I sometimes encounter a certain anxiety in philosophy when I suggest that we should not be constructing ethical theories. Indeed, I very recently discovered that the idea makes a certain professor of mine very anxious, as it lead this particular professor to make the unwise proclamation that constructing ethical theories is just "what philosophers do". As though Susan Wolf, Harry Frankfurt, Bernard Williams and Elizabeth Anscombe were discardable footnotes in the annals of modern ethics.
Elsewhere in conversation, a different professor I know has voiced the concern that ethical decisions made without the aid of ethical theory might be "arbitrary". When a person is in a tough spot, and when they need to choose between two difficult alternatives, the decision to just pick one on the basis of instinct or feeling is alleged to be problematic, because that person might have consulted the correct ethical theory instead.
The anxiety, I suggest, may be produced by the pretensions of moral theory itself: because a correct theory is supposed to produce a very general set of coherent ethical principles which are to 'cover' all decision-situations, because ethical theory purports to capture the true meaning of "goodness" or "rightness", the absence of ethical theory provokes the anxious response: how can we accomplish these goals without it? What resources remain?
It is, after all, a fair question, one that deserves an answer. Yet, I think that the best thinkers of the past 100 years have been patiently reminding us that in focusing so narrowly on theory, we are neglecting the huge number of resources that are quite literally at our fingertips. We are human beings. We are embedded in a massively complex social context, and within this context there exist many powerful sources of reasons. We are social creatures: The roles we play, the relations we enter into, the norms we accept, and the ideals with which we identify are constantly interacting with our practical thought, our judgment and our action. We are also organisms with basic needs: the mere fact that we are embodied generates an enormous number of important practical imperatives for us, individually and collectively. We are also citizens: we live under laws and institutions that shape our perogatives and which can provide reasons for action on their own. We are also goal-driven: a human life is probably not complete without the active prusuit of coherently organized ends. Also, we love: our identities become intertwined with the identities of particular others through processes of mutual identification and care. We are also thinking things, and our epistemic patterns of judgment can be correct or incorrect, logical or illogical.
Gee, look at that! No moral theory, yet somehow we can still speak of acting for good reasons, we can still praise and blame one another, and we can still hold each other responsible for what we do according to various standards.
"OK," says the ethical theorist, "so Fred is a good father and a lousy workmate and a decent husband and a terrible painter and an upstanding citizen and a high-functioning alcoholic. Fine. But how good is he?" My main thought is that this final question is entirely superfluous, unnecessary, pointless. It only seems like an important question when we allow the pretensions of theory to induce myopia in us, such that we are unable to see our own radical embeddedness, our existence as human beings in a human world.
Elsewhere in conversation, a different professor I know has voiced the concern that ethical decisions made without the aid of ethical theory might be "arbitrary". When a person is in a tough spot, and when they need to choose between two difficult alternatives, the decision to just pick one on the basis of instinct or feeling is alleged to be problematic, because that person might have consulted the correct ethical theory instead.
The anxiety, I suggest, may be produced by the pretensions of moral theory itself: because a correct theory is supposed to produce a very general set of coherent ethical principles which are to 'cover' all decision-situations, because ethical theory purports to capture the true meaning of "goodness" or "rightness", the absence of ethical theory provokes the anxious response: how can we accomplish these goals without it? What resources remain?
It is, after all, a fair question, one that deserves an answer. Yet, I think that the best thinkers of the past 100 years have been patiently reminding us that in focusing so narrowly on theory, we are neglecting the huge number of resources that are quite literally at our fingertips. We are human beings. We are embedded in a massively complex social context, and within this context there exist many powerful sources of reasons. We are social creatures: The roles we play, the relations we enter into, the norms we accept, and the ideals with which we identify are constantly interacting with our practical thought, our judgment and our action. We are also organisms with basic needs: the mere fact that we are embodied generates an enormous number of important practical imperatives for us, individually and collectively. We are also citizens: we live under laws and institutions that shape our perogatives and which can provide reasons for action on their own. We are also goal-driven: a human life is probably not complete without the active prusuit of coherently organized ends. Also, we love: our identities become intertwined with the identities of particular others through processes of mutual identification and care. We are also thinking things, and our epistemic patterns of judgment can be correct or incorrect, logical or illogical.
Gee, look at that! No moral theory, yet somehow we can still speak of acting for good reasons, we can still praise and blame one another, and we can still hold each other responsible for what we do according to various standards.
"OK," says the ethical theorist, "so Fred is a good father and a lousy workmate and a decent husband and a terrible painter and an upstanding citizen and a high-functioning alcoholic. Fine. But how good is he?" My main thought is that this final question is entirely superfluous, unnecessary, pointless. It only seems like an important question when we allow the pretensions of theory to induce myopia in us, such that we are unable to see our own radical embeddedness, our existence as human beings in a human world.
0 comments:
Post a Comment