Alice C. Linsley
Timeline
Charles Sanders Peirce 1839-1914
William James 1842-1910
Bertrand Russell 1872-1970
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889-1951
Martin Heidegger 1889-1976
Rudolf Carnap 1891-1970
John Dewey 1894-1904
Ayn Rand 1905-1982
Elizabeth Anscombe 1919-2001
John B. Rawls 1921-2002
Jacques Derrida 1930-2004
Peter Singer 1946-Present
William James 1842-1910
Bertrand Russell 1872-1970
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889-1951
Martin Heidegger 1889-1976
Rudolf Carnap 1891-1970
John Dewey 1894-1904
Ayn Rand 1905-1982
Elizabeth Anscombe 1919-2001
John B. Rawls 1921-2002
Jacques Derrida 1930-2004
Peter Singer 1946-Present
"Upon this first...rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to believe, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry."--C.S. Peirce
“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”--Bertrand Russell
"Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all.”--J.B. Rawls
The Post Modern Era is characterized by a proliferation of philosophical developments that seek to destabilize traditional views, interpretations and values. The “new thought” goes against the notion that words and narratives have a fixed meaning. Discussions about language raise questions about the meaning of words like “good” and “evil.” Some postmodern philosophers say that these words are meaningless.
Postmodern ethics is not a complete departure from modern ethics. Rather, it is a continuation of modern thinking in “another mode.” To draw an analogy from linguistics, past ethics have been in the indicative mode, and post-modern ethics are discussed in the subjunctive mode. In language, the indicative mood expresses certainly and objectivity whereas the subjunctive mood expresses uncertainty and subjectivity. In art, postmodernism seeks to produce a feeling, not reproduce an image.
Both modernists and postmodernists favor empiricism and logic over metaphysical approaches to “certainty.” From the mid-20th century to the present, ethicists continue to address questions that have been considered from antiquity: human nature, the good life, moral authority, the limits of human knowledge, etc. They have stressed discontinuity, continuity, and difference within continuity, rather than outright rejection of past ethical answers.
Ethics in the 20th century touched on matters beyond human freedom and moral choice. It questioned the very basis for making judgment about human existence, questioning even the ordinary words we use and the common ideas that we take for granted. Science has influenced post-modern ethics in a profound way, especially the social sciences: anthropology, psychology, sociology and linguistics.
Modern and post-modern ethics present shifting points of moral reference, idealism, ammoralism, objectivism, linguistic analysis, structuralism, and deconstruction.
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| Claude Lévi-Strauss |
Structuralism first developed as an intellectual movement in Europe in the Modern Era. It held that human culture may be understood by means of a structure involving symbols and language. Claude Lévi-Strauss was the iconic structuralist. Through his field studies among primitive people in the Amazon, he came to the conclusion that universal “structures” underlie all human activity, giving shape to seemingly disparate cultures and creations. His work had a profound influence even on his critics, the post-structuralists.
A major theme of post-structuralism is instability in the human sciences, due to human complexity and the impossibility of fully escaping structures in order to study them. It is the old adage about the fish not knowing that it is different from non-aquatic creatures.
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)
Postmodernism moved away from traditional interpretations in the work of the French Algerian, Jacques Derrida. Derrida sought to uncover and lift up the underbelly of meaning in myths and texts. He enjoyed making fun of traditional interpretations, yet in his “ontotheology” he concluded that there was something fixed at the metaphysical center. Deconstruction reveals a “presence” that has been called by different names throughout history: logos, nous, arche, God, the metaphysical center, etc. However, for Derrida the fixed presence is not a being, but rather a necessary function by which we are able to discover meaning. Here Derrida borrows from Wittgenstein’s idea of a word as a function and Heidegger’s development of Dasein.
Derrida’s deconstruction reveals great complexities of
meaning in written texts, ideas, myths and human customs. He explored the
“metaphysics of presence.” He explores what is present. He wants to know what
dominates and blocks what seems not to be present. He ascribes to subordinate
objects a more substantial existence than the shadow they cast, or their
“trace.” Derrida wrote: "Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed
immediately to neutralization: it must, by means of a double gesture, a double
science, a double writing, practice an overturning of the classical opposition,
and a general displacement of the system. It is on that condition alone that
deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the field of
oppositions it criticizes" (Metaphysics).
Derrida explores the hidden presence. In so doing, deeper
and/or unfamiliar meanings emerge. His method involves neutralizing the
shouting voice in order to hear resonances of underlying voices. He looks for
Plato behind Aristotle, for mystery behind logic, and for the metaphysical
behind the physical. His reversals are a strategic intervention to free western
philosophy from the constraints of empiricism, materialism, and linear logic.
Derrida was a master when it came to identifying binary
distinctions, such as dominance and subservience, and reversals. In the case of
binary oppositions, each component of the binary set means something, and the
relationship of the oppositions means something, and the hierarchy exhibited by
the set means something. The reversal of the oppositions also means something.
The reversal of the subordinated term of an opposition is a significant aspect
of Derrida's strategy. In examining a binary opposition and reversals,
deconstruction brings to light traces of meaning that cannot be said to be
present, but which must have metaphysical existence.
Derrida borrowed the term “deconstruction” from Martin Heidegger. Heidegger exposed the
fundamental problem of existence (ontology) or Being (German dasein). He believed the individual’s
moral duty is to face one’s non-existence, what he called “negation.” Life
involves a dread of death because it means the negation of self or ego.
Heidegger believed that authentic being is possible only when the individual
faces death as extinction in a straight forward way.
While a student, a priest in his
Catholic school gave Heidegger a copy of Franz Brentano’s dissertation, titled,
On the Manifold Meaning of Being
according to Aristotle. Heidegger said it was, “the chief help and guide of
my first awkward attempts to penetrate into philosophy.” He recognized, as did
Brentano, that “the question of being captivated Aristotle as the single most
important question.”
The significance of Heidegger’s work was overlooked by many
who viewed him as a Nazi sympathizer because he failed to speak against the
Nazi regime. In developing his version of atheistic existentialism, Heidegger
drew on Nietzsche’s view that man decides his own values.
Other Trends in Ethics
Other Trends in Ethics
The Russian novelist, Ayn Rand, developed an ethical
philosophy known as “Objectivism” which affirms the highest good as
self-interest and self-preservation. Objectivism holds that individuals are in contact with an objective reality
through sensory perception and that the proper moral purpose of one's life is
the pursuit of personal happiness through acting in one's "rational
self-interest." Rand argued that the only
social system consistent with this morality is laissez-faire capitalism.
Elizabeth Anscombe refuted Nietzsche’s immoralism and
perspectivism and developed an argument against Bentham’s utilitarianism.
Against Locke's "natural law" theory, Bentham insisted that real
rights are those established and enacted by the State. According to this
principle, the "utility" or usefulness of a law depends on how widely
the pains and pleasures of the law are felt across the spectrum of a society.
Anscombe pointed out that consequentialism is incompatible with the
Judeo-Christian ethic upon which Western societies were founded. In the
Judeo-Christian tradition some actions, such a murder and adultery, are always
forbidden exactly because of the
consequences felt by families.
J.B. Rawls produced his very influential book A Theory of Justice and developed a
democratic system of determining what justice is possible when people must
decide from a neutral “blind” position.
In logic, great new minds emerged such as Saul Kripe and
Willard Van Orman Quine. They were influenced by the work of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell for
whom logic was the supreme measure of verifiable knowledge. Frege's logic is known
as second-order
logic. His writings were largely ignored when first published, but were
introduced to later generations by Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) and
Russell, both of whom saw the merit of Frege’s work. This trend in logic would have an indirect impact of ethics. In every age, intellectual elitism lacks compassion for human expression that appears to be irrational.
In 1903, Russell wrote an appendix to his book The
Principles of Mathematics in which he explained his differences with
Frege. Though Charles Sanders Peirce did not review Russell’s book with great
enthusiasm, it is evident that Russell was influenced by Pragmatism, a very
influential American philosophical movement.
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a method for solving or evaluating
intellectual problems, and a theory about the kinds of knowledge humans are
able to acquire. It is a modern treatment of the age old questions of what can
be known and what constitutes humans uniqueness. The nihilists argued that
nothing can be known, and even if something were knowable, it could not be
communicated. The Skeptics argued that very little that we say we know is
actually true. The Pragmatists, as heirs of Enlightenment rationality and the
Modern Era’s emphasis on operational science, attempted to ground knowledge on
logic and facts.
Pragmatism is an American philosophical development that was
strongly influenced by Darwin ’s
The Origin of Species. Darwin introduced the theory that
populations evolve over the course of generations through a process
of mutation and natural selection. He speculated that the diversity
of biological life arose from a common ancestor through a branching pattern of evolution (nested
hierarchies). This theory is based on Darwin ’s
research did during the Beagle Expedition in the 1830s.
Charles Sander Peirce (1839-1914)
Charles Sanders Peirce was an early pioneer of Pragmatism, a
philosophical movement that found different expressions in the works of William
James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and John Dewey. Peirce received his M.A. from
Harvard in 1862, and was a professor at Johns Hopkins. He defined Pragmatism as
a philosophical approach designed to bring clarity through the application of
logic. He wrote:
"The study of
philosophy consists, therefore, in reflexion, and pragmatism is that method of
reflexion which is guided by constantly holding in view its purpose and the
purpose of the ideas it analyzes, whether these ends be of the nature and uses
of action or of thought. It will be seen that pragmatism is not a Weltanschauung
[worldview] but is a method of
reflexion having for its purpose to render ideas clear." (From
Peirce's Personal Interleaved Copy of the 'Century Dictionary', CP 5.13 n. 1,
c. 1902)
Peirce, William James and Oliver Wendell Holmes interacted
with each other during their time at Cambridge ,
Massachusetts Darwin 's
ideas. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who later became a Supreme Court Justice, said,
“The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to
its original size.”
The name of the club is ironic since the members had no
interest in metaphysics. Metaphysics is the philosophical exploration of
entities beyond matter: Goodness, Truth, Eternity, the Soul, God, etc. Peirce
wrote, "...pragmatism is, in itself, no doctrine of metaphysics, no
attempt to determine any truth of things. It is merely a method of ascertaining
the meanings of hard words and of abstract concepts. All pragmatists of
whatsoever stripe will cordially assent to that statement."
The term “Pragmatism” was not applied to this philosophical
movement until 1898 when William James first used the term in a lecture. For
James, Pragmatism was a way to apply Darwin 's
theory of natural selection to philosophy. The mid-century Pragmatists believed
that humans have survived and evolved because organisms with the ability to
reason logically are naturally selected over organisms without reasoning.
William James (1842-1910)
William James wrote The
Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. The book comprises
James' edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which were delivered at the
University of Edinburgh
James described religious experience in psychological terms,
and believed that religions serve as social value. He even granted the
possibility of supernatural experience, though he held that this is beyond the
bounds of Pragmatism. Dewey rejected the idea that religious experience
reflects a unique supernatural category of knowledge. He agreed that religion
might serve a social benefit, but never as a vehicle for verifying facts. He
believed that God and religion could be explained entirely in natural or
materialist terms.
John Dewey (1894-1904)
Dewey founded the Chicago School of Pragmatism at the University of Chicago
The primary influences on Dewey’s thought were Hegel and Darwin.
He was both a materialist and an atheist, as evidenced from his first published
article (1882) titled “The Metaphysical Assumptions of Materialism.” He
believed that Man stands alone in his efforts to create the world of his
dreams. Humans have finally reached the stage of evolution that makes them able
to realize an ideal society.
Dewey’s pragmatism profoundly shaped American public
education. He insisted that the scientific
method is the only reliable way to increase human good. His writings have led to Scientism, the belief that science alone
has authority to verify truth. He applied the theory of natural selection to
education, insisting that some were more deserving of a higher level of
education than others. Likewise, these more evolved thinkers should be the only
ones permitted to teach at the higher levels.
Dewey was an atheist. In his view, God is an idea that
"denotes the unity of all ideal ends arousing us to desire and
actions." As a product of the human
imagination, God has no reality, but Dewey thought that the idea of God might
serve as a useful instrument in society.
Dewey’s advocacy of Hegelian materialism and Darwinian
evolution made him more of an ideologue than a philosopher. Ironically, his
lack of objectivity represents a betrayal of one of Peirce's cardinal rules: “Do
not block the way of inquiry.” Peirce wrote in 1896, "Upon this first...rule
of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring
not be satisfied with what you already incline to believe, there follows one
corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of
philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry."
Dewey's atheistic-Darwinian assumptions need to be
questioned, according to the rules of Pragmatism itself. Yet Pragmatism's
strangle hold on American Education makes it almost impossible to question
Dewey's assumptions.
Dewey was determined that American education should be based
on his materialist evolutionary worldview. His approach had the effect of
enshrining Darwin
in the public schools and blocking metaphysical inquiry. Without metaphysics
there is no means of integrating the subjects taught in schools. Students learn
content in various subjects. However, there is no means of integrating learning
so much that is learned is lost.
The English writer, Dorothy L. Sayers, noted in her 1947
speech “The Lost Tools of
Learning” that the dismissal of metaphysics from modern education has
resulted in students learning more, but knowing less than students under
Scholasticism when metaphysics was still part of education. She showed that teaching
less in more subjects prolongs intellectual childhood because students are not
given the tools for mature (lifelong) learning. Sayers’ speech has had a great
influence on the ever expanding classical education movement in America .
An honest assessment of American public education suggests
that grades motive more than the desire to learn. Politics plays a greater role
in educational policy than sound educational research. At the university level,
peer review has the effect of diminishing the influence of paradigm-shifters.
More honorary degrees are given to celebrities and politicians than to scholars
who make authentic contributions to human knowledge. Every American university
has been influenced by Pragmatism. The list of scholars and institutions
appears here, but this is
by no means a comprehensive list.
A critic of Dewey’s “instrumental pragmatism” was the
English writer G.K. Chesterton who wrote about the “suicide of thought” in
modernism. He appreciated logical thought and empirical evidence, but not the
idolatry of scientism. He wrote, “This bald summary of the thought-destroying
forces of our time would not be complete without some reference to pragmatism;
for though I have here used and should everywhere defend the pragmatist method
as a preliminary guide to truth, there is an extreme application of it which
involves the absence of all truth whatever.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Wittgenstein
is the leading analytical philosopher of the 20th century. Logical analytic
approaches are concerned with the use of language, the logic of language
systems, and the relation of language and mind.
Wittgenstein influenced two important female philosophers:
Elizabeth Anscombe, who translated his works into English, and Philippa Foot.
These women were close friends until Foot moved to the United States . Conversations with
Anscombe stimulated Foot’s interest in formulating a new theory of moral
philosophy. Both women are known for their contributions to virtue ethics, one
of three major approaches in ethics. It emphasizes virtue and character in
contrast to deontological ethics (duty) and utilitarian ethics (consequence).
Wittgenstein studied at Trinity
College , Cambridge with Bertrand Russell. Russell
inspired Wittgenstein to consider the nature of thought itself. In his early
works, Wittgenstein maintained that words are human constructions without
absolute meaning and that language is incapable of perfect communication. When
we speak of a chair, for example, each of us has a different mental picture.
Chair is really a word for various wood components that have been assembled in
a certain way with nails or brackets. Or perhaps the components are metal and
the chair folds. Of perhaps the chair is padded with cushions and upholstered
with a colorful fabric. So the word
“chair” can produce different mental pictures.
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
Logico-philosophicus (1921), a volume of only 75 pages, became the Bible of
the Vienna Circle .
He believed that he provided the “final solution” to philosophical problems. In
the Tractatus, he wrote that
“philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts” and philosophy is
“not a body of propositions, but to make propositions clear.”
In Philosophical
Investigations (1953), Wittgenstein argued that “philosophy is a battle
against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” He argued
that language only approximates what is intended. Language is not capable of
perfect communication.
Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations are
regarded as representative of two distinct phases in Wittgenstein’s thought.
The two periods are not oppositional, however. In the Tractatus,
he develops his thought about the logic of propositions, and in the Philosophical
Investigations he is concerned about other forms of language and explores
the question more metaphysically.
In Wittgenstein's view this mental picture (chair) which we suppose gives us a true account of an object actually “stands in the way of our seeing the use of the word as it is” (PI:305). The picture of one thing, that is in fact many things, leads us to the childish belief that there is a correspondence between the word and the nature of the thing.
According to Wittgenstein’s picture theory, meaning requires
that there be “atomic” facts. In this view, meaning can only be found through
analysis of propositions that picture facts. By this reasoning, truth claims that are
metaphysical in nature, and ethical statements that are not based on empirical
observation and analysis of facts, are meaningless. Since the words good, evil and beauty do not
represent simple propositions, it is impossible to know what these words mean.
Though murder is almost universally regarded as morally wrong, nevertheless the
statement “Murder is evil” is impossible to verify as a fact. Words cannot be
regarded as the conveyors of fixed and absolute values. They are instead a
function by which we must discover values.
Logical positivists, such as Rudolf Carnap, were influenced
by Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. They rejected all truth claims that could not be
reduced to atomic facts. They viewed metaphysics as a waste of intellectual
energy.
Logical Positivism (1922-1950)
The philosophical
movement of Logical Positivism can be traced to the Vienna Circle (1922), a group of philosophers in Austria Great Britain
by A.
J. Ayer and in America
by Rudolf Carnap.
Logical
Positivism held two key beliefs: (1) absolute confidence in empirical
experience as the only source of knowledge; and (2) logical analysis performed
with the help of symbolic logic is the single method for solving philosophical
problems. This group of philosophers attempted to exclude metaphysics from
philosophical investigation in favor of strict logical and mathematical analysis.
They also stripped ethics of
aspects considered important from the earliest time: conscience, intuition,
emotion, etc. The result was a materialist and empirical skepticism about all
truth claims. Some Logical Positivists were atheists, though this represents an
opinion which cannot be proved by even the strictest logic. Others regarded the
existence of God as impossible to verify and would be considered agnostics.
Logical
Positivists were skeptical about truth claims that were mathematically reducible,
yet optimistic about the potential of science to better the human race and life
on earth. These shared a commitment to Unified
Science, that is, the construction of a system in which every legitimate
statement is logically reduced to a direct experience. The Vienna Circle ’s Manifesto stated that “The endeavor is to
link and harmonize the achievements of individual investigators in their
various fields of science.”
Logical Positivism was a highly academic approach that had
little appeal to the average person who struggled with day to day matters of
moral choice. It also didn’t represent the religious sentiments of
Wittgenstein, who called Kierkegaard “a saint.” Although only a few references
to Kierkegaard exist in Wittgenstein’s works, it is clear that Wittgenstein
shared Kierkegaard’s religious inclinations. In conversation with his friend
Maurice O'Connor Drury, Wittgenstein made the following remark: “Bach wrote on the title page of his
Orgelbuchlein, ‘To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbor may be
benefited thereby.’ That is what I would have liked to say about my work.”
A much as he may have wanted to be remembered for giving
glory to God, Wittgenstein’s religious thought had little influence on 20th
century ethics. His Tractatus on the
other hand, influenced the development of Logical Positivism in Great Britain and the United
States , and works published after his death influenced
Idealism in Germany .
Idealism expressed a renewed interest in innate knowledge.
The existence of things depends on their being perceived in the mind. This
represents a reaction to the cold logic that striped metaphysics from ethics
and replaced it with a materialist worldview. Idealism views the world as a
mental construct with no objective existence apart from the Mind. All
experienced objects are fundamentally immaterial and a dimension of the mind.
Objects exist but, they lack substance.
Their existence necessarily requires their being perceived.
Idealism was expressed as “Immaterialism” in the writings of
the Irish bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753), and in the ego consciousness of
the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who developed an atheistic version of
existentialism.
Heidegger
succeeded his former mentor Edmund Husserl at Freidburg University
Heidegger dedicated his book Sein und Zeit (Being and Time)
to Husserl and describes his method using Husserl’s term “phenomenology.”
However, the book represents a departure from Husserl’s thought. From his school days Heidegger was enthralled by
the question of being. He read Aristotle and Brentano to develop a
philosophical framework for articulating authentic human existence, what he
termed “Dasein.”
Dasein is a
compound of the German “da” which means there/here, and “sein” which means to
be. Heidegger’s
Dasein deals with everyday human existence, not just the consciousness of
the individual. It references the unique “human way of being,” a way of being
that embodies an understanding of its mortality. Life leads to death and
involves a dread of negation of being. Heidegger believed that authentic being
was possible only as the individual honestly faces death as extinction.
Heidegger argued
that humans do not create their world by mental pictures, but exist in the
world and are shaped by the world. In developing his atheistic existentialism,
Heidegger maintained that each person must decide his own values according to
his own existence. This means that each individual’s existence is unique. His
thought runs counter to the positivist claim that there can only be one
right answer to a properly formulated logical problem. This is why Carnap cited
Heidegger’s work as an example of “philosophical nonsense” in his 1923 book, The Elimination of Metaphysics.
As with Nietzsche, Heidegger offered no hope of another
world or another life beyond this one. We have this life only, and that
realization moves us to live differently. We each have a responsibility to act
in the time we have to make life meaningful, but our being draws meaning from
how we move to non-being or extinction.
Because there is no God and no moral structure to the world,
each of us has a radical or “dreadful” freedom to make our own choices, chose
our own lifestyle, and decide our own morality. This is more than freedom. It is an inescapable existential necessity.
The world is such that there is no escaping making a choice and there is no
escaping the consequences of our choices.
Heidegger’s thought implies a new definition of moral duty,
one totally removed from the Judeo-Christian morality. The individual’s moral
duty is not to obey God-given laws, but to face the reality of non-existence or
negation. In What is Metaphysics?
Heidegger poses these questions about negation:
Why are we concerned about this
nothing? The nothing is rejected by
science and sacrificed as the unreal.
Science wants to have nothing to do with the nothing. What is the nothing? Does the nothing exist
only because the not, i.e., negation exists?
Or do negation and the not exist only because the nothing exists? We maintain: the nothing is the simple
negation of the totality of being (sein). Anxiety reveals nothing.
The philosopher who most directly answered Heidegger is one
of Wittgenstein’s students, Elizabeth Anscombe, an Irish convert to Roman
Catholicism who smoked cigars and protested the practice of abortion. In 1968,
when much of the intellectual world reacted with anger to Pope Paul VI's
reaffirmation of Catholic teaching on contraception, Anscombe and her
philosopher husband, Peter Geach, toasted the announcement with champagne. They
had seven children.
In the essay “Contraception and Chastity” Anscombe defended
traditional Christian teaching on sex. This was a time of experimentation with
“free” love and the essay was unpopular. However, it was so intellectually
rigorous that her opponents never successfully refuted her arguments.
Elizabeth
Anscombe (1919-2001)
G.E.M. ("Elizabeth ")
Anscombe
was one of the 20th century's most remarkable philosophers. She studied with
Ludwig Wittgenstein, and upon his death in 1951 became one of his literary
executors. She translated Wittgenstein's unpublished writings, preparing them
for publication after his death, and she wrote a book entitled An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus.
In 1970, Anscombe was appointed to the chair in Cambridge that had been
held by Wittgenstein. Despite her loyalty to her former teacher, Anscombe was
not one of Wittgenstein's true disciples. Her great intelligence and
originality led her in different directions and to different conclusions.
In 1958, Anscombe produced a paper entitled “Modern Moral
Philosophy” in which she offered a critique of prevailing academic approaches
to ethics. In this paper she pointed out that while Aristotle had much to say
about virtue and vices, he did not think of morality as people do today. Our conception of morality comes from
centuries of Christianity, drawing on Jewish law (Torah). The Judeo-Christian
conception of moral obligation is based on codified law (such as the Law of
Tehut, and the Code of Hammurabi). From
the first century A.D., Greek-speaking converts to Christianity sought to
conform to virtues and avoid vices because these were viewed as a requirement
of divine law.
Anscombe’s work restored interest
among philosophers in the Aristotelian idea of virtue. Her paper on modern
moral philosophy advanced “virtue ethics” in the 20th century. Her
influence is seen in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre’s book After Virtue
(1985) and Onora O'Neill’s book Towards Justice and Virtue (1996).
It was in the area of moral
philosophy that Anscombe countered Heidegger’s bleak existentialism. She argued
that since 20th century western society is no longer Christian, the
terms “good” and “evil” or “right” and “wrong” are no longer useful. She
recommended discarding the terms “right” and “wrong” in favor of the terms
“justice” and “injustice.” These terms are only meaningful as they are attached
to the Judeo-Christian concept of a law-giving Creator God. Anscombe believed
that in the post-Christian world most philosophers are utilitarians or
consequentialists, judging the ethical value of an action by its consequences.
She pointed out that utilitarian ethics is incompatible with the
Judeo-Christian tradition that insists that some actions are always forbidden
regardless of the consequences.
In her argument, Anscombe assumes that the world is a place
where the reasoning individual can be assured that concepts of justice, good,
and moral obligation have meaning. This suggests that Heidegger’s “nothing”
which causes us anxiety has a binary opposite – something – and this something
potentially relieves anxiety. The logic of her argument is that when we feel
the anxiety of injustice (which is negating) we should perform justice. Justice then is not a state of affairs, but a
practical virtue of a good person. It is perhaps the derived virtue of being
made in the image of a Good God.
Anscombe responded to Leibniz’ on the problem of evil and
suffering (theodicy). Leibniz wrote: “It is generally agreed that whatever God
wills is good and just. But there remains the question whether it is good and
just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just;
in other words, whether justice and goodness are arbitrary or whether they
belong to the necessary and eternal truths about the nature of things, as do
numbers and proportions (Reflections of
The Common Concept of Justice).
Anscombe argued that death, injustice, and suffering can
only be experienced as “bad” because humanity knows what is “good.” Her
argument is the reverse of Heraclitus’ (540-480 BC) who said “If it were not
for injustice, men would not know justice.” Anscombe is saying that the study
of Man as subject leads logically to the conclusion that were it not for justice, humans would not know injustice.
The question of justice and how it is to be achieved becomes
more complex in pluralistic societies where there are many competing
interests. How can a modern liberal
democracy hope to have “liberty and justice for all” when the rule of the
majority necessarily overrides the interests of minorities? This problem was addressed by the American
political ethicist John B. Rawls.
John B. Rawls (1921-2002)
John B. Rawls is recognized as one of the leading political
philosophers of the 20th century. He was born in Baltimore
in 1921 and went to Princeton as an
undergraduate. He considered entering the Episcopal priesthood, but lost his
faith after his war experiences in the Pacific in World War II. He taught at
Harvard for more than 30 years. Among his students were some accomplished
American philosophers, including Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, Onora O'Neill,
Christine Korsgaard, and Susan Neiman.
Rawls’s first book was book A Theory of
Justice published in 1971. Nearly 600 pages long, it has been
translated into 27 languages. Rawls claimed to have articulated a theory of
justice which is genuinely universal and acceptable from our present,
pluralistic, political perspective. His book has greatly influenced political
theory. A few regard his experiment as pernicious.
Two of Rawls's brothers died in childhood because they had
contracted fatal illnesses from him. In 1928, at age 7, John contracted
diphtheria. His younger brother Bobby visited him in his room and was infected
and died. The next winter, John contracted pneumonia. Another younger brother,
Tommy, caught the illness from him and died." Rawls’ biographer Thomas
Pogge calls the loss of his two brothers the "most important events in
Jack’s childhood." The unfairness of these tragic deaths caused Rawls to
ponder the nature of fairness and justice, and to dedicate his entire
professional life to that question. He wrote:
"My aim is to
present a conception of justice which generalizes and carries to a higher level
of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract as found, say, in
Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. In order to do this we are not to think of the
original contract as one to enter a particular society or to set up a
particular form of government. Rather, the guiding idea is that the principles
of justice for the basic structure of society are the object of the original
agreement. They are the principles that free and rational persons concerned to
further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as
defining the fundamental terms of their association. These principles are to
regulate all further agreements; they specify the kinds of social cooperation
that can be entered into and the forms of government that can be established.
This way of regarding the principles of justice I shall call justice as
fairness. ... ""I shall now state in a provisional form the two
principles of justice that I believe would be chosen in the original position.
... The first statement of the two principles reads as follows.
First: each person is
to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a
similar liberty for others.
Second: social and economic
inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected
to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open
to all.
There are two
ambiguous phrases in the second principle, namely 'everyone's advantage' and
'open to all.’
By way of general
comment, these principles primarily apply, as I have said, to the basic
structure of society. They are to govern the assignment of rights and duties
and to regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages. As their
formulation suggests, these principles presuppose that the social structure can
be divided into two more or less distinct parts, the first principle applying
to the one, the second to the other. They distinguish between those aspects of
the social system that define and secure the equal liberties of citizenship and
those that specify and establish social and economic inequalities. The basic
liberties of citizens are, roughly speaking, political liberty (the right to
vote and to be eligible for public office) together with freedom of speech and
assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person
along with the right to hold (personal) property; and freedom from arbitrary
arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law. These
liberties are all required to be equal by the first principle, since citizens
of a just society are to have the same basic rights.
The second principle
applies, in the first approximation, to the distribution of income and wealth
and to the design of organizations that make use of differences in authority
and responsibility, or chains of command. While the distribution of wealth and
income need not be equal, it must be to everyone's advantage, and at the same
time, positions of authority and offices of command must be accessible to all.
One applies the second principle by holding positions open, and then, subject
to this constraint, arranges social and economic inequalities so that everyone
benefits.
These principles are
to be arranged in a serial order with the first principle prior to the second.
This ordering means that a departure from the institutions of equal liberty
required by the first principle cannot be justified by, or compensated for, by
greater social and economic advantages. The distribution of wealth and income,
and the hierarchies of authority, must be consistent with both the liberties of
equal citizenship and equality of opportunity.
It is clear that these
principles are rather specific in their content, and their acceptance rests on
certain assumptions that I must eventually try to explain and justify. A theory
of justice depends upon a theory of society in ways that will become evident as
we proceed. For the present, it should be observed that the two principles (and
this holds for all formulations) are a special case of a more general
conception of justice that can be expressed as follows.
All social
values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of
self-respect— are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of
any, or all, of these values is to everyone's advantage."
Rawls' theory of justice is posed as an alternative to the
utilitarian approach that holds that the best consequences indicate the best
choices. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls wrote “Each person possesses an
inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole
cannot override. Therefore, in a just
society the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining
or the calculus of social interests.”
Rawls proposed a social contract approach to justice that revolves
around three principles: (1) each individual is to have equal right to the
greatest personal liberty that is compatible with like liberty for all; and (2)
social and economic inequalities are to be attached to public positions that
are open to all under conditions of fairness in opportunity; and (3) when these
principles are in conflict, the first principle must take priority.
Rawls accepts that there will always be some economic
differences in society. He is not a
Marxian. His concern is that those who are at the bottom should never be
allowed to sink below the level of basic material needs. Fairness of
opportunity requires consideration of those in society whose abilities may be
such that they remain the least fortunate. To prevent extreme poverty, he
developed what he called the “difference principle.”
Using the difference principle, Rawls hoped to minimize
wealth differences by insisting that inequalities in basic goods can be allowed
only if distribution of primary goods first benefits the poorest. He argued that the welfare of society
depends on the welfare of the poorest, and that a just society makes fairness
to all a primary consideration when forming public policy.
Rawls’ egalitarian approach to justice is a hypothetical
one. It is not so much a philosophy as
it is a method for constitution-building.
He conducted his thought-experiment with his students at Harvard. Rawls’ method requires that participants forget
their economic status, race, gender, level of education, religion, physical and
mental abilities, etc. Under this “veil of ignorance”, each is to consider
fairness from an “original position”; that is, they must establish a principle
of fairness (such as distribution of income) without knowing beforehand where
they end up in the pecking order. Rawls believed that nobody would agree to a
system that incorporates slavery or totalitarianism since they themselves might
end up a slave or oppressed by government officials. He assumes that
participants will always act rationally, and in seeking their best
self-interest under the veil of ignorance, they will also seek the best
interest of all.
Rawls’ thought experiment operates on the assumptions that
democracy is the best system, that people should vote, and that private
property in not an inalienable right (against John Locke). His primary concern
is justice. Rawls defends a welfare form of democracy on the basis of his
belief that a just society requires that individual’s democratic rights must
always take priority over the common good. In his view that there is a fixed
point of reference by which to decide justice, Rawls follows the deontological
ethics of Immanuel Kant.
Another view of how humans act in their own self-interest
was developed by the Russian novelist Ayn Rand in her famous book The Fountainhead (1943). The title is a reference to Rand 's
statement that “man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress.” In this book,
and in her later volume Atlas Shrugged
(1957), Rand lays down the ethical principle
of rational self-interest that would become the basis for Objectivism. She
argues that rational selfishness is a virtue and that this virtue can be
developed only by those who autonomously develop their own code of values and
conduct.
Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
Rand advocated rational individualism and laissez-faire
capitalism, and rejected socialism, altruism, and religion, especially Christianity. She argued
that it is rational only for one to seek to maximize one’s self-interest and
that self-sacrifice for the good of others (altruism) is irrational. Rand argues that selfishness is a proper virtue and that
the rational person will pursue it. She argued that the rational man lives “with
his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life.”
Rawls held that a
person committed to justice for all as the highest self-interest can put
himself in the “original position” and decide impartially. Rand ,
on the other hand, argues that justice for all is meaningless because nobody is
able to reason impartially. Humans, in order to be human, act in accordance
with what they think will promote their own best interest. To do otherwise, in Rand ’s view, is to act as a non-rational animal.
Peter Singer (1946-Present)
The Australian ethicist Peter Singer is the son of Viennese Jewish
refugees. He teaches biomedical ethics at Princeton University
In A
Darwinian Left, Singer outlines a plan for the political left to
act affirmatively toward the environment and social problems. He says that
humans naturally tend to be self-interested and argues that just because selfish
tendencies are natural, that does not make them morally right. He recognizes
that humans want to enjoy the good life and often would rather ignore the
suffering of others in the world. He gives 20% of his income to world
relief agencies and tries to live simply. Such attitudes are short sighted in a
shrinking world.
While in Australia ,
Singer ran for political office as a candidate for the Green Party
(environmentalist). His political leaning is leftist, but he is not a Marxian.
In 2010, Singer said: “Capitalism is very far from a perfect system, but so far
we have yet to find anything that clearly does a better job of meeting human
needs than a regulated capitalist economy coupled with a welfare and health
care system that meets the basic needs of those who do not thrive in the
capitalist economy.”
Singer’s views are a mix of conventional and controversial. His
less controversial principal is the Gold Rule which he expresses in these
words: “We should always think Golden Rule: Would I want this done to me?” He
applies this to all living organisms.
Singer is an animal rights activist (as were Bentham,
Schopenhauer and Rawls). Animals suffer pain as do humans, and neither should
be allowed to suffer. Singer believes that it is better to experiment on the
terminally ill human who has no consciousness and no sensation of pain than to
experiment on animals who feel pain. Dr. Singer has chained himself in
stocks to show solidarity with farm animals. He argues that it is ethical to
perform tests on people and animals who do not feel pain. Singer echoes Rawls
who wrote, “Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of
a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and
pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose
duties of compassion and humanity in their case.”
A more controversial principle is Singer’s approval of
euthanasia of the terminally ill and severely handicapped individuals who no
longer have consciousness. This is justified in order to prevent families
and the sick and handicapped future suffering. This view is controversial
because of moral distaste of the 1930’s Eugenics movement, and the Kevorkian
assisted suicides of the 1980's and 1990's.
It is especially alarming to persons with physical
handicaps. Not Dead Yet is a lobby of handicapped persons who seek to protect
the rights of fellow handicapped citizens. They have protested against Dr.
Singer’s teaching at Princeton . One NDY banner
read “Is Princeton to become a 'poison ivy'
league school?”
There is a central difficulty in Singer’s ethical system. He
asks that we justify putting to death the terminally ill or the severely
disabled infant on the basis that we would want it done to us were we in the
same situation. The average person cannot justify euthanasia using the Golden
Rule. The Golden Rule is a rule of reciprocity intended to improve the quality
of human relations. It cannot be applied to taking life.
Singer is well aware of the objections to his ethical
system. In his book Practical Ethics,
he wrote:
In dealing with an
objection to the view of abortion presented in Chapter 6, we have already
looked beyond abortion to infanticide. In so doing we will have confirmed the
suspicion of supporters of the sanctity of human life that once abortion is
accepted, euthanasia lurks around the next comer - and for them, euthanasia is
an unequivocal evil. It has, they point out, been rejected by doctors since the
fifth century B.C., when physicians first took the Oath of Hippocrates and
swore 'to give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such
counsel'. Moreover, they argue, the Nazi extermination programme is a recent
and terrible example of what can happen once we give the state the power to MI
innocent human beings. (Practical Ethics, 2nd edition, Cambridge, 1993, p. 175)
The most controversial question asked about Singer’s ethics
of death and dying is whether or not the State should have the power to
euthanize. The greater the emotional distance from the patient, the more
impersonal the decision. Most people are more comfortable with families making
such decisions, as they know their loved ones better, and hopefully base their
decisions on compassion. Among archaic peoples, killing a member of the
community was regarded as a serious violation, bringing blood guilt upon the
individual and the community. That is why people who committed crimes were banished
rather than executed. People do not want to kill, or be responsible for
killing, their own kin.
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