certain general features:
· First, utopian principles are in their intention universally valid, temporally and geographically.
· Second, the idea of the good order arises out of our experience but does not mirror it in any simple way and is not circumscribed by it. Imagination may combine elements of experience into a new totality that has never existed; reason, seeking to reconcile the contradictions of experience, may transmute its elements.
· Third, utopias exist in speech; they are “cities of words.” This does not mean that they cannot exist but only that they need not ever. This “counterfactuality” of utopia in no way impedes its evaluative function.
· Fourth, utopian principles may come to be realized in history, and it may be possible to point to real forces pushing in that direction. But our approval of a utopia is not logically linked to the claim that history is bringing us closer to it or that we can identify an existing basis for the transformative actions that would bring it into being. Conversely, history cannot by itself validate principles. The movement of history (if it is a meaningful totality in any sense at all) may be from the most desirable to the less; the proverbial dustbin may contain much of enduring worth.
· Fifth, although not confined to actual existence, the practical intention of utopia requires that it be constrained by possibility. Utopia is realistic in that it assumes human and material preconditions that are neither logically nor empirically impossible, even though their simultaneous co-presence may be both unlikely and largely beyond human control to effect.
· Sixth, although utopia is a guide for action, it is not in any simple sense a program of action. In nearly all cases, important human or material preconditions for good politics will be lacking. Political practice consists in striving for the best results achievable in particular circumstances. The relation between the ideal and the best achievable is not deductive. [….]
Thus, the incompleteness of utopia, far from constituting a criticism of it, is inherent in precisely the features that give it evaluative force. As has been recognized at least since Aristotle, the gap between utopian principles and specific strategic/tactical programs can be bridged only through an inquiry different in kind and content from that leading to the principles themselves. If so, the demand that utopian thought contain within itself the conditions of its actualization leads to a sterile hybrid that is neither an adequate basis for rational evaluation nor an accurate analysis of existing conditions.’—William A. Galston

‘By perfectible, it is not meant that he [i.e., man] is capable of being brought to perfection. But the word seems sufficiently adapted to express the faculty of being continually made better and receiving perpetual improvement; and in this sense it is here to be understood. The term perfectible, thus explained, not only does not imply the capacity of being brought to perfection, but stands in expression to it. If we could arrive at perfection, there would be an end to our improvement. There is however one thing of great importance that it does imply: every perfection or excellence that human beings are competent to conceive, human beings, unless in cases that are palpably and unequivocally excluded by the structure of their frame, are competent to attain.’—Wlliam Godwin

‘There are recognizable barriers from which men have always sought to emancipate themselves, in order to obtain access to something, and appropriate something, that is conceived time and again in the ideas of freedom, joy, happiness, etc., which no cynical irony can expunge. The inexhaustible possibilities of human nature, which themselves increase with cultural progress, are the innermost material of all utopias, and moreover a very real, and in no way immaterial material at that. They inevitably lead to the desire to transform human life.’—Rudolf Bahro

‘Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Taylor, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Merton, Yogi Berra, Allen Ginsburg, Harry Wolfson, Thoreau, Casey Stengel…Baba Ram Dass, Gandhi, Sir Edmund Hillary…Freud, Norman Mailer…Thomas Edison, H.L. Mencken, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Ellison…Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, [Frank Lloyd Wright, Muhammad Ali, Kenneth Rexroth, Dorothy Day, Malcolm X, Oprah Winfrey, Vaclav Havel, Dorothy Healey, Leonardo Boff, Seyyid Hossein Nasr, James deAnda, Nelson Mandela, Helen Mirren, Pico Iyer, Mose Allison, Jewel, Dame Judi Dench, Aretha Franklin, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), Leonard Cohen], you and your parents. Is there really one kind of life which is best for each of these people?’—Robert Nozick

‘Utopia will consist of utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions. Some kinds of communities will be more attractive to most than others; communities will wax and wane. People will leave some for others or spend their whole lives in one. Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others. The utopian society is the society of utopianism. [….] Half of the truth I wish to put forth is that utopia is meta-utopia: the environment in which utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular utopian visions are to be realized stably.’—Robert Nozick

‘We may distinguish three utopian positions: imperialistic utopianism, which countenances the forcing of everyone into one pattern of community; missionary utopianism, which hopes to persuade or convince everyone to live in one particular kind of community, but will not force them to do so; and existential utopianism, which hopes that a particular pattern of community will exist (be viable), though not necessarily universally, so that those who wish to do so may live in accordance with it.’—Robert Nozick

‘The classic utopia anticipates and criticizes. Its alternative fundamentally interrogates the present, piercing through existing societies’ defensive mechanisms—common sense, realism, positivism and scientism. Its unabashed and flagrant otherness gives it a power which is lacking in other analytical devices. By playing fast and loose with time and space, logic and morality, and by thinking the unthinkable, a utopia asks the most awkward, the most embarrassing questions. As an imaginative construction of a whole society, the utopia can bring into play the rich critical apparatus of the literary form and a sensitivity to the holistic nature of society, enabling it to mock, satirize, reduce the prominent parts, to illuminate and emphasize the neglected, shadowy, hidden parts—and to show the interrelatedness—of the existing system. Utopia can be seen as the good alternative, the outline of a better future, an “ought” to the current “is.” The possibility of such a future helps undermine the complacency and overcome the inertia of existing society by showing that it is neither eternal nor archetypal but merely one form amongst many. This need not lead to teleology (i.e. “this is your future”), for the alternative has many shapes.’—Vincent Geoghegan

‘For [Ernst] Bloch, the enemies of hope are confusion, anxiety, fear, renunciation, passivity, failure and nothingness. Fascism was their apotheosis. But since all individuals daydream, they also hope. It is necessary to strip this dreaming of self-delusion and escapism, to enrich and expand it and to base it in the actual movement of society. Hope, in other words, must be both educated and objectively grounded; an insight drawn from Marx’s great discovery: “the subjective and objective hope-contents of the world.” The Principle of Hope is an encyclopaedic account of dreams of a better existence; from the most simple to the most complex; from idle daydreams to sophisticated images of perfection. It develops a positive sense of the category “utopian,” denuded of unworldliness and abstraction, as forward dreaming and anticipation. [….] This then is Bloch’s great masterpiece. His achievement was to see that utopianism is not confined to intellectuals and their various blueprints of a better life. He saw that, in countless ways, individuals are expressing unfulfilled dreams and aspirations—that in song, dance, plants and plaster, church and theater, utopia waits.’—Vincent Geoghegan

‘Marxists have a defensive attitude towards utopias. It was so laborious to escape from them in the past. But today utopian thought has a new necessity. For that historical spontaneity that Marx conceived as a process of natural history and which our Marxist-Leninists celebrate in the name of objective economic law, must be overcome. [….] The problem is to drive forward the “overproduction” of consciousness, so as to put the whole historical past “on its head,” and make the idea into the decisive material force, to guide things to a radical transformation that goes still deeper than the customary transition from one formation to another within one and the same civilization. We are now facing, and what has in fact already begun, is a cultural revolution in the truest sense of the term: a transformation of the entire subjective form of life of the masses….’—Rudolf Bahro

‘Certainly, the concept of utopia is only one of the many possible demonstrations of the anxieties, hopes, and pursuits of an era and of a social milieu. The questioning of the legitimacy and rationality of the existing order, the diagnosis and criticism of moral and social defects, the search for remedies, the dreams of a new order, etc.—all these favorite themes of utopias are found in political systems and popular myths, in religious doctrines and in poetry. If the critique of social reality and the expectation of a new City turn toward utopia, that means that a choice has been made among available forms of discourse. What is said in utopia and as utopia cannot be said otherwise. There are “hot” eras when utopias flourish, when the utopian imagination penetrates the most diverse forms of intellectual, political, and literary activity; eras when opposing points of view and divergent main themes seem to rediscover their point of convergence in the very invention of the descriptions of utopias. But there are other “cold” eras, when utopian creativity is weakened and cut off from social, intellectual, and ideological activities.’—Bronislaw Baczko

1. ‘There is no utopia without an overall representation, the idea-image of an alternative society, opposed to the existing social reality, and its institutions, rites, dominant symbols, systems of values, norms of interdictions, hierarchies, relations of dominance and property, its domain reserved to the sacred, and so forth. In other words, there is no utopia without a synthetic and disruptive representation of social otherness. [….]
2. The representations of a different and happy City are the products of a particular way of imagining the social; utopias are one of the places, occasionally the privileged place, where the social imagination is put into practice, where individual and collective social dreams are welcomed, gathered, worked on, and produced. Moreover if utopian imagining activity is focused on overall and synthetic idea-images, it nevertheless is developed through day-to-day reality. The dreams of the happy City are, then, articulated with images of a renewed daily life, and utopias often offer a great luxury of detail in their descriptions of individual and collective daily life. The structural relationships between the representation of the overall society and the detailed images of the ordinary aspects of life are as complex as they are revealing. [….]
3. The alternative society is not only imagined, it is also thought to be consonant with reason, and prides itself on the rationality it brings into play. Utopias want to install reason in the realm of the imagination; in utopias, constant exchanges among social dreams and critical, theoretical, and normative reflection are carefully worked out. The term idea-image to which we often have recourse has the sole aim of bringing these distinctive characteristics of utopian representation to the fore. [….]
4. Utopia is not only imagined and thought, it is made intelligible and communicable in a discourse by which the merging of the idea-images and their integration into a language is accomplished. [T]wo classic paradigms were imposed in utopian discourse from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. The first is the utopia of the imaginary voyage. [….] The other paradigm is that of the utopia-proposal for ideal legislation. [….]
5. Every utopia is not necessarily proposed as a program of action or even as a model that would demand intellectual or emotional support. The novelistic utopias are offered most frequently as intellectual games. They only seek to stimulate both the imagination and the critical and moralizing reflection of the readers…. However, sometimes even the utopias presented in the form of an imaginary voyage inspire a will to act and to give some of their ideas a practical application. [….] But there are utopias that proclaim themselves as both a prophetic and a founding word, and that find their extensions in the establishment of exemplary communities professing to put them into practice.’—Bronislaw Baczko

‘Plato in fact comes in rather late, if we focus first on the world of classical antiquity. Utopian themes reach back to the earliest Greek writings. From Hesiod’s Works and Days, of the early seventh century BC, came the canonical depiction of the Golden Age, the bitterly-lamented vanished age of Kronos’ reign: when men “lived as if they were gods, their hearts free from all sorrow, and without hard work or pain;” when “the fruitful earth yielded its abundant harvest to them of its own accord, and they lived in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things.” Reworked by Virgil and Ovid as the lost age of Saturn (the Roman Kronos), the pastoral perfection in the Golden Age reappeared as the classic Arcadia, a time and place of rustic simplicity and felicity.’—Krishan Kumar

‘If Arcadia showed man living within, and according to, nature, the Hellenic ideal city represented human mastery over nature, the triumph of reason and artifice over the amoral and chaotic realm of nature. Hence the importance, in the ideal city tradition, of those who gave the law and made the rational order of human society: the founders and framers of cities and constitutions, the philosopher-kings, the architect-planners. An early Greek tradition already venerated the semi-mythical figures of Solon of Athens and Lycurgus of Sparta as the founders and law-givers of their respective city-states. Their idealization, common throughout the classical period, was boosted by Plutarch’s Lives (first century AD), which made of Solon and Lycurgus virtually the creators of utopian societies. As received in Europe through various translations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Lives, eked out with such celebrated set-pieces as Pericles’ funeral oration from Thucydides’ History, set before European thinkers two sharply contrasting utopian models. There was Athens: democratic, tolerant, boisterous, given over to a cultivated hedonism; and there was Sparta: authoritarian, ascetic, communistic. European utopian writers, along with most other kinds, were clearly fascinated by the alternative possibilities suggested by these two great exemplars of the ancient world. Right up to the French Revolution and beyond, one way of classifying utopias was as “Athenian” or “Spartan,” with Sparta predictably the favourite not simply for matching more closely the utopian preference for a tightly regulated communal order, but as much for its status as the putative model of the most admired ancient utopia, Plato’s Republic.’—Krishan Kumar

‘[Thomas] More shows himself, and his Utopia, to the product of a new age. His Utopia has a rationalism and a realism that we associate typically with the classical revival of the Renaissance, and that are to be found equally in the architectural utopias of the fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy. We should remember that Utopia was published less than three years after Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513). More’s urbane and witty style, his “profound sense of political realities,” constantly evoke the relentlessly de-mystified world of Machiavelli’s notorious treatise (and, incidentally, remind us that utopia and anti-utopia [“dystopia”] shadow each other very closely).’—Krishan Kumar

‘The realm of utopia is wide but it is not boundless. Utopia is not some unchanging human archetype or universal human propensity. Distinctions have to be made and these must be largely historical. If utopia is not in one very obvious sense concerned with the here-and-now, for the most part it draws both its form and content from the contemporary reality. Whether or not we choose to call Plato’s Republic a utopia, or to accept the idea of a Christian utopia, we must recognize the fundamental difference of intention and concern between them, a reflection of the very different conditions that gave rise to them. Both classical and Christian utopianism persisted well into the modern age. They had—and have—a continuing influence on conceptions of utopia. This can make it difficult to see the even more important differences between these utopian “prefigurations” and the utopia proper, the modern utopia that was invented in Europe in the sixteenth century. The utopia of the ancient world is hierarchical, economically undeveloped and static. The modern utopia is egalitarian, affluent and dynamic. Such a conception emerged under unique historical conditions. As these changed so the content and even, to an extent, the form of utopia changed. So we should not be surprised to find ourselves dealing with utopias of many different kinds, and with many different purposes, in the more than four centuries since More’s Utopia. A strict definition of utopia would serve no useful purpose; as Nietzsche says, “only that which has not history can be defined.”’—Krishan Kumar

There was a ‘direct and dynamic connection between the idea of the American nation as utopia, and the foundations of scores of utopian communities that, dismissing this idea, still sought and found refuge on the American continent. We might borrow a term from the American philosopher Robert Nozick and consider America, in this aspect, as meta-utopia. In this conception, utopia is not one community, one vision of the good life, but a “framework for utopias,” a place which freely allows people to form and re-form themselves into utopian communities of diverse kinds. [….] Nineteenth-century America was this meta-utopia on a grander and more generous scale than ever before or since. The vast size of its still relatively unsettled territory, coupled with the utopian notions that accompanied its entire development as a nation, drew utopian groups to it as to a magnet. On both physical and ideological grounds, nineteenth-century America was the ideal framework for utopias in Nozick’s sense. It set up a dynamic counterpoint between the larger national experiment—America as utopia—and the host of small experimental communities, each pursuing its individual utopian vision. Meta-utopia, like utopia, produced a characteristic literature, the literature of the experimental community. There were the reports and survey of founders, sympathizers and observers, such as John Humphrey Noyes’s History of American Socialisms (1870), Charles Nordhoff’s The Communistic Societies of the United States (1875) and William Alfred Hinds’ American Communities (1878). Noyes founded Oneida; Hinds was a founding-member of it. There was also the autobiographies and memoirs of those who had actually been born or lived for much of their time in utopian communities, such Frederick Williams Evans’s Autobiography of a Shaker (1869), Robert Dale Owen’s Twenty-Seven Years of Autobiography (1874) and Pierrepont Noyes’s My Father’s House: An Oneida Boyhood (1937). All these combine, to a remarkable degree, personal involvement and sympathy with a wide-ranging outlook and refreshingly clear-sighted analysis.’—Krishan Kumar

‘[T]here was probably more genuine communism practiced in nineteenth-century America than in any society, at any time, beyond the hunting and gathering stage. This certainly seemed self-evident to many Europeans. The young Friedrich Engels was among the many European socialists who were stirred by the reports of the American communities, and who first looked to them to provide the example and model for European communism. “The first people in America,” wrote Engels, “and indeed in the world who brought into realization a society founded on the community of property were the so-called Shakers.” The American communities, he confidently declared, had demonstrated that “communism, the social life and work based on the common possession of goods, is…not only possible but has actually been realized…and with the best result.” The communities were themselves to a good extent the product of a wider movement of reform that enthusiastically embraced socialism. Socialism in mid-nineteenth-century America was far from being the “un-American” thing it has now become.’—Krishan Kumar

‘Gandhi’s fascination as a thinker lies in his inward battle between two opposing attitudes—the Tolstoyan socialist belief that the Kingdom of Heaven is attainable on earth and the Dostoevskian mystical conviction that it can never be materialized. The modern Hindu standpoint has generally been anti-utopian: Rama Rajya lies in the bygone Satya Yuga, and Kali Yuga is the age of unavoidable coercion. Gandhi began by challenging this view under the influence of Tolstoy, but he ended his life with more of a Dostoevskian pessimism. This does not mean that he abandoned either his imaginative, utopian, political vision or what he called his practical idealism embodied in concrete programs of immediate action. He did not feel that he was wrong to urge men to set themselves, as he did in his own life, seemingly impossible standards, but he came closer to seeing that it is wrong to expect them to do so. [….] “Euclidean” models—of the satyagrahi, of a society based on satya and ahimsa, of Rama Rajya—are not without their value in political theory, but they must not be mistaken for definitely realizable concretions. [….] Gandhi’s concepts of satya, ahimsa and satyagraha, of tapas, and, above all, of the satyagrahi, are such ideal constructions—“Euclidean” models as he himself called them. They do involve a “momentous truth,” but they are also deceptive representations, in a sense. In constructing these, Gandhi was in the oldest political tradition that goes back to classical Chinese and Indian thinkers, and to Plato in the West. They could serve in the serious task of civic education (paideia) provided they are not taken to represent precisely the political realities of the future.’—Raghavan Iyer

‘Utopia has, for four centuries, accompanied that hope of progress and that striving for betterment. It has been itself a principle of expression of that belief and a potent agent of that impulse. It now struggles against a confused but widespread sense that this has been an illusion, or an impossible dream. A strong utopian current has persisted…. It may be that, once invented, the utopian idea can never entirely disappear—not, that is, so long as Western society itself continues. But utopia as a form of the social imagination has clearly weakened—whether fatally we cannot say. It has not in recent times found the power to instill its vision in the public consciousness. If it cannot do so again some time in the future, we should be aware of the seriousness of the failure. Karl Mannheim, who was as thoughtful a student of utopias as anyone, considered that the elimination of the “reality-transcending” power of utopia would mean “the decay of the human will:” The complete disappearance of the utopian element from human thought would mean that human nature and human development would take on a totally new character. The disappearance of utopia brings about a static state of affairs in which man himself becomes nor more than a thing. We would then be faced with the greatest paradox imaginable, namely, that man, who has achieved the highest degree of mastery of existence, left without any ideals, becomes a mere creature of impulses. Thus, after a long tortuous, but heroic development, just at the highest stage of awareness, when history is ceasing to be blind fate, and is becoming more and more man’s own creation, with the relinquishment of utopias, man would lose his will to shape history and therewith his ability to understand it.’—Mannheim qtd. in Krishan Kumar

References and Further Reading:

Baczko, Bronislaw. Utopian Lights: The Evolution of the Idea of Social Progress. New York: Paragon House, 1989.
Bahro, Rudolf (David Fernbach, trans.). The Alternative in Eastern Europe. London: NLB (New Left Books), 1978.
Bahro, Rudolf. Building the Green Movement. Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publ., 1986.
Bartkowski, Frances. Feminist Utopias. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
Berryman, Phillip. Liberation Theology. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.
Bloch, Ernst (Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight, trans.). The Principle of Hope, 3 Vols. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
Bloch, Ernst (Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg, trans.). The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988.
Breines, Wini. Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962-1968: The Great Refusal. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989 ed.
Dolgoff, Sam, ed. The Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939. New York: Free Life Editions, 1974.
Elster, Jon and Karl Ove Moene, eds. Alternatives to Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Erasmus, Charles J. In Search of the Common Good: Utopian Experiments Past and Future. New York: Free Press, 1985.
Galston, William A. Justice and the Human Good. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Geoghegan, Vincent. Utopianism and Marxism. London: Methuen, 1987.
Godwin, William. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Middlesex, England: Penguin Classics, 1985 (1793).
Hine, Robert V. California’s Utopian Colonies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983 (1953).
Iyer, Raghavan. Parapolitics: Toward the City of Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Iyer, Raghavan. The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. Santa Barbara, CA: Concord Grove Press, 2nd ed., 1983 (1st ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).
Jacoby, Russell. The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Jacoby, Russell. Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007 ed.
Joll, James. The Anarchists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2n ed., 1979.
Katsiaficas, George. The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1987.
Kohn, Livia. Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism. Cambridge, MA: Three Pines Press, 2004.
Kumar, Krishan. Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1987.
Kumar, Krishan and Stephen Bann, eds. Utopias and the Millennium. London: Reaktion Books, 1993.
LaFargue, Michael, tr. The Tao of the Tao Te Ching: A Translation and Commentary. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992.
Levitas, Ruth. The Concept of Utopia. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990.
Luntley, Michael. The Meaning of Socialism. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1990.
Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960 (1936).
Manuel, Frank E. and Fritzie P. Manuel. Utopian Thought in the Western World. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979.
Marsden, John Joseph. Marxian and Christian Utopianism: Toward a Socialist Political Theology. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991.
Martineau, Alain. Herbert Marcuse’s Utopia. Montreal: Harvest House, 1986.
Melville, Keith. Communes in the Counter Culture: Origins, Theories, Styles of Life. New York: Morrow Quill, 1972.
Morrison, Roy. We Build the Road as We Travel. Philadelphis, PA: New Society Publishers, 1991.
Nordhoff, Charles. The Communistic Societies of the United States. New York: Schocken Books, 1965 [1875].
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
Pitzer, Donald E., ed. America’s Communal Utopias. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Rexroth, Kenneth. Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century. New York: Seabury Press, 1974.
Schaer, Roland, Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent, eds. Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Smith, Christian. The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Sonn, Richard D. Anarchism. New York: Twayne Publ., 1992.
Stites, Richard. Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Taylor, Michael. Anarchy and Cooperation. London: Wiley, 1976.
Taylor, Michael. Community, Anarchy and Liberty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Weisbrud, Carol. The Boundaries of Utopia. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

Please see here and here for two previous posts on "utopian thought and imagination."

Natural Law: An Introduction—Part 3

2009-10-27T12:46:00.004-04:00

"Bamboo stems with branches and folia," Kishi Ganku (Japanese, 1749-1838), Edo period. © Smithsonian Institution

“Ever since Antigone’s resistance to Creon’s prohibition against performing the rights of burial for her brother, and ever since the controversy over the essence of right and justice among Sophists and Platonists, that is, from the very outset of Occidental legal thought, philosophers have asked themselves whether positive law is committed to general moral principles. These principles of legal morality have been articulated in theories of natural law or justice.”— Otfried Höffe

“In the Enlightenment, natural law as a discipline [was] grounded exclusively on reason and independently of doctrinal elements. …[I]t belonged both to the faculty of jurisprudence and to that of philosophy.”—Otfried Höffe

“Before the Americans and French declared the rights of man, the leading proponents of universalism lived on the margins of the great powers. Perhaps that very marginality enabled a handful of Dutch, German, and Swiss thinkers to take the initial lead in arguing that rights were universal. As early as 1625, a Dutch Calvinist jurist, Hugo Grotius, put forward a notion of rights that was applicable to all of mankind, not just one country or legal tradition. He defined ‘natural rights’ as something self-possessed and conceivably separate from God’s will. He also suggested that people could use their rights—unaided by religion—to establish contractual foundations for social life. His German follower Samuel Pufendorf, the first professor of natural law at Heidelberg, featured Grotius’s achievements in his general history of natural law teachings in 1678. Although Pufendorf criticized Grotius on certain points, he helped solidify Grotius’s reputation as a prime source of the universalist stream of rights thinking.”—Lynn Hunt

“The Swiss natural law theorists built upon these ideas in the early eighteenth century. The most influential of them, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, taught law in Geneva. He synthesized the various seventeenth-century natural law writings in The Principles of Natural Law (1747). Like his predecessors, Burlamaqui provided little specific legal or political content to the notion of universal human rights; his main purpose was to prove their existence and their derivation from reason and human nature. He updated the concept by linking it to what the Scottish philosophers called an internal moral sense…. Immediately translated into English and Dutch, Burlamaqui’s work was widely used as a kind of textbook of natural law and natural rights in the last half of the eighteenth century. Rousseau, among others, took Burlamaqui as a point of departure. Burlamaqui’s work fed a more general revival of natural law and natural rights theories across Western Europe and the North American colonies. [….] Grotius, Pufendorf, and Burlamaqui were all well known to American revolutionaries, such as Jefferson and Madison, who read in the law.”—Lynn Hunt

“Having grown up with natural law theory and the associated moral philosophy, it is hardly strange that Americans found use for such ideas in their own writings and, eventually, in the documents of independence and constitution-building.”—Knud Haakonssen

“Certain basic rights are inalienable because they are duties under natural law, and all other duties/rights derive their ultimate justification more or less directly from these. None of the American theoreticians put forward a clear idea of rights as underived, primary features of the person, and one inevitably gets the impression that some of the apparent moral certainty stemmed from the fact that Americans stayed well within the comfortable moral world of traditional natural law theory, with its assurance of an in-principle harmony of individual rights and duties.”—Knud Haakonssen

“The persons known as major German war criminals were tried in 1945 for offenses specified in an agreement (‘the London Agreement and Charter 8 August 1945’) made between the states governing Germany since its surrender to them. The judges held that the defendants had at all relevant times been bound by (and in many instances had acted in violation of) the principles or rules specified in the London Charter, such obligations being derived not, of course, from the agreement (which was made subsequent to the acts in question), but rather, as to some of the crimes alleged, from international law and, as to the alleged ‘crimes against humanity,’ from the ‘elementary dictates of humanity.’ To hold the defendants responsible for violating these rules and dictates, and reject any argument that their acts’ compliance with German law could make the acts lawful, was not (so the tribunal ruled) to violate the principle of law and justice that no one should be punished except for violation of law. The result of these rulings might be accounted for by (i) exclusive positivism: the tribunal was morally authorized to apply moral rules, notwithstanding that the rules so applied were not rules of law either at the time of the crimes or the time of the prosecution. But the terms of the rulings (as just summarized) can be accounted for (ii) by inclusive positivism: the Charter was positive law for the tribunal and directed it to apply moral rules which by virtue of that direction were also legal rules. Still, (iii) natural law theory’s account seems the most explanatory: the moral rules applied were also rules of the ‘higher law’ applicable in all times and places (and thus in Germany and its territories, before as after the Charter) as a source of argumentation and judgment ‘according to law’ when the social-fact sources which are the normally dominant and quasi-exclusive source of law are, in justice, inadequate and insufficient guides to fulfilling obligations such as the judicial obligation to do justice according to law, or everyone’s obligation to behave with elementary humanity even when under orders not to—even if those orders have intra-systemic legal validity according to the formal or social-fact criteria of some existing legal system. And if one has doubts about victors’ justice, those very doubts can likewise appeal to principles of the same higher law, jus gentium, or law of reason and humanity.”—John Finnis

“The reluctance of legal positivists to provide a set of basic international norms that could conclusively mandate international legal intervention for a wide array of human rights abuses, such as prosecuting Nazi war criminals, led many theorists to look back to the natural law tradition. Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, said that he saw himself representing all of humanity as he sought to punish those Nazi leaders who had committed ‘atrocities and persecutions on racial or religious grounds.’ Jackson argued that the Martens Clause of the Hague Convention of 1907 provided two related sources of international law from which a defense of international tribunals could be derived. International interventions are justified by reference to ‘the principles of the law of nations, as they result from the usages established among civilized peoples, [1] from the laws of humanity, and [2] the dictates of public conscience. On this view, there are principles of natural law that are somehow enshrined in the public conscience. What offends the public conscience in international crimes is that humans are treated in ways that no human should have to bear—namely, to be made to suffer arbitrarily. Arbitrary suffering is here treated as clearly wrong from the natural law perspective since it violates the most basic standards of how humans regard each other, and how humans know, in the light of reason, that they should behave. Humans are supposed to treat each other with minimal decency based on the idea that human personhood has a core of intrinsic value that must always be respected.”—Larry May

“Law’s effectiveness is dependent on the moral legitimacy of the law. In this…I follow Lon Fuller, a paradigmatic moral minimalist, who attempted to provide a middle ground between legal positivism and robust natural law theory. [….] [I]n a pluralistic society or world community, it makes prudential good sense to link wide-scale acceptance to normative justification. For law to be effective, there must be such acceptance, but the acceptance is not what justifies the norms. Rather it is the moral legitimacy of law that both provides a justification for its enforcement and also creates wide-scale acceptance. There is a minimum moral or natural law content that laws must display to be legitimate. This is what I am calling the ‘moral legitimacy’ of the law. The morality of law does not need to be robust for law to be legitimate. Here there is a set of moral principles, recognized in virtually every legal system, that makes a law worthy of being enforced. Such moral principles ultimately protect the inner normative core of law by guaranteeing that the law is, in some rudimentary way, fair.”—Larry May

“[Intuitionism] has three main characteristics: (1) It is an ethical pluralism, in the sense that it affirms an irreducible plurality of basic moral principles…. (2) Each principle centers on a different ground for action, conceived as a factor implying a prima facie moral duty and knowable by ordinary moral agents. The ground itself might be an action, like making a promise; a cognition, such as noticing a person will bleed to death without one’s help; or an accessible fact, such as the possibility that one can contribute to the well-being of others. It is in virtue of grounds of these sorts that one has the duty in question. (3) Each moral principle is taken to be in some sense intuitively know by those who appropriately understand it.”—Robert Audi

Epistemologically, intuitionism “is roughly the thesis that basic moral judgments and basic moral principles are non-inferentially knowable and that, for those who justifiedly hold them non-inferentially, they are justified by, and constitute knowledge on the basis of, the non-inferential deliverance of reason.”—Robert Audi

Prima facie duties in the intuitionist sense are “ineradicable but overridable.” Indeed, as in the case of W.D. Ross’s intuitionism, once we appreciate that the “primary role of intuition is to give us direct, i.e., non-inferential knowledge (or at least justified belief) of the truth, rather than of the self-evidence, of moral propositions (especially certain moral principles), there is less reason to think that moral beliefs resting on an intuitive apprehension of principles are indefeasibly justified. [….] The view that the justification of moral intuitions is defeasible…is quite consistent with [Ross’s] claim that the self-evident truths in question do not admit of proof. That a true proposition does not admit of proof is an epistemic fact about it and leaves open that a person might have only poor or overridden grounds for believing it. It is true that paradigm cases of presumptively unprovable propositions—such as luminously self-evident simple axioms—invite the sense of indefeasibility. But a proposition’s having the epistemic status of unprovability does not entail that one cannot lose one’s justification for believing it, or fail to become justified in believing it upon considering it, or even fail to find it intuitive and for that reason not come to believe it at all.”—Robert Audi

“Rossian principles of duty (though perhaps not exactly Ross’s list of them) may be argued to be just the general moral principles one would derive—even, if not strictly deduce—from a careful application of the [Kantian] categorical imperative to everyday life. For instance, if one is to avoid treating people merely as means—and so to realize the negative standard expressed by the categorical imperative—one must recognize (prima facie) duties of non-injury (including avoidance of murder, brutality and theft), of reparation and of fidelity and veracity’ and if one is to treat people positively as ends—and so to realize the positive standard it expresses—one must recognize duties of beneficence, gratitude, self-improvement, and justice…. [….] If a Kantian intuitionism is viable, and if principles of the kind Ross proposed can serve as middle axioms, we have made a theoretical advance.”—Robert Audi

“We may still wonder what it is about persons in virtue of which, for Kant, they must be treated as ends. Kant employs a number of notions. Consider just one: dignity. This may in turn be taken to be based on autonomy, rationality, or other characteristics of persons. The most important point here is that dignity is a moral value. This is in part to say that it is essential to it that beings possessing it have moral rights. In part, to call the dignity of persons a moral value is to say that in virtue of it there are moral reasons to act in a certain way toward them and that certain other ways of acting toward them are wrong. A second important point about dignity—or indeed any comparably broad moral value that might ground the categorical imperative (such as ‘worth’), is that there is a far-reaching moral attitude that goes with it: respect for persons. If this is so, we might take both dignity and respect for persons as fundamental elements in a value-based intuitionism.”—Robert Audi

[The Natural Duty of Justice] is “the obligation each of us has to treat every person with equal concern and respect,” and “according to which each of us—independently of which institutions we find ourselves in or the special commitments we have undertaken—has a limited moral obligation to help ensure that all persons have access to institutions that protect their basic rights.”—Allen Buchanan

References and Further Reading:
(Several of these books simply contain brief discussions of natural law, ideas similar to those found in the natural law tradition, or insights explicitly or implicitly in support of natural law philosophy. I make the assumption that natural law need not be religious in formulation even if it is often religious in inspiration or motivation, hence there is such a thing as ‘secular’ or philosophical natural law, as we see quite early and clearly with the Stoics.)

Alexy, Robert. The Argument from Injustice: A Reply to Legal Positivism. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2002.
Audi, Robert. The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Bix, Brian H. ‘Natural Law: The Modern Tradition,’ in Jules Coleman and Scott Shapiro, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002: 61-103.
Buchanan, Allen. Justice, Legitimacy and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Cunningham, Lawrence S. Intractable Disputes about the Natural Law: Alasdair MacIntyre and His Critics. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.
Dworkin, Ronald. Law’s Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Finnis, John. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1982 ed.
Finnis, John. Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Finnis, John. “Natural Law Theories,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2007), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2007/entries/natural-law-theories/.
George, Robert P. In Defense of Natural Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
George, Robert P., ed. Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1992.
George, Robert P. and Christopher Wolfe, eds. Natural Law and Public Reason. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000.
George, Robert P., ed. Natural Law. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.
Gomez-Lobo, Alfonso. Morality and the Human Goods: An Introduction to Natural Law Ethics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002.
Haakonssen, Knud. Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Höffe, Otfried (Alexandra Newton, trans.). Kant’s Cosmopolitan Theory of Law and Peace. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Hunt, Lynn. Inventing Human Rights: A History. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
Iyer, Raghavan. “The Open Texture of Natural Law,” in his Parapolitics: Toward the City of Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 50-60.
Janis, Mark W. An Introduction to International Law. New York: Aspen Law & Business, 3rd ed., 1999.
Kainz, Howard P. Natural Law: An Introduction and Re-examination. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2004.
Maritain, Jacques. The Rights of Man and Natural Law. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943.
May, Larry. Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Account. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
May, Larry. War Crimes and Just War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Murphy, Mark C. Natural Law and Practical Rationality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Murphy, Mark C. “The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Winter 2002), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2002/entries/natural-law-ethics/.
Murphy, Mark C. Natural Law in Jurisprudence and Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Novak, David. Natural Law in Judaism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Nussbaum, Martha C. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.
Paul, Ellen Frankel, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul, eds. Natural Law and Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Natural Law: An Introduction—Part 2

2009-10-21T06:45:00.004-04:00

"Crow on a Cherry Branch," Okuhara Seiko (1837 - 1913) © Smithsonian Institution.

“In Locke’s state of nature there are binding moral duties, including a duty of self-preservation and, given natural equality and reciprocity, a duty to preserve others, a duty not to take the life of another and a duty not to do what tends to destroy others by impairing their liberty, health or property. (These duties seem to be derived from the fundamental law of nature, which is the preservation of humankind.). Citing Richard Hooker’s views, Locke holds that the recognition of moral equality also gives rise to positive duties of benevolence and beneficence.”—Martha C. Nussbaum

Although positivist legal theorists “take their theories to be opposed to, or at least clearly distinct from, natural law theory,” natural law theorists “have not conceived of their theories in opposition to, or even as distinct from, legal positivism.”—John Finnis

“Natural law theory accepts that law can be considered and spoken of both, as a sheer social fact of power and practice, and as a set of reasons for action that can be and often are sound as reasons and therefore normative for reasonable people addressed by them.”—John Finnis

“The fulcrum and central question of natural law theories of law is: How and why can law…give its subjects sound reason for acting in accordance with it? How can a rule’s, a judgment’s, or an institution’s legal (‘formal,’ ‘systemic’) validity, or its facticity or efficacy as a social phenomenon (e.g., of official practice), make it authoritative in its subject’s deliberations?”—John Finnis

“[N]atural law theory holds that law’s ‘source-based character’—its dependence upon social facts such as legislation, custom or judicially established precedents—is a fundamental and primary element in ‘law’s capacity to advance the common good, to secure human rights, or to govern with integrity.’”—John Finnis

While law is “normally [an] indispensable instrument of great good”… [it nonetheless can become] “an instrument of great evil unless its authors steadily and vigilantly make it good by recognizing and fulfilling their moral duties to do so, both in settling the content of its rules and principles and in the procedures and institutions by which they make and administer it.”—John Finnis

“If one thinks perceptively and carefully about what to pursue (or shun) and do (or forbear from), one can readily understand and assent to practical propositions such as that life and health, knowledge and harmony with other people are desirable for oneself and for anyone else. The intrinsic desirability of such states of affairs as one’s flourishing in life and health, in knowledge and in friendly relations with others, is articulated in foundational, underived principles of practical reasoning (reasoning towards choice and action). [….] A natural law moral theory will give us an account of the way in which first principles of practical reason take on a moral force by being considered, not one by one but in their united (‘integral’) directedness. That integral directedness is given specific (albeit highly general) articulation in principles such as the injunction to love one’s neighbor as oneself; or the Golden Rule of doing for others what you would want them to do for you and not doing to others what you would not have them to do to you; or in the ‘categorical-imperatives’ to respect, and treat intrinsically valuable humanity (the basic aspects of human flourishing) in oneself and in others, so that each of one’s communities is treated as a [Kantian-like] kingdom of ends—of persons each ends in themselves” (John Finnis). These higher level moral principles can be given further specification, what Aquinas called determinatio, through the institution of governmental authority acting in the first instance through legislation and other forms of law-making. The political-theoretical part of natural law theory should address—explain and elaborate—the corresponding (moral) grounds of political obligation and the proper forms of governmental authority.

“Social facts make a positive legal rule a reason for action because the desirability of authority as a means of securing common good, and the desirability of the ‘rule of law and not of men,’ are standing and potent reasons for acknowledging such facts as an instance of valid legislation giving presumptively sufficient reason for compliance. Purely positive law that is legally valid is (presumptively and defeasibly) valid and binding morally—has the moral form or meaning of legal obligatoriness—when and because it takes its place in a scheme of practical reasoning whose practical starting-point is the range of basic ways in which human well-being can be promoted and protected, the way picked out in practical reason’s first principles.”—John Finnis

The defeasibility of the presumptive obligatoriness of authoritative reasons “is entailed by the dependence of such reasons’ peremptory, pre-emptive or exclusionary force upon a background of presupposed basic human needs and goods, and of basic moral principles and norms, a background which entails that if a purportedly authoritative proffered (posited) reason conflicts sufficiently clearly with those standing needs, good, principles or norms, its exclusionary force is exhausted or overcome and the purported obligatoriness defeated.”—John Finnis

“[B]oth the effectiveness of laws as solutions to coordination problems and promoters of common good, and the fairness of demanding adherence to them, are dependent on there being both by the subjects and administrators of the legal system as legally and morally entitled, precisely as validly made law, to prevail against all other reasons save competing moral obligations of greater strength.”—John Finnis

“The positivist thesis that all law depends for its existence, validity and obligatoriness on its social-fact source(s) is often accompanied, as in [Joseph] Raz’s ‘exclusive legal positivism,’ by the thesis that judges, as the ‘primary law-applying institutions,’ have a duty to decide certain sorts of case (e.g., cases where the existing legal rule would work injustice) by applying moral principles or rules or rules which warrant amending or even abandoning part of the existing law.”—John Finnis

“Natural law theories hold as strongly as any positivist theory that sound and legitimate adjudication gives priority to conscientious and craftsman-like attention to social-fact sources and to rules and principles pedigreed by such sources, [and] sets them aside only if and to the extent that they are ‘too iniquitous to be applied,’ and tailors the resultant new rule so as to cohere as far as possible with all the other (not too iniquitous) doctrines, rules and principles of the particular legal system in which the judge has jurisdiction.”—John Finnis

“Most people now do not need natural law for instruction regarding clear-cut issues like genocide, slavery, or sexual molestation. But the fact that these issues are ‘clear-cut’ seems to be a tribute to the fact that at a certain junction in history, at least implicit natural-law considerations were influential in bringing about new moral insights and changing prevailing practices.” —Howard P. Kainz

“Let us take telling examples of Natural Law assertions:
‘All human beings seek self-preservation.’ (factual-seeming)
‘All human beings are entitled to survive.’ (evaluative)
‘A human being cannot seek self-preservation and with consistency deny the same right or urge to another.’ (a seemingly logical truth)
‘All human beings are equally entitled to freedom of choice, thought, speech, and action.’ (evaluative)—liberty, negative or positive
‘All human beings are equally entitled to some minimal respect worthy of human stature.’(evaluative)—minimal egalitarianism
All human beings are entitled to equal respect and equal opportunities of self-expression and self-fulfillment.’ (evaluative)—strict egalitarianism
‘No human being should act toward another in a manner that he or she would not wish anyone else to act toward him or her.’ (evaluative)—the Golden Rule
[….] In general, such assertions are not merely definitions of ‘man’ or decisions of principle, and they certainly are not contingent truths. If we could correctly characterize them we might be in a position to show that the criticism of the logical positivists [i.e., that the concept of Natural Law ‘is wholly empty of empirical content and cognitive meaning;’ legal positivists, on the other hand, contend ‘the concept is empty of operative force and practical import’] is irrelevant rather than false. Natural Law assertions are often about what a human being must be assumed to be, or how human beings must be treated if we are to assign abiding, universal, and meaningful status to being human; that is, if we are to regard all human beings (biologically defined) as rational and moral agents, or if we are to differentiate decisively between the human and other species of beings without detaching man entirely form nature. It is important to concede that the word must necessarily introduces a metaphysical (a non-empirical as well as non-evaluative) element into every careful formulation of Natural Law.”—Raghavan Iyer

“Inasmuch as the concept of Natural Law contains a minimal element, it is an attempt at the definition of ‘man’ and the articulation of the foundations of human existence in a social and cosmic context. Insofar as it contains a maximal element, it is plainly metaphysical, passing beyond the boundaries of presently verifiable experience. However, between minimal and maximal ranges of meaning, the concept touches upon generally shared (or at least sharable) notions of human self-awareness, felt needs and ideals, common feelings of deprivation, self-alienation, and moral autonomy, as well as mutually recognizable signs of striving after a deeper and larger fulfillment than is capable of conceptualization. Natural Law has often been articulated with a stress on features that seem to be defined with dogmatic certainty, but essentially it expresses a deep sense of wonder, reverence, and agnosticism as to the unknown possibilities of human growth.”—Raghavan Iyer

Please Note: A list of "References and Further Reading" will be appended to the third and final post in this series.

Natural Law: An Introduction—Part 1

2009-10-20T01:04:00.009-04:00

"Persimmon Tree," late 18th-early 19th century, Nakamura Hochu © Smithsonian Institution (The image is for ornamental purposes.)

Natural law has to do with the idea that there are some meta-laws (or principles) that transcend, supervene upon or trump positive law(s). In the Western philosophical tradition, its roots go back as far as the pre-Socratic philosophers: Anaximander (610-547 BCE), Pythagoras (570-500 BCE), and Heraclitus (540-475 BCE). There are glimmers of it in Aristotle’s notion of “right reason” and Plato appears to assume the workings of some sort of unwritten and divine natural law. It is also found in the work of the Greek dramatists, Aeschylus (525-456 BCE) and Sophocles (495-406 BCE). Natural law receives its first strong articulation among the Greek and Roman Stoics: “We find in Stoic natural law theory very general but groundbreaking concepts of divine governance, of rationality or logos embedded in nature, universal human equality and brotherhood, and the ideal of respecting and harmonizing oneself with nature” (Howard P. Kainz).

Among the Roman jurists, Gaius (130-180) identified natural law with the “law of nations,” in the sense that there is a rational element underlying and therefore common to all judicial systems. The East Roman Christian Emperor Justinian (483-565) oversaw a codification of all Roman law as the Corpus Juris Civilis (in three parts: the Digesta, Institutiones and Codex) in which natural law is distinguished from the ‘law of nations’ and is depicted as a set of immutable divine laws which can be used to judge the validity of civil laws. The twelfth century Benedictine monk and canon lawyer from Bologna, Gratian, understood natural law as contained in the Hebrew Bible’s Decalogue and in the Golden Rule of the New Testament Gospels.

After the Stoics, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) represents the most important development in the natural law tradition. Aquinas distinguishes between the “Eternal Law” that governs the universe, the “Divine Law” found in the Scriptures, “Natural Law,” which is participation in the Eternal Law by rational creatures, and civil or positive law. In this account, Eternal Law gives rise to natural law and the Divine Law reiterates aspects of the Natural Law. At its best, civil law will assume or incorporate much of the natural law that pertains to social order. In effect, natural law mediates between divine law, on the one hand, and human or positive law, on the other. As explained by Kainz, “what we experience as fundamental human inclinations are aspects of the eternal law instilled into human nature, orienting humans toward certain natural goals. Human beings have a natural inclination to accomplish the general ends congruent with their nature, and this inclination is a mark or impression of the eternal law in which they are participating. Natural law thus is the actual participation in the eternal law, facilitated by human inclinations to implement the will of the divine legislator.” The primary motivation for such participation in the eternal law is a rational apprehension of the imperative that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided,” which is a general principle of practical reason. This is said by Aquinas to be the “first precept” of natural law. The good for humans is eudaimonia, clarified in terms of the natural inclinations of human nature, and which entail three pivotal secondary precepts of natural law: (1) the preservation of human life, (2) sexual intercourse and education of offspring (an inclination in common with other animals), and (3) an inclination to good, according to the nature of our reason which nature has provided us, and involving an inclination to know about God, live in society, and to shun ignorance (and hence pursue knowledge). The determination of further natural law principles is not a strict logical or deductive exercise of reasoning from premises to a conclusion, but involves the derivation of conclusions from the secondary precepts, for instance: do not kill, help maintain social order and harmony, as well as the giving of “determinations” to certain generalities: for example, prison sentences or fines are a determination from the principle that evildoers should be punished.

With Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), natural law is made known to us through “natural reason” and the law of the Decalogue. The law of God is, after St. Paul, written in the hearts of all men, “But if we would look for empirical confirmation of the rational application of natural law, Suarez suggests that the ‘law of nations’ is the closest approximation to it.”—Howard P. Kainz

“For many years, natural law was thought to be the principal source of international law. Indeed, many texts of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries characterized themselves as studies of the ‘laws of nature and of nations.’ [….] A belief in the relevance of natural law to international relations may, but need not, stem from religious principles. The early sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish international lawyers, Vitoria and Suárez, for example, based the law of nations on Catholic natural law foundations. However, Grotius [see below], a Protestant, later looked to more general biblical sources, as well as to classical authors and to right reason, to ground his theory of natural law. [….] When nineteenth-century legal positivists began deriding international law as being mere morality and not law at all, many international lawyers took affright and tried to sever their ties with natural law altogether. There was a suspicion that intimately linking international law to natural law debased international law.”—Mark W. Janis

Relying on the polyvalent meaning of jus in early medieval philosophy as law, right or justice, “the Spanish Dominicans, Francisco de Vitoria (1492-1546) and Bartolemé de las Casas (1474-1566), reflecting critically on the Spanish conquest of the New World, insisted that natural rights inhered in humans and were being subverted by European colonizers. Vitoria applied jus gentium [the ‘law of nations’ or international law] in condemning the actions of the Conquistadores in America, arguing that jus gentium forbids the taking of property of the Indians, or trying to bring them under the domination of the Spanish Empire, since they have a right to their own government. Native Americans may not be enslaved since they have dominion over themselves and over things, and their state of freedom is indicated by their political systems, magistrates, and system of exchange and religion; and it is unjust to force the Christian religion on them, since faith has to be voluntary.”—Howard P. Kainz

The Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1588-1645), made explicit a point found earlier in the tradition (e.g. with Robert Bellarmine): natural law can be valid and binding even if God does not exist (i.e., we need not presume a divine legislator). The “father of international law” grounded natural law in what he took to be our intrinsically social, altruistic nature as rational beings. In her recent book, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (2006), Martha C. Nussbaum states that she is attempting to “revive” the natural law philosophy of Grotius. Although Grotius applies natural law principles specifically to international relations, Nussbaum contends such principles suggest a broader or more “general template for thinking about domestic issues as well, although he does not so apply it: In On the Law of War and Peace (1625), Grotius gives an account of the basic principles of international relations, tracing it to the Greek and Roman Stoics (Seneca and Cicero above all). Put very simply, this approach holds that the way to begin, when we think about fundamental principles, is to think of the human being as a creature characterized both by dignity or moral worth and by sociability: by ‘an impelling desire for fellowship, that is for common life, not just of any kind, but a peaceful life, and organized according to the measure of his intelligence, with those who are of his kind.’ Grotius thinks of these features as deeply natural. We may, however, (with Cicero, who was agnostic in metaphysics), view these claims as freestanding ethical claims out of which one might build political conceptions of the person that can be accepted by people who hold different views in metaphysics and in religion. The general idea of Grotius’ natural law theory is that these two features of the human being, and their ethical value, suggest a good deal about the treatment to which every human being is entitled. Thus political theory begins from an abstract idea of basic entitlements, grounded in the twin ideas of dignity (the human being as an end) and sociability. It is then argued that certain specific entitlements from those ideas, as necessary conditions of a life with human dignity. [….] What I want to bring out about Grotius’ theory is that it begins with the content of an outcome, in the sense of an account of basic entitlements of human beings whose fulfillment is required by justice; if these entitlements are fulfilled, then a society (in this case, ‘international society’) is minimally just. The justification of the entitlement set is not procedural, but involves the intuitive idea [what for Aquinas would be a ‘self-evident’ idea] of human dignity and arguments to the effect that a certain entitlement is implicit in the idea of human dignity. Grotius explicitly argues that we must not attempt to derive our fundamental principles from an idea of mutual advantage alone; human sociability indicates that advantage is not the only reason for which humans act justly. Grotius evidently believes that a society based upon sociability and respect rather than upon mutual advantage can remain stable over time. [….] Notice that for Grotius the important kind of equality among persons is moral equality, which entails equality of respect and entitlement. Equality of powers plays no significant role in his argument. [….] Thus there is no analogue in his theory to Hume’s Circumstances of Justice or to the similar assumptions in the theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Kant. Wherever human beings are alive, there are already Circumstances of Justice between them, just because they are human and sociable.”—Martha C. Nussbaum

“Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) might be treated as the antitype to everything Grotius stands for, but such a presumption would clearly be mistaken. Indeed, what is most striking to someone who examines the social contract tradition beginning from the natural law tradition is how much these thinkers agree with Grotius and his fellow natural law thinkers. That is to say, Hobbes holds that there are natural moral laws that enjoin ‘Justice, Equity, Modesty, Mercy, and (in summe) doing to others, as wee would be done to’ (XVII). But he believes that these moral laws can never give rise to a stable political order, because they are ‘contrary to our naturall Passions, that carry us to Partiality, Pride, Revenge, and the like’ (ibid). Natural sociability can be observed among bees and ants, but in human beings there is no reliable sociability without coercion. Because our natural passions are fundamentally competitive and egoistic, with fear playing a central motivating role, the state of nature—the state of human relations in the absence of a strong coercive sovereign—is a state of war. Hobbes famously describes this state as a very miserable one indeed. In this state of war, there is a rough equality of power and resources. Where bodily strength is concerned, the weakest can kill the strongest by stealth; where mental capacity is concerned, this rough equality will be doubted only by those who have a ‘vain conceipt’ of their own wisdom. [….] Although Hobbes appears to think humans are moral equals as well (the natural law part of his theory suggests this strongly, at any rate), it is equality of power and ability that plays the salient role in his argument. Equality of ability plays a large role in making the state of nature as bad as it is: for it generates an equality of hope, which in turn spurns people on to further competition. Given this natural equality of power, our passions incline us to make peace with one another, so that we can get on with our lives in tolerable security. ‘The Passions that encline men to Peace, are Feare of Death; Desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a Hope by their Industry to attain them. And Reason suggesteth convenient Articles of Peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement’ (XIII). Hobbes does not portray his social contract as generating principles of justice. He speaks of justice in ways that are hard to reconcile, sometimes arguing that there is no justice where there is no coercive power (XV), and sometimes arguing that there are natural principles of justice, albeit ineffectual ones, given our natural passions. But the social contract does generate the fundamental principles of political society. The contract is a reciprocal agreement to transfer natural rights (XIV). Its object is for every man a ‘good to himselfe,’ for the group of human beings a mutual advantage, ‘that Is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of Warre’ (XVII).”—Martha C. Nussbaum

“…Hobbes is normally portrayed as the great defender of the position that moral laws are not laws properly so called, and ‘states could be bound by no higher law.’ This view is based on Hobbes’s claim that the relationship among States in international affairs is like the relationship of people in the state of nature, where the natural human condition can be described as the ‘war of very man against every man.’ As Hobbes says at the end of Chapter 30 of the Leviathan: ‘The Law of Nations and the Law of Nature, is the same thing. And every Sovereign hath the same Right, in procuring the safety of his People, that any particular man can have, in procuring his own safety.’ It is thus contended that Hobbes is the great defender of the use of violence, especially in situations where there is no sovereign, and most especially in the relations between States. It is often forgotten, though, that in the very paragraph where Hobbes speaks of the war that exists in any state of nature, he also declares that the first branch of the ‘first, and fundamental law of nature’ is ‘to seek peace and follow it.’ The more Hobbesian-sounding law of nature, ‘by all means we can, defend ourselves,’ is said to be only the second branch of the first law of nature. Hobbes has been often unfairly characterized as the defender of the right of States to use any means, including violence, in the relations with one another and with their own subjects. This is because in the state of nature, while individual persons have the right to do everything, this is not a reasonable position in which to remain.”—Larry May

“[W]hile it is always unreasonable to be first performer of the social covenant, it is also unreasonable not to want to join cooperative associations that could protect us. It seems reasonable to argue that if Hobbes rejects the desirability of first performance to the social contract, he should also be opposed to the attitudes of cooperation and trust that are essential to an international rule of law. Yet, in Chapter 14 of Leviathan, Hobbes indicates that the first performance of contracts is only conditionally irrational in the state of nature—that is, only when cooperation jeopardizes self-defense. But Hobbes also counsels that we should always pursue peace over war and that it is reasonable to go to great lengths to create a situation in which people feel bound to keep their promises and contracts. Indeed, Hobbes defines the law of nature as a dictate of right reason that counsels against the use of force and violence. Civil society, along with the domestic rule of law, is created so as to provide just the sort of mutual enforcement of agreements that will make the first performance reasonable. [….] A Hobbesian position on international law would support a systematic set of laws of nature that can be derived from the two-pronged principle: Seek peace where you can, and otherwise be ready to resort to war. What is lacking in Hobbes’s account, from a contemporary perspective, is a strong defense of human rights.”—Larry May

“Hobbes argues that the laws of nature are mere theorems for what ‘conduceth to the conservation and defense of themselves.’ For this reason, natural laws are not laws properly so-called: they are binding ‘in foro interno,’ not ‘in foro externo.’ Nonetheless, for Hobbesians, natural laws are no less binding in terms of their reasonable restraint on violent action because of their ‘in foro interno’ status. These secular laws bind in the conscience, and this is a true bindingness. But they do not bind as laws often do—that is, they do not bind because of the fear of punishment at the hands of the law-givers. Fear of the person who could punish creates a bindingness that is externally motivated . Yet the internally motivated bindingness of conscience, while weaker than such things as fear, is still a motivation for most people. And a Hobbesian can follow Hobbes in arguing that it is reasonable for humans to place restraints on what they can bargain away: ‘[T]here be some rights that no man can be understood by any words, or other signes, to have abandoned or transferred….’ Because Hobbes did not clearly recognize a category of moral rights that could be used to ground fundamental legal norms, and because he did not think that the laws of nature were laws properly so-called, he is normally seen as the first strict legal positivist rather than a defender of natural law theory. But it seems to me that the Hobbesian, although non-standard Hobbesian, position on international relations…blurs the distinction between positive and natural law theories in significant ways and sets the stage for a moral minimalism that lets in a minimal conception of natural law. For while the law of nature only bind in the conscience, they do still bind, and can form the basis for restraint of violence, even in the international arena. A secularized and minimalist natural-law theory is one that derives constraints on the use of violence from principles of human psychology and morality.”—Larry May

Please Note: A list of "References and Further Reading" will be appended to the third and final post in this series.

Virtue Ethics: An Introduction—Part 3

2009-10-14T16:06:00.030-04:00

‘Rules can be indispensable and yet indeterminate, they can be indeterminate and yet action-guiding. [….] Rules are not the enemy but the matrix of judgment.’—Onora O’Neill

‘…[T]he Aristotelian ancestry of the concept of (moral) virtue…traditionally consists—under one aspect—in a capacity for thinking correctly about how to respond to particular situations as they arise. (This is the capacity summed up in the concept of phronēsis, a “practical wisdom”—in Aristotle’s terms an “intellectual,” not a “moral virtue, but one that has to be understood by abstracting the common cognitive element from a range of different virtues that are genuinely moral: virtues consisting in the reliable disposition to deal in an appropriate, felicitous, or at least not contemptible way with the various sorts of circumstances attendant on human life.) The subject matter of this kind of correctness is not itself psychological: it relates, first, to the evaluatively significant features of situations and, second, to the identification and weighing of any reasons for action that these features may generate. [….] Virtue ethics, then, can be seen as aiming at the evaluation of the rational character ideal as it relates to practical rationality, and within practical rationality, to the proper appreciation of those (potentially action-guiding) values that lie beyond the range of ordinary self-interest.’— Sabina Lovibond

‘[W]e can begin with the idea…that the virtuous person has a distinctive way of seeing situations, persons, courses of action, or anything else that we regard as a logically appropriate object of moral evaluation. This way of seeing is objective in that those who become party to it are thereby alerted to genuine features of the world.’—Sabina Lovibond

‘Virtue ethics…offers a character ideal not just in the edifying sense (an example we should strive to imitate) but also in an epistemological one: it follows Aristotle in holding out a standard of correct judgement.’—Sabina Lovibond

‘[Phronēsis brings] together, on one hand, a general insight into what is of value or worth pursuing and, on the other, insight into the concrete possibility of realizing value in particular situations. People who have the quality of phronēsis will therefore excel in the construction of “practical syllogisms,” which we can think of as verbal representations of the thought expressed in an episode of purposive action. They will have a good eye for the evaluatively significant particular, and so will be among the active supporters of that structure of concern which makes such a particular “significant” (that is, potentially action-guiding) in the first place.’—Sabina Lovibond

‘[S]omeone who has been successfully initiated into a culture cannot make explicit all that she has thereby learned about the ethical—either about what counts as an instance of some concept figuring in the common ethical vocabulary, or about how to assess the relative “saliency” of different value considerations bearing on a particular case.’—Sabina Lovibond

‘Contrary to the common view, virtue ethics is not…starkly opposed to Kant and his followers on the issue of “moral motivation.” Virtue ethicists who rely on Aristotle’s philosophy of action rather than Hume’s need not, and should not, say that the virtuous agent acts “from desire” as opposed to reason, for…Aristotle and Kant share the non-Humean premise that we have two principles of movement, not just one. The virtuous Aristotelian agent does not characteristically act from the principle-of-movement-we-share-with-the-animals, as a child does, but from reason (logos) in the form of “choice” (prohairesis).’—Rosalind Hursthouse

‘[T]he territory of virtue is larger than that of action and tendency to action. Virtue involves and depends on appropriate emotions as well as actions. This is still true where the tendency to action is not an important aspect of the emotion, as in feeling sympathy for what deserves sympathy in the past, about which, in the most important respects, we cannot do anything. Even more importantly, virtue depends on motives and beliefs that shape actions. Claims about virtue and the virtues are not chiefly about the ethical classification and evaluation of actions performed, but rather about the ethical significance of what lies behind our actions.’—Robert Merrihew Adams

‘A view of virtue as a kind of goodness rather than a kind of rightness makes it easier to see how there can be quite different alternative ways of being genuinely virtuous.’—Robert Merrihew Adams

‘Moral virtue is excellence of moral character.’—Robert Merrihew Adams

‘One who enjoys the supreme benefit in loving the Good will have a motive to imitate the Good, and therefore to become as excellent as possible.’—Robert Merrihew Adams

‘Spirituality has long been considered to be a concept that is concerned in the first instance with activities rather than theories, with ways of living rather than doctrines subscribed to, with praxis rather than belief.’—John Cottingham

‘There were many Stoic treatises entitled “On Exercises,” and the central notion of askesis found for example in Epictetus, implied not so much “asceticism” in the modern sense as a practical programme of training, concerned with the “art of living.” Fundamental to such programmes was learning the technique of prosoche—attention, a continuous vigilance and presence of the mind (a notion, incidentally, that calls to mind certain Buddhist spiritual techniques). Crucial also was the mastery of methods for the ordering of the passions—what has been called the therapy of desire [after Martha Nussbaum’s book of that title]. The general aim of such programmes was not merely intellectual enlightenment, or the imparting of abstract theory, but a transformation of the whole person, including our patterns of emotional response [cf. the Greek term, metanoia].’—John Cottingham

‘[Aristotle] has quite a bit to say about what the virtue of phronēsis consists in, but he clearly is not confident that he can give a full account of it. …[H]e thinks that fundamentally it does not matter, because we can pick out persons who are phronetic in advance of investigating the nature of phronēsis. [As Zagzebski writes in a note, ‘Since Aristotle think that the virtue of phronēsis is both a necessary and sufficient condition of having the moral virtues, the truly phronetic person will always be paradigmatically good as well as paradigmatically wise.’] The phronimōs, can be defined, roughly, as a person like that, where we make a demonstrative reference to a paradigmatically good person. So Aristotle assume that we can pick out paradigmatic instances of good persons in advance of our theorizing.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘The function of an exemplar is to fix the reference of a “good person” or a “practically wise person” without any use of concepts, whether descriptive or nondescriptive.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘It is not implausible to think we are elevated by others who are more developed than ourselves in their striving for harmonious hierarchical development and for a valuable life. We are aided and encouraged along our own path of development by their striving for self-development and purer feeling; contrast the effects on us of encountering those with a sour mixture of one-upmanship, self-aggrandizement, desire to dominate or destroy, and other festering emotions, the effects of wending our way and bending our attention to their motivations and trajectories. [….] We all know people, I hope, who bring out the best in us, people in whose presence we would be embarrassed to speak or act from unworthy motives, people who glow. In their presence we feel elevated. We are pushed, or nudged further along a path of development and perfection; rather, we are inspired to move ourselves along, in the direction shown. [….] We want to find a way of living whereby our best energies and talents are poured out so as to speak to and improve the best energies and talents of others. We want to utilize our highest parts and energies in a way that helps others to flourish.’—Robert Nozick

‘First, the exemplar can serve as a standard of perfection against which the rest of us are measured. The exemplar may not be literally perfect, but he or she is close enough to determine what is good for us, on the Platonic interpretation. What is good for us in that sense is to imitate the exemplar. Second, human flourishing can be defined as the kind of life the exemplar desires or at which she aims.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘There are some individuals whose lives are infused by values, who pursue values with single-minded purity and intensity, who embody value to the greatest extent. These individuals glow with a special radiance. Epochal religious figures often have this quality. To be in their presence (or even to hear about them) is to be uplifted and drawn (at least temporarily) to pursue the best in oneself. There are less epochal figures as well, glowing with a special moral and value loveliness, whose presence uplifts us, whose example lures and inspires us.’—Robert Nozick

‘If all the concepts of a formal ethical theory are rooted in a person, then narratives and descriptions of that person are morally significant. It is an open question what it is about the person that makes him or her good.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘With respect to certain elements of human life, the terms of the novelist’s art are alert winged creatures, perceiving where the blunt terms of ordinary speech, or of abstract theoretical discourse, are blind, acute where they are obtuse, winged where they are dull and heavy.’—Martha C. Nussbaum

'[O]rdinary people—which means all of us—find [the] story mode of moral discourse [i.e., the form which includes parable, the play, short story, the narrative poem, the novel and the film] uniquely palatable and nutritious; it seems perfectly designed to engage our moral faculties. Our moral understanding and the story form seem fitted for one another. No rote learning is necessary: it all seems to flow quite naturally. This is the way our moral faculty likes to operate. It is almost effortless to take in a story, pleasant even, though the story may be replete with moral discourse. The novel, in particular, is a text of a very different kind from the scientific treatise. It is also very different from the philosophical text, which is what philosophers, naturally, are most comfortable with. Thus the novel form has tended to be ignored by moral philosophers: it is not, for them, the place to look for canonical expressions of ethical truth. Yet, quite obviously, it is for most educated people one of the prime vehicles of ethical expression. (Film plays a similar role for the less word-minded.) In reading a novel we have ethical experiences, sometimes quite profound ones, and we reach ethical conclusions, condemning some characters and admiring others. We live a particular set of moral challenges (sitting there in our armchair) by entering into the lives of the characters introduced. [....] Stories can sharpen and clarify moral questions, encouraging a dialectic between the reader's own experiences and the trials of the characters he or she is reading about. A tremendous amount of moral thinking and feeling is done when reading novels (Or watching plays and films, or reading poetry and short stories). In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that for most people this is the primary way in which they acquire ethical attitudes, especially in contemporary culture. Our ethical knowledge is aesthetically mediated.'—Colin McGinn

‘Religious exemplars are sometimes useless for modeling virtue in the messy situations that ordinary, less-than-virtuous persons encounter in modern life precisely because what makes the religious exemplars extraordinary is that they know how to avoid such messes. Some of us want to learn how to avoid the messes, but meanwhile, we have to face them and need exemplars of how to do that.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘Emotions easily become dispositions. Human beings develop patterns of emotional response in similar situations. These circumstance/emotion pairs become part of a person’s character. They express the way she emotionally fits into the world around her. An emotion is motivating because of the combination of its affective component and its intentionality. Affectivity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a state’s being motivating. It is necessary because affect is what gets us going. Hume is usually associated with this point, but so is Aristotle [in De Anima], and I believe they are right that no cognitive or purely representational state can do so.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘The concept of a motive arises within the discourse of giving reasons in both the sense of precipitating reasons and the sense of justifying reasons.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘Motive dispositions are constituents of traits of character. A trait of character is the combination of a motive-disposition and reliability in acting in a way that expresses the motive and reaching the end (if any) of the motive. The good ones are constitutive of virtues, and the bad ones are constitutive of vices.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

‘I have proposed that “good” is defined by direct reference. If so, it is plausible that “good life” is defined by direct reference as well. It is a life like that, which is to say that we know it when we see it. Describing lives is one of the functions of literature and biography. [….] If we defined the good life as a life like that, we do not do it independently of referring to persons whose lives we want to imitate. We imitate persons we regard as exemplars, and we imitate lives we regard as exemplary, and these are not independent activities. [….] So what is a flourishing life? I propose that it is determined by what the exemplars say it is. [….] The exemplars make the determination of good lives in the hard cases. If “good life” is defined by direct reference independently of a “good person,” then the life of a good person can come apart from a good life. However, if I am right, that is not the way these concepts work. The lives we want to imitate are lives of persons we want to imitate.’—Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

References and Further Reading:

Adams, Robert Merrihew. A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Aristotle (Roger Crisp, trans.). Nicomachean Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Athanassoulis, Nafsika. ‘Virtue Ethics,’ Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/v/virtue.htm
Baron, Marcia W. Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Berkowitz, Peter. Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Broadie, Sarah. Ethics with Aristotle. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Chong, Kim-chong. Early Confucian Ethics. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2007.
Crisp, Roger, ed. How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1996.
Crisp, Roger and Michael Slote, eds. Virtue Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Darwall, Stephen, ed. Virtue Ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Dent, N.J.H. The Moral Psychology of the Virtues. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
DePaul, Michael and Linda Zagzebski, eds. Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Engstrom, Stephen and Jennifer Whiting, eds. Aristotle, Kant and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Foot, Philippa. Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1978.
Foot, Philippa. Natural Goodness. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2001.
Galston, William. Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues and Diversity in the Liberal State. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Geach, Peter. The Virtues. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Goldie, Peter. On Personality. London: Routledge, 2004.
Gonzalez, Francisco J. Dialectic and Dialogue: Plato’s Practice of Philosophical Inquiry. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998.
Goodin, Robert E. Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Hanley, Ryan Patrick. Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values and Issues. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Hurka, Thomas. Virtue, Vice, and Value. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Hursthouse, Rosalind, ‘Virtue Ethics,’ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2003) Edward N. Zalta, ed. URL= http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2003/entries/ethics-virtue/.
Hursthouse, Rosalind, Gavin Lawrence and Warren Quinn, eds. Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Iyer, Raghavan. Parapolitics: Toward the City of Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Keown, Damien. The Nature of Buddhist Ethics. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Kupperman, Joel. Character. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Lear, Gabriel Richardson. Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Lovibond, Sabina. Ethical Formation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1985, After Virtue. London: Duckworth, 2nd ed., 1985.
McGinn, Colin. Ethics, Evil, and Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
McKinnon, Christine. Character, Virtue Theories, and the Vices. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 1999.
Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.
Norton, David L. Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.
Nozick, Robert. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Nussbaum, Martha C. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Nussbaum, Martha C. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
O’Neill, Onora. Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reasoning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Sherman, Nancy. Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Sim, May. Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Slote, Michael. From Morality to Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Slote, Michael. Morals from Motives. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Slote, Michael. The Ethics of Care and Empathy. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Sorabji, Richard. Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Swanton, Christine. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Taylor, Gabriele. Deadly Vices. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Tessman, Lisa. Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Van Norden, Bryan W. Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Wallace, James. Virtues and Vices. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.
Wierzbicka, Anna. What Did Jesus Mean? New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Wood, Allen E. Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Yu, Jiyuan. The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Zagzbeski, Linda Trinkaus. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. Divine Motivation Theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Image: Mending Clothes in the Early Morning Sun, © Smithsonian Institution

Virtue Ethics: An Introduction—Part 2

2009-10-11T14:22:00.015-04:00

The image is of "Noah's Ark" (ca. 1590), a painting attributed to Miskin. © Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. I chose this for the same reasons Amyn B. Sajoo selected it for the cover of his Muslim Ethics: Emerging Vistas (2004), as explained in the Preface to the book.

The mature, self-responsible, self-actualizing individual is first and foremost self-governing. The art and science of self-government is for virtue ethical theory the paradigm of good government (or governance). We might imagine, therefore, that the primary task of good government is to assure that the opportunities and occasions of such self-governance are generalized throughout society. Owing to the human condition and reflective of our natural sociability, not all of the preconditions of self-directed individuality can be self-supplied by individuals. It follows that if we are to hold individuals morally accountable for self-discovery and self-actualization, they are entitled to the necessary conditions of same. In short, some of the necessary (yet not sufficient) conditions of eudaimonistic moral aspiration are best thought of as social and political conditions, the responsibility for which is everyone’s:

To say that all are responsible is not necessarily to say that each is responsible, though. Still less is it to say that each is necessarily responsible for attempting to do whatever must be done himself. [….] [W]e typically—and rightly—suppose that, when responsibilities have not been allocated to anyone in particular within a group, the most that can be said is that each of them has an imperfect duty to perform at least some (but not necessarily all) of the acts that we might ideally wish be performed. The same general principle gives rise to much stronger implications at the level of the group as a whole, however. When no one in particular bears responsibility for performing some morally desirable actions, everyone collectively has a strong, perfect duty to see to that those things are done, within the limits of the capacities of the group as a whole to do so without undue sacrifice. [….] [The requirements of strong collective responsibility are, from the perspective of individual action, a coordination problem.] [T]he solution to such coordination problems is, of necessity, a responsibility peculiar to the group as a whole (Robert E. Goodin).

While in the past it was the polis or city-state that provided (through its ‘constitution’) a solution to the coordination problem represented by the generalization of the opportunities and occasions for human flourishing, today that solution is provided by the State. The State bears ‘ultimate responsibility for providing the coordination that is required in order for people to be able do the right thing’ (Goodin). Virtue ethics can appreciate the fact that individual moral responsibilities give rise to collective moral responsibilities that cannot be self-supplied by individuals: Where shared collective responsibilities are concerned, it is—by definition—everyone’s business what everyone else does. And this tautology is far from an empty one. It is everyone’s business, first and most simply, because it is a responsibility that everyone shares with everyone else. It is everyone’s business, second and more importantly, because, for anyone else’s contribution to be efficacious, each agent must usually play his part under the scheme that has been collectively instituted for discharging that shared responsibility. [….] Failure to discharge shared, collective responsibilities…undermin[es] in certain crucial respects other people’s moral agency itself. [….] That is what justifies us, pace libertarian principles, in forcing people to play their part in collective moral enterprises—so that others may play their part in them too [….] All of this is simply to say that, where there is a collective responsibility to coordinate individual behavior in pursuit of some morally important goal, it is legitimate for the collectivity to impose sanctions upon individuals in pursuit of that goal. Of course, it is perfectly true that not all coordination schemes require such enforcement…[for]people are sometimes prepared to play their assigned roles without any external sanctions whatsoever. So my argument here is not that we should necessarily always enforce coordination schemes. It is, rather, that we should always be prepared to enforce them as necessary (Robert E. Goodin).

Eudaimonistic ethics is a valuable voluntary option for individuals only if the necessary social and political conditions for it prevail.

The eudaimonist conception of human nature and the good life entail enhancing the quality of life through the acquisition of moral virtues and the proper development of character. As dispositions of character, the moral virtues are (1) personal utilities, (2) intrinsic goods (i.e., of intrinsic or inherent value), and (3) social utilities (because morally ‘other-regarding’). Utility is understood here in its lexical sense, meaning fitness for some purpose or worth to some end.

To have moral integrity implies one is dedicated to the task of harmoniously integrating otherwise separable, conflicting and often fragmented aspects of personhood—notably, cognitive and affective faculties, desires, interests, roles, life-shaping choices—into a self-consistent if not harmonious whole. In the Apology and the Crito Socrates exemplifies moral integrity, conducting himself in a manner that vividly and exquisitely exemplifies the very conduct for which he is condemned (i.e., living a philosophical way of life).

The problem of moral development is the problem of discovering the conditions necessary and sufficient for the manifestation of the virtues and the actualization of value(s). Each person is morally obligated, from the perspective of virtue ethics, to sincerely and persistently endeavor to actualize, conserve and defend those values he or she identifies with as the product of self-examination and the prerequisite of self-direction. The specific cluster of values so identified may (and usually does) vary from person to person and no one individual is capable of realizing all such values, although one might nonetheless recognize and appreciate all values (or value as such), especially insofar as these values have become identified with other individuals. Individual values identification brings in its wake the intrinsic and intangible rewards of personal fulfillment and flourishing. We are all alike with regard to values-potentialities by virtue of our human nature, but we differ, owing to genetic inheritance, upbringing, circumstance and so forth in the manner of values-identification and actualization. We might see this as the interdependence of value-actualizers, serving to confirm our inherently social nature as human beings. Such interdependence, furthermore, is capable of (has implications for) filling out the meaning of true community.

Identification with particular values is a sign of moral integrity and entails ‘living in truth to oneself,’ where ‘the self’ is fulfilled in the actualization, conservation and defense of value(s). Such identification is of a piece with self-knowledge and simultaneously a ‘knowledge of the good.’

Eudaimonistic individualism supports and strengthens both community and tradition, these being in the course of any life ‘received’ and then ‘chosen.’ Individual moral autonomy here has a necessary connection to the identification and appreciation of the ‘right’ tradition and the ‘right’ community. Recall that the individual self-realization of eudaimonistic ethics is inherently a social enterprise, as virtuous individuals are the vehicles for manifesting objective worth in the world. Being objective, the worth of such values actualization and expression is incomplete without the recognition, appreciation and utilization by appropriate others; that is to say, by those individuals who comprise an individual’s ‘natural community.’ The obligation of the individual to relate to this community is one with the moral obligation of self-actualization, an inherently non-egoistic enterprise. In the same way, and as explained by Norton, there is a ‘natural tradition’ and ‘natural meta-tradition’ for every person, for we have predecessors in the general endeavor of self-directed living, as well as predecessors in a particular chosen course of life. Thus to ‘choose oneself’ inevitably and invariably entails the deliberative choice of one’s meta-tradition and tradition. Prior to this choice, one’s meta-tradition and tradition are central to what Jürgen Habermas has called the ‘lifeworld,’ the individuated (if not idiosyncratic) backdrop of personal and collective identity that symbolize one’s share of the cultural inheritance, and about which one may be only dimly (less than fully consciously) aware, yet with which (through its language, concepts and categories, etc.) one makes one’s way about in the world. With the age of reason, as it were, one’s involuntary affiliations are subject to reasoned choice, to deliberate commitment and self-imposed obligations, as one identifies with that tradition that becomes the backbone of one’s worldview (while one’s worldview may contain elements from more than one tradition, the nature of philosophical and spiritual discipline or praxis, the student-teacher relationship, and the sheer depth and scope of major religious and philosophical traditions suggests it is neither wise nor prudent to identify with more than one tradition) . The ‘choice’ and commitment to community and tradition assume a developmental period of inquiry and exploration, experimentation and uncertainty, the eudaimonistic equivalent of moral adolescence. Moral maturity is evidenced when one comes to identify with one’s freely chosen community(ies) and tradition, when one comes to appreciate the absolutely fundamental pride of place one’s tradition plays in providing propitious conditions for individual and collective flourishing. The eudaimonistic approach to community and tradition hopes to avoid the pitfalls of New Age dilettantism, the follies of faddish eclecticism, and the vices of rootless cosmopolitanism while not succumbing to a Burkean-like veneration of traditions that fails to subject their contents to a rational or reasonable scrutiny (‘critique’). Eudaimonist communities are self-defining, being predicated on the individual’s moral autonomy and her unique articulation and realization of values for herself and others (i.e., the common good). In such a community, individuals interact with one another as ‘whole persons,’ being greater than the sum total of their social roles, their social interactions characterized by a conspicuous exemplification of caring and compassionate relations understood as universalizable forms of erōs (in the Platonic sense) and philia (in both Platonic and Aristotelian senses).

Understood at a sufficient level of abstraction, the shared values and beliefs within such a community are perfectly compatible with diverse lifestyles or life-plans; to use Norton’s example, not every Transcendentalist need live, like Thoreau, for two years in a cabin in the woods. Indeed, think of the variety of individuals who were Transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Sarah Margaret Fuller, by way of lustrous examples.

One learns from the aporetic dialogues, Socratic elenchus, and Platonic dialectic that knowledge of the virtues—and the Good for that matter—is neither simply the product of unreflective or untutored intuition (the ‘stuff’ of everyday experience), nor propositional knowledge (the claim of the Sophists; propositions ascribe predicates: qualities, properties or attributes, to an ‘object’), nor a combination thereof. (When we say that a person ‘knows that p,’ ‘believes that p,’ ‘doubts that p,’ ‘affirms that p,’ etc., ‘p’ stands for a proposition.) In Platonic thought, the fact that we have some ability to recognize instances and properties of a particular virtue, is due to our soul’s possession of (or prior acquaintance with)—however obscure or opaque in the present—the knowledge of that virtue, knowledge, if you will, of its essence. A propositional definition of virtue is partial and incomplete, incapable of expressing the true knowledge of virtue. However important in some contexts—after all, they express relative truths—propositional formulations should not be confused with the knowledge of virtue. One reason for this is that the knowledge of virtue is bound up with self-knowledge, and such knowledge effaces the boundaries between subject and object (for instance, one cannot communicate one’s self-knowledge to others). The knowledge of good (and evil) is directed more to, and evidence in, the ‘how’ of knowing rather than the knowledge ‘that:’ knowledge of the good means knowing how to be good (or how to do things well). As Francisco J. Gonzalez explains, the knowledge associated with the virtues and the Good is (1) a knowledge how (exemplified by Socrates himself in the course of a dialogue), (2) a self-knowledge insofar as it is ineluctably tied to the virtuous agent herself, and (3) non-propositional knowledge (hence the aporias, the Socratic method, and the philosopher’s ascent out of the Cave to a vision of the Agathon). Nonetheless, words, images (as allegories, metaphors, analogies, etc.) and propositions are dialectically essential to the dialogic process of evoking, remembering, or awakening that enables one to recognize, in some measure, that with which the soul has had prior acquaintance. In terms of the Platonic Cave allegory, the Good is the true cause of knowing and being known, and the knowledge of the Good is decidedly non-propositional. For example, our knowledge of beauty itself, as a ‘form’ or ‘idea,’ depends on illumination of the Good (the Sun) in the very way that our perception of beautiful sensible objects (as partial or instantiations or realizations of “beauty”) depends on the illumination of the sun. The Platonic ‘form’ of beauty is the ideal that all objects christened ‘beautiful’ must approximate or instantiate. Similarly, ‘we can know what a virtue is without reducing it to its imperfect and contingent instances only because our understanding of the good allows us to idealize’ (Gonzalez). Knowledge, on this account, is not simply or solely knowledge of how things are, but presupposes a desire to know how things (by nature) should be. Doxa, opinion or belief, does not become epistēmē or knowledge through syllogistic proofs or deductive justification (for the Good remains outside any system of deductive knowledge), as the former already presupposes the latter, its epistemic status owing to the fact that it is an implicit awareness of the (idealized) ‘form,’ albeit restricted to its incomplete instantiation or partial realization. Through dialectical ascent to the Good we learn to distinguish belief from true knowledge, to properly distinguish the ‘form’ from its instantiations, in Aristotelian terms, to distinguish the contingent from the necessary. ‘The soul can seek to understand what virtue is only because it already “divines” this in the words, propositions and images with which it deals’ (Gonzalez). So propositions are used in dialectic to attain an insight that transcends them (the Good, after all, is transcendent), an insight into that nature which they themselves presuppose but cannot adequately or definitively express. This insight is on the order of a ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ (not in the Russellian sense, which is an immediate kind of sensuous or empirical knowledge) but is more than that inasmuch as the virtuous individual exemplifies the proper praxis of a ‘knowing how,’ having artfully woven together insight, reason, and right living.

Plato is an objective idealist, for it is as a result of our insight into and reflection upon noumenal realities outside the Cave that we are able to properly re-order the concrete and phenomenal world of the political realm with that which is true and just, with that which is Good, thereby bringing the soul of man into proper harmony and proportion with the polis of men, and both in alignment with the macrocosm. The objective nature of morality assumes the integrity and intelligibility of a cosmic order permitting subjective views of the Good articulated by individuals capable of indefinite growth or perfectibility, relative views and formulations of the Good that are consciously distinguished from but inspired by absolute (non-propositional) truth and goodness (the Agathon).

After Plato and Aristotle, it is the Hellenistic philosophical schools in Greece and Rome that provide the clearest expression of virtue ethics. These schools practiced what Martha Nussbaum calls the ‘therapy of desire,’ as the Epicureans, Skeptics and Stoics—among others—'all conceived of philosophy as a way of addressing the most painful and pressing problems of human life. They saw the philosopher as a compassionate physician whose arts could heal many pervasive types of human suffering. They practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual technique dedicated to the display of cleverness but as an immersed and worldly art of grappling with human misery. They focused their attention, in consequence, on issues of daily and urgent human significance—the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression—issues that are sometimes regarded embarrassingly messy and personal by the more detached varieties of philosophy’ (Nussbaum). In Platonic terms, this represents the dialectical descent back into the Cave following the ascent to the Good, the ascending and descending dialectics complementing each other not unlike the way in which political theory is dialectically related to political praxis. The goal of philosophy remains human flourishing (or the relief and prevention of unnecessary suffering), and the methods of this medical ethical philosophy make use of logical rigor, precise reasoning, rational arguments, yet these are valuable only insofar as they prove their ‘protreptic’ worth, that is, insofar as they prove helpful in turning the Socratic interlocutors toward self-examination and philosophy, toward virtue and the good life. As with Socrates, the premises of a therapeutic argument are not designed in the first instance to logically necessitate an indubitable conclusion, but rather to turn an individual in a certain direction, to convert her to a certain course of action, the measure of success being practical and ethical, rather than purely formal or theoretical. The conception of the philosopher’s mission a medical one, ‘compassion and love of humanity [are] central features of it. Having understood how human lives are diseased, a philosopher worthy of the name—like a doctor worthy of that name—will proceed to cure them’ (Nussbaum). This medical philosophy must therefore challenge and change the psychology of the interlocutor, must delve deep into her inner world with appeals to memory and imagination, relying on the techniques of narrative and rhetoric, and calling upon the resources of friendship and community. It is a therapy of desire because our emotions often have a cognitive dimension that helps us better perceive and assess what is deeply significant or important in our lives. In Nussbaum’s words, ‘passions such as fear, anger, grief and love are not blind surges of affect that push and pull us without regard to reasoning and beliefs. They are, in fact, intelligent and discriminating elements of the personality that are very closely linked to beliefs and are modified by the modification of belief.’

While virtue ethics has social and political preconditions, as well as political implications and importance, it is perhaps best viewed as serving parapolitical purposes, where parapolitics ‘signifies the imaginative application of seminal ideas vitalizing political theory and practice; the elaboration of fundamental principles into paradigms of relationships among persons and between civil means and humane ends; the quest for political understanding and action based upon the ever-receding perspective of ideals rooted in the ethics, metaphysics and psychology of self-transcendence.’—Raghavan Iyer

Please Note: 'References and Further Reading' will be appended to the third and final part of this series.

Virtue Ethics: An Introduction—Part 1

2009-10-09T12:58:00.007-04:00

Virtue ethics
…begins with the question: ‘What is a worthy life for a human being?’
…is preoccupied with the moral growth and character of individuals.
…postulates, in its classical Greek version, four principal (or ‘cardinal’) moral virtues: wisdom, justice, temperance (or moderation, sōphrosynē), and courage. Of these four virtues, sōphrosynē is the most difficult to render adequately into English. It implies mastery of the art of self-control, excellence of character and soundness of mind; it further connotes the qualities of wisdom and eudaimonia. In Plato’s triune soul, it represents reason ruling over the ‘spirited’ and ‘appetitive’ parts. In social and political terms it suggests balance, proportionality, and judiciousness in action. Indeed, as with all the cardinal virtues, we might examine it in terms of thought, feeling, speech and action, for it (they) has (have) both intra- and interpersonal application. Christians, while acknowledging the significance of classical Greek virtues, recognize the following (cardinal) specifically theological virtues: faith, hope and love [agapē, also ‘charity,’ Gk. charis, L., cāritās]; other theological virtues include goodness, humility, chastity, and poverty. A Buddhist list of virtues would include wisdom, compassion, generosity, patience, perseverance, concentration and non-attachment. The Confucian cluster of virtues is relatively unique as well, although all of these lists might plausibly be said to have more than strong family resemblance to each other, as some virtues, notably wisdom and some form of self-control, are common to both religious and non-religious worldviews.
…is ‘agent-centered.’ While modern moral theories, like utilitarianism/consequentialism and deontology/Kantian ethics, are largely or conventionally ‘act(ion)-centered.’ It is certainly possible to imagine an ethical life that appreciates and integrates the virtues of all three ethical theories, even if that means giving (lexical) priority to one theory over the others. The leading notions of eudaimonist ethics are, typically, not those of obligation, duty and rule-following but rather goodness, worth and value, although the endeavor to be good or to realize value(s) is certainly conceived as obligatory. And indeed, there’s nothing that precludes obligations, duties and rules, imperatives and commands, from playing an indispensable role in virtue-ethical training and moral growth.

A virtue is a settled (i.e., reliable) disposition to act in a certain way. It expresses an ideal as much as an achievement.

The qualities of moral character, however fragile, are a (spiritual, ethical, cognitive and affective) developmental outcome. These virtues, as excellent qualities of character, are intrinsically valuable for those who exemplify them while at the same time being extrinsically valuable for others.

Virtue ethics is perfectionist or, better, perfectibilist (in the Godwinian sense): it demands of individuals a continuous moral growth, a ‘self-surpassing’ with no endpoint, and commitment to an askēsis familiar to Hellenistic ethics, Christianity, Islamic humanism and mysticism (Sufism), Indian religious worldviews, and some forms of Daoism. This perfectibilist ethics in the ‘art of living’ involves a training dedicated to techniques of mental attentiveness or presence of mind and focused on learning those methods necessary for ordering the passions or mastering the ‘therapy of desire.’

Because virtue ethics are dispositional, there’s a significant difference between a ‘virtuous act’ and ‘living virtuously.’ Cultivating a virtuous disposition entails habituating our emotions in particular ways as well as the exercise of practical reasoning (deliberative judgment, phronēsis) so as to learn how and why to act the right way in any given situation, as well as, more broadly, conduct our lives in such a way as to reveal our dedication to (the fundamental value of) the Good. Developmentally speaking, the virtuous person comes to learn how to intuitively and spontaneously respond to the moral dimensions of any circumstance or situation: ‘The better I get at deliberating and working out what to do, the less I will need to deliberate, for the more obvious it will become to me what the morally salient features of the situation in front of me are.’—Julia Annas

The virtues are rational states generated from repeated choices and the fruition of a developmental pattern or habit (in the Aristotelian sense) of consistent and coherent reasoning about the right and proper thing to do, the right and proper way to live. Acquiring a virtue is often compared (keeping in mind the analogy is not perfect) to acquiring a skill (e.g., becoming an artisan), or learning to play a musical instrument. The emulation of one’s betters enables on to eventually progress to the point where one acquires an understanding of what one is doing and has the ability to freely act (perform) on one’s own in a self-directed fashion. One’s parents, teachers, and peer group all affect the trajectory of ones’ character development, all can work with our natural endowments and tendencies in the arduous process of chiseling, cutting, shaping and polishing this raw material through habituation exercises and (formal and informal) educational practices. In the first instance, virtue ethics is beholden to the presence of virtuous agents as intimate role models fit for direct and indirect emulation.

‘One might think that the demands of morality conflict with our [enlightened] self-interest, as morality is other-regarding, but eudaimonist ethics presents a different picture. Human nature is such that virtue is not exercised in opposition to self-interest, but rather is the quintessential component of human flourishing. The good life for humans is the life of virtue and therefore it is in our interest to be virtuous. It is not just that virtues lead to the good life (e.g., if you are good you will be rewarded), but rather that a virtuous life is good because the exercise of our rational capacities and virtues is its own reward.’—Nafsika Athanassoulis

Human nature contains innate potentialities and capacities that can come to fruition with careful cultivation, proper habituation and education. The actualization or realization (or expression) of such potentialities and capacities is experienced as affording that sort of happiness, contentment or satisfaction that is peculiar to self-fulfilling conduct, otherwise known as eudaimonia or ‘human flourishing’ (living well).

Our innate excellences or virtues (aretaiē, s. aretē) come to fruition as a result of a proper orientation toward ‘the Good,’ for in our heart of hearts, we are lovers of the Good.

Eudaimonia, awkwardly translated as ‘happiness,’ but better rendered as ‘human flourishing,’ identifies the condition of living in truth to oneself, and requires a deliberate process of self-discovery and self-examination as integral to that form of self-knowledge that is part and parcel of virtuous living.

‘In an ethics of virtue there is no room for supererogation. There is no “floor” of minimal moral obligation for the agent to rise above; being a fully virtuous agent is an ideal for everyone. The development of virtue is a process that everyone starts and continues to go along, there are no levels that only moral heroes are supposed to reach. However, there is an analogue to the problem of supererogation: the thought that there is a distinction between the virtue that we all may be expected to achieve , and the virtue which only exceptional people may be expected to achieve.’—Julia Annas

‘The eudaimonistic handling of supererogation is discernable in the testimony of heroes and saints that their heroic or saintly conduct was perceived by them as their duty; yet at the same time, they typically do not universalize their heroic or saintly duties. [….] We can think of their situation on the analogy of the skilled swimmer who can accomplish a deep-water rescue that is beyond the capabilities of a novice and a non-swimmer. As moral development increases, so do moral responsibilities, and in recognition of this the hero or saint demands more of himself than he asks of other persons, and more of himself than he asked at prior levels of development. In sum, eudaimonism’s thesis is that some of what is obligatory at later stages of moral development is supererogatory…with respect to earlier stages, while moral development itself is a universal demand upon humankind.’—David L. Norton

For eudaimonistic individuation or self-actualization it is the responsibility of persons to actualize objective value(s) in the world. (David L. Norton)

Whatever one’s projects and commitments are (apart from specifically moral ones), they cannot be identified with character, but how someone maintains or fails to maintain commitments and responsibilities normally counts heavily toward character, as do the sorts of commitments and responsibilities someone takes on.’—Joel Kupperman

‘Strength of character is independent of goodness of character, in the deeply wicked people have strong characters. Indeed, a strong character is required to be either extremely good or deeply wicked.’—Joel Kupperman

‘A person’s character is a complex of innate dispositions, shaped by environmental influences, as well as traits acquired through habituation, reasoned assessments, and voluntary choices. A character is not something that comes ready-made and can just be put on. It is a complex individuating feature of persons and cannot be hived off from the person. It provides a source of continuity throughout a person’s life. Thus, characters are not to be thought of as simply a collection of moral virtues. Further, virtues, unlike characters, can be specified independently of persons who instantiate them. If two people have the virtue of courage, it is the same virtue they have. Characters are inextricably linked with the persons who create them.’—Christine McKinnon

‘We value traits, calling them virtues, because they are dispositions reliably to recognize what is of value or disvalue in the world, and reliably to respond appropriately in thought, feeling and actions. Intellectual virtues, such as wisdom, and moral virtues, such as benevolence and being just, have precisely this feature. We value wisdom because we value truth. We value benevolence because we value such things as security and comfort, and we disvalue cruelty because we disvalue such things as pain and needless suffering. And so on for justice and the other virtues. What you value in the world will determine what character traits you value in yourself and in others. Another way of putting what is at the heart of virtue is that a virtue is a trait that is reliably responsive to good reasons, to reasons that reveal values; it is reason-responsive in the right way.’—Peter Goldie

‘Character is fragile.’—Peter Goldie

‘People who exhibit quite different traits in different spheres of life are often seen as not typical, let alone successful, in their inner fragmentation, but as having pervasive failings of character and feeling and as susceptible to swings of judgment and action. A rigid distinction or disassociation between spheres of life is often maintained at great psychic cost, and frequently fails: the impartial severities of the “public” person carry over into intimate relationships; the indulgences or bullying of “private” life become the corruptions of “public” life. Habits of dishonesty or of callousness, of friendliness or of courtesy, are not easily kept within distinct departments of life; nor are sensitivity and lack of sensitivity to others. Without some very general inclusive traits of character, patterns of action, attitude, and feeling within spheres of life, even psychological stability, can fail. Inclusive principles of virtue are no more dispensable than inclusive principles of justice.’—Onora O’Neill

Please Note: A list of 'References and Further Reading' will be appended to the third and final post of this series.

Philosophy of Law & Legal Theory: A Basic Bibliography

2009-09-27T20:31:00.011-04:00

Our next bibliography in the Directed Reading series covers “philosophy of law and legal theory.”

Some of the titles are from the discipline of philosophy proper but I thought to include them owing to their demonstrative or possible relevance to philosophy of law and legal theory (Larry Solum’s references in many of the entries in his Legal Theory Lexicon are exemplary in this regard). Still, there is much one might have included that I’ve left out: for example, “neuroethics and law” has become an increasingly important subject area that raises questions (some novel, others long-standing) in part addressed with the conceptual resources provided by philosophy, yet I’ve not included works in the philosophy of mind or the philosophy of science (in this case, neuroscience) essential to treating such questions. As a basic or “select” bibliography, the list is not exhaustive, yet I trust it fairly represents the scope and substance of philosophy of law and legal theory, at least in some parts of the globe. And I welcome suggestions for possible additions to the next draft of this compilation.

I want to thank Larry Solum of the Legal Theory Blog as well as Matt Bodie and Dan Markel of PrawfsBlawg for posting earlier drafts of this list (with the latter, as part of the ‘Research Canons’ project). And I'm most grateful to Dennis Patterson (see too here) for awakening and shaping my intellectual interest in the philosophy of law and legal theory.

Political & Legal Obligation: An Introduction — Part 3

2009-09-25T08:00:00.010-04:00

But the contract, on which government is founded, is said to be the original contract; and consequently may be supposed too old to fall under the knowledge of the present generation. If the agreement, by which savage men first associated and conjoined their force, be here meant, this is acknowledged to be real; but being so ancient, and being obliterated by a thousand changes of government and princes, it cannot now be supposed to retain any authority. If we would say any thing to the purpose, we must assert, that every particular government, which is lawful, and which imposes any duty of allegiance on the subject, was, at first, founded on consent and a voluntary compact. But besides that this supposes the consent of the fathers to bind the children, even to the most remote generations, (which republican writers will never allow) besides this, I say, it is not justified by history or experience, in any age or country of the world.

Almost all the governments, which exist at present, or of which there remains any record in story, have been founded originally, either on usurpation or conquest, or both, without any pretence of a fair consent, or voluntary subjection of the people. When an artful and bold man is placed at the head of an army or faction, it is often easy for him, by employing, sometimes violence, sometimes false pretences, to establish his dominion over a people a hundred times more numerous than his partizans. He allows no such open communication, that his enemies can know, with certainty, their number or force. He gives them no leisure to assemble together in a body to oppose him. Even all those, who are the instruments of his usurpation, may wish his fall; but their ignorance of each other's intention keeps them in awe, and is the sole cause of his security. By such arts as these, many governments have been established; and this is all the original contract, which they have to boast of.

The face of the earth is continually changing, by the encrease of small kingdoms into great empires, by the dissolution of great empires into smaller kingdoms, by the planting of colonies, by the migration of tribes. Is there any thing discoverable in all these events, but force and violence? Where is the mutual agreement or voluntary association so much talked of? [….]
It is in vain to say, that all governments are or should be, at first, founded on popular consent, as much as the necessity of human affairs will admit. This favours entirely my pretension. I maintain, that human affairs will never admit of this consent; seldom of the appearance of it. But that conquest or usurpation, that is, in plain terms, force, by dissolving the ancient governments, is the origin of almost all the new ones, which were ever established in the world. And that in the few cases, where consent may seem to have taken place, it was commonly so irregular, so confined, or so much intermixed either with fraud or violence, that it cannot have any great authority.

My intention here is not to exclude the consent of the people from being one just foundation of government where it has place. It is surely the best and most sacred of any. I only pretend, that it has very seldom had place in any degree, and never almost in its full extent. And that therefore some other foundation of government must also be admitted.—David Hume, “Of the Original Contract”

1) ‘A state is legitimate only if it claims to impose on its subjects a general, at least prima facie, duty to obey its law and its subjects have a general prima facie duty not to interfere with their enforcement.
2) There may be no general, even prima facie duty to obey the laws of a state, not even those of a just state; but there is a general prima facie duty not to interfere with the administration of the laws of a just state.
3) Legitimate states are not only possible, but actual.’—William A. Edmundson

‘Law changes our moral situation in at least three ways: (1) Legal judgments and enactments can alter the balance of reasons and thereby create new moral duties; (2) legal judgments and enactments provide a mechanism for enforcing moral duties, whether preexisting or flowing from legal acts; and (3) sufficiently just states impose a general duty not to interfere with their administrative prerogatives. These powers are enough to constitute a robust conception of legitimate political authority. This is the only sense in which political obligation and legitimacy need to be correlated.’—William A. Edmundson

‘In fact, because there is a degree of parallelism between political and epistemic authority, a legitimate political authority gives citizens good reasons to believe they ought to obey its laws, just as legitimate scientific authorities give the laity good reasons to believe what they say about the workings of the world. [….] Good reasons needn’t be sufficient or conclusive reasons, whether the issue is scientific or political authority. What those good reasons are, in the case of political authority, is not always made vividly clear. In many instances, the best that can be said of a law that is a legislative compromise (as most are) is that important but conflicting ends and interests were weighed and balanced, and general conformity with the means specified by the law in question is better than the alternatives (including the alternative of doing nothing).’—William A. Edmundson

‘Anyone who claims that there are actions that are both illegal and justified surely need not be thereby asserting that it is right generally to disobey all laws or even any particular law. It is surely not inconsistent to assert both that indiscriminate disobedience is indefensible and that discriminate disobedience is morally right and proper conduct. Nor, analogously, is it at all evident that a person who claims to be justified in performing an illegal action is thereby committed to giving endorsement to the principle that the entire legal system ought to be overthrown or renounced. At a minimum, therefore, the appeal to “But what if everyone did that?” cannot by itself support the claim that one has an absolute obligation to obey the law—that disobeying the law can never be truly justified.’—Richard A. Wasserstrom

‘We should comply with and do our part in just and efficient social arrangements for at least two reasons: first of all, we have a natural duty not to oppose the establishment of just and efficient institutions (when they do not yet exist); and second, assuming that we have knowingly accepted the benefits of these institutions and plan to continue to do so, and that we have encouraged and expect others to do their part, we also have an obligation to do our share when, as the arrangement requires, it comes our turn. Thus, we often have both a natural duty as well as an obligation to support just and efficient institutions, the obligation arising from our voluntary acts while the duty does not.’—John Rawls

‘…[T]he principles to which social arrangements must conform, and in particular the principles of justice, are those which free and rational men would agree to in an original position of equal liberty, and similarly, the principles which govern men’s relation to institutions and which define their natural duties and obligations are the principles to which they would consent when so situated. It should be noted straightway that in this interpretation of the contract theory the principles of justice are understood as the outcome of a hypothetical agreement. They are principles which would be agreed to if the situation of the original position were to arise.’—John Rawls

‘…[E]ven under just constitutions unjust laws may be passed and unjust policies enforced. Some form of the majority principle is necessary but the majority may be mistaken, more or less willfully, in what it legislates. In agreeing to a democratic constitution (as an instance of imperfect procedural justice) one accepts at the same time the principles of majority rule. Assuming that the constitution is just and that we have accepted and plan to continue to accept its benefits, we then have both an obligation and a natural duty (and in any case the duty) to comply with what the majority enacts even though it may be unjust. In this way we become bound to follow unjust laws, not always of course, but provided the injustice does not exceed certain limits. [….] The right to make laws does not guarantee that the decision is rightly made, and that while the citizen submits in his conduct to the judgment of democratic authority, he does not submit his judgment to it. And if in his judgment the enactments of the majority exceed certain bounds of injustice, the citizen may consider civil disobedience.’ Civil disobedience is understood to be ‘public, nonviolent, and conscientious acts contrary to law usually done with the intent to bring about a change in the policies or laws of the government. [….] In this way it manifests a respect for legal procedures. Civil disobedience expresses disobedience to law within the limits of fidelity to law and this feature of it helps to establish in the eyes of the majority that it is indeed conscientious and sincere, that it really is meant to address their sense of injustice. Being completely open about one’s acts and being willing to accept the legal consequences of one’s conduct is a bond given to make good one’s sincerity, for that one’s deeds are conscientious is not easy to demonstrate to another or even before oneself.’—John Rawls

‘Morality is that system of conduct which is determined by a consideration of the greatest general good: he is entitled to the highest moral approbation whose conduct is, in the greatest number of instances, or in the most momentous instances, governed by views of benevolence, and made subservient to public utility. In like manner the only regulations which any political authority can be justly entitled to enforce are such as are best adapted to public utility. Consequently, just political regulations are nothing more than a certain select part of moral law. The supreme power in a state ought not, in the strictest sense, to require anything of its members that an understanding sufficiently enlightened would not prescribe without such interference.’—William Godwin

‘…[A] man may be right to comply with the commands of the government under whose de facto authority he finds himself. But none of this settles the question of legitimate authority. This is a matter of the right to command, and of the correlative obligation to obey the person who issues the command. [….] Obedience is not a matter of doing what someone tells you to do. It is a matter of doing what he tells you to do because he tells you to do it. Legitimate, or de jure, authority thus concerns the grounds and sources of moral obligation.’—Robert Paul Wolff

‘The defining mark of the state is authority, the right to rule. The primary obligation of man is autonomy, the refusal to be ruled. It would seem, then, that there can be no resolution of the conflict between the autonomy of the individual and the putative autonomy of the state. In so far as a man fulfills his obligation to make himself the author of his decisions, he will resist the state’s claim to have authority over him. That is to say, he will deny that he has a duty to obey the laws of the state simply because they are the laws. In that sense, it would seem that anarchism is the only political doctrine consistent with the virtue of autonomy. Now, of course, an anarchist may grant the necessity of complying with the law under certain circumstances or for the time being. He may even doubt that there is any real prospect of eliminating the state as a human institution. But he will never view the commands of the state as legitimate, as having a binding moral force.’—Robert Paul Wolff

‘…[A]n organization that is just, effective, and legitimate (in the sense of being singled out as the salient organization for this territory) has eo ipso a claim on our allegiance. Though popular consent may be implicated in its justice, its effectiveness, or its legitimacy, the moral requirement that we support and obey such an organization is not itself based on any promise that we have made.’—Jeremy Waldron

‘It is the contention that the idea of individual self-development is contradicted by the idea of government. This is so, it is held, because government is coercive power (perhaps “the monopoly of legitimate coercive power”) over individuals, whereas self-development implies the voluntary initiative of individuals and therefore cannot be coerced. But this argument mistakenly supposes that whatever characterizes self-development must likewise characterize its conditions. To say that self-development is voluntary is to say that it is optional. If it has a necessary condition, then self-development is an option only when these conditions prevail. And this is to say that for the option of self-development to exist, supply of its necessary conditions is mandatory. To be sure, the supply of the necessary conditions that are to be self-supplied by individuals fall within the option of self-development and is not mandatory. But conditions that must be furnished to individuals by external agencies do not partake of the voluntary character of self-development. Recognition that their presence is mandatory commensurates the provision of them with the coercive nature of government, while respecting the voluntary nature of individual self-development: individuals remain free to avail themselves, or not, of the provided conditions. It is mandatory, of course, that individuals contribute (notably through taxes) to the government that provides the necessary conditions that individuals cannot self-supply, but this is a different issue, namely the balancing of liberty with autonomy, where “liberty” is understood “negatively,” as freedom from interference, but “autonomy,” as “self-direction,” entails positive conditions of enablement.’—David L. Norton

References and Further Reading:

Cudd, Ann, “Contractarianism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/contractarianism/
Dagger, Richard, “Political Obligation,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/politicalobligation/
Dworkin, Ronald M. Law’s Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Edmundson, William A. Three Anarchical Fallacies: An Essay on Political Authority. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Edmundson, William A., ed. The Duty to Obey the Law: Selected Philosophical Readings. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
Estlund, David M. Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Finnis, John. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Freeman, Samuel. Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Gans, Chaim. Philosophical Anarchism and Political Disobedience. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Gaus, Gerald F. Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Godwin, William (Isaac Kramnick, ed.). Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1976 (1793).
Goodin, Robert E. Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Green, Leslie. The Authority of the State. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1988.
Green, Leslie. “Legal Obligation and Authority,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2004/entries/legal-obligation/
Greenawalt, Kent. Conflicts of Law and Morality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Hardin, Russell. Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Hobbes, Thomas (A.P. Martinich, ed.). Leviathan. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002 (1651).
Hume, David. “Of the Original Contract,” in Alasdair, MacIntyre, ed., Hume’s Ethical Writings. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979.
Klosko, George. The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.
Klosko, George. “Presumptive Benefit, Fairness, and Political Obligation,” in Edmundson, ed. (above): 193-212.
Kraut, Richard. Socrates and the State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Locke, John (P. Laslett, ed.). Two Treatises of Government. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988 (3rd ed., 1698).
Norton, David L. Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
Pennock, J. Roland and John W. Chapman, eds. Political and Legal Obligation. New York: Atherton Press, 1970/New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction, 2006.
Philp, Mark. Godwin’s Political Justice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Philp, Mark. “William Godwin,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2006/entries/godwin/
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, revised ed.
Rawls, John. “The Justification of Civil Disobedience,” in Edmundson, ed. (above): 49-62.
Raz, Joseph. The Authority of Law. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Raz, Joseph. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1986.
Sartorius, Rolf. “Political Authority and Political Obligation,” in Edmundson, ed. (above): 143-156.
Shapiro, Ian. “The Social Contract,” in his The Moral Foundations of Politics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003: 109-150.
Simmons, A. John. Moral Principles and Political Obligations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Simmons, A. John. Justification and Legitimacy: Essays on Rights and Obligations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Waldron, Jeremy. “Special Ties and Natural Duties,” in Edumundson, ed. (above): 271- 299.
Wellman, Christopher Heath and A. John Simmons. Is There a Duty to Obey the Law? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Wasserstrom, Richard A. “The Obligation to Obey the Law,” in Edmundson, ed. (above): 17-47.
Wolff, Robert Paul. In Defense of Anarchism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998 ed.
Wolff, Robert Paul. “The Conflict between Authority and Autonomy,” in Edmundson, ed. (above): 63-74.

Political & Legal Obligation: An Introduction — Part 2

2009-09-25T04:16:00.003-04:00

‘I am not an anarchist because I believe political states provide vitally important benefits that are not to be secured in their absence, and they supply these benefits without requiring their subjects to make unreasonable sacrifices. This defense of statism openly depends upon the truth of three claims: (1) political states supply crucial benefits, (2) these benefits would be unavailable in the absence of political states, and (3) states can render their services without imposing unreasonable costs upon those they coerce.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘Put plainly, for the vast majority of us, life without political order would be a horribly perilous environment.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘I say that the benefits of citizenship are greater than the costs because what each of us gains from everyone else’s compliance with the state’s law is much more valuable than what we lose by having to obey these laws ourselves.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘I want to insist that a state is justified in nonconsensually coercing me (even if I am not benefited and/or would genuinely prefer to take my chances in the state of nature) because the state’s uniform coercion over all those within its territorial borders is the only way for it to rescue any of us from the perils of the state of nature. My account of political legitimacy is nonpaternalistic, then, because it insists that my state justifiably coerce me only because this coercion is a necessary and not unreasonably burdensome means of securing crucial benefits for others.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘[There are] certain roles which groups necessarily have to play in coordinating behavior. First, where coordination does not emerge naturally, coordination schemes can function as coordination schemes at all only if they are embraced by the group whose behavior is to be coordinated by them. This, in turn, means that someone must intentionally have engineered the coordination scheme, and everyone must act intentionally in compliance with it. That is to say, coordination requires everyone to “track” everyone else’s behavior. [….] Second, even where there is no need to organize a coordination scheme formally, the group as a whole still has a residual supervisory function. This entails, in the first instance, a responsibility to undertake regular monitoring. It entails, in the second place, a responsibility to be prepared to organize a more formal coordination scheme should the less formal ones fail to perform satisfactorily. Thus, groups must be at least ultimately responsible for coordination. The reason is the same as the reason why I must be responsible for rescuing the drowning swimmer—no one else can, or will. Coordination is, by its nature, our collective enterprise. No other agent, individual or group, can do it for us. [….] If individuals are rightly to be excused from achieving the good through their own isolated actions, pleading “It’s not my job,” then the collectivity must be empowered and enjoined to do whatever is necessary to eliminate those barriers that block morally efficacious individual behavior. The collectivity must be empowered to make it someone’s job, if anyone is allowed to plead, “It’s not my job.” [….] Where there is some collective agency in existence…there is no problem in ascribing group responsibilities…directly to it. The state is preeminent among such organized collectivities. Our paradigm of moral agency is essentially individualistic, to be sure. The natural person is our model. Only those things that are possessed of clear values, goals and ends, and capable of deliberation upon and intentional implementation of action plans in pursuit of them—can count as agents at all, for moral purposes. It is only to them that moral injunctions can be addressed. The limits of their capacity for effective action mark the limits of our moralizing. But artificially created agencies are agents, too. Most especially, the state is a moral agent, in all the respects that morally matter. It, like the natural individual, is capable of embodying values, goals and ends; it, too, is capable (through its legislative and executive organs) of deliberative action in pursuit of them. The state is possessed of an internal decision mechanism (a constitution, and the processes that it prescribes) that mimics perfectly, for these purposes, that which is taken as the defining feature of moral agency in the natural individual. [….] [It is the state that] must be ultimately responsible, because the state is the preeminent organization among them in any given territory. Other organizations exist by leave of—and at least in one (legalistic) sense, only under a charter from—the state. [….] Where shared, collective responsibilities are concerned, it is—by definition—everyone’s business what everyone else does. And this tautology is far from an empty one. It is everyone’s business, first and most simply, because it is a responsibility that everyone shares with everyone else. It is everyone’s business, second and more importantly, because, for anyone else’s contribution to be efficacious, each agent must usually play his part under the scheme that has been collectively instituted for discharging that share responsibility. [….] The failure of any one party to abide by the coordination scheme will typically undermine, to some greater or lesser extent, the success of the scheme as a whole, thereby preventing other moral agents from successfully discharging their assigned duties. It is for this reason that we may rightly force people to do their duties to schemes for discharging collective responsibilities—even if we may not so enforce isolated, individual responsibilities.’—Robert E. Goodin

‘To the extent that the avoidance of injustice is a moral imperative, the establishment of coordinating institutions is a moral imperative.’—Jeremy Waldron

‘…[G]oods provided by cooperation can be termed “excludable” or “nonexcludable.” Excludable goods can provided to some members of a given community while being denied to specified others. [….] Nonexcludable goods, in contrast, cannot be denied to specified others. Frequently, if provided at all, they must be provided to all members of some community. Familiar examples of nonexcludable goods are the rule of law, relief from various forms of pollution and other environmental hazards, and national defense. These goods and others like them that also depend on the cooperation of large numbers of people are often referred to as public goods. The two main features of public goods are (a) that they are nonexcludable and (b) that they depend upon the cooperation of numbers of people. [….] Because of the benefits provided by [schemes providing nonexcludable goods], individuals are no longer able to decide whether or not to receive them. Accordingly, the contractarian implications of the receipt of such benefits are blurred.’—George Klosko

‘The principle of fairness is able to generate obligations to contribute to nonexcludable schemes if certain conditions are met. The main conditions are that the goods in question must large be (i) worth the recipients’ effort in providing them and (ii) “presumptively beneficial.” [….] [B]y “presumptively beneficial” goods I mean something similar to Rawls’s primary goods, “things that every man is presumed to want.” [….] Because obligations to support cooperative schemes are grounded upon a broad principle of the fair distribution of burdens and benefits, they hold only as long as the costs and benefits of the scheme in question are fairly distributed. We can say that a scheme in which this condition is met passes the “fair distribution” test and so is “fair.” Because of the complexity of the distribution of benefits and burdens in actual schemes, however, it may be difficult to say whether any given scheme passes this test. Similarly, it may be difficult to say at exactly what point the pattern of distribution in a given scheme moves from being fair to being unfair. But it is clear that at the point at which a given scheme begins to fail the test, individuals’ obligation to it are dissolved.’—George Klosko

‘It is not merely that political coercion is a possible solution to the harmful circumstances of the state of nature; it is the only viable solution because only coordination will solve the problems, and there is no way to ensure sufficient coordination without coercion. [….] The point…is that the perils that prevail in the absence of political society are distinct insofar as they create what is fundamentally a coordination problem: There is no way other than general compliance with a single authoritative set of rules to secure peace and protect basic moral rights.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘…[W]e all have a defeasible moral duty to follow a just law validly enacted by a legitimate regime.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

‘Socrates’ duty not to try to destroy the Laws is explained…by appeal to the moral quality of the Law or the impartial moral values that this legal obedience will bring about or advance—values such as happiness [eudaimonia] or justice. Our general duties to advance or respect such values by…upholding the institutions that embody and promote them, are what explain the wrongness of Socrates’ proposed escape on all three readings of the opening “destruction argument.” The theories that in this way ground our duty to obey the law in one (or more) of the general moral duties that we have as persons and moral equals are…[called] Natural Duty theories.’—Christopher Heath Wellman

The Natural Duty argument:
Premise 1: Government (political society, law) is necessary for human beings. Among other things, this premise assumes the hypothetical ‘state of nature’ is synonymous with coordination and assurance problems and thus without coercive law and government the human condition would be aptly characterized, in Hobbes’ words, as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’
Premise 2: All persons have a natural moral duty to (one or more):
(a) maximize goodness in the world (e.g., eudaimonia, perfection…)
(b) perform necessary tasks to which they are well suited and support and obey those who perform necessary tasks
(c) respect and defer to those who do necessary tasks by occupying positions of authority
(d) do and promote justice
(e) assist those in peril
Conclusion 1: Therefore all persons have a natural moral duty to:
(a) leave the state of nature and join together with others to create government and law where none exist; and
(b) support and comply with stable and existing governments and law within their jurisdiction (provided they are reasonably just)
Conclusion 2: All persons have a moral duty to obey domestic law. (Christopher Heath Wellman)

Philosophical anarchism denies ‘that legitimate states are possible and actual. “There are,” as John Simmons tersely puts it, “no morally legitimate states.” The position is called philosophical anarchism to distinguish it from the more notorious political anarchism popularly associated with bombs and beards, Sacco and Vanzetti. Philosophical anarchists are not committed to bringing down the existing political order and even concede that “government may be necessary and that certain governments ought to be supported.” But their support rests on general moral reasons that deny the state any right to rule or any presumption that there is moral reason to act as its laws require.’—William A. Edmundson

‘Where what morality requires and what the law requires converge, the philosophical anarchist’s practical recommendation will coincide with that of the state.’—William A. Edmundson

Please Note: References and Further Reading will be appended to the third and final part of this series.

Political & Legal Obligation: An Introduction — Part 1

2009-09-24T05:00:00.010-04:00

This is the first of three parts:

‘There are at least three central areas of disagreement in attempts to solve the problem [of political obligation], as a result of the various answers which have been given to three basic questions: To whom is this obligation owed? What is the obligation an obligation to do? How does one come to be under the obligation?’—A. John Simmons

‘The two most fundamental questions of political theory are: (1) Under what conditions, if any, may those in power claim to rule as a matter of moral right? This I shall call the question of political authority, and (2) Under what conditions, if any, may the citizen lie under a prima facie moral obligation to obey those who claim political authority? This I shall call the question of political obligation.’—Rolf Sartorius

‘Many people feel…that they are tied in a special way to their government, not just by “bonds of affection,” but by moral bonds’—A. John Simmons

‘Political obligation is closely linked with the obligation to obey some legitimate political authority, and insofar as that authority operates through laws, with the obligation to obey the law.’—A. John Simmons

‘Obligations are limitations on our freedom, impositions on our will, which must be discharged regardless of our inclinations.’—A. John Simmons

‘…[W]e can make sense of the idea of a legitimate political authority without positing the existence of a general duty to obey the law.’—William A. Edmundson

‘Philosophers have long understood the duty to obey the law to be a prima facie duty rather than an absolute duty…. A prima facie duty is, one might say, a candidate duty, one that will in fact be one’s duty unless a conflicting duty or other moral consideration outweighs it.’—William A. Edmundson

‘Thus there are at least three different positions which might be taken concerning the character of the obligation to obey the law or the rightness of disobedience to the law. They are (1) One has an absolute obligation to obey the law; disobedience is never justified. (2) One has an obligation to obey the law but this obligation can be overridden by conflicting obligations; disobedience can be justified, but only by the presence of outweighing circumstances. (3) One does not have a special obligation to obey the law, but it is in fact usually obligatory, on other grounds, to do so; disobedience to law often does not turn out to be unjustified.’—Richard A. Wasserstrom

‘Whatever else they do, all legal systems recognize, create, vary and enforce obligations. This is no accident: obligations are central to the social role of law and explaining them is necessary to an understanding of law’s authority and, therefore its nature. Not only are these obligations in the law, there are also obligations to the law. Historically, most philosophers agree that these include a moral obligation to obey, or what is usually called “political obligation.” Voluntarists maintained that this requires something like a voluntary subjection to law’s rule, for example, through consent. Non-voluntarists denied this, insisting that the value of a just and effective legal system is itself sufficient to validate law’s claims.’—Leslie Green

A moral obligation…
1. is a moral requirement generated by the performance of some voluntary act (or omission); furthermore, unlike duties, obligations require special performance
2. is owed by a specific person (the “obligor”) to a specific person(s) (the “obligee[s[“), whereas duties are owed by all persons to all others
3. simultaneously generates a correlative right: ‘By incurring an obligation to do A, the obligor creates for the obligee a special right to the obligor’s performance of A.’
(after A. John Simmons)

‘Obligations correlate with the moral version of what are called in legal jargon “rights in personam.”’ Duties ‘correlate with “rights in rem,” that is, rights which are held against all other people.’—A. John Simmons

We might speak of four kinds or principles of obligation: the principles of ‘fidelity’ and ‘consent’ (1 & 2), which are obligations deliberately undertaken, like promising or consenting; and the principles of ‘fair play’ and ‘gratitude’ (3 & 4) or principles of reciprocation, being understood as obligations generated by the receipt or acceptance of benefits. (after A. John Simmons)

‘The mere fact that an institution (or set of institutions) exists, and that its rules apply to me, will not bind me to that institution. If I am morally bound to obey the law or to be a good citizen, the ground of this bond will be independent of the legal and political institutions in question.’—A. John Simmons

‘…[T]he first recorded argument for political obligation, that of Socrates in Plato’s Crito, suggested at least three distinct ground for political obligations: that the State was a good State and thus owed obedience, that the State was a benefactor to be repaid, and that Socrates had tacitly consented to the State’s authority over him and so became bound.’—A. John Simmons

‘Consent theory has provided us with a more intuitively appealing account of political obligation that any other tradition in modern political theory. At least since Locke’s impassioned defense of the natural freedom of men born into nonnatural states, the doctrine of personal consent has dominated both ordinary and philosophical thinking on the subject of our political bonds. The heart of this doctrine is the claim that no man is obligated to support or comply with any political power unless he has personally consented to its authority over him; the classic formulation of the doctrine appears in Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. There is no denying the attractiveness of personal consent (and of the parallel thesis that no government is legitimate which governs without the consent of the governed).’—A. John Simmons

‘Consent theories of political obligation are the foundation from which the political works of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau were constructed. Consent theory characteristically advances four central theses:
1. Man is naturally free. This is normally a claim about a “natural right” man is supposed to possess. In calling a right “natural,” we mean, first, that it is possessed by all men (or “all rational agents,” or “all agents capable of choice”) solely by virtue of their humanity (or “rational agency” or “power of choice”). And second, a “natural right” is not the product of some voluntary act, as other sorts of rights are. The natural right in question here is the “natural right of freedom”….
2. Man gives up his natural freedom (and is bound by obligations) only by voluntarily giving a “clear sign” that he desires to do so. "For while the individual gives up his natural freedom (to some extent) in authorizing the government to direct his actions, he allegedly both gains in the ‘new freedom’ available under the rule of law, and also, since his authorization ‘makes the government’s acts his own,’ does not really lose any freedom of action to begin with."
3. The method of consent protects the citizen from injury by the state. According to one version of the claim: "the method of consent guarantees that a government which has been consented to can never (logically) injure (in the classical sense of ‘wrong’) the citizen, provided it is acting ‘intra vires’ (within the terms of the citizen’s consent). Consent theorists also recognize limits on the sanctity of personal consent, for example, those captured in the doctrine that certain rights are "inalienable."
4. The state is an instrument for serving the interests of its citizens. The consent theorists demonstrate a preference for individual commitment over unavoidable benefits or protection of interests. [….] Thus, consent theory maximizes protection of the individual’s freedom to choose where his political allegiance will lie. Political obligations cannot be inherited or unwittingly acquired. And a deliberate undertaking, of which promising is the paradigm, is the only ground of obligation which allows this feature to be present in a theory of political obligation.’—A. John Simmons

Implied consent might be construed in at least three different ways:
1. ‘An act may be such that it leads us to conclude that the actor was in an appropriate frame of mind to, or had attitudes which would lead him to, consent if suitable conditions arose. This conclusion may be expressed by the conditional: if he had been asked to (or if an appropriate situation had otherwise arisen), he would have consented.’
2. ‘An act may be such that it “commits” the actor to consenting.’
3. ‘An act may be such that it binds the actor morally to the same performance to which he would be bound if he had in fact consented. I may do something which is not itself and act of consent, but which nonetheless binds me as if I had consented; after performing the act, it would be wrong (ceteris paribus) for me not to do those things which my actual consent would have bound me to do.’—A. John Simmons

‘The problem is that consent, whether express or tacit, must be fully voluntary in order to bind. Hume was surely correct when he remarked that it was simply not a live option for the average citizen to leave the country of his birth and native language and to abandon his friends, family, employment, and cultural ties. As an account of the putative foundation of political obligation it thus seems to me that any theory of an implied social contract must fail.’—Rolf Sartorius

‘Almost every member of every community that has existed on the face of the earth might reasonably say, “I know of no such contract as you describe; I never entered into any such engagements; I never promised to obey; it must therefore be an iniquitous imposition to call upon me to do something under pretense of a promise I never made.” The reason a man lives under any particular government is partly necessity; he cannot easily avoid living under some government, and it is often scarcely in his power to abandon the country in which he was born: it is also partly a choice of evils; no man can be said, in his case, to enjoy that freedom which is essential to the forming of a contract, unless it could be shown that he had a power of instituting, somewhere, a government adapted to his own conceptions.—Government in reality, as has abundantly appeared, is a question of force, and not of consent. It is desirable that a government should be made as agreeable as possible to the ideas and inclinations of its subjects; and that they should be consulted, as extensively as may be, respecting its construction and regulations. But, at last, the best constituted government that can be formed, particularly for a large community, will contain many provisions that, far from having obtained the consent of all its members, encounter even in their outset a strenuous, though ineffectual, opposition.—From the whole of these reasonings it appears that, in those measures which have the concurrence of my judgement, I may reasonably be expected to co-operate with willingness and zeal; but, for the rest, my only justifiable ground of obedience is that I will not disturb the repose of the community, or that I do not perceive the question to be of sufficient magnitude to authorize me in incurring the penalty.’—William Godwin

‘It has appeared that the most essential of those rights which constitute the peculiar sphere appropriate to each individual, and the right upon which every other depends as its basis, is the right to private judgement. [….] To a rational being there can be but one rule of conduct, justice, and one mode of ascertaining that rule, the exercise of his understanding. [….] The universal exercise of private judgement is a doctrine so unspeakably beautiful that the true politician will certainly feel infinite reluctance in admitting the idea of interfering with it.’—William Godwin

A. John Simmons concludes his powerfully argued and influential book, Moral Principles and Political Obligations (1979), with the claim that ‘Most citizens have neither political obligations nor “particularized” political duties, and they will continue to be free of such bonds barring changes in political structures and conventions.’ And yet, he argues, we still have a duty to support just government (as well as a duty to fight injustice). Moreover, the ‘absence of political obligations in a political community…will not entail that disobedience or revolution is justified.’

Please Note: References and Further Reading will be appended to Part 3.

Facts & Values, Truth & Objectivity

2009-09-22T18:36:00.021-04:00

Value means goodness as an end: that which is worthwhile or desirable for its own sake.

We choose or determine that there be values, that they exist, but their character is independent of us.

To judge that something is good is to judge that it is properly valued.

Values are "intrinsic goods" that by their nature enhance a life, that make a fundamental and positive contribution to human flourishing (eudaimonia).

'Values are to be brought about, maintained, saved from destruction, prized and valued (where this last is some descriptive term of psychology plus the theory of action).’ We ought to ‘care about, accept, support, affirm, encourage, protect, guard, praise, seek, embrace, serve, be drawn toward, be attracted by, aspire toward, strive to realize, foster, express, nurture, delight in, respect, be inspired by, take joy in, resonate with, be loyal to, be dedicated to, celebrate values. With the very highest values, we are to be elevated by, enthralled by, love, adore, revere, be exalted by be awed before, find ecstasy in these highest values.’—Robert Nozick

‘We are born, as social animals, into a cultural world of value and disvalue—a world where certain things matter, as harmful, dangerous, comforting, warming and so on. If we have been brought up in the right way, we will be disposed reliably to recognize these values and disvalues and to respond as we should: as Aristotle says: “at the right times, about the right things, towards the right people, and in the right way.” And if this happens, then we will care in the right way about the things that matter: not simply caring for justice and kindness as if for some vague idea, but caring that particular people in particular circumstances are treated as they should be—with fairness, honesty and consideration, so that we get angry (justifiably angry) if this doesn’t happen. It will become “second nature” to have these responses, so that our own interests narrowly conceived, are quite naturally far from being our only consideration in deciding what to do. Being disposed reliably to be motivated by specifically other-regarding moral considerations is part of what it is to have a virtue.’—Peter Goldie

‘There are some individuals whose lives are infused by values, who pursue values with single-minded purity and intensity, who embody value to the greatest extent. These individuals glow with a special radiance. Epochal religious figures often have this quality. To be in their presence (or even to hear about them) is to be uplifted and drawn (at least temporarily) to pursue the best in oneself. There are less epochal figures as well, glowing with a special moral and value loveliness, whose presence uplifts us, whose example lures and inspires us.’—Robert Nozick

‘Most philosophers who have written on the question of what has intrinsic value have not been hedonists; like Plato and Aristotle, they have thought that something besides pleasure and pain has intrinsic value. One of the most comprehensive lists of intrinsic goods that anyone has suggested is that given by William Frankena (1908-1994). It is this: life, consciousness, and activity; health and strength; pleasures and satisfactions of all or certain kinds; happiness, beatitude, contentment, etc.; truth; knowledge and true opinions of various kinds, understanding, wisdom; beauty, harmony, proportion in objects contemplated; aesthetic experience; morally good dispositions or virtues; mutual affection, love, friendship, cooperation; just distribution of goods and evils; harmony and proportion in one’s own life; power and experiences of achievement; self-expression; freedom; peace, security; adventure and novelty; and good reputation, honor and esteem, etc. (Presumably a corresponding list of intrinsic evils could be provided.) Almost any philosopher who has ever addressed the question of what has intrinsic value will find his or her answer represented in some way by one or more items on Frankena’s list. (Frankena himself notes that he does not explicitly include in his list the communion with and love and knowledge of God that certain philosophers believe to be the highest good, since he takes them to fall under the headings of “knowledge” and “love.”) One conspicuous omission from the list, however, is the increasingly popular view that certain environmental entities or qualities have intrinsic value (although Frankena may again assert that these are implicitly represented by one or more items already on the list). Some find intrinsic value, for example, in certain “natural” environments (wilderness untouched by human hand); some find it in certain animal species; and so on.’—Michael J. Zimmerman

‘Values enter into the very definition of what a fact is; the realm of facts cannot be defined or specified without utilizing certain values. Values enter into the process of knowing a fact; without utilizing or presupposing certain values, we cannot determine which is the realm of facts, we cannot know the real from the unreal.’—Robert Nozick

Rational acceptability in the natural sciences depends ‘on such cognitive virtues as “coherence” and “functional simplicity,” show[ing] that at least some value terms stand for properties of the things they are applied to, and not just for feelings of the person who uses the terms.’—Hilary Putnam

‘[F]act, (or truth) and rationality are interdependent notions. A fact is something that it is rational to believe, or, more precisely, the notion of a fact (or a true statement) is an idealization of the notion of a statement that it is rational to believe. [….] [B]eing rational involves having criteria of relevance as well as criteria of rational acceptability, and…all of our values are involved in our criteria of relevance. The decision that a picture of the world is true (or true by our present lights, or “as true as anything is”) and answers the relevant questions (as well as we are able to answer them) rests on and reveals our total system of value commitments. A being with no values would have no facts either. The way in which criteria of relevance involves values, at least indirectly, may be seen by examining the simplest statement. Take the sentence “The cat is on the mat.” If someone actually makes this judgment in a particular context, then he employs conceptual resources—the notions “cat,” “on,” and “mat”—which are provided by a particular culture, and whose presence and ubiquity reveal something about the interests and values of that culture, and of almost every culture. We have the category “cat” because we regard the division of the world into animals and non-animals as significant, and we are further interested in what species as given animal belongs to. It is relevant that there is a cat on the mat and not just a thing. We have the category “mat” because we regard the division of inanimate things into artifacts and non-artifacts as significant, and we are further interested in the purpose and nature a particular artifact has. It is relevant that it is a mat that the cat is on and just something. We have the category “on” because we are interested in spatial relations. Notice what we have: we took the most banal statement imaginable, “the cat is on the mat,” and we found that the presuppositions which make this statement a relevant one in certain contexts include the significance of the categories animate/inanimate, purpose, and space. To a mind with no disposition to regard these as relevant categories, “the cat is on the mat” would be as irrational as “the number of hexagonal objects in this room is 76” would be, uttered in the middle of a tête-à-tête between young lovers. Not only do very general facts about our value system show themselves in our categories (artifacts, species name, term for a spatial relation) but, our more specific values (for example, sensitivity and compassion), also show up in the use we make of specific classificatory words (“considerate,” “selfish”). To repeat, our criteria of relevance rest on and reveal our whole system of values.’—Hilary Putnam

‘There are a variety of reasons why we are tempted to draw a line between “facts” and “values”—and to draw it in such a way that “values” are put outside the realm of rational argument altogether. For one thing, it is much easier to say, “that’s a value judgment,” meaning, “that’s just a matter of subjective preference,” than to do what Socrates tried to teach us: to examine who we are and what our deepest convictions are and hold those convictions up to the searching test of reflective examination.’—Hilary Putnam

‘The moral life is not intermittent or specialised, it is not a peculiar or separate area of our existence…. [W]e are always deploying and directing our energy, refining it or blunting it, purifying it or corrupting it…. “Sensitivity” is a word which may be in place here…. Happenings in consciousness so vague as to be almost non-existent can have “moral colour”… (“But are you saying that every single second has a moral tag?” Yes, roughly.)’—Iris Murdoch

Because our states of consciousness and action presuppose perceptual (or epistemic) discrimination, any such discrimination is subject to moral evaluation.

‘The moral point is that “facts” are set up as such by human (that is moral) agents. Much of our life is taken up by truth-seeking, imagining, questioning. We relate to facts through truth and truthfulness, and come to recognise and discover that there are different modes and levels of insight and understanding. In many familiar ways, various values pervade and colour what we take to be the reality of our world; wherein we constantly evaluate our own values and those of others, and judge and determine forms of consciousness and modes of being.’—Iris Murdoch

'There is a value cost to immoral behavior: The immoral life is a less valuable life than the moral one. ‘The immoral person thinks…his immoral behavior costs him nothing. But that is not true; he pays the cost of having a less valuable existence. He pays that penalty, though he doesn’t feel it or care about it.’—Robert Nozick

'Emotions...involve value judgments about important things, judgments in which, appraising an external object as salient for our own well-being, we acknowledge our neediness and incompleteness before parts of the world we do not fully control. [....] Emotions...view the world from the point of view of my own scheme of goals and objects, the things to which I attach value in a conception of what it is for me to live well.'—Martha C. Nussbaum

'[E]udaimonism is not ethical subjectivism. It is true that it exhibits great concern for the subject—the self of each person—for example, by insisting upon the importance of self-knowledge and self-development. But the self is here conceived as a task, a piece of work, namely the work of self-actualization. And self-actualization is the progressive objectivizing of subjectivity, ex-pressing it into the world. [....] For eudaimonistic individualism, it is the responsibility of persons to actualize objective value in the world.'—David L. Norton

The self-fulfilling life of each person requires more values than he or she personally realizes and is dependent upon others for these values. [...] Accordingly, the meaning of "autonomy," if the term is to be applicable, must be consistent with interdependence. ...[I]t means, not total self-sufficiency, but determining for oneslef what one's contributions to others should be and what use to make of the values provided by the self-fulfilling lives of others.'—David L. Norton

‘A person who tracks bestness, who seeks value, will have to formulate her own package of value realization; she cannot simply “maximize” on the value dimension. This package need not be an aggregate, it can pattern and unify the diverse values it realizes. In thus patterning value, the person may emulate a previous pattern exhibited by a value exemplar, or described in some tradition, or she may create a new complex unity, sculpting the value contours of her life in an original, perhaps unique way. Some significant part of the vividness of characters we read about in fiction, history, or religious texts or scriptures is their individuality in (valuable) value contouring.’—Robert Nozick

‘[T]he perfectionist aspiration to self-development…to a harmoniously hierarchically ordered being [cf. here Plato’s distinguishing and ranking of the rational, spirited and appetitive parts of the soul]…[should not] be interpreted as a denigration of what one hopes to improve on or of others not so intent. If we are to strive for a state judged higher, then something also must be ranked lower: to judge something as less than the best need not involve any elitist contempt for it.’—Robert Nozick

'One difficulty in discussions of value is that the descriptive language we have for what we value or disvalue is broad and inexact, and the terms that are readily available turn out to fit cases that differ significantly in value. Is a life marked by selfishness undesirable, or inferior to one that is less selfish but otherwise similar? Nietzsche, in a section of Thus Spake Zarathustra, ironically entitled "On the Three Evils," points out, both for selfishness and for two other examples, that generalizations fail in the face of the variety of instances. Indeed, we can see that the 'selfishness' of a creative, work-absorbed artist might be much more positive than the 'selfishness' of a petty profiteer or a family tryrant. One reason that Nietzsche's preoccupation with value is pursued in oblique utterances is that anything resembling a formula can be misapplied by someone who is insensitive to significant differences among cases. Camus makes a related point when, after presenting some models of very good kinds of lives, he observes that a recommendation of the models does not include assurance that imitations of the models are to be esteemed. Nuances matter. The difficulty with language points toward one of the ways in which context, especially the context provided by an individual life, matters in the assessment of value. [....] The importance of context to value exacerbates what is in any case a serious problem. If, as Aristotle says, every subject has its due degree of precision, and that of ethics is not great, it must be admitted that the precision generally to be expected in discussion of value is very low indeed. There are two strategies that a philosopher who believes in, and wishes to convey, a hierarchy of values can pursue in an attempt to mitigate this. One is not to rely entirely on general characterizations of the hierarchy of values, but instead to fill in meaning by presenting a concrete (and highly contextual) example of someone whose life was marked by the highest values. Thus, much of the meaning of Plato's ethics is in the portrait of Socrates that emerges, the students who compiled The Analects of Confucius pursued much the same strategy. A second strategy is to indicate one's hierarchy of values in a way that allows for elements of irony and a pervasive sense of the personal and elusive nature of what is being talked about. This is the strategy of Nietzsche and Camus.'—Joel J. Kupperman

‘[People] differ in temperament, interests, intellectual ability, aspirations, natural bent, spiritual quests, and the kind of life they wish to lead. They diverge in the values they have and have different weightings for the values they share. (They wish to live in different climates—some in mountains, plains, deserts, seashores, cities, towns.) There is no reason to think that there is one community which will serve as ideal for all people and much reason to think that there is not. [….] For each person, so far as objective criteria of goodness can tell (insofar as these exist), there is a wide range of very different kinds of life that tie as best; no other is objectively better for him than any other one in this range, and no one within the range is objectively better than any other.’—Robert Nozick

‘[Moral values] refer to things we consider worth cherishing and realizing in our lives. Since judgments of worth are based on reasons, values are things we have good reasons to cherish, which in our well-considered views deserve our allegiance and ought to form part of the good life. Universal moral values are those we have good reasons to believe to be worthy of the allegiance of all human beings, and are in that sense universally valid or binding. Moral values are meant for beings like us and intended to regulate our lives. Reasons relevant to a discussion of them are therefore of several kinds, such as our assessment of our moral capacities, what we take to be our basic tendencies and limits, the likely consequences of pursuing certain values, their compatibility, the ease with which they can be combined into a coherent way of life, and the past and present experience of societies that lived by them.’—Bhikhu Parekh

'[O]rdinary people—which means all of us—find [the] story mode of moral discourse [i.e., the form which includes parable, the play, short story, the narrative poem, the novel and the film] uniquely palatable and nutritious; it seems perfectly designed to engage our moral faculties. Our moral understanding and the story form seem fitted for one another. No rote learning is necessary: it all seems to flow quite naturally. This is the way our moral faculty likes to operate. It is almost effortless to take in a story, pleasant even, though the story may be replete with moral discourse. The novel, in particular, is a text of a very different kind from the scientific treatise. It is also very different from the philosophical text, which is what philosophers, naturally, are most comfortable with. Thus the novel form has tended to be ignored by moral philosophers: it is not, for them, the place to look for canonical expressions of ethical truth. Yet, quite obviously, it is for most educated people one of the prime vehicles of ethical expression. (Film plays a similar role for the less word-minded.) In reading a novel we have ethical experiences, sometimes quite profound ones, and we reach ethical conclusions, condemning some characters and admiring others. We live a particular set of moral challenges (sitting there in our armchair) by entering into the lives of the characters introduced. [....] Stories can sharpen and clarify moral questions, encouraging a dialectic between the reader's own experiences and the trials of the characters he or she is reading about. A tremendous amount of moral thinking and feeling is done when reading novels (0r watching plays and films, or reading poetry and short stories). In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that for most people this is the primary way in which they acquire ethical attitudes, especially in contemporary culture. Our ethical knowledge is aesthetically mediated.'—Colin McGinn

‘The moral point is that “facts” are set up as such by human (that is moral) agents. Much of our life is taken up by truth-seeking, imagining, questioning. We relate to facts through truth and truthfulness, and come to recognise and discover that there are different modes and levels of insight and understanding. In many familiar ways, various values pervade and colour what we take to be the reality of our world; wherein we constantly evaluate our own values and those of others, and judge and determine forms of consciousness and modes of being.’—Iris Murdoch

Truth is objective; it is good to believe what is true; truth is a goal worthy of human inquiry; and truth is worth caring about for its own sake.‘Thinking about why we should care about truth tells us two things about it: first, that truth is, in part, a deeply normative property—it is a value. And second, this is a fact that any adequate theory of truth must account for. In light of this fact, I suggest that truth, like other values, should be understood as depending on, but not reducible to, lower-level properties. Yet which properties truth depends on or supervenes on may change with the type of belief in question. This opens the door to a type of pluralism: truth in ethics may be realized differently than in physics.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘Truth is a property that is good for beliefs to have. Since propositions are the content of beliefs, and it is the content of a belief and not the act of believing that is true, we can also say that truth is the property that makes a proposition good to believe.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘Objectivity calls for putting one’s idiosyncratic predilections and parochial preferences aside in forming one’s beliefs, evaluations and choices. It is a matter of proceeding in line not with one’s inclinations but with the dictates of impartial reason. The universality of reason must be recognized: What is rational for one person to do, to believe, or to value will thereby also of necessity be equally rational for all the rest of us who might find ourselves in the same circumstances. For rationality is inherently “objective:” it does not reconfigure itself to meet the idiosyncratic predilections of particular individuals. To be sure, objectivity will have to take context into account, seeing that different individuals and groups confront very different objective situations. Rationality is universal, but it is circumstantially universal—and objectivity with it. It is a matter of what “any of us” would do in one’s place. [….] The contextuality of good reasons can be reconciled with the universality of rationality itself by taking a hierarchical view of the process through which the absolutistic (and uniform) conception of ideal rationality is thought to bear context differently, on the resolution of concrete cases and particular situations.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘The content of an assertion is intrinsically related to a conceptual scheme. [….] In effect, propositions, true or false, are implicitly indexed to some conceptual scheme or schemes. [….] Facts are internal to conceptual schemes, or ways of dividing the world into objects, among which there can be equally acceptable alternatives. [….] [S]uch metaphysical pluralism is consistent with realism about truth.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[I]n taking concepts to be flexible and fluid like, the pluralist is not saying that we are confused about our concepts. Rather, the point is that concepts are not absolutely determinate or closed; they do not have a fixed use in every possible situation. This does not imply, however, that no concepts have determinate uses in all actual situations. Some concepts may be perfectly determinate in actual situations, but not in all possible situations. [….] For the pluralist, concepts are…flexible; they are subject to possible extension in the fact of unforeseen circumstances. Hence, there can be irresolvable disagreements over how to apply any concept. In a sense, concepts are therefore always possibly vague in a nonpejorative sense; they have what Waismann called “open texture.”’—Michael P. Lynch

‘Minimally speaking, a proposition is true in the realist sense when things are as that proposition says they are. Some aspect of objective reality must simply be a certain way. If it is, then the proposition is true; if not, the proposition is false. The truth of the proposition hinges on the world alone, not on our thought about the world. In short, realism about truth minimally implies two commitments: (a) truth is an authentic property that some propositions have and others lack, and (b) the concept of truth is, in Putnam’s words, “radically non-epistemic;” that is, whether a proposition is true (in most cases) does not depend on what I or anyone else believes or knows. [….] According to correspondence accounts of truth, there are three metaphysical aspects to any true proposition: the proposition itself (the truth bearer), its correspondence (the truth relation), and the reality to which it corresponds (the truth marker). [….] In other words, propositions are true when they correspond to the facts.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[T]here is no logical incoherence in supposing that facts and propositions are relative to conceptual schemes and that truth is the correspondence of (relative) propositions with (relative) facts.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘All truths are relative, yes, but our concept of truth needn’t be a relative concept.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[T]he conditions under which a proposition is true are partly determined by the conceptual scheme in which the proposition is expressed. But what makes a proposition true is not its relation to a scheme but whether or not the conditions in question obtain. For a claim to be true (or false), the conditions must be relative to a scheme. Yet the reason that the claim is true is not because it is relative to a scheme (as the truth relativist must hold); it is true because it is the case.[….] A fact, in the human sense, is simply what is the case.’—Michael P. Lynch

‘[A] uniformitarian absolutism at the high-generality level of “what rationality is” is perfectly consonant with a pluralism and relativism at the lower level of concrete resolutions regarding “what is rational” within the contextual setting of particular cases. The ruling principles of rationality never uniquely constrain their more specific circumstantial implementations. At each step along the way we repeat the same basic situation: delimitation, yes; determination, no. The sought-for reconciliation between the universalistic absoluteness of rationality and the variability and relativity of its particular rulings is thus provided for by the consideration that the absolutism of principles operates at the highest level of the hierarchy of rational development, while there is ever “slack” and variability as one moves towards the lowest level of concrete determinations. The variability and relativity of good reasons at the level of our actual operations can indeed be reconciled with the absolutism of rationality itself by taking a hierarchical view of the process through which the absolutistic conception of ideal rationality is brought to bear on the resolution of concrete circumstances and particular situations.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘In characterizing a belief as objectively rational we are certainly not claiming that there is a universal consensus about it. No matter how sensible a contention on any significant issue may be, there is an ever-present prospect that some people—perhaps even many—will nevertheless quite defensibly and appropriately dissent from it. The validity of our judgments is emphatically not destroyed by finding that there are people who reject them.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘We have to come to terms with epistemic realities, which include: 1) the diversity in people’s experiences and cognitive situations; 2) the variation of “available data;" 3) the underdetermination of facts by data (all too frequently insufficient); 4) the variability of people’s cognitive values (evidential security, simplicity, etc.); and 5) the variation of cognitive methodology and the epistemic “state of the art.” Such factors—and others like them—make for an unavoidable difference in the beliefs, judgments, and evaluations even of otherwise “perfectly rational” people.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘If we are going to be rational we must take—and have no responsible choice but to take—the stance that our own standards (of truth, value, and choice) are the appropriate ones. Be it in employing or in evaluating them, we ourselves must see our own standards as authoritative because this, exactly, is what it is for them to be our own standards—their being our standards consists in our seeing them in this light. We have to see our standards in an absolutistic light—as the uniquely right appropriately valid ones—because this is what is at issue in their being our standards of authentic truth, value, or whatever. To insist that we should view them with indifference is to deny us all prospects of having any standards at all. Commitment at this level is simply unavoidable. Our cognitive or evaluative perspective would not be our perspective did we not deem it rationally superior to others.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘What people think to be true is clearly something that is person-variable and thus relative. We can take the line that “What is true?” is a question that different people can quite appropriately answer differently because of the interpersonal variability of available information. But what truth is all about is something that is…altogether definite and fixed. The evidentiation at issue in the epistemic sector is doubtless interpersonally and intercommunally variable. But variability on the side of information does not make for variation on the side of concepts.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘[W]e can (quite appropriately) disagree about what it is that is true and what good reasons are at hand, while yet maintaining an (appropriately) absolutistic view of what truth and good reasons are. The ideal nature of actual truth and of actual good reasons that inhere in our (defining) conceptions of inquiry establishes a clear limit to the implications of cognitive relativism. To re-emphasize: a pluralistic contextualism of potential basis-diversity is altogether compatible with an absolutistic commitment to our own basis. One can accept the prospect of alternatives as available to the community at large without seeing more than one of them appropriate for oneself. One can combine a pluralism of possible alternatives with an absolutistic position regarding ideal rationality and a firm and reasoned commitment to the standards intrinsic to one’s own position. We ourselves are bound to see our own (rationally adopted) standards as superior to the available alternatives—and are, presumably, rationally entitled to do so in light of the cognitive values we in actual fact endorse. The crux of the pluralism issue lies in the question of just what it is that one is being pluralistic about.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘The immense success of quantitative techniques in the mathematicizing-sciences has misled people into thinking that quantification is the only viable road to objectively cogent information. But think—is it really so? Where is it written that numbers alone yield genuine understanding—that judgment based on structural analysis or qualitative harmonization is unhelpful and uninformative, so that where numbers cannot enter, intelligibility flies away? (Modern mathematics itself is not all that quantitative, since it is deeply concerned with issues such as those of topology and group theory that deal with structures in a way that puts quantitative issues aside.) [….] To be sure, to acknowledge the limits of measurability is not to downgrade the whole process, let alone to propose its total abandonment. It is precisely because we are well advised to push the cause of measurement as far as we legitimately can that we need to be mindful of the line between meaningful measurement and meaningless quantifications. That we cannot draw this line better than seems to be the case at present is—or should be—a proper cause for justified chagrin. But for present purposes the salient point is that quantification does not carry measurability in its wake nor necessarily indicate objectivity. Polls quantify public opinion, but need they indicate anything objective? The sales price of entries in an art auction are perfectly good quantities, but they reflect no more than the elusive fashion and passion of the moment. There is nothing about quantities as such to indicate that they measure anything objective. Three lessons emerge: (1) While measurement requires quantification, quantification is not sufficient for measurement. (2) Quantification is neither necessary to nor sufficient for objectivity. (3) Actual measurement, while indeed sufficient for objectivity, is not necessary for it. The long and short of it is that the linkage between objectivity and quantification is more distant and more complex than is commonly envisioned.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘Any adequate worldview must recognize that the ongoing process of scientific inquiry is a process of conceptual innovation that always leaves various facts about the things of this world wholly outside the cognitive range of the inquirers of any particular period.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘[F]ailures of objectivity—wishful thinking, self-deception, bias-indulgence, and similar departures from the path of reason—may be convenient and even, in some degree, psychologically comforting. But they are ultimately indefensible. For if it is a viable defense of a position that we want, it is bound to be a rational one. In the final analysis, “Why be rational?” must be answered with the only rationally appropriate response: “Because rationality itself obliges us to be so.” In providing a rational justification of objectivity—and what other kind would we want?—the best we can do is to follow the essentially circular (but nonviciously circular!) line of establishing that reason herself endorses taking this course. The only validation of rationality’s recommendations that can reasonably be asked for—and the only one worth having—must lie in the consideration of the systemic self-sufficiency of reason. Reason’s self-recommendation is an important and necessary aspect of the legitimation of the rational enterprise. And in those matters where rationality counts, objectivity is the best policy by virtue of this very fact itself.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘Heeding the strictures of morality is part and parcel of a rational being’s cultivation of the good. For us rational creatures morality (the due care for the interests of rational beings) is an integral component of reason’s commitment to the enhancement of value. Reason’s commitment to the value of rationality accordingly carries in its wake a commitment to morality. The obligatoriness of morality ultimately roots in an ontological imperative to value realization with respect to self and world that is incumbent on free agents as such. On this ontological perspective, the ultimate basis of moral duty roots in the obligation we have as rational agents (toward ourselves and the world at large) to make the most and best of our opportunities for self-development. Moral obligation ultimately inheres in this ontological obligation to the realization of values in one’s own life.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘[T]he crucial question for rationality is not that of what we prefer but of what is in our best interests; not simply what we happen to desire but what is good for us in the sense of contributing to the realization of our true interests. The pursuit of what we want is rational only insofar as we have objectively sound reasons for deeming this to be want-deserving. The question of whether what we prefer is preferable, in the sense of deserving this preference, is always relevant. Ends can and (in the context of rationality) must be evaluated. It is not just beliefs that can be stupid, ill-advised, and inappropriate—that is to say, irrational—but ends as well. [….] What separates evaluations from mere preferences is that the former involves standards. In evaluating we bring criteria to bear on whose basis the ideas in question are rated as good or bad, superior or inferior, just or unjust, etc. Evaluations will, as such, have to be backed by reasons articulated in terms of the relevant norms—norms which ultimately inhere in the architecture of our generalizable needs.’—Nicholas Rescher

‘To proceed objectively is…to render oneself perspicuous to others by doing what any reasonable and normally constituted person would do in one’s place, thereby rendering one’s proceedings intelligible to anyone. When the members of a group are objective, they secure great advantages thereby: they lay the groundwork for community by paving the way for mutual understanding, communication, collaboration. And in cognitive matters they also sideline sources of error. For the essence of objectivity lies in its factoring out of one’s deliberations personal predilections, prejudices, idiosyncrasies, and the like that would stand in the way of intelligent people’s reaching the same result. Objectivity follows in reason’s wake because of its effectiveness as a means of averting both isolation and error.’—Nicholas Rescher

Global and historical meta-philosophical reflection helps us appreciate the manner in which reason is ‘embedded, articulated and manifested in culturally specific ways,’ the manner in which the ‘forms of rationality’ are ‘interculturally available even if they are not always interculturally instantiated.’ As Jonardon Ganeri notes, some paradigms of rationality, for instance the instrumentalist and epistemic conceptions, do not respect the oft-cited geo-historical division between East and West, while ‘others, for instance the Jaina notion of a rationality of reconciliation, or the modeling of reason by game-theory, are found in one but not the other [culture].’—Jonardon Ganeri

‘We learn most of what we know about what makes life worth living, and how to live it well, from non-scientific [or, if you prefer, non-legal] sources–biography, narrative history, serious journalism, and religious texts [I would add 'philosophy'], not to mention novels, poetry, drama and the visual arts. For Europeans at least, there is more insight to be got from a single volume by Jane Austen or Gustave Flaubert than a whole shelf of treatises on the social psychology of bourgeois love and marriage.’—John Ziman

‘In recognizing the compelling power of values, and of logical principles (their normative, or what is sometimes called their “magnetic quality”), we humans are plainly recognizing something that goes beyond the observed facts of the natural world. And the theistic outlook now proposes to interpret these features as signifying the presence, beyond the empirical world, of a transcendent supernatural domain that is by its very nature normative—rational and moral. The two principal categories of the normative, the rational and the good, are features which traditional theology has held to apply to God in virtue of his very nature. God is goodness itself (Aquinas), he is the Logos—ultimate rationality (St. John). In short, beyond, or behind, the observable universe—the sequence of events that is simply one contingent happening after another—there is for the theist a domain of eternal value and reason, a domain that impinges on our empirical world, making us respond to something beyond the mere sequence brute facts. We human creatures (since we are ourselves rational and moral beings, at least in part) are responsive to reason and value, and in being so responsive we participate, however dimly, in the divine nature.’—John Cottingham

‘To affirm that there can be several different systems all giving us, at the same time, varying and yet legitimate “true” metaphysical descriptions of the world does not…necessarily entail that there are many realities, that nothing is absolutely real, or, put less dramatically, that there is no such thing as a single, context neutral description or account of the world, that is, as the world really is. It only means that no metaphysical description of it can be outside every possible conceptual framework, but Reality itself is. Nor does it follow that any assertions about this “real” or “true” world beyond all conceptual frameworks, are nonsense. [....] The conceptual frameworks we build in the realm of rational thought are not useless just because they cannot describe Ultimate Reality. Serious examination of, reflection on, these explanatory and interpretive schemes, their differences and overlaps, are crucial to expanding and deepening our understanding of reality, even if these conceptual frameworks (any or all possible combinations and collections of them) cannot bring us the Absolute Truth. If nothing else, they enable us to understand the relativity of conceptual truths and structures, and make us see what Pascal meant when he said that the highest function of reason is to show us the limitations of reason.’—Nandini Iyer

References & Further Reading:

Anderson, Elizabeth. Value in Ethics and Economics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Cottingham, John. The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Dupré, John. Human Nature and the Limits of Science. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2001.

Ganeri, Jonardon. Philosophy in Classical India. London: Routledge, 2001.

Goldie, Peter. On Personality. London: Routledge, 2004.

Iyer, Nandini. “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” in Knut A. Jacobsen, ed. Theory and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson. Leiden: Brill, 2005: 99-127.

Kupperman, Joel J. Value...and What Follows. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Lloyd, G.E.R. Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity & Diversity of the Human Mind. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2007.

Lynch, Michael P. Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.

Lynch, Michael P. True to Life: Why Truth Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.

Lynch, Michael P., ed. The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Mason, Elinor, “Value Pluralism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/value-pluralism/.

McGinn, Colin. Ethics, Evil, and Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Mou, Bo, ed. Two Roads to Wisdom? Chinese and Analytic Philosophical Traditions. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2001.

Mulhall, Stephen. ‘Misplacing Freedom, Displacing the Imagination: Cavell and Murdoch on the Fact/Value Distinction,’ in Anthony O’Hear, ed. Philosophy, the Good, the True and the Beautiful. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 255-277.

Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.

Murdoch, Iris. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. London: Penguin, 1993.

Newell, R.W. Objectivity, Empiricism and Truth. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.

Norton, David L. Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.

Nozick, Robert. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Nussbaum, Martha C. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Nussbaum, Martha C. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Parekh, Bhikhu. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Putnam, Hilary. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Putnam, Hilary (James Conant, ed.). Realism with a Human Face. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Putnam, Hilary. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Rescher, Nicholas. Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1993.

Rescher, Nicholas. The Validity of Values. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Rescher, Nicholas. Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997.

Rescher, Nicholas. Nature and Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2000.

Rescher, Nicholas. Cognitive Pragmatism: The Theory of Knowledge in Pragmatic Perspective. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.

Sen, Amartya. On Ethics and Economics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1988.

Stocker, Michael. Plural and Conflicting Values. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1990.

Wedgwood, Ralph. The Nature of Normativity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Wiggins, David. Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1998.

Wong, David B. Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Ziman, John. Real Science: What It Is, and What It Means. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Zimmerman, Michael J. The Nature of Intrinsic Value. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.

Zimmerman, Michael J. “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2007), Edward N. Zalta, ed. URL =http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2007/entires/value-intrinsic-extrinsic/

A Jaina Propaedeutic for Metaphysical Relativism, Perspectival Rationalism and Contextual Pluralism

2009-09-20T18:19:00.023-04:00

Ceiling inside the large Jain temple at Rankpur, Rajastan, India.

Immediately below is a slightly edited version (I’ve removed all but one of the hyperlinks and references and some diacritics were unavailable) of a section from Wikipedia’s entry on the Jain doctrine of Anekantavada. Jaina contributions to rationality and logic are among the sources of inspiration for how I’ve come to think about questions of fact and value, and especially truth and objectivity, so I thought to introduce it here by way of a preface or propaedeutic to a forthcoming post on “facts and values, truth and objectivity.” The Jains enable us to see what may be involved in formulating an “epistemology of perspective” that is at once pluralist, relative and objective, thereby exemplifying, among other things, the epistemic virtues of scepticism without succumbing to what Michael Williams has defined as “radical scepticism” (2001: 59).

Anekāntavāda is one of the most important and fundamental doctrines of Jainism. It refers to the principles of pluralism and multiplicity of viewpoints, the notion that truth and reality are perceived differently from diverse points of view, and that no single point of view is the complete truth.

This is to contrast attempts to proclaim absolute truth with adhgajanyāyah, which can be illustrated through the parable of the "blind men and an elephant". In this story, each blind man felt a different part of an elephant (trunk, leg, ear, etc.). All the men claimed to understand and explain the true appearance of the elephant, but could only partly succeed, due to their limited perspectives. [….]

The etymological root of anekāntavāda lies in the compound of two Sanskrit words: anekānta (‘manifoldness’) and vāda (‘school of thought’). The word anekānta is a compound of the Sanskrit negative prefix an, eka (‘singularity’), and anta (‘attribute’). Hence, anekānta means “not of solitary attribute.” The Jain doctrine lays a strong emphasis on samyaktva, that is, rationality and logic. According to Jains, the ultimate principle should always be logical and no principle can be devoid of logic or reason. Thus, the Jain texts contain deliberative exhortations on every subject, whether they are constructive or obstructive, inferential or analytical, enlightening or destructive.

Anekāntavāda is one of the three Jain doctrines of relativity used for logic and reasoning.

The other two are:
syādvāda—the theory of conditioned predication and;
nayavāda—the theory of partial standpoints.

These Jain philosophical concepts made important contributions to ancient Indian philosophy, especially in the areas of skepticism and relativity.

Syādvāda is the theory of conditioned predication which provides an expression to anekānta by recommending that the epithet Syād be prefixed to every phrase or expression. Syādvāda is not only an extension of anekānta ontology, but a separate system of logic capable of standing on its own. The Sanskrit etymological root of the term syād is “perhaps” or “maybe,” but in the context of syādvāda, it means “in some ways” or “from a perspective.” As reality is complex, no single proposition can express the nature of reality fully. Thus the term “syāt” should be prefixed before each proposition giving it a conditional point of view and thus removing any dogmatism in the statement. Since it ensures that each statement is expressed from seven different conditional and relative viewpoints or propositions, syādvāda is known as saptibhangīnāya or the theory of seven conditioned predications. These seven propositions, also known as saptibhangī, are:

syād-asti—in some ways, it is,
syād-nāsti—in some ways, it is not,
syād-asti-nāsti—in some ways, it is, and it is not,
syād-asti-avaktavyah—in some ways, it is, and it is indescribable,
syād-nāsti-avaktavyah—in some ways, it is not, and it is indescribable,
syād-asti-nāsti-avaktavyah—in some ways, it is, it is not, and it is indescribable,
syād-avaktavyah—in some ways, it is indescribable.

Each of these seven propositions examines the complex and multifaceted nature of reality from a relative point of view of time, space, substance and mode. To ignore the complexity of reality is to commit the fallacy of dogmatism.

Nayavāda is the theory of partial standpoints or viewpoints. Nayavāda is a compound of two Sanskrit words—naya (‘partial viewpoint’) and vāda (‘school of thought or debate’). It is used to arrive at a certain inference from a point of view. An object has infinite aspects to it, but when we describe an object in practice, we speak of only relevant aspects and ignore irrelevant ones. This does not deny the other attributes, qualities, modes and other aspects; they are just irrelevant from a particular perspective. Authors like Natubhai Shah explain nayavāda with the example of a car; for instance, when we talk of a “blue BMW” we are simply considering the color and make of the car. However, our statement does not imply that the car is devoid of other attributes like engine type, cylinders, speed, price and the like. This particular viewpoint is called a naya or a partial viewpoint. As a type of critical philosophy, nayavāda holds that all philosophical disputes arise out of confusion of standpoints, and the standpoints we adopt are, although we may not realize it, “the outcome of purposes that we may pursue.” While operating within the limits of language and seeing the complex nature of reality, Māhavīra used the language of nayas. Naya, being a partial expression of truth, enables us to comprehend reality part by part. [….]

Thus Jaina "standpoint" epistemology or perspectival rationalism entails in the first instance the idea that the nature of an object cannot be expressed by any one proposition, such a proposition necessarily expressing only a conditional or relative point of view. It's not that the Jainas are thereby committed to a non-propositional theory of truth but instead, it seems, to a para-propositional theory insofar as propositions rely on presuppositions and assumptions and these selfsame propositions are necessarily partial. And yet we cannot dispense with these propositions: hence a para-propositional theory rather than a non-propositional theory of truth. The Jaina doctrines sketched in outline form here bring attention to little noticed features of our concepts and certain structural characteristics intrinsic to our philosophical language, for example, that there are "hidden parameters in belief and assertion" and that our propositional utterances are subject to a high degree of under-specification. In short, our knowledge claims are invariably perspectival and partial, in addition to being primarily presumptive (in the sense that, as Michael Williams says, 'no move in the game of giving and asking for reasons is presuppositionless' and that all moves made by both claimants and challengers 'depend for their legitimacy...on commitments currently not under scrutiny, at least some of which have the status of default entitlements'), and thus it behooves us to understand rationally expressed and seriously held alternative claims or views as liable to possession of at least some measure of truth. While we may not want to go as far as the Jains in viewing all contradictory claims as, in some sense, merely ostensible or prima facie contradictions, perhaps we could adopt such a stance as a preliminary or presumptive heuristic until or unless we definitively conclude that we're confronted with an insoluble (for even the Jains) or an intractable or real contradiction.

Jonardon Ganeri has termed the apparent meta-metaphysical or meta-philosophical aspiration of these Jain doctrines a "rationality of reconciliation" (or 'harmonization'), the goal of which is the complete knowledge of truth, although the Jains, like other Indian philosophers (e.g., the Advaita Vedāntins and the Buddhists), believe we are also capable of possessing (God-like) omniscient knowledge, that is, absolute truth (kevalajñāna; the functional equivalent of [nirguna] Brahman-realization for the Advaita Vedāntin and nirvāna for the Buddhist). I'm more interested in the former sort of knowledge (thus setting aside soteriological concerns), particularly insofar as Jaina rationality and logic reflect, in Matilal's words, a concern that is "somewhat ethical," meaning that a

Rejection of a seriously held view is discouraged lest we fail to comprehend its significance and underlying presuppositions and assumptions. [....] [The Jainas] emphasize not only different facets of reality, not only the different senses in which a proposition can be true or false, but also the contradictory and opposite sides of the same reality, the dual (contradictory) evaluation of the same proposition and the challenge it offers to the doctrine of bivalence or reality.

This "somewhat ethical" concern is likewise evidenced in an intriguing point made elsewhere by Matilal, namely, that the Jaina doctrine of truth as a metaphorical many-faceted gem (or light refracted through a prism) entailed carrying their well known (if at times extreme) adherence to the principle of nonviolence "from the physical and practical plane to the intellectual plane."

Metaphysical and epistemological insights related to those we find among the Jains can be gleaned from the views of a handful of contemporary philosophers as diverse as Willard Van Orman Quine (e.g., the indeterminacy of 'radical translation' thesis), Hilary Putnam, Nicholas Rescher, Michael Lynch, Nelson Goodman (e.g., 'frames of reference'), Peter Unger, and David B. Wong. Consider, for instance, the following from Unger's Philosophical Relativity (1984):

The answer one prefers for a certain philosophical problem will depend on what assumptions one has adopted in relation to that problem. And, irrespective of the problem in question, assumptions crucial to one's answer will always be somewhat arbitrary, not determined by objective facts, including facts of logic and language. A certain set of assumptions yields one answer, another set another; whatever facts pertain to the problem fail to decide between the one set or the other.

Unger illustrates his "hypothesis" with an examination of "contextualist" and "invariantist" arguments in semantics as equally plausible "reference frames," a discussion that suggests a comparison with the semantic implications of Jain ideas. But here I'll confine myself to noting one obvious difference between Unger's general account of "philosophical relativity"and the Jaina idea that the means and method of acquiring knowledge are necessarily perspectival. Unger states, "Emphatically, I consider these relativity theses as no more than hypotheses, not as propositions for which we now, or soon will, have ovewhelming or even compelling reason." Of course Unger's theses on relativism were restricted to a particular class of problems in philosophy, not all philosophical topics or questions. By way of contrast, the Jaina rationality of reconciliation and non-onesidedness, apart from being global in scope, has been described by Matilal as "dogmatic:" "above all, the Jains were non-dogmatic, although they were dogmatic about their non-dogmatism." Given the soteriological motivations of Jain doctrine (which we've set aside for our discussion), alongside the vigorous religio-philosophical milieu the Jains were members of, we might forgive them for at least this type of dogmatism (that environment included both āstika sad-darśanas: Nyāya, Vaiśesika, Sāmkhya, Yoga, Mīmāmsā, and Vedānta, as well as the nāstika philosophical systems: Jainism, Buddhism, and Cārvāka).

Although we could conceivably call upon Jaina ideas in support of this or that form of cognitive pluralism, strictly speaking, it would seem their doctrines fall within the ambit of syncretism, in which the various viewpoints or perspectives are integrated so as to get a truer or complete picture of what is real. Ganeri makes this clear in his discussion of the Jaina application of these doctrines to an ontology of objects in which statements are "conditionalized" by the "somehow" operator (the syād prefix above):

A complete description of an object is a description with explicit reference to the state of the object at each [of the values of the otherwise hidden parameters of substance, place, time, and state]. What the insertion of 'somehow' [ syāt/syād] allows us to do is to begin to build up such a pointwise description of the object, each somehow-conditionalised statement carrying information along a line of sight of points. As more statements are added, a picture builds up of the whole object, just as (to use a favourite metaphor of Sukhlalji Sanghvi) we build up a picture of the whole house by inspecting it from different sides, inside and out. [....] But a question still remains—can we ever by this means, reach a complete description of the object? [....] The Jaina rationality of reconciliation certainly leads to ever more complete descriptions, but does the description ever become complete?

We need not here try to answer this otherwise important question. But we should note that, within the Indian philosophical environment at least, these selfsame doctrines might equally be characterized in toto as "synthetic," if by that we mean, with Rescher, "the construction of a combining standpoint that mixes a piece of one position with some different piece of another—that grants one the right in this respect and another the right in that one." Rescher thereby proffers at least one reason Matilal is justified in describing the Jains as "dogmatic about non-dogmantism:" "every standpoint (perspective, doctrinal stance), however 'synthetic' it may be, is just exactly that—just one more particular standpoint," even if we detect meta-metaphysical or meta-philosophical implications or possibilities as a result of this standpoint. We can similarly conclude that the Jains did not succumb to what Rescher calls "relativistic indifferentism" in formulating their doctrine of non-onesidedeness (or conversely, 'many-sidedness'), for even "if we are pluralists and accept a wide variety of perspectives as being (abstractly speaking) 'available,' we still have no serious alternative to seeing our own stance as superior—at any rate, if we have such a stance at all, as we must do if we are actually philosophizing."

The overarching moral I'd like to draw from Jaina philosophy as a propaedeutic to my forthcoming post on "facts and values, truth and objectivity," is largely metaphorical if not "ethical" in the sense invoked above by Matilal, which is to say it is more about the spirit than the letter of these particular Jain doctrines. Put differently, it revolves around notions of philosophical temperament, the motivation of our philosophical endeavors, and the possible metaphysical and epistemological lessons we might discover in a sensitive examination of the conditions provided by a global environment or civil society defined by a commitment among its members to "moral minimalism" if not democratic values, principles and praxis or cosmopolitan justice. Among these lessons might be an appreciation of the significance of metaphysical relativism and perspectival epistemology or rationalism, or simply something on the order of what Rescher calls "contextualist pluralism." This would mean that, with the Jains, we have begun to appreciate the non-onesidedness (or the complex and multi-faceted nature) of reality or the many facets of truth, a realization underwritten by the different contexts of experience unique to each of us, thereby "combin[ing] a pluralistic acknowledgement of distinct alternatives with a recognition that a sensible individual's choice among them is not rationally indifferent, but rather constrained by the probative indications of the [reflective] experience that provides both the evidential basis and evaluative criteria for effecting a rational choice" (Rescher).

References and Further Reading:

Ganeri, Jonardon. Philosophy in Classical India. London: Routledge, 2001.
Lynch, Michael. Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.
Matilal, Bimal Krishna. The Central Philosophy of Jainism. Ahmedabad: L.D. Institute of Indology, 1981.
Matilal, Bimal Krishna (Jonardon Ganeri and Heeraman Tiwari, eds.). The Character of Logic in India. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998.
Matilal, Bimal Krishna, "Religion and Value," in Jonardon Ganeri, ed., The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal: Ethics and Ethics (Philosophy, Culture and Religion). New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Rescher, Nicholas. Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1993.
Sharma, Arvind. A Jaina Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2001.
Unger, Peter. Philosophical Relativity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Williams, Michael. Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Wong, David B. Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Reflections On “Dirty Hands”—A Précis

2009-09-16T00:09:00.016-04:00

Dirty hands involve a violation of a person, principle, or value.

'…[B]ecause we tend to think of morality both as forming a coherent whole and as dominating all other reasons for action, there are at least two different ways of stating the “dirty hands” thesis. We may state it as the view that political reasons sometimes legitimately override the most serious moral considerations, or as the view that morality is divided against itself, with the virtues required by political life incompatible with what we think of as normal (or ‘private’) virtues. There is a third option, but it is less a formulation of the dirty hands challenge than a way of sanitizing its confrontation with morality. This is the option of treating the apparent clash between political and ordinary morality as reconciled by some overarching moral principle, such as the principle of utility.'—C.A.J. Coady

'Politics has always posed threatening questions about the scope and authority of common understandings of morality. It is politics that Thrasymachus has foremost in mind in Plato’s Republic, when he challenges Socrates to refute his startling definition of justice as “the interest of the stronger.”'—C.A.J. Coady

'In thinking about this issue, it is important to distinguish self-serving opportunists from those who suffer corruption from their sincere efforts to govern well. Self-serving opportunists often rationalize their dubious measures to themselves through self-deceptive references to “the good of the whole,” claiming that group loyalty demands moral sacrifice or that “the end justifies the means.” Egocentric opportunism, however, differs conceptually from dirty hands. The question before us is whether corruption in the political realm might arise as a result of the very nature of governance and morality. Do rulers simply have more opportunities for temptation and therefore succumb more often than do private citizens? Or does good governance sometimes require the sacrifice of moral standards?'—Laurie Calhoun

'Those who refer to the necessities of politics have, at least since Machiavelli, often thereby signified not only necessary risks of an apparently immoral kind, but necessarily even lies, cruelties and even murders. Taking their lead from Sartre’s play of the same name, modern philosophers tend to talk of the necessity for “dirty hands” in politics, meaning that the vocation of politics somehow rightly requires its practitioners to violate important moral standards which prevail outside of politics.'—C.A.J. Coady

'For politics, the Machiavellian thought, at least in its most challenging form, is…the idea…that it is sometimes legitimate for political rulers, to deceive, cheat, betray or even torture or murder, where these acts are clear violations of the moral code that seems to bind us all.'—C.A.J. Coady

'Machiavelli’s position appears to be simply that principle must sometimes be sacrificed in order to succeed as a leader: if one wants to be an effective ruler, then one must be prepared to forsake morality. In this reading, Machiavelli is neither a moral relativist nor an immoralist, for he does not claim that leaders are immune from the dictates of morality, but that they must flout morality in order to lead well. Whether he is correct in his realism about dirty hands depends, then, on the nature of morality.'—Laurie Calhoun

'…[A]lthough he has in mind the need to override Christian morality, [Machiavelli’s advocacy of ‘necessary immorality’] has wider application to moral codes and virtues that are recognized in secular and other contexts beyond Christianity. When Machiavelli says, “a man who wishes to profess goodness at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not so good. Hence it is necessary for a prince who wishes to maintain his position to learn how not to be good and to use this knowledge or not according to necessity,” he is genuinely challenging a very deep and compelling picture of morality. According to this picture, we can understand what it is to lead a good life and/or the duties of a moral code, and such an understanding provides us with final, authoritative guidance on how to act. Moral reason may not always have something to say about our choices and decisions…but when it does intervene seriously and relevantly, it must carry the day against all competing considerations. This picture is challenged by Machiavelli because he thinks that there are powerful reasons which can and should override the moral reasons.'—C.A.J. Coady

'In Pocock’s wording, Machiavelli “enters the realm of moral ambiguity” by making use of the polysemy that attended the term “virtue.” To the Greek eudaimonists, arete connoted moral excellence based on commitment to the actualization, conservation, and defense of certain objective values, and implying strength of character. To the ancient Romans virtù connoted the strength to deal effectively and nobly with whatever fortune might send. In Christianity under the influence especially of Augustine and Boethius, virtue becomes purity, understood as absence of defilement by the world, and submission to Fortune, which is now understood as Providence. “Virtue” in Machiavelli retains the idea of strength in the Roman meaning, but undermines the Greek idea of objective goodness by associating strength with effectiveness and expediency. In Pocock’s words, “Virtù took on the double meaning of the instruments of power, such as arms, and the personal qualities needed to wield these instruments.'—David L. Norton

'Machiavelli makes it clear that one of the situations generating the need for the rule to act wickedly is the fact that with whom one interacts cannot be relied upon to act morally, and hence conformity to morality is foolish and dangerous for survival. We might call this the problem of moral isolation. As befits someone who puts survival at the heart of morality, Thomas Hobbes gives an even clearer account of this then Machiavelli. Hobbes thought that the laws of nature gave us a valid moral code and associated virtues, but that they obliged in foro interno and “not always” in foro externo. He meant that we ought to want the laws of nature to be obeyed, but that we would be stupid to practice morality unilaterally. Hobbes did not think the point applied solely to politics; rather, he thought it an important feature of life in a state of nature, but, as Sidgwick noted…and as Hobbes would certainly have insisted, rulers often stand in relations to one another that resemble a state of nature. Hence the sphere of international relations is one that naturally lends itself to the dirty hands story.'—C.A.J. Coady

'For many years, it has been impossible to make moral arguments about international relations to its American students without encountering the claim that moral judgments have no place in discussions of international affairs or foreign policy. This claim is one of the foundations of the so-called realist approach to international studies or foreign policy.'—Charles R. Beitz

'According to Realism, the nature of international relations precludes morality in that sphere. And because morality is not operative in the international sphere, a moral theory of international law is an exercise in futility. [….] In its purely positive variant, Realism is a descriptive explanatory account of the nature of international relations. …[H]owever, Realists typically draw a meta-ethical implication from their descriptive-explanatory theory: broadly, that morality is inapplicable to international relations.'—Allen Buchanan and David Golove

'…[A]mong the dirty features of dirty hands are people being wronged, they and their trust, integrity, and status as ends are violated, dishonoured, and betrayed: innocents are killed, tortured, lied to, deceived. Dirty hands can also involve other sorts of harms and wrongs—e.g. the destruction of a holy place or a great work of art. They sometimes involve the violation of a principle rather than a person: e.g. agreeing not to prosecute terrorists in order to end a highjacking.'—Michael Stocker

'I think it difficult to overestimate the importance of the rule of immorality in creating situations which necessitate and justify acting with dirty hands. In at least many cases…were it not for the immorality, there would be no need or room for dirty hands. The issue is important enough to stop and show that the immorality of the circumstances can provide the specific differences between cases of dirty hands and other cases. [For there are instances when an agent is] immorally coerced to take part in, perhaps even to implement, an immoral project. [In such cases, what sets them apart from other kinds of conflicts where one is unable to avoid doing wrong] is that they involve being coerced to help implement another’s evil project.'—Michael Stocker

'[O]ur acts are not fresh moral starts, their moral nature depends sometimes not only on us and what we can do at the time of the act, but also on what we have done previously. It can also depend on others and what they do.'—Michael Stocker

An act is one of dirty hands if from some vantage point or perspective (i.e., of the ruler, the politician, those in situations of highly constrained and momentous political choice) it is understood as somehow right or even obligatory, but from another perspective (e.g. the individual’s personal moral code, traditional religious moral codes or virtue ethics) it is nonetheless known to be clearly wrong, shameful, and the like. “So, in Walzer’s case of torturing someone to compel him to reveal where his group has planted a bomb among innocent civilians, the torture can be justified, even obligatory, but nonetheless wrong and shameful” (Michael Stocker).

'One of President Kennedy’s advisers in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, Dean Acheson, proudly records that, when the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and much else stood in the balance, “those involved…will remember the irrelevance of the supposed moral considerations brought out in the discussions,…moral talk did not bear on the problem.” This seems to have been largely true of Acheson’s own contributions to the crucial debates, but his view did not prevail and some of the other arguments put to the President had a moral flavor, such as Robert Kennedy’s belief that the aerial attack upon the Cuban missile bases, a course favoured by Acheson, would be a Pearl Harbor in reverse. Characteristically, Acheson thought this a mere obfuscation and part of an “emotional or intuitive” response. Nonetheless, if moral considerations were not irrelevant, they were surprisingly lacking in weight when compared to other factors of a more obviously political or even personal kind, such as the need for President Kennedy to regain prestige, demonstrate his courage, and eliminate the prospect of impeachment, as well as the necessity to avoid Democratic Party defeats in upcoming Congressional elections.'—C.A.J. Coady

'[O]ne may readily concede that some areas of life lead to more frequent clashes between moral and non-moral values but we need to recall both that precisely which areas these are is a matter of historical contingency, and that frequency of confrontation need not correlate with frequency of justified overriding. Politics may be very bland as, I imagine, in Monaco, and private life can be a maelstrom of agonizing conflicts, as in a black ghetto or an Ethiopian village during famine. Moreover, where politics is morally perturbing it doesn’t follow that decisions against morality will necessarily be legitimate. Some area may be morally dangerous than another without being less morally constrained. Politics may often be sleazier than housekeeping without this fact licensing fewer moral constraints in politics. On the contrary, the more frequent temptation is, the greater, we might naturally suppose, the need for stern attachment to moral standards and virtue. (This was indeed the view of Machiavelli’s famous humanist contemporary, Erasmus, in his The Education of a Christian Prince).'—C.A.J. Coady

'[T]he values which politicians find themselves driven to promote, and others find themselves driven to endorse, may be the product of degraded social circumstances and arrangements.'—C.A.J. Coady

'We concentrate upon the particular act that will require dirty hands and ignore the contingency and mutability of the circumstances that have given rise to it. Yet it is precisely these circumstances which often most deserve moral scrutiny and criticism, and the changes which may result from such criticism can eliminate the “necessity” for those types of dirty hands in the future. This suggests that philosophers and other theorists have in fact been too complacent in their acceptance of neutrality and immutability of the background circumstances which generate “dirty hands” choices. Robert Fullinwider once remarked that we need politicians just as we need garbage collectors, and in both cases we should expect them to stink. But, once upon a time, we needed the collectors of what was euphemistically called “night soil” and, in many parts of the world, human ingenuity has eliminated the need for that very malodorous occupation.'—C.A.J. Coady

'[A]ccording to Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics, “habits build character,” so a person who sacrifices his own principles one time becomes more likely to do so again in the future. Agents who set aside what once were their moral views become progressively desensitized to the sorts of violations that formerly elicited their moral indignation. Agents learn, and they become habituated to accept what once seemed unacceptable, no longer feeling compelled to object to what once seemed objectionable. In clinging to some goal while neglecting, even temporarily, his moral beliefs and principles, the agent thus metamorphoses slowly into a corrupted image of his former self. In this view, those who renounce moral standards and principles for the prudential interests of a group thereby transform themselves (albeit gradually) into persons who no longer embrace those standards and principles. Some might claim that they know where to “draw the line,” insisting that they will not sacrifice certain fundamental beliefs. Still, if habits build character, then even the act of sacrificing less-fundamental beliefs renders one more likely to sacrifice other, perhaps more-fundamental beliefs in the future. Corruption may be a long, irresistible journey down a very slippery slope.'—Laurie Calhoun

Michael Walzer and other contemporary writers on the topic of “dirty hands” do little to elaborate or clarify their basis for distinguishing private and public morality or what Stuart Hampshire calls “a conflict between two ways of life.”

'[It is a] common contention that there are two levels or types or standards of morality, one for the individual in his private life and in his immediate surroundings, the other for political life and collective conduct. This standpoint has been stated plausibly over and over again, from Aquinas to Maurras, Kautilya to Tilak, Jowett to Niebuhr. Prudentia politica or niti is held to be the charioteer of other virtues, and adapts the natural law or dharma to raison d’état or artha. Politics may be subordinated, but it must not become subservient, to morals.'—Raghavan Iyer

‘It was absolutely and continually fundamental to Gandhi to reject this dominant doctrine of double standards, with its varying sources of support, types of formulation and methods of justification. It is not that Gandhi failed to distinguish between fact and value, or even between what men must ideally do and what they can practically achieve. He recognized that in politics as in life, we continually search for a middle term in our attempt to mediate between the desirable and the possible. Nor did he fail to see that politics, like medicine, requires immediate action based upon incomplete knowledge. Every act according to the Gita, inevitably contains an element of error in this imperfect world. This may be truer of politics than of personal life, though this is by no means self-evident. What Gandhi denied was that in politics we must make more allowances, or even need more elbow room, than in the personal moral quest in the company of men of varying and even conflicting human aspirations. It is because Gandhi took very seriously, and regarded as highly complex and dilemma-ridden, the process of moral growth, choice and decision, for the sensitive individual, that he regarded politics as altering the sphere, but not the moral value or validity or culpability of human action.'—Raghavan Iyer

'[Gandhi held that] political and personal morality must coincide and extend to all human beings in all walks of life. The purification of politics requires the removal of the taint of double standards by men of courage and integrity. [….]. Gandhi’s only view is that politics is inherently impure and involves pollution and could never be ideal in any sense, but that it can and must be purified, and this requires, as a first step, the repudiation of any distinction between public and private, political and personal, morality. [….] Gandhi’s moral notion of pollution refers to the contagion of power-seeking that hampers man’s relations with his fellow men in politics and society.'—Raghavan Iyer

'Socrates and Machiavelli are rarely regarded as ideological allies, but both qualify as realists about dirty hands. The salient difference between them is that Socrates exhorts (by his own example) those who would avoid corruption to eschew public life [cf. Plato’s Apology, 31d-32a], whereas Machiavelli exhorts those who wish to be leaders to accept corruption as the price that they will have to pay. Nowhere, however, does Machiavelli exhort anyone to become a leader. He claims, most realistically, that if one wishes to be a successful leader, then one must be willing to forsake morality. No one is forced to become a government official, and no official is forced to be a superlative one.'—Laurie Calhoun

References & Further Reading:

Beitz, Charles R. Political Theory and International Relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999 ed.
Brecher, Bob. Torture and the Ticking Bomb. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.
Buchanan, Allen. Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Buchanan, Allen and David Golove. “Philosophy of International Law,”in Jules Coleman and Scott Shapiro, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002: 868-934.
Calhoun, Laurie. “The Problem of ‘Dirty Hands’ and Corrupt Leadership,” The Independent Review, Vol. VIII, No. 3, Winter 2004: 363-385.
Coady, C.A.J. “Politics and the Problem of Dirty Hands,” in Peter Singer, ed., A Companion to Ethics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991: 373-383.
Coady, C.A.J. “Dirty Hands,” in Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit, eds. A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1993: 422-430.
Coady, C.A.J. Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Coady, C.A.J. Morality and Political Violence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Coady, C.A.J. (Tony), “The Problem of Dirty Hands,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/dirty-hands/.
Elshtain, Jean Bethke, ed. Just War Theory. New York: New York University Press, 1992.
Ginbar, Yuval. Why Not Torture Terrorists? Moral, Practical and Legal Aspects of the ‘Ticking Bomb’ Justification of Torture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Hampshire, Stuart, ed. Public and Private Morality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Iyer, Raghavan. The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Khawaja, Irfan. “Do We Have to Get Our Hands Dirty to Win the War on Terrorism? And What Does that Mean, Exactly?” History News Network: http://hnn.us/articles/4997.html (May 17th, 2004).
May, Larry. Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Account. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
May, Larry. War Crimes and Just War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Norton, David L. Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.
Sharp, Gene. “Ethics and Responsibility in Politics,” in Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist. Boston, MA: Extending Horizons Books/Porter Sargent, 1979: 235-250.
Stocker, Michael. Plural and Conflicting Values. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1990.
Tanaka, Yuki and Marilyn B. Young, eds. Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History. New York: The New Press, 2009.
Thompson, Dennis F. Political Ethics and Public Office. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Walzer, Michael. “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2 (1973): 160-180.
Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. New York: Basic Books, 2nd ed., 1992.
Weber, Max. “Politics as a Vocation” (1919), in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1958.

Please note: The publicity photo above for the front cover of Bombing Civilians is different in several respects from the cover that appears on my copy of the book, including the order of the editors' names, thus I cited the book with Tanaka's name first, as appears in the hard copy of the book before me.

But George, You're a Communist!

2009-08-19T20:57:00.008-04:00

Not infrequently one comes across the expression, "That's an ad hominem," in various dialogue contexts, implying one has obviously violated a rule of reasoning or standard of good argument. And, in fact, that may often indeed be the case, the particular fallacy in this instance being an argument (or a move in an argument) "directed to the man," in other words, one has criticized the arguer at the expense of the argument. In Douglas Walton's words, an argumentum ad hominem "is a personal attack on an arguer that brings the individual's personal circumstances, trustworthiness or character into question." In our assessment of the plausibility, soundness or persuasiveness of an argument, such a "personal attack is inherently dangerous and [unduly] emotional...and is rightly associated with fallacies and deceptive tactics of argumentation." What follows is generally inspired by Walton's work, especially his book, Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation (1989).

Walton informs us that there are generally three types of ad hominem argument:
1. The "abusive" ad hominem "is the direct attack on a person in argument, including the questioning or villification of his character, motives, or trustworthiness."
2. The "circumstantial" ad hominem "is the questioning or criticizing the personal circumstances of an arguer, allegedly revealed, for example, in his actions, affiliations, or previous commitments, by citing an alleged inconsistency between his arguments and the circumstances."
3. The "poisoning the well" type of ad hominem "is said to occur when the critic questions the sincerity or objectivity of an arguer by suggesting that the arguer has something to gain by supporting the argument he has advocated."

It's important to appreciate, however, that the ad hominem argument is just that, namely, an argument, and thus "is not always logically unreasonable or fallacious." The foremost reason for this can be inferred from the fact that the argumentum ad hominem, when fallacious, is by definition an informal (thus not formal) fallacy, hence the determination of whether or not the argument is reasonable entails a close examination of its specific incarnation within a particular dialogue form and context. Put differently, in the myriad rhetorical fora of practical reasoning and dialogue forms in everyday social and institutional settings, the identification of an informal fallacy is neither "field invariant" (Toulmin 2003) nor transparent. We therefore need to carefully consider precisely how this argument form is being used in a dialogue context before we can claim the argument is fallacious or unreasonalble. On occasion, what appears at first glance to be a fallacious ad hominem may in fact turn out to be a rather reasonable or perfectly appropriate--thus nonfallacious--use of the ad hominen argumentum. Walton provides us with a fairly straightforward if not simple illustration of a nonfallacious use of the ad hominem:

GEORGE: The notorious problems we have been having with postal strikes means that there is no longer reliable mail service provided by the government. I think we ought to allow private, for-profit mail delivery companies to compete on an equal footing with the Post Office.

BOB: But George, you are a communist.

Let us suppose that in this case George is an avowed communist and has based his previous arguments on many standard communist principles and positions. Now in many cases, calling your opponent in an argument a communist could be a fallacious type of ad hominem attack. However, in this instance, Bob seems to have a reasonable point. If George is an avowed communist, and communists are for state control and against private enterprise, then how can George consistently argue for a for-profit mail service run by private enterprise. It seems like a legitimate question. Of course, George may be able to resolve the ostensible inconsistency in subsequent dialogue. But surely Bob is justified in challenging the consistency of George's position at this point in the dialogue. If so, then in this case, Bob's circumstantial argument is not fallacious.

In a courtroom, the testimony of a witness may be undermined by subjecting it to questions that center upon her motives or character or past behavior in an effort to expose the individual's testimony as irredeemably tainted, as considerably less than impartial, trustworthy, or true. In such cases, it appears that the ad hominem is well-suited to the task at hand and thus is a perfectly appropriate argument. This is not to suggest, of course, that it is invariably reasonable in such settings or not structurally prone to abuse.

Sometimes it's quite difficult to unequivocally determine whether or not an ad hominem is fallacious, as it's not clear precisely how much contextual information is essential to a fair assessment of the argument. The following, for example, enables us to see how interpretive issues having to do with the particular dialogue and its interlocutors may be decisive in a complete reckoning of the relative merits of the argument on each side:

PARENT: There is strong evidence of a link between smoking and obstructive lung disease. Smoking is also associated with many other serious disorders. Smoking is unhealthy. So you should not smoke.

CHILD: But you smoke yourself. So much for your argument against smoking.

If we've had any philosophical training, and perhaps even if not, I suspect we're tempted to be dismissive of (if otherwise sympathetic to) the child's response to the parent's seemingly impeccable argument. And yet should not something be said on behalf of the child's retort challenging the parent's patent personal inconsistency between word and deed? Assuming the parent intends the argument to be pedagogically persuasive, that is, to steer the child away from the putative charms of smoking, then the argument is not at all as strong as it first appears (I know: a sound argument need not be persuasive, but I'm concerned with arguments in the real world, in which case we want the argument to be both sound and persuasive). In some worlds, we find the child appreciating the force of the argument irrespective of the parent's personal inconsistency, but outside those worlds, that is an unrealistic expectation. Or, as Walton concludes, "surely it is not unreasonable to require that the parent owes the child a defense or examination of his position."

The argumentum ad hominem is often grouped with other so-called emotional fallacies, including "argument to the people" (argumentum ad populum), "argument to pity" (argumentum ad misericordiam), and "argument to the stick" (argumentum ad baculum). These in turn, are classified as informal fallacies as such, of which there are over forty in number (Angeles 1992: 104-110). Referring to these argument forms as "fallacies" even if only informal, is misleading owing to the fact that, qua argument forms, they are not even prima facie fallacious! Nevertheless, it is probably prudent to be presumptively suspicious when we encounter these argument forms, given the frequency with which many of them are used inappropriately. But because we're in the realm of informal logic, the determination of whether or not these forms are in fact fallacious requires careful examination of their use in specific dialogue types and contexts, including the specific chains of reasoning. We might also bear in mind that practical reasoning in everyday social settings is often at best primarily presumptive, where a presumption is a speech act betwixt and between an assumption and an assertion. While we can identify both deductive and inductive reasoning in presumptive argument chains, it is important that our standards and criteria of argument plausibility and persuasiveness are sensitive to this overarching presumptive character, which entails ever-shifting burdens of proof and presumptions alternatively required, reasonable, or permissible.

Strictly speaking, then, if the argument forms classified in logic textbooks as "informal fallacies" are not even prima facie fallacious, they are innocent until proven guilty. Take, for instance, the "argument to the stick," a descriptive label that screams unreasonable or irrational, an argument form that is, finally, prima facie fallacious. Yet even here this form may be, and often is, perfectly proper: as in negotiation dialogues that occur in judicial plea-bargaining, international legal and political settings involving nation-states, and collective bargaining between labor and management. I'm assuming here that while we may conceptually distinguish between "arguing and bargaining" (Elster 1991), on the ground these are inextricably intertwined, making this a perfectly, if painfully, acceptable form of argument. That we require a close examination of these so-called informal fallacies in their dialogues types and social settings to ascertain whether or not they are truly fallacious is perhaps most readily seen in the case of the "argument from authority" or "appeal to expertise" (argumentum ad verecundiam).

In sum, the argument forms referred to as "informal fallacies" are capable of being more or less strong or weak, reasonable or unreasonable, fallacious or not, persuasive or not.

References and Further Reading:

Angeles, Peter A. The Harper Collins Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: HarperCollins, 2nd ed., 1992.
Bailin, Sharon W. and Harvey Siegel. "Critical Thinking," in Nigel Blake, et al., eds. The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education. Malden, MA: Blackwell., 2003: 181-193.
Elster, Jon. "Arguing and Bargaining in the Federal Convention and the Assemblée Constituante," (1991) Working Paper No. 4, Center for the Study of Constitutionalism in Europe. Available: http://www.geocities.com/hmelberg/elster/AR91AAB.HTM
Fisher, Alec. The Logic of Real Arguments. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Groarke, Leo. "Informal Logic," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/logic-informal/.
Toulmin, Stephen. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003 ed.
Toulmin, Stephen, Richard Rieke and Allan Janik. An Introduction to Reasoning. New York: Macmillan, 1984 ed.
Walton, Douglas N. Informal Logic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Walton, Douglas N. Plausible Argument in Everyday Conversation. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992.
Walton, Douglas N. Arguments from Ignorance. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
Walton, Douglas N. Appeal to Expert Opinion: Arguments from Authority. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.
Warburton, Nigel. Thinking from A to Z. New York: Routledge, 2nd ed., 2000.

Science & Technology: A Basic Bibliography

2009-08-05T02:35:00.012-04:00

This installment in the Directed Reading series is a bibliography for "science and technology." It covers philosophy of science, works in different scientific fields, science studies, history of science, technology, as well as science and technology ethics. Like most of our lists, it is limited to books only, in English. Nonetheless, that leaves us with quite a number of titles. As is our practice, the material below will serve as an introduction of sorts to the subject matter of the bibliography and is designed to whet your appetite. Should there be a title or two you believe worthy of inclusion by all means let me know and I'll consider it for the next draft of this compilation.

It is popularly supposed that science can be distinguished from other modes of systematic inquiry by a distinctive method. This is not what is observed. The techniques used in scientific research are extraordinarily diverse, from counting sheep and watching birds to detecting quasars and creating quarks. The epistemic methodologies of research are equally varied, from mental introspection to electronic computation, from quantitative measurement to speculative inference.—John Ziman

In the 1940s Robert Merton proposed the "prescriptions, proscriptions, preferences and permissions" that scientists come to feel bound to, the core of the scientific ethos if you will, were more or less captured by five fundamental norms or regulative principles: Communalism, Universalism, Disinterestedness, Originality, and Scepticism (CUDOS). John Ziman argues that these norms no longer properly describe the ethos of what he terms "post-academic science" or what others call "Big Science." In other words, (academic) science in roughly the last third of the twentieth century underwent "a radical, irreversible, worldwide transformation in the way that [it] is organized, managed and performed." Of course this transformation was not absolute, thus we can speak of both continuities and differences between that sort of science which was formally and informally guided by CUDOS norms and post-academic science. Ziman contends this more straightforwardly industrial (and now highly technological and market-oriented) post-academic science is best understood by way of its alternative set of regulative principles or social norms (as Ziman explains, social and epistemic norms are closely bound up with each other):

Very schematically, industrial science is Proprietary, Local, Authoritarian, Commissioned, and Expert. It produces proprietary knowledge that is not necessarily made public. It is focused on local technical problems rather than on general understanding. Industrial researchers act under managed authority rather than as individuals. Their research is commissioned to achieve practical goals, rather than undertaken in the pursuit of knowledge. They are employed as expert problem-solvers, rather than for their personal creativity. It is no accident, moreover, that these attributes spell out 'PLACE.' That, rather than 'CUDOS,' is what you get for doing good industrial science.

Moreover,

post-academic science is under pressure to give more obvious value for money. Many features of the new mode of knowledge production have arisen 'in the context of application'—that is, in the course of research on technological, environmental, medical or societal problems. More generally, science is being pressed into the service of the nation as the driving force in the national R & D system, a wealth-creating techno-scientific motor for the whole economy.

In other words, utility and market imperatives fuel the ethos and practice of contemporary science to a degree unprecedented in the history of science. As Richard C. Lewontin notes in Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA (1991), science is "guided by and directed by those forces in the world that have control over money and time." Symptomatic of such control is Lewontin's anecdotal observation that "No prominent molecular biologist of my acquaintance is without a financial stake in the biotechnology business." Ziman explains how deeply this new ethos has been inscribed in the practice of scientific research:

...[A]s researchers become more dependent on project grants, the 'Matthew Effect' is enhanced. Competition for real money takes precedence over competition for scientific credibility as the driving force of science. With so many researchers relying completely on research grants or contracts for their personal livelihood, winning these become an end in itself. Research groups are transformed into samll business enterprises. The metaphorical forum of scientific opinion is turned into an actual market in research sciences.

Ziman provides us with a bounty of reasons for thinking deeply about the vulnerability of scientists to "the demands of their paymasters," be they of private provenance or the product of the State's science policy.

Let's shift our attention to topics more explicitly and clearly epistemological and ontological, more theoretical and philosophical, the kind of subject matter that falls typically under the heading of "metascience" and philosophy of science, but is sometimes treated in science studies and history of science as well. Again, we begin with Ziman, here on the nature of "scientific facts:"

It is a philosophical fantasy to suppose that a scientific [or empirical] 'fact' can be freed from the context in which it was observed. That context always contains both 'theoretical' and 'subjective' features, usually closely intertwined. A sophisticated instrument embodies many theoretical concepts. But these are only elaborations and extensions of the theories needed by a trained observer to 'see' what is scientifically significant in her personal experience of the world. And thus it is the case that even the most empirical research findings are saturated with theoretical notions and targeted on specific theoretical issues.

The scientifc facts produced in the natural sciences are not epistemically privileged vis-à-vis the knowledge provided by social scientists or even those working in the humanities. Ziman writes that these fields of intellectual inquiry

[no] doubt...differ enormously in their subject matter, their intellectual objectives, their practical capabilities, and their social and psychic functions. Nevertheless, they belong to the same culture, and operate institutionally under the same ethos. As a consequence, the knowledge produced by the natural sciences is no more 'objective,' and no less 'hermeneutic,' than the knowledge produced by the social, behavioral and other human sciences. In the last analysis, they are all of equal epistemological weight.

As to the theoretical aspect of scientific facts:

"Theories are schematic. They introduce order into representations of experience at the price of obliterating specific facts. " And theories often rely on taxonomy, indeed, the taxonomy itself is suffused with theory:

In metascientific terms, classification, like observation, is a 'theory-laden' activity. It cannot be done entirely without reference to its intellectual and social environment. The resulting scheme always reflects conscious or unconscious influences, such as socially potent metaphors, formal mathematical patterns, the supposed functions of component elements, relationships to unobservable structures , or the need to reconcile conflicting conceptual or practical paradigms.

With Philip Kitcher in Science, Truth and Democracy (2001) and Ronald N. Giere in Science Without Laws (1999), Zyman suggests we view the nature of scientific representation in theories on the order of maps. In Giere's words,

Maps have many of the representational features we need for understanding how scientists represent the world. There is no such thing as a universal map [one reason why Kitcher says we cannot have a 'Theory of Everything,' for an 'ideal atlas is a myth']. Neither does it make sense to question whether a map is true or false. The representational virtues of maps are different. A map may, for example, be more or less accurate, more or less detailed, of smaller or larger scale. Maps require a large background of human convention for their production and use. Without such they are no more than lines on paper. Nevertheless, maps do manage to correspond in various ways with the real world. Their representational powers can be attested by anyone who has used a map when traveling in unfamiliar territory.

The cartographic analogy is central to Giere's notion of a "perspectival realism" that attempts to steer a middle course between (traditional and strongly metaphysical) scientific realism and purely constructivist accounts of science, that is to say, it endeavors to appreciate their relative merits on both epistemological and metaphysical grounds. Kitcher's discussion of "mapping reality" is likewise on behalf of a "modest realism" that wishes to retain the notion (in some measure) of a "mind-independent" reality or robust conception of objectivity while acknowledging such things as the underdetermination of theory by evidence. In Kitcher's words, "There is all the difference between organizing thought and speech, and making reality:...we should not confuse the possibility of constructing representations with that of constructing the world." Or, as Helen Longino puts it, "one can be a realist in the sense of holding that there is a world independently of our thinking that there is one, without being a scientific realist in the sense of holding that the successes of our best theories consists in the world having exactly the features attributed to it by those theories." This is a lesson we might have learned from the history of science if only because, as Nicholas Rescher writes, "we shall ultimately recognize many or most of our current scientific theories to be false and that what we proudly vaunt as scientific knowledge is a tissue of hypotheses--of tentatively adopted contentions many or most of which we will ultimately come to regard needing serious revision or perhaps even abandonment."

Ziman summarizes the scientific significance of the cartographic analogy:

As philosophers and other metascientists are coming to realize, theories are very like maps. Almost every general statement one can make about scientific theories is equally applicable to maps. They are representations of a supposed 'reality.' They are social institutions. They abstract, classify, and simplify numerous 'facts.' They are functional. They require skilled interpretation. And so on. The analogy is evidently much more than a vivid metaphor. In effect, every map is a theory. An analysis of the most commonplace map explores almost all the metascientific features of the most recondite theory. From a naturalistic point of view, the London Underground map exemplifies these features just as well as, say, the 'Standard Model' of particular physics.

Indeed, and much to the chagrin of the old-fashioned scientific realist, "It is clear that scientific maps, models, metaphors, themata and other analogies are not just tools of thought, or figures of speech. They are of the very substance of scientific theory. As sources of meaning and understanding, they stand on an equal footing with explicit verbal and symbolic representations."

To be sure, "perspectival" realism and "modest" realism are still species of realism, yet there is no longer the hard and fast metaphysical commitment to the idea of science as describing things "out there"--objects or not--as they really are or giving us the definitive account of how the world, simply and absolutely, in fact is. Thus Sophie Allen rightly concludes that opponents of conventional scientific realism

do not always--or even usually--count themselves as being sceptics about the existence of the external world, as idealists, phenomenalists or verificationists. Rather, their scepticism is rather more restricted in scope and concerns the existence, or the nature, of the types of entities which the theory postulates or, even more narrowly, what might be called the 'unobservables' postulated by scientific theory. Such entities either do not exist, they claim, or they do not exist entirely mind-independently; that is, they do not exist independently of humans theorizing about them.

Yet another new species of realism (one that has family resemblance to some ideas found in the Mādhyamika school of Buddhism), namely, the "ontic structural realism" of James Ladyman and Don Ross in Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (2007) would have us no longer refer to the unobservables postulated by physics as "objects." In a review of their book, Jeremy Butterfield elaborates:

At first sight, the denial of objects seems mad. Surely no fancy argument from the philosophy of science, or of physics, will convince us that there are no people, trees, or rocks? But of course, our authors are not mad. What they deny is a cluster of views about objects, which they think are not only traditional and false, but still influential and deeply misleading. Besides, they maintain that once we reject these views and think of objects correctly, as some sort of abstraction from a web of relations, we see that people, trees, or rocks--the objects of everyday life and the special sciences--are just as real as the arcane objects of physics: they are all abstractions from webs of relations. So the upshot of their views is rather the opposite of what you might first guess. They do not deny that everyday thought and the special sciences have a subject matter. Rather, they take the lesson from philosophy of science (especially physics)--the lesson that there are no objects, nor intrinsic properties, prior to relations--to liberate everyday thought and the special sciences from the threat of being in some sense secondary to, or derivative from (or 'epiphenomenal' upon) physics. Once we realize that objects are really patterns, each science becomes free to articulate and investigate its own ontology.

We conclude with a few thoughts on the increasing recognition of the sheer folly intrinsic to thinking that the ideal end or goal of the scientific enterprise as such is to provide us with a "Theory of Everything" (TOE). The celebrated Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking was once of the advocates for a naturalistic TOE. However, as John Cottingham informs us,

reflection on Kurt Gödel’s famous incompleteness proof of 1931 has led Hawking to recant. In a more sober assessment he acknowledges that we can never be 'angels who view the universe from the outside,' but instead that both we and our models are 'part of the universe we are describing.' One might therefore expect any scientific theory we produce to be 'either inconsistent, or incomplete.' So in place of his earlier jocular ambition to know 'the mind of God' (i.e. to provide a complete naturalistic theory of the cosmos), Hawking now writes that he is glad he has changed his mind: 'I'm now glad that our search for understanding will never come to an end.'

In Nature and Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science (2000), Nicholas Rescher has come to the same conclusion but for different and long-standing reasons:

The fatal flaw of any purported explanatory theory of everything arises in connection with the ancient paradox of reflectivity and self-substantiation. How can any theory adequately substantiate itself? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? What are we to make of the individual--or the doctrine--that claims, 'I stand ready to vouch for myself?' And how can such self-substantiation be made effective? All the old difficulties of reflexivity and self-reference come to the fore here. No painter can paint a comprehensive picture of a setting that includes this picture itself. And no more, it would seem, can a theorist expound an explanatory account of nature that claims to account satisfactorily for that account itself. For in so far as that account draws on itself, this very circumstance undermines its validity.

In case you missed it...

2009-08-04T16:53:00.006-04:00

Logos, a "journal of modern society and culture," has three articles under the heading of "Reflections on Gaza." And over at the International Law Observer, Valentina Azarov introduces us to "[t]wo reports [that] have been recently released by the fact-finding missions posted by the major international NGOs, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) to the Gaza Strip and South Israel following the 22-day war that took place in the region between December 2008 and January 2009:" Gaza Conflict Aftermath: so far “the international community has failed spectacularly”

The Boston Review's latest forum covers Development in Dangerous Places, with the lead essay by Paul Collier followed by responses from a handful of experts on geopolitics and global developement.

At Opino Juris, Roger Alford draws our attention to a post by Marko Milanovic of EJIL: Talk! on the House of Lords' last judgments as the final court of appeal in England and Wales. As you'll see in the comments to Roger's post, yours truly has a few things to say about this as well.

The latest issue of Middle East Report (Summer 2009), No. 251, has made available online an interesting article by one Daud Munir (although I would have liked to have seen some references): "Struggling for the Rule of Law: The Pakistani Lawyers’ Movement." Of course this is a subject that Anil Kalhan has blogged about over at Dorf on Law.

At the blog for Chinese philosophy, Manyul Im is "a bit skeptical" about a proposal touting the potential for Confucianism in contemporary China to lead the struggle for environmental awareness and sustainable development. There's a fairly long comment thread and of course yours truly once again chimes in.

Pardo and Patterson's latest article against the current in contemporary philosophy of mind (forthcoming in Neuroethics) is available at SSRN: "Minds, Brains, and Norms."

The tireless Frank Pasquale writes on "What the Media Isn't Covering in the Health Reform Debate--And Why It Matters."

And at The Faculty Lounge, Tim Zinnecker is troubled by the fact that over one billion people a day on our planet go hungry: Food for Thought.

Haider Ala Hamoudi shares his thoughts on "Women in the New Iraq" at his blog, Islamic Law in Our Times.

Lisa R. Pruitt explores "a law that's all about rural women" in her post at the Legal Ruralism blog ('a little [legal] realism about the rural').

Finally, C.A.J. (Tony) Coady, author most recently of Morality and Political Violence (2007) and Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics (2009), has penned the entry on "The Problem of Dirty Hands" for the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I'm especially pleased to see this entry because it is one I recommended to the editors several years ago (actually, in 2004!) and the subject editor, Thomas Pogge, agreed to it, as well as to my suggestion that Coady be its author.

Health Insurance Industry and Health Care Reform

2009-08-03T15:23:00.005-04:00

In today's Times, Michael Hiltzik provides us with a succinct account of the shenanigans if not machinations of the health insurance industry as it fights to gut meaningful health care reform in this country:

[I]f the insurers have proved anything over the last 15 years as the health crisis has gathered speed like an avalanche roaring downhill, it's that they're part of the problem, not the solution.

The firms take billions of dollars out of the U.S. healthcare wallet as profits, while imposing enormous administrative costs on doctors, hospitals, employers and patients. They've introduced complexity into the system at every level. Your doctor has to fight them to get approval for the treatment he or she thinks is best for you. Your hospital has to fight them for approval for every day you're laid up. Then they have to fight them to get their bills paid, and you do too.

One Wendell Potter reminded a Senate committee in June that health insurance executives had assured Congress in 1993 that they would work to secure universal medical coverage and end denials of coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Then they moved heaven and earth to kill reform.

They've made the same promises now, Potter observed. But they're in an even better position to throttle reform. Mergers and acquisitions have turned the industry into a cartel of huge corporations.

"The industry is bigger, richer and stronger, and it has a much tighter grip on our healthcare system," he said. The last thing they want is a government program set up as their competition.

Potter knows the insurers' ways because he was a top executive in the industry for 20 years. But the hard numbers bear him out. The two largest insurers, WellPoint and UnitedHealth Group, each acquired 11 other insurers between 2000 and 2007. They now control a total of 67 million "covered lives" (that's customers in health insurance-speak).

This consolidation has produced functional monopolies in communities across America. The American Medical Assn. (itself no great fan of reform) found in a 2007 survey that in 76% of the country, defined as its major metropolitan statistical areas, one insurer had a share of 50% or more of the conventional insurance market. This phenomenon gives the companies enormous power to drive up premiums and maximize profits. [....]

You've heard of the Blue Dog Democrats, those mostly rural conservatives who blocked a summertime vote on reform legislation on Capitol Hill? According to the Center for Public Integrity, the biggest backer of the Blue Dogs’ political action committee is the healthcare industry, which is on the path to pumping a total of $1.2 million into the PAC's maw in the current 2009-10 election cycle.

Then there's the advocacy group called the Campaign for an American Solution, which describes itself as "a grass-roots effort . . . to build support for workable healthcare reform." The organization owns up to being an "initiative" of America’s Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, the industry's chief lobbying arm. Unless I've missed a radical change in lawn and garden horticulture, you can't get much further from the grass roots than to be a creation of the industry with the biggest stake in the debate. [....]

Please read the whole article.

Addendum: "A Canadian doctor diagnoses U.S. healthcare," that is to say, a "caricature of 'socialized medicine' is used by corporate interests to confuse Americans and maintain their bottom lines instead of patients' health" (also in today's Times).

Death & Dying: A Selected Bibliography

2009-07-22T20:27:00.039-04:00

Our latest bibliography in the Directed Reading series covers "death and dying" from vantage points provided by religious worldviews, philosophy, science and medicine, as well as from the humanities in general.

Although most of the great philosophers have touched on the problem of death, few have dealt with it systematically or in detail.—Robert G. Olson

Even those who think that death is a continuation, and not an ending, can benefit from contemplating the implications of annihilation. That annihilation would be bad for them explains why it is important to live forever: it is the only way to avoid the evil of annihilation. If, on the other hand, annihilation would not be bad for them, the question arises as to why they value the prospect of immortality.—Steven Luper

Death...the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.—Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

The Epicurean argument that "death is nothing to us:"
1. An event can be good or bad for someone only if, at the time when the event is present, that person exists as a subject of at least possible experience, so that it is at least possible that the person experiences the event.
2. The time after a person dies is at a time at which that person does not exist as a subject of possible experience.
3. Hence the condition of being dead is not bad for that person.
4. It is irrational to fear a future event unless that event, when it comes, will be bad for us.
5. [Therefore,] it is irrational to fear death.—Martha Nussbaum

That fear of Acheron must be hurled out headlong, that fear which shakes human life at its very foundations, covering everything over with the blackness of death, and which does not leave any pleasure fluid and pure. —Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), III. 37-4.

Look back at the eternity that passed before we were born, and mark how utterly it counts to us as nothing. This is a mirror that Nature holds up to us, in which we may see the time that shall be after we are dead. —Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, III. 972-975.

1. It is not bad for us that we once failed to exist.
2. Our posthumous nonexistence is like our pre-natal nonexistence in all relevant respects.
3. If two things are alike in all relevant respects, and one of them is not bad for us, then the second is not bad for us either.
4. So it is not bad for us that we will fail to exist once more. —Steven Luper, formulating the argument above from Lucretius

The bad consequences of the fear of death [are] of four kinds: dependence upon religion; inability to enjoy other pleasures (culminating in the extreme case, in a total hatred of life); pointless frenetic and anxious behavior, together with the subjective feeling of a great weight or burden; and, finally, various forms of harmful and immoral behavior aimed at siezing a kind of worldly immortality in the form of money, power, and reputation. —Martha Nussbaum on the principal nefarious effects of the fear of death according to Lucretius

As Lucretius and his mentor Epicurus suggested, fearing what it will be like to not exist after we die is as silly as revulsion at the thought of what it was like to not exist before we were born. However, we might have a different reason for not objecting to our vital non-existence: it was followed by our existence! Nor would we worry about post-vital non-existence if it, too, were followed by existence. [....] But temporary nonexistence is not the same as permanent nonexistence; it becomes permanent by virtue of what happens (or not) in the future; since nonexistence might be temporary, the prospect of nonexistence per se is not upsetting. It is the permanence of nonexistence that worries us. Unlike the temporary nonexistence that is now behind us, the death before us is likely to make us nonexistent permanently.—Steven Luper

While life is good, it seems more would be better (even if each additional year is less valuable than its predecessor), and the better more life would be, the worse death is. This reasoning commits us to the harm thesis: death is, at least sometimes, bad for those who die, and in this sense something that 'harms' them. Even after our lives are over, it seems that we have a stake in what happens in the world, for posthumous events can advance (and others can impede) the projects we undertake while alive or our directives concerning what will be done to our property after we are dead. If this view is correct, we must accept the posthumous harm thesis, according to which events occurring after we die can harm us. —Steven Luper

Seneca said that to overcome the fear of death we must think of it constantly. The important thing, however, is to think of it in the proper manner, reminding ourselves that we are but parts of nature and must reconcile ourselves to our allotted roles. [....] The fear of death displays a baseness wholly incompatible with the dignity and calm of the true philosopher, who has learned to emancipate himself from finite concerns. Essential to the Stoic outlook was the Platonic view that philosophizing means learning to die; that is, learning to commune with the eternal through the act of philosophic contemplation.—Robert G. Olson

Philosophers as different—and of different times and places—as Condorcet, Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell understood death as the natural and proper terminus of life such that we can joyfully if not calmly (cf. ataraxia) face death if we've lived a good or fulfilling life, what the classical Greek philosophers characterized as a life suffused with eudaimonia. For Condorcet and Russell, eudaimonia in fact crowds out the fear of death, while Nietzsche, like the Stoics, found therapeutic value in the constant awareness of death (cf. the Latin maxim, Memento mori, the precise meaning and implications of which changed under the impact of Christianity). For Heidegger, to deny the lucid awareness of death is to live inauthentically or, after Sartre, in bad faith. Indeed, the cultivation of this awareness accords a significance or urgency to life that would otherwise be lacking.

So-called 'Irish wakes' and the euphemisms of the funeral business notwithstanding, the traditional Judeo-Christian view of human mortality is insistent that death is both terrible and terrifying.—John Donnelly

But if death is an evil, it is the loss of life, rather than the state of being dead, or nonexistent, that is objectionable.—Thomas Nagel

[It is a] generally accepted fact that human beings naturally tend to fear dying. It is to be expected that men will try to avoid the fear and repress it, if possible. One way of doing this would be to convince oneself that one was immortal through one's works, so that death was not really or fully the end of one's existence. It would be hard to convince oneself of such a claim on a conscious level, just because of its literal falseness. But such belief in one's immortality could perhaps survive on an unconscious level where it would be less subject to rational scrutiny, and perhaps be capable of counteracting one's fear of death. The unconscious delusion of one's immortality (or living on) through one's works can, if we adopt Freudian teminology, be thought of as an unconscious defensive mechanism of the ego that protects us from conscious fear about death by repressing that fear and counterbalancing it in such a way that it for the most part remains unconscious. —Michael A. Slote

It is well known that the fear of dying is a prime source of much of human religiosity. Belief in an afterlife of the traditional religious sort is one way that men can assuage their anxiety about dying. What is perhaps not so well known is how the fear of dying can give rise to (and explain) certain attitudes and activities of people who are not in any ordinary way religious, and perhaps also certain attitudes and activities of religious people that are not generally associated with religion.—Michael A. Slote

There is a famous long passage in the Pensées where Pascal talks about diversion, its role in human life, and its sources. Men 'cannot stay quietly in their own chamber' alone and meditating, for any length of time. We need or think we need diversion and activity and cannot be happy without diverting ourselves from ourselves because of the 'natural poverty' of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely. [....] The vanity of our lives consists, for Pascal, in the fact that when we divert ourselves (from ourselves), we typically deceive ourselves about our motives for behaving as we do. [....] But why, in the end, should we not want to think about ourselves? Pascal suggests that the reason is that thinking about ourselves makes us think of our feeble and mortal condition. He also says about man: 'to be happy he would have to make himself immortal; but, not being able to do so, it has occurred to him to prevent himself from thinking of death.' Presumably, then, Pascal thinks there is a connection between thinking about oneself and thinking unpleasant thoughts about one's death; and this seems to be quite plausible. For at least while we are absorbed in things outside us, we do not think of ourselves, or thus, it would seem, of our death; whereas if and when one does think about oneself, one might very easily think about one's death. It would seem, then, that the explanation of our diverting ourselves from (thinking about) ourselves is that this at least to some degree enables us to avoid thinking anxiously about our mortality.—Michael A. Slote

References:

Donnelly, John, ed. Language, Metaphysics, and Death. New York: Fordham University Press, 2nd ed., 1994.
Luper, Steven. The Philosophy of Death. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Nussbaum, Martha C. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Olson, Robert G. "Death," in Paul Edwards, ed. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan & The Free Press, 1967: 307-309.

I would like to thank Daniel Goldberg of the Medical Humanities Blog for posting the first draft of this bibliography at his blog in 2007.

Senator Sessions & the E-Word

2009-07-17T22:16:00.004-04:00

Senate Minority leader Jeff Sessions has, what I consider to be a jaded conception of empathy and its role in judging. Presumably, in his view, empathy is a squishy, biased response to a litigant that distorts the “neutral, “impartial,” perspective a judge must adopt to dispense justice. Empathize with litigant X entails prejudice against litigant Y. The conclusion simply doesn’t follow and more important it distorts judging. I may feel the pain of firing someone or disciplining my child and yet, if I’m honest and fair, I will carry through with the firing or disciplining anyway. Anyone who can’t do this shouldn’t be a judge. Moreover, any decision-maker regarding the complex interests and conflicts of several people should be able to feel the loser’s pain and ratify the loss nonetheless. This is simply a feature of practical reasoning about the interests of other people. The conflation of empathy for X and judging in favor of X simply on the grounds of empathy is fundamentally fallacious and dangerous. Empathy–feeling someone else’s pain–helps a judge see a relevant fact of the conflict that the non-empathetic judge fails to see. It serves the cardinal principle of practical reasoning: know all the facts before you decide. It in no way dictates a result; it simply guarantees the result to be based on all the relevant facts.

Global Distributive Justice: A Selected Bibliography

2009-07-07T20:02:00.051-04:00

This bibliography in the Directed Reading series covers the ethics, economics and politics of global distributive justice. The material excerpted below is from several titles in the list and will serve as an introduction to our subject matter.

The prima facie duty to relieve suffering is in general quite strong. Other moral considerations must be at least as strong to override its dictates. But in our ordinary thinking, we rarely allow a fair contest to take place. Instead, we routinely underestimate the inherent force of the duty to relieve suffering. We pit it against its competitors in an already weakened and diminished state. (Note that the duty to relieve suffering comes in two parts: a prohibition against inflicting suffering, and a requirement to prevent it. What we tend to underestimate is less the former than the latter.) We do so because of three deeply rooted habits: a tendency to forget the meaning of suffering, to forget the existence of suffering, and to forget or understimate our ability to prevent suffering. These three habits are mutually reinforcing. —Jamie Mayerfield, Suffering and Moral Responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

We inhabit a world in which the lives of many millions of people are impaired and shortened by extreme moral poverty. How much ought affluent people—people like you and me—to be doing to help them?

The only way ultimately to end the scandal of world poverty will be by large-scale collective action—and this will not simply be a matter of raising levels of material 'aid' from rich to poor, either, but requires transforming the political, economic, and social structures that produce these patterns of deprivation.

[T]here is the following argument from rectificatory justice: we are collectively responsible for the injustice done in creating and sustaining other people's poverty, this puts us under a duty to redress that injustice, and I must discharge my share of that duty. [....] Another possibility is an argument from distributive rather than rectificatory justice. This holds that it is simply the fact that the world's resources are inequitably distributed, rather than the explanation of how that distribution came about that gives us a duty to change it, and makes it wrong for me not to discharge my share of that collective duty. A third, distinct possibility is an argument from regulative justice, objecting to the rules that currently govern international trade and financial accountability—to the rules themselves, rather than from the distributions resulting from their application. These rules, it might well be argued, unfairly enforce others' poverty for our advantage; we are collectively responsible for reforming them; and I ought to play my part in doing so.

Confronted with other peoples' need, there are two questions to ask: 'What can we do to stop this from happening again?' and 'What can we do to help these people now?' Recognizing that humanitarian aid will not answer the first question doe not detract from its importance in addressing the second.

According to the life-saving analogy, it is wrong not to donate your time and money to humanitarian aid-agencies, because refusing to do this is, in a morally relevant way, like failing to save someone's life right in front of you.

Not contributing to aid agencies is like failing to avert threats to life directly: it exhibits a failure of beneficence, and that makes it morally wrong.—Garrett Cullity, The Moral Demands of Affluence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

PRINCIPLE OF GROUP RESPONSIBILITY: If A's interests are vulnerable to the action and choices of a group of individuals, either disjunctively or conjunctively, then that group has a special responsibility to (a) organize (formally or informally) and (b) implement a scheme for coordinated action by members of the group such that A's interests will be protected as well as they can by that group, consistently with the group's other responsibilities.

PREVENTING EXPLOITABLE VULNERABILITIES: No one should be forced into a vulnerable or dependent position, insofar as this can be avoided. If people are placed in such a position (either through personal choice or natural or social necessity), vulnerabilities/dependencies should be reciprocal and, ideally, symmetrical among all those who are involved. In no case should they be so severe or asymmetrical that one party has exclusive, discretionary control over resources that the other needs to protect his vital interests.

PROTECTING THE VULNERABLE: When people are particularly vulnerable to or dependent upon you, for whatever reasons, you have a special responsibility to protect their interests. When they are vulnerable to you individually, you must seek to produce the result directly through your own efforts. Where they are vulnerable to a group of you, the group as a whole is responsible for protecting their interests; and you as an individual within that group have a derivative responsibility to help organize and participate in a cooperative scheme among members of that group to produce that result.—Robert E. Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Severe poverty is by far the greatest source of human misery today. Deaths and harms from direct violence around the world—in Chechnya, East Timor, Congo, Bosnia, Kosovo, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Rwanda, Somalia, Iraq and so on—provoke more publicity and handwringing. But they are vastly outnumbered by deaths and harms due to poverty.

The official position articulated by the United States and practiced by the developing countries can...be characterized by these three elements: We are able to reduce severe poverty and the hunger and diseases associated therewith at modest cost; we are willing to spend a tiny fraction of our national income toward such a reduction, but we are not legally or morally obligated to give any weight at all to this goal.

[T]here are at least three morally significant connections between us and the global poor. First, their social starting positions and ours have emerged from a single historical process that was pervaded by massive grievous wrongs. The same historical injustices, including genocide, colonialism, and slavery, play a role in explaining both their poverty and our affluence. The affluent countries and the elites of the developing world divide these resources on mutually agreeable terms without leaving 'enough and as good' [Locke] for the remaining majority of humankind. Third, they and we co-exist within a single global economic order that has a strong tendency to perpetuate and even to aggravate global economic inequality.—Thomas W. Pogge, ed., Global Justice. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001.

For moral cosmopolitans the circumstances of justice and the nature of social cooperation have been altered so fundamentally [by economic integration, including transnational production structures, and globablization generally] that we are entitled to transpose egalitarian concepts of distributive justice that apply within the state onto the international or transnational level. [....] And yet we are not dealing with a 'now vanished Westphalian world' (to paraphrase Allen Buchanan), but rather a world in which solidarist and cosmopolitan models of governance coexist, usually rather unhappily, with many aspects of the old Westphalian order. First, there is deformity in terms of the distribution of advantages and disadvantages: in the way, for example, security is defined and the choices taken by institutions and states as to whose security is to be protected; or, very obviously, in the massive inequalities of the global economic order. Second, there is deformity in terms of who sets the rules of international society. Institutions are not, as some liberals would have us believe, neutral arenas for the solution of common problems, but rather sites of power, even of dominance. The vast majority of weaker actors are increasingly 'rule takers' over a whole range of issues that affect all aspects of social, economic, and political life. Third, there is deformity in terms of the very different capacities of states and societies to adapt to the demands of the global economy, combined with the extent to which the economic choices of developing countries are, if not dictated, then certainly shaped by the institutions dominated by the strong and often backed by coercion in the form of an expanding range of conditionalities. And finally, deformity is evident in the limited capacity of international law and institutions to constrain effectively the unilateral and often illegal acts of the strong. In this sense we are not moving beyond sovereignty, but rather returning to an earlier world of differentiated and more conditional sovereignties.—Andrew Hurrell in Pogge, ed., Global Justice (2001) (above).

Our world is arranged to keep us far away from massive and severe poverty and surrounds us with affluent, civilized people for whom the poor abroad are a good cause alongside the spotted owl. In such a world, the thought that we are involved in a monumental crime against these people, that we must fight to stop their dying and suffering, will appear so cold, so strained, and ridiculous, that we cannot find it in our heart to reflect on it any further. That we are naturally myopic and conformist enough to be easily reconciled to the hunger abroad may be fortunate for us who can 'recognize ourselves,' can lead worthwhile and fulfilling lives without much thought about the origins of our affluence. But it is quite unfortunate for the global poor, whose best hope may be our moral reflection.

The worse-off are very badly off in absolute terms.
They are also very badly off in relative terms—very much worse off than many others.
The inequality is impervious: it is difficult or impossible for the worse-off substantially to improve their lot; and most of the better off never experience life at the bottom for even a few months and have no vivid idea of what it is like to live in that way.
The inequality is pervasive: it concerns not merely some aspects of life, such as the climate or access to natural beauty or higher culture, but most aspects or all.
The inequality is avoidable: the better-off can improve the circumstances of the worse-off without becoming badly off themselves. [....]
There is a shared institutional order that is shaped by the better-off and imposed on the worse off.
This institutional order is implicated in the reproduction of radical inequality in that there is a feasible institutional alternative under which severe and extensive poverty would not persist.
The radical inequality cannot be traced to extra-social factors (such as genetic handicaps or natural disasters) which, as such, affect different people differentially. [....]
The better-off enjoy significant advantages in the use of a single natural resource base from whose benefits the worse-off are largely, and without compensation, excluded. [....]
The social starting positions of the worse-off and the better-off have emerged from a single historical process that was pervaded by massive grievous wrongs.—Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.

Islam & Justice: An Introduction

2009-07-01T09:02:00.016-04:00

Justice, ‘adl (also as or related to haqq—‘right,’ qist—‘equity,’ sidq—‘truth,’ and ihsān—‘virtue’ or ‘beneficence’), is one of the foremost themes in the Qur’ān, indeed, it is part of the metaphysical rationale for creation: ‘God created the heavens and earth for a purpose: to reward each soul [i.e. provide just recompense] according to its deeds. They will not be wronged’ (45: 22). Mankind alone is responsible for whatever justice—or injustice—is in the world (10: 44). Divine justice is more than a quid pro quo exchange, at least with regard to merit- or desert-based principles, for God ‘doubles any good deed and gives a tremendous reward of His own’ (4: 40).

The Qur’ānic concern for justice reiterates one of the fundamental demands (as ‘righteousness’) made by God upon man in revelations to the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. The fact that the Qur’ān often refers to terms such as ‘adl (equitable, just), ihsān (beneficence) and ma‘rūf (a generally accepted good) without defining them, suggests a relation to justice prior to the Qur’ānic revelations, thereby re-affirming its importance and reminding its readers of the continuity with earlier revelations. Moreover, this pre- and extra-Qur’ānic reference to justice can also be inferred from the fact that mankind is endowed with a universal and objective moral nature or fitra (incipient or dispositional moral and spiritual awareness). It is fitra that forms the objective basis for the equal treatment of all human beings, linking natural law, human nature, and the divine command to build a just society. Perhaps the quintessential articulation of the importance of justice in the Qur’ān is found in 4: 135:

You who believe, uphold justice and bear witness to God, even if it is against yourselves, your parents, or your close relatives. Whether the person is rich or poor, God can best take care of both. Refrain from following your own desire, so that you can act justly—if you distort or neglect justice, God is fully aware of what you do.

The call to justice is complemented by numerous admonitions against injustice in the Qur’ān.

‘Adl, a noun, comes from the verb ‘adala, which means, among other things, to straighten or modify; to depart or deflect from one (presumably wrong) path to the other (presumably right one) [cf. Q1: 17 on ‘the Straight Path,’ al-sirāt al-mustaqīm, and the literal meaning of sharī‘ah as ‘the way or path’ to water]; to equalize; and to balance, weigh, or be in equilibrium. Among the numerous suggestive synonyms we cite nasīb and qist, rightful share; qistās and mīzān, scale; and taqwīm, straightening. Other synonyms imply the classical Greek virtue sōphrosynē: temperance, harmony, self-mastery, and with respect to action: balance, proportionality and judiciousness, or the Aristotelian principle of the (Golden) Mean between extremes. The semantically rich metaphorical image of ‘the scale’ (mīzān) is used in the Qur’ān with reference to divine justice on the Day of Judgment (yawm ad-Din).

Divine justice by definition perfect, eternal and ideal, we are urged to make every effort to approximate and reflect this metaphysical fact (a capacity owing to fitra), reward or punishment in the next life allotted in accordance with the sincerity and strength of our endeavors to instantiate this divine (ideal) model, one reason for the association of justice with ihsān, beneficence or moral excellence, that is, doing the utmost good. The imperative of justice is both an individual and collective obligation for Muslims, so that while we may distinguish between personal and political virtues, they are necessarily tied together. Mohammad Hashim Kemali provides a succinct summary:

Justice is generally understood to mean ‘putting everything in its rightful place,’ and in the context of Sharī‘ah as ‘giving everyone his or her entitlement.’ Islam’s unqualified commitment to impartial justice is manifested in numerous places in the Qur’ān. We also note the Qur’ānic conception of justice is neither rigid nor rule-bound but open to a variety of considerations. This can be seen in various places in the text of such concepts as ma‘rūf (decent, fair, customary) and ihsān (equity, the doing of good) next to ‘adl (justice). The Qur’ān and Sunnah also integrate intuitive insight (firāsah) and considerations of a just policy (siyāsah shar‘iyyah) into its vision of justice. Moreover, Sharī‘ah validates ijtihād bi’l-ra’y (opinion-based legal judgement) as a basis of adjudication in the absence of a clear text. When the judge adjudicates on the basis of ijtihād, he relies not only on his understanding of Sharī‘ah but also his conscience, insight and experience. This is equivalent to saying that equity and fairness constitute important ingredients of both ijtihād and ‘adl in Islam. Mohammad Hashim Kemali, Shari‘ah Law: An Introduction (Oxford, England: Oneworld, 2008): 199-200.

The Prophet Muhammad appears to have had a keen sense of justice, publicizing widespread inequity and oppression in and around Mecca: a new if not stricter standard of justice was needed to address questions of fairness and exploitation not beholden to tribal status and the privileges of wealth. Whatever dimensions of justice were part of the bedouin ethic of muruwwa in the Jahiliyya, they precipitously declined in the time and place of Muhammad, hence the Meccan revelations regarding the treatment of orphans and the plight of the poor. The Qur’ān evidences the urgency of addressing issues that fall under the rubric of socio-economic or distributive justice, rebuking those who have greedily consumed their inheritance while loving wealth ‘with a passion’ (89: 19-20). Moreover, the enshrinement of zakāt (alms-giving) as the third pillar of practice in Islam makes this duty integral to Muslim identity, effectively institutionalizing a ‘right’ for the needy and deprived to a share in the community’s wealth: no longer would the provision of basic material needs be at the whim or discretion of tribal chiefs. In addition to this compulsory obligation, Muslims of sufficient means are expected to practice voluntary charitable giving (sadaqah). The Qur’ān’s ill-understood opposition to usury (ribā) further illustrates the attempt to deal with problems of distributive justice (as Rosen remarks, the term 'more accurately refers to any form of unjust enrichment').

Historically, questions of political justice were first broached in the Khārijite opposition to the Umayyad caliphate. The Khārijites invoked the doctrine of qadar (power; free will, thus the corollary proposition that each individual is responsible for his or her acts) against the Umayyad rulers’ attempt to legitimize their rule through the principles of ijma‘ (consensus, agreement) and bay‘ah (oath of allegiance), fortified with the theological doctrine of jabr (lit., compulsion; predestination; here in the sense that Umayyad rule was seen as ordained by God). The ‘absolute justice of God’ was one of the five tenets of Mu‘tazilite kalām (theology), unremarkable as such until we learn that it was bound up with debates over the nature of evil and injustice, including the metaphysical and ethical scope of man’s free agency. The Mu‘tazilites even took to referring to themselves as ‘The People of Justice and Unity.’ The pursuit and realization of justice for the Mu‘tazilah was both determined and constrained by the powers of reason (‘aql).

‘The Father of Arab Philosophy’ and Islam’s first significant philosopher, Abū Yūsuf Ya‘qūb ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (d. c. 866) held justice to be the central virtue owing to its balancing and coordinating functions vis-à-vis other (principally classical Greek) virtues, thereby demonstrating the integration of Peripatetic and Neoplatonic ideas into a distinctively Islamic philosophy. Islam’s first truly systematic philosopher, al-Fārābī (c. 870-950), envisioned the ideal Islamic polity portioning such goods as security, wealth, honor and dignity according to a desert principle of distributive justice. Rational justice, formulated in terms of a social contract theory inspired by Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Ethics, as well as the Islamic sciences generally, was the center point of Ibn Sina’s (Avicenna) (979-1037) political scheme to secure the common welfare from a pool of basic resources. For Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126-1198), justice is the sum and highest of all virtues of man as a citizen of the polity. Furthermore, it inheres in the fulfillment of role responsibilities and duties in a social division of labor structured according to the standards and strictures of philosophy (falsafah). While some virtues, like wisdom and courage, are class-specific, justice is pertinent to all citizens, provided they perform the vocation for which they are fitted ‘by nature.’

Justice in jurisprudential terms entails in the first instance equal treatment of all before the law (fiqh). With the sharī‘ah as lodestar (i.e., God’s Will in ideal and abstract form), both ethics and law in Islam approach justice through the doctrinal formula of ‘commanding right and forbidding wrong’ (al-amr bi’l-ma‘rūf wa’l-nahy ‘an al-munkar). In short, fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), as the human endeavor to understand and interpret God’s Will, is a system of ethico-legal obligation formulated in imperative or obligatory (amr) and prohibitive (nahy) terms, with all human actions exhaustively classified as mandatory (fard or wājib), encouraged (mustahabb or mandūb), permissible (halāl or mubāh), discouraged (makrūh), or forbidden (harām). Procedural justice in Islam tends toward a communalist conception of personalism rather than corporatist and administrative principles insofar as trust is placed in the ‘just judge’ or ‘just witness,’ trumping the judicial system as such. In other words, the status and personal qualities of juridical actors are paramount and this might be charitably described as one of the implications of a religious formulation of virtue jurisprudence.

The Islamic modernism or ‘reformism’ of a Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905) or a Muhammad Rashīd Ridā (1865-1935) devotes more attention to issues of individual freedom and national self-determination than institutional and public policy questions regarding the mechanics of distributive justice. Exemplified in the works of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the Nahdah’s (renaissance; rebirth) second generation of Muslim intellectuals (i.e. after World War II) brought back to the political and economic foreground pressing questions of distributive justice, albeit in a manner that lacked the complete historical compass and ethical range of earlier philosophical and jurisprudential discussions. Most recently, Muslim scholars have persuasively argued for the relevance of Islamic conceptions of justice and jurisprudence to the ideals and values intrinsic to international human rights, such rights being the primary means for realizing and exploring principles of international justice. The Islamist social organization and political party Hizbullāh in Lebanon, and what might be called its Sunni counterpart Hamas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, have made the pursuit of social justice a religious obligation central to their welfare work and political platforms. In Turkey, we find the (post-?) Islamist Justice and Development Party (AK Party) proclaiming (in its political program) a commitment to laws “based on [the] fundamentals of universal justice and human rights.”

Further Reading: Khaled Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (Oxford, England: Oneworld, 2001); Mashood A. Baderin, International Human Rights and Islamic Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Sohail H. Hashmi, ed., Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798-1939 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983 ed.); Majid Khadduri, The Islamic Conception of Justice (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984); M. Ali Lakhani, Reza Shah-Kazemi and Leonard Lewinsohn, The Sacred Foundations of Justice in Islam: The Teachings of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom/North Vancouver, BC: Sacred Web Publ., 2006); Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 4th ed., 2007); Rudolph Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Lawrence Rosen, The Justice of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and, Amr G.E. Sabet, Islam and the Political: Theory, Governance and International Relations (London: Pluto Press, 2008).

A different version of the above is found in Juan E. Campo, ed., Encyclopedia of Islam (New York: Facts on File/Checkmark Books, 2009): 416-418.

Divine Law (Sharī‘ah) & Jurisprudence (fiqh) in Islam

2009-06-26T10:58:00.019-04:00

Having recently introduced the subjects of constitutionalism and democracy vis-à-vis Islam, I thought it would help to say a few basic things about Sharī‘ah and fiqh, in particular as they have bearing upon our concerns about human rights and democracy, concerns of course common to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Perhaps needless to say, there persists an inexcusable lack of fundamental understanding among non-Muslims about the meaning of divine law and jurisprudence in Islam. And it should be said that not a few Muslims may possess a less than sophisticated knowledge of Sharī‘ah and fiqh as well, as contemporary Muslim scholars have made plain. Whatever the occasional "wisdom of crowds" or the truth captured by Condorcet's "jury theorem" (which provides some theoretical support for democracy...or perhaps not), the hoi polloi or masses, by definition, are not intellectuals, this being one of several reasons defenders and critics alike have understood the importance of formal and informal education in democratic polities if they are to have any realistic prospect for long-term survival, let alone flourishing, and accounts for the fact that democracies can never, or at least should not be, purely "participatory" (let alone 'deliberative'), that is, allow for literal "rule by the people" (or, literally, 'popular sovereignty'), even if we find sufficient reason here and there or now and again to expand the parameters of participation and deliberation. In other words, democracies in the (post-) modern world are necessarily "representative."

We first introduce Sharī‘ah, followed by a sketch of the meaning of fiqh, both of these being basic and introductory treatments of their respective subjects. For further exploration interested readers should consult the works listed under "Jurisprudence" in my Islamic Studies Bibliography.

Sharī‘ah: literally, something like ‘the way,’ or ‘the path to the watering hole (or spring),’ and refers to divine law or God’s will in Islam. Historically, the term Sharī‘ah refers to all the elements of a proper, i.e. righteous life; this includes moral behavior, proper respect towards Allāh, correct belief, personal piety, and so on. In other words, it means the right way to live one's life as a Muslim in conformity to God’s will. In more recent times, the scope of its reference has narrowed to that which falls under the rubric of Islamic law (fiqh), but there is a logical, conceptual and practical difference between Sharī‘ah and fiqh. The latter involves the human process of understanding and implementing the divine law. It is a serious (religious, epistemological, ontological, ethical…) mistake to conflate Sharī‘ah and fiqh, or to use these terms, as often happens today, as synonyms. The Sharī‘ah, writes Khaled Abou El Fadl, ‘is God’s Will in an ideal and abstract fashion, but the fiqh is the product of the human attempt to understand God’s Will. In this sense, the Sharī‘ah is always fair, just and equitable, but fiqh is only an attempt at reaching the ideals and purposes of Sharī‘ah (maqāsid al-Sharī‘ah). [….] The conceptual distinction between Sharī‘ah and fiqh was the product of a recognition of the inevitable failures of human efforts at understanding the purposes or intentions of God.’

The function of Sharī’ah is here analogous or similar to that of Natural Law intimations among the Stoics and both religious and secular Natural Law doctrine as it developed from and after Grotius. Recently, Abdullahi An-Na‘im has made the provocative argument that ‘precisely because sharī‘a is supposed to be binding on Muslims out of religious conviction, a believer cannot be religiously bound except by what he or she personally believes to be a valid interpretation of the relevant texts of the Qur’ān and Sunnah. Yet, given the diversity of opinions among Muslim jurists, whatever the state elects to enforce as positive law is bound to be deemed an invalid interpretation of Islamic sources by some of the Muslim citizens of the state.’ Moreover, such ‘objections to the enforcement of sharī‘a through positive law and the notion of an Islamic state do not, of course, preclude Muslims from personally conforming with every aspect of sharī‘a.’

We might describe the function of Sharī‘ah along the order of a Platonic Form, at least in its ‘bedrock version’ as outlined by T.K. Seung in Intuition and Construction: The Foundation of Normative Theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993). In this account, intuition and construction are two integral processes intrinsic to the functional role of Platonic Forms (or ‘Ideas,’ ‘Archetypes,’ etc.). Platonic Forms—like the Sharī‘ah—are (is) fairly indeterminate, while nonetheless serving as normative, intuitive, and largely nonpropositional foundations (in theory, accessible to any Muslim) for constructing (propositional, hence legal) models as guides for determinate social realities, thus, for example, (the Form) Justice is only the normative foundation for constructing principled models of determinate social orders, none of which fully realizes Justice, and all of which endeavor to approach Justice, succeeding by degrees. What is more, the attempt to instantiate or embody the model is never wholly successful, given the nature of the human condition and the model’s idealized qualities in reference to the Form itself: ‘The indeterminacy of Platonic Forms makes them flexible standards, and their flexibility assures their eternal durability.’ Sharī‘ah is like the Platonic Form in being universal, abstract, and ‘indeterminate,’ and thus cannot directly serve as a normative standard (i.e., any interpretation of the Divine Will needs religiously rationalized and principled justification by way of textual hermeneutics and exegesis). This is perhaps one reason Norman Calder writes that, ‘in modern academic analysis of Islamic law, the word Sharī‘ah is of little use: what we can study and describe is always fiqh.’ Fiqh represents a Platonic-like endeavor to translate Sharī‘ah into direct, concrete, and normative models for particular contexts. As with Platonic intuitionism in which all human beings have access to Platonic Forms, all Muslims, as noted by An-‘Naim above, have access to Sharī‘ah, indeed, they are under a spiritual obligation to attempt to understand (and live by that understanding) the divine law. Such understanding is necessarily partial and fallible and may vary according to the individual (every Muslim is different): ‘Indeterminacy and relativity are inseparable in the domain of realization.’ The divine nature of Sharī‘ah means that it retains a normatively transcendent and evaluative function whatever the extent of its positivization as fiqh. In other words, law as such, or positive law, cannot exhaust the evaluative function of divine law as one’s understanding of same can always deepen, one’s intuitive discernment can always be keener. As a transcendent (nonpropositional) guide for action, and despite its integral relation to Islamic law, Sharī‘ah should not be confused or conflated with any of its specific principled and propositional constructions by way of fiqh, or any political proposal for a putatively Islamic state. Nonetheless, fiqh can serve as an aid in coming to understand divine law insofar as it enables us to obtain further, dialectical insight into that which transcends positive law; discursive reasoning and rational understanding, in other words, and in this case intrinsic to the Islamic science of jurisprudence, are part and parcel of the process of acquiring (intuitive or nonpropositional) insight into divine law. That is to say, there is a dialectical relation between divine and human law that represents, in epistemic terms, a dialectic between propositional knowledge and ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ in a Platonic sense or ‘knowledge by presence’ after Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī: ‘The insight that transcends words cannot be attained except by means of words; what cannot be spoken of becomes manifest in the very act of speaking.’ Like Socrates in the agora, Islamic scholars (jurists, theologians and philosophers) can examine and refute propositions that claim to fully or finally capture the nature or essence of the Divine Will, that pretend to fully embody or ‘positivize’ the Sharī‘a. The jurist’s fallible, limited, and historical understanding of Sharī‘ah, in other words, is evidenced by his facility with ’usūl al-fiqh: how he has arrived at the determination of law, rather than simply the result, that is, the legal determination or ruling itself, or, in the case of furū‘ al-fiqh, the persuasiveness of the arguments explicating the concepts and rules that relate to religious rituals and ethico-religious conduct in the widest sense.

And it is fitra, the Islamic term that designates our primordial inclination or general predisposition to the good as a constituent feature of human nature, that allows individual qua individuals, to have insight into the Divine Will (and thus functions like soul memory in Platonic thought: permitting individual intuitive awareness, however dim or partial, into the Good; this insight is what Socrates set out to awaken in the interlocutors of the dialectical dialogues). In fact, fitra can serve as the Islamic equivalent of individual conscience, according individuals in effect the right of principled objection to interpretations of Sharī‘ah that violate their sincere and sustained endeavors (made in the context of the Islamic tradition) to realize this dispositional awareness of ‘the Good,’ the Divine Will or Sharī‘a.

That said, consider the following comments from Professor Haider Ala Hamoudi, as a ‘legal realist,’ from his blog ‘Islamic Law in Our Times: A Realistic Assessment of Islamic Law in Today’s World’ (http://muslimlawprof.org/), as they help us appreciate the difference between concern with the ‘conceptual’ and focus on the ‘empirical’ or how, in practice, the normative is entangled or even conflated with the descriptive (what others term 'fact/value' entanglement):

In Islamic studies departments, there's this notion of shari'a as this sort of idealized, highly stylized logic driven system that is sort of somewhere in the sky that nobody can see, and then there's fiqh, which is any given juristic interpretation of this beauty written down on paper always with the flaws of that jurist, and then there's actual law, which bears no necessary relationship to either. [….] Certainly shari'a and fiqh, the ideal and then the imperfect reflection of the ideal (still not real) is a favorite of this group, their law review articles go to great lengths to explain the difference between the two, because one must understand how this all works, this lovely thing up there in the sky, its shadow in the academy and then if you're lucky they'll attempt to relate all of that to reality in a way that is, ummm, perplexing. [….] [A]s with any law or rule of social order, when you want to understand what the shari'a is, you have to see what the shari'a actually does. What role in the social order? How? Who has the authority to declare it? Where and when does it conflict with national law and how do Muslims of various sorts react to that? Where is it important to most? Where do some care and not others? THAT is law.

And in one sense that is true enough, but in principle and practice we need to keep in mind the necessary metaphysical, logical or conceptual, and legal distinctions that make a difference to our understanding of what is normative, prescriptive and descriptive (this allows, for instance, appreciation for the fact that what we might describe in any given case as normative or prescriptive is contingent or contestable and that there are may be principled differences of opinion--and arguments to be made--as to what is to properly count as prescriptive or normative).

So, for example, we should bear in mind the normative argument made by Abdullahi An-Na‘im:

When observed voluntarily, Sharī‘ah plays a fundamental role in shaping and developing ethical norms and values that can be reflected in general legislation and public policy through the democratic political process. But…Sharī‘ah principles cannot be enacted and enforced by the state as public law and public policy solely on the grounds that they are believed to be part of Sharī‘ah. If such enactment is attempted, the outcome will necessarily be the political will of the state and not the religious law of Islam. The fact that ruling elites sometimes make such claims to legitimize their control of the state in the name of Islam does not mean that such claims are true. The fact that the state is not a religious institution is the historical experience and current political reality of Islamic societies. [….] [D]ispelling the dangerous illusion of an Islamic state that can enforce Sharī‘ah is necessary for legitimizing and implementing the principles and institutions of constitutionalism, human rights, and citizenship in Islamic societies. Abdullahi An-Na‘im, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Sharī‘a. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).

Finally, we will grant the last word to Mohammad Hashim Kamali as evidence for the proposition that there need not be any inherent conflict—let alone contradiction—between Sharī‘a and democratice theory and praxis. This is true despite the historical fact that ‘with reference to justice and basic rights…the traditional fiqh in the areas of al-ahkām al-sultāniyyah (principles of government) and siyāsah shar‘iyyah (Sharī‘ah) has fallen short of reflecting the Qur’ān’s comprehensive conception of justice in the sphere particularly of rights and liberties.’ The following is a summary of points made by Kamali on behalf of our claim:

1. Notwithstanding certain reservations, some Muslim commentators have noted the Islamic credentials of formal constitutions in present-day Muslim countries; these constitutions, on the whole, pay greater attention to basic rights and liberties, the foundations of accountable and representative government, and as such tend to be in greater harmony with the basic principles of Islam. [….]

2. In response to the question whether a formal constitution was Islamic, and whether any objectionable elements therein invalidated the whole of a constitution, Muhammad Rashīd Ridā (d. 1935) issued a fatwā that may be summarized as follows: If a constitution seeks to establish a good government, defines the limits of power and ascertains criteria of accountability, then it would be in harmony with Islam. Should there be an instance of disagreement with any of the principles of Islam, only that element should be addressed and amended. For after all many of the great works of fiqh also contain errors, but this does not invalidate the whole of the endeavor or manual in which such an error might have occurred. [….]

3. [Despite] a lack of consensus over the basic definition of “right” in the
Islamic discourse, the word “haqq” is often said to convey a basic meaning
regardless of definitions. Haqq (right) in the Qur’ān occurs in several places and carries a variety of meanings, which include justice, right as opposed to falsehood, a legal claim, an obligation, something that is proven and an assigned portion. The many meanings of haqq in the Qur’ān may be said to be a cause sometimes of ambiguity, even misunderstanding. For instance the shared meaningof haqq between a right and an obligation has persuaded Western Islamologists to draw…the unwarranted conclusion that Islam recognizes only obligations but no right inhering in the individual. This is tantamount to turning a blind eye to the affirmative stance of the Qur’ān and Sunnah on the rights of the individual, including his right to life, right to justice, right to equality, right of ownership, rights to sustenance and support within the family, parental rights, right of inheritance and so forth. Islam’s commitment to justice and its advocacy of human dignity could not be sustained without the recognition of rights. [….] We may add…that Islam’s perspective on rights and liberties is somewhat different from that of constitutional law and democracy and their underlying Western postulates. Islam, like other great religions, is primarily concerned with human relations. In ordinary life, people do not live primarily in terms of rights against others but in terms mutual relationships involving love, compassion, self-preservation and self-sacrifice in pursuit of happiness and peace for themselves and their loved ones. The great religious traditions teach people, with good reason, that such things are not a matter of course nor are they always a question of rights. This would partially explain why most religions tend to emphasize moral virtue, obligation, love and sacrifice even more than the individual’s rights and claims. [….]

4. [T]here are differences between the theistic view of right and freedom when compared to what they mean in a secular context, but we also note that taking a totally secular approach to them is not advisable in the Islamic context. We believe that human rights and democratic values would benefit if religious values are also taken into consideration. [….] For the religious reformers to carry forward their struggle for democracy and human rights, they should be seen as authentic articulators of change espousing an alternative from within rather than without the tradition. [….]

5. For moderate Muslim thinkers, Islam’s exhortation to justice does not preclude people’s interpretation of it. On the subject of women’s rights, for example, it is suggested that women’s isolation from public life has been due to backward customary impositions on the Qur’ānic discourse. Thus what is needed is to restore women’s originally independent status in the Qur’ān, and provide a social context where women can exercise their freedom and independence. [….] Political parties and associations are permitted, and Islam stands for consultative and constitutional government with limited powers subjected to the rule of law. Basic rights and freedoms must be protected and government is accountable to the people. Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Sharī‘ah Law: An Introduction (Oxford, England: Oneworld, 2008).

Fiqh: understanding, knowledge; Islamic jurisprudence (law) as derived from Sharī‘ah (lit., the way; divine law, God’s will). Strictly speaking, Sharī‘ah is perfect: immutable and infallible, God’s will as abstractly and ideally understood, while fiqh is fallible and changeable, the product of a human attempt to understand that which is divine. There is, in other words, a logical, conceptual and practical distinction between Sharī’ah and fiqh, however much the latter is inspires the former. Nonetheless, and in the words of Knut S. Vikø, ‘It is more common to use “Sharī’a” as a name for the Islamic legal rules that we actually see applied in our human existence. Then one distinguishes between fiqh as the science used to derive the legal rules from their sources and the Sharī’ah as the result of this endeavor, the actual body of laws and rules in all their variations and internal inconsistency.’ As Norman Calder observes, there are two broad types of jurisprudential literature: usūl al-fiqh (‘roots’) and furū‘ al-fiqh (‘branches’) (there is a third type, the tabaqāt—biographical—genre which is common beyond fiqh proper and not treated here). Islamic law itself is the product of the application of usūl al-fiqh (the ‘roots’ or sources of law), the principles and methods through which practical rules are developed from the tradition’s foundational sources: a) the Qur’ān, b) the Sunnah, (or ahādīth) c) ijmā‘ (consensus) of Muslim scholars on a legal rule about a topic not explicitly covered in the aforementioned sources (Shī‘ī jurists deny this is possible; and differences arise as to the possible value of ‘implied’ or ‘silent’ consensus, with Hanafī jurists speaking in its favor), and d) analogy (qiyās), involving reliance on precedent. In conjunction with these sources, subsidiary or supplemental presumptions and principles may aid the jurist in deriving interpretive rules: istihsān (considerations of equity and the application of discretion or preference, the ratio legis or ‘effective cause of the ruling’ differing from one obtained strictly through qiyās); ‘unregulated interest’ or masālih mursalah, explained by Wael Hallaq as arising in relation to a rationally suitable benefit motivated by public interest ‘that is not sustained by textual evidence,’ later this method of reasoning was approved provided ‘it could be shown that the feature of public interest adopted in a case was suitable (munāsib) and relevant (mu‘tabar) whether to a universal principle of the law or to a specific…piece of textual evidence’ (Hallaq); and istishāb, the rational presumption of continuity. There are four major schools (madhhabs) (five, when we add the Shī‘ī) of Islamic law: the Hanafī, the Hanbalī, the Mālikī and the Shāfi‘ī, along with a fair number of other teachers and ‘schools’ (e.g. the Zāhirī, Zaydī, Ibādī, and Ismā‘īlī) throughout Islamic history. In Twelver Shī‘ism, the Usūlī school of jurisprudence predominates. After Shāfi‘ī, the jurist’s decision in a new case of law must fall into one of five categories: the obligatory (wājib), the recommended (mandūb), the permissible (mubāh), the prohibited (harām), or the repugnant (makrūh). Calder defines the scope of the second type of jurisprudential literature:

[Furū‘ al-fiqh] sets out…concepts and rules that relate to conduct, and arguments about them. Its headings are purity, prayer, fasting, alms, pilgrimage…and then such topics as warfare, marriage, divorce, inheritance, penalties, buying and selling, judicial practice, etc., in variable order. The whole is a conceptual replica of social life, not necessarily aspiring to be either complete or practical, but balanced between revelation, tradition and reality, all three of which feed the discussion and exemplify the concepts.

Thus described, this literature is reminiscent of both Mishnah and Talmud in Judaism.

Governor Mark Sanford faces the music

2009-06-24T17:52:00.004-04:00

In a genuinely remarkable piece of American political theater, Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina admitted that he had not in fact taken a hike on the Appalachian Trail during a five-day absence, but rather conducted an extramarital affair in Argentina. Extensive news coverage abounds, among other places, in The State (Columbia, S.C.), The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

Even more remarkably, Mark Sanford has a theme song. With very few modifications, the lyrics from "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," the climactic song from the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical, Evita, come very close to describing Governor Sanford's story:

It won't be easy, you'll think it strange
When I try to explain how I feel
that I still need your love after all that I've done

You won't believe me
All you will see is a guv you once knew
Although he's dressed up to the nines
At sixes and sevens with you

I had to let it happen, I had to change
Couldn't stay all my life down at heel
Looking out of the window, staying out of the sun

So I chose freedom
Running around, trying everything new
But nothing impressed me at all
I never expected it to

Chorus:
Don't cry for me Carolina
The truth is I never left you
All through my wild days
My mad existence
I kept my promise
Don't keep your distance

And as for fortune, and as for fame
I never invited them in
Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired

They are illusions
They are not the solutions they promised to be
The answer was here all the time
I love you and hope you love me

Don't cry for me Carolina

Repeat chorus

Have I said too much?
There's nothing more I can think of to say to you.
But all you have to do is look at me to know
That every word is true

Neda ندا

2009-06-21T16:54:00.001-04:00

This video is as compelling as it is graphic:

In death she is being called Neda ندا, which in Farsi means the voice or the call.