In Republic I, Plato's character Socrates attempts to defend the idea of justice as a human moral virtue against Thrasymachos' explicit immoralism. Several of you have expressed skepticism about the very possibility of any objective morality (which both S. & T. presuppose, in the sense of 'objective' we explain in the philosophy toolkit). We will have to have a serious discussion of the question of moral relativism at some point, and propaedeutic to that conversation, here is a famous article by the philosopher Mary Midgley. Let me know if you have trouble with the URL, which sends you to a chapter in a googlebooks offering:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8k6snEhYSAYC&pg=PT76&lpg=PT76&dq=trying+out+one%27s+new+sword&source=bl&ots=lQ3l6wX9GC&sig=kzCZLMhsSG2cOlkneluAqCeBJoA&hl=en&ei=HyONTMaROcX7lwfLwqBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CD8Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=trying%20out%20one%27s%20new%20sword&f=false
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11 comments:
I really like that article, thank you for sharing it with us. I agree with Midgely's claim that "Except for the very smallest and most remote, all cultures are formed out of many streams" (61). We have some moral understanding of all humans simply because we belong to one human community, and because cultures do not exist in separate boxes from one another. We must have some cultural understanding of another society and the cultures that have shaped it in order to respect them, a prerequisite for making moral judgements. When we make moral judgements regarding a foreign society, we should understand how our morals differ from theirs. Cruelty and suffering exist in all cultures, so while making moral judgements we should not condemn any one culture, though I am unsure what to think about condemning individual practices. A common Western belief is that we should police the world against cruelty and oppression, but this is not a universally held value. What actions should we take, if any, against foreign cultural practices that Americans view negatively?
Looking forward to that discussion. Only the archaic believe in moral absolutes these days, you know. ;)
Lisa: by 'individual practices' do you mean stuff like genocide? I'm pretty sure it's proper to condemn that, and improper not to. (What action we take or don't take to deal with it is a separate and sticky question, of course.)
I'm not convinced that the question of what everyone agrees to is pertinent here. Nazis disagree with me about the full humanity of Jews, Blacks, Gays, and Polish Catholics, but the ugly fact of their demurral hardly prevents me from being correct in my own moral judgment.
Sharon: Is Midgley talking about absolutes, in the sense of something ontologically permanent and invariant, or epistemologically beyond question? I suspect rather she is speaking of moral facts, which emerge historically (genocide wasn't an issue before there were people!) and which we know only fallibly, but well enough to get on with.
I appreciate that Midgely took human imperfect, fallibility, and ego into account in her defense (or was it?) of unrealistic moral fact. It was a breath of fresh air for someone to admit that maybe science and logic don't have all the answers yet, and its okay to be normative in some instances. "Scientists" believed in Geocentricism for a long time. "Alchemy" was considered a pinnacle of human mastery of the physical world until modern chemistry came around.
Matt, I agree with your statement about matters like genocide that are, I think, fairly black and white. I was thinking of practices that are more in the "gray zone," like corporeal punishment, which are considered morally acceptable in some cultures but not in others.
Regarding "gray zone" practices, it's one thing to make a judgement about another culture from standards current in your own culture, and another altogether to condemn the practice as "evil," and its perpetrators as "monsters". Even within one particular culture, "gray zone" issues are morally ambiguous.
Btw, for information about moral ambiguities in World War II (though applicable to other situations) check out Primo Levi's The Drowned and the Saved. Alyssa and I read it last year in our evil class; it's a great book.
Michael: I'm not sure I understand your post.
Lisa: the point of my relatively unambiguous example is to underscore Midgley's claim that we can and must make moral judgments. If we agree on that, we are on the same page.
Of course, people are entirely capable of disagreeing about anything. That fact alone tells us nothing much about the truth, falsity, or relativity of any proposition. That some societies practice corporal punishment and some don't on principled grounds tells us only that it's a moral question not yet definitively solved, or that some societies have sorted it out and others haven't. Slavery was like that not so long ago.
Then yes, we are on the same page. :)
I would like to conclude with this thought: the fact that some cultures do and some don't practice corporal punishment may not mean that it is an unanswered moral question, but rather that there are multiple answers.
I commented before I read the article. I agree, Midgely isn't talking about moral absolutes in the sense I've usually heard, but she does bring up some important points.
Question: Why do we view genocide as a black and white issue? I believe it has quite a bit of historical support, and only in the last five hundred years or so has there been objection to the obliteration of entire people groups. To what foundation are we appealing?
Lisa: Fair enough; that's a possible explanation for the disagreement. However, since some people give principled reasons against the practice, we would need some positive account in its favor to defend it -- it's not enough to shrug and say "different strokes" (ouch).
Sharon: I'm sure you'll agree that the mere fact that a practice has a long history is not an argument for its moral acceptability. Slavery has quite a pedigree, for example, as does murder.
I won't rehearse the many and varied arguments against genocide here. Suffice it to say that attempts to defend it on rational grounds are as embarrassing as Thrasymachos' defense of tyranny.
I'm interested in pursuing this discussion further, but it's probably outside the bounds of this class.
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