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Subt opic
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Topic Personal
Better Living Development

Moral Decision Making:

How to Approach
Everyday Ethics
Course Guidebo
ook

Professor Clancy Martin

University
ty of Missso
ouriKansas City
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 Clancy Martin, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair of Philosophy
Professor of Business Ethics
University of MissouriKansas City

P
rofessor Clancy Martin is Professor and
Chair of Philosophy at the University
of MissouriKansas City (UMKC) and
Professor of Business Ethics at UMKCs Henry
W. Bloch School of Management. He specializes
in moral psychology and existentialism. Professor
Martin earned his Ph.D. in 2003 from The University of Texas at Austin,
where he wrote a dissertation on Nietzsches theory of deception under the
late Robert C. Solomon.

A 20112012 Guggenheim Fellow, Professor Martin has authored,

coauthored, and edited a variety of books in philosophy, including Love, Lies,
and Marriage; Honest Work: A Business Ethics Reader (with Solomon and
Joanne Ciulla); and The Philosophy of Deception. He has published dozens
of articles, essays, and reviews on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Romanticism, the
virtue of truthfulness, and many other subjects and has translated Nietzsches
Thus Spoke Zarathustra and other texts from German and Danish. Before
becoming a philosopher, he was a successful businessman and owned a
chain of luxury jewelry stores, a wine bar, and a mergers and acquisitions
company.

Professor Martins writing has appeared in Harpers Magazine (where he

is a contributing editor), The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
the London Review of Books, GQ, Esquire, Ethics, The Times Literary
Supplement, VICE, The Australian Financial Review, Details, Mens
Journal, ELLE, The Harvard Advocate, the Columbia Journalism Review,
Bookforum, and many other publications. His work has been translated into
more than 20 languages, including Portuguese, Korean, and Mandarin. In
2009, Kansas Citys The Pitch named him the Best Author of the Year.

i
A Pushcart Prize winner, Professor Martins rst novel, How to Sell: A Novel,
was selected as a 2009 Book of the Year by The Times Literary Supplement
and received recognition from The Guardian, The Kansas City Star,
Publishers Weekly, and several other publications. It also was optioned by
Sony for lm. His second novel, Travels in Central America, was published
in 2012. Two of his magazine stories are currently being developed for lm.
Professor Martin also has been a nalist for the National Magazine Award.
His work in progress includes a book on the nature of the will, a novel, and
several essays, both philosophical and popular.

ii
 Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Professor Biography ............................................................................i

Course Scope .....................................................................................1

LECTURE GUIDES

LECTURE 1
Why Be Good? ...................................................................................3
LECTURE 2
Is It Ever Permissible to Lie? .............................................................9
LECTURE 3
Arent Whistle-Blowers Being Disloyal?............................................15
LECTURE 4
Whats Wrong with Gossip? .............................................................21
LECTURE 5
Do I Have an Obligation to Be Healthy? ...........................................27
LECTURE 6
Can I Sneak a Grape or Two While Shopping? ................................33
LECTURE 7
Is It Wrong to Make as Much Money as I Can?................................40
LECTURE 8
What Are My Obligations to the Poor? .............................................46
LECTURE 9
Can We Do Better Than the Golden Rule? ......................................52
LECTURE 10
Why Cant I Just Live for Pleasure? .................................................59

iii
 Table of Contents

LECTURE 11
Why Cant I Date a Married Person? ................................................66
LECTURE 12
Are Jealousy and Resentment Always Wrong?................................72
LECTURE 13
What Are the Rules for Respecting Privacy?....................................78
LECTURE 14
What Do I Owe My Aging Parents? ..................................................84
LECTURE 15
Should I Help a Suffering Loved One Die?.......................................90
LECTURE 16
Is Genetic Enhancement Playing God? .........................................96
LECTURE 17
Is Conscientious Objection a Moral Right?.....................................102
LECTURE 18
Is It Always Wrong to Fight Back? ..................................................109
LECTURE 19
Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished? ....................................... 116
LECTURE 20
Is Torture Ever Acceptable?............................................................122
LECTURE 21
Do Animals Have Rights? ...............................................................128
LECTURE 22
Why Should I Recycle? .................................................................134
LECTURE 23
Does It Matter Where I Shop? ........................................................140

iv
 Table of Contents

LECTURE 24
What Would Socrates Do? .............................................................147

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Bibliography ....................................................................................153

v
vi
 Moral Decision Making:
How to Approach Everyday Ethics

Scope:

W
e are all constantly confronted with moral challenges. A friend
asks if you like his new beard: Do you lie and say yes or tell
him the truth and hurt his feelings? You discover that a friend
is having an affair or taking liberties with ofce resources: What are you
required to do, if anything? Morality forces its way into the most everyday
decisions we make, such as recycling, whether or not to buy the cage-free
eggs at the grocery store, and whether or not we should shop at only the local
stores or nd the best price. What about that promotion that means spending
less time with your family? How much do you owe your aging parents or
your adult children? We all have intuitions about how best to handle moral
situationsand in our pluralistic society, many of us have differing moral
intuitionsyet we rarely stop to ask ourselves why we believe what we
do. Can we defend our moral intuitions with good reasons? Are our various
moral commitments consistent with one another? Do we often simply avoid
thinking about what is the right or the wrong thing to do and follow that old
familiar guide, habit?

This course charts the terrain of the many great thinkers, in both the Western
and Eastern traditions, who have wrestled with these and many other moral
questions, difculties and dilemmas. We will look as far back into our
intellectual history as Homer and Confucius to understand how we have
come to formulate the moral opinions we have, and we will examine what
contemporary Nobel Prizewinning thinkers, such as Kenneth Arrow, have to
say about moral debates that continue to puzzle us today. Much of our course
will focus on what great philosophers and moral leaders have saidsuch
thinkers as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Buddha, Abraham, Paul, Immanuel
Kant, and John Stuart Mill. But we will also look at what contemporary
neuroscience has to say about morality and especially how that applies to
the ethics of everyday life. The course covers much of the history of the
great theories of morality, but we always keep one eye focused on practice.
All of the thinkers we discuss agree that theorizing about morality is useless

1
 if it doesnt help us each, as individuals, to solve moral problems and think
through genuine moral challenges.

By learning about the history and current state of intellectual theory in

ethics, we will discover better techniques for recognizing moral problems
when they present themselves, develop approaches for untangling the
complicated knots morality can tie us in, and even arrive at concrete answers
for many common moral dilemmas. Most importantly, we will learn how to
ask ourselves tougher questions about what the good life is and what kind of
ethical challenges it presents. We will broaden our worldview about value.
And we will recognize that very often what we thought was ethically simple
and straightforward is actually much more complex, morally speaking, than
it rst appears. We will become experts in ethicsand experts in confronting
our own moral mistakes, prejudices, and hypocrisies.
Scope

2
 Why Be Good?
Lecture 1

W
hy be moral rather than immoral? Are we good because we know
other people are watching? Are we afraid of the consequences?
Are we naturally inclined toward being good? Or is itas
Socrates thoughtthat we have thought the problem through and come
to the realization that being good actually benets both ourselves and the
people around us? In this course, we will look at all these questions and
nd out how many of the wisest people in both the Western and the Eastern
philosophical traditions have tried to answer them. We will also think
through the ethical dilemmas and specic moral challenges that many of us
face in our lives.

Herodotus and Moral Relativism

x In one of the great masterpieces of the Western philosophical
tradition, The Republic, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato
proposed a now-famous thought experiment. Suppose that you
came into possession of a magical ring, called the Ring of Gyges,
that made you invisible. Would you behave yourself, or would you
engage in criminal and immoral behavior because you could get
away with it? In this lecture, we will examine how various thinkers
have replied to the questions posed by Plato in the Ring of Gyges
thought experiment.

x The 5th-century-B.C. Greek philosopher and historian Herodotus

famously wrote, Circumstances rule men; men do not rule
circumstances. Herodotus started the long tradition of writing
down historical accounts to produce factual narratives about the
past. In doing so, he came to some conclusions about morality that
prevail even today.

x Among the most inuential of these conclusions was Herodotuss

argumentrevolutionary in his own daythat all morality is
relative. He pointed out that if you studied the history of virtually

3
 any moral or immoral
practice, you would soon
nd one or more civilizations
that had either supported or
discouraged that practice.

x Furthermore, Herodotus
argued, we have no way of
standing outside of history to
say this is right or that is
wrong. Because we ourselves
are always xed in a particular
historical time and place, we
inevitably believe that the

iStock/Thinkstock.
moral code we endorse is the
right or true one.

x Herodotus would have

responded to the challenge of In Herodotuss view, human
beings act in accordance with the
the Ring of Gyges by asserting circumstances that the world and
that anyone who did not use history has thrust upon them.
the ring in immoral pursuits
had been trained by his or her culture to behave in customary ways.
Arguments about cultural relativity and moral relativity made by
Herodotus are still powerful today.

Humans: Creatures with a Conscience

x Many of us adopt our moral codes from our religious traditions
Lecture 1: Why Be Good?

from the commandments of God. For these believers, the relativist

is simply wrong. God trumps history every time. However, even
if your moral code is strongly rooted in your religion, life still
presents you with many moral confusions and challenges.

x Scientic research and evolutionary theory is increasingly showing

that we may actually be naturally inclined toward a universal set of
moral intuitions that we might collectively call the good. It turns
out that the latest scientic research shows that we have a kind of

4
 baseline sense for morality that transcends the relativity of cultural,
social, or historical position.

x This line of thinking among scientists started with Charles Darwin,

who claimed that it was precisely morality that distinguished
humans from other animals. Darwin went on to ask the question:
Where does conscience come from?

x According to Darwin, we have a conscience because of our social

instincts, habits, andmost important for our discussiona mind
that is wired to make things work in a societal unit.

Oxytocin: The Conscience Hormone

x The contemporary evolutionary biologist and philosopher Patricia
Churchland has asserted that acting cooperatively in a societal
setting is actually part of the process of natural selection. She
identied the mammalian hormone oxytocin as the primary seed of
both human and animal morality. Oxytocin reduces defensiveness,
fear, and stress. In mammals, oxytocin is released in a mother and
her offspring when they are together; for this reason, when they are
separated, they feel pain and anxiety.

x As an example, Churchland pointed out that prairie voles, after

their rst litter is born, mate for life. The montane vole, however,
does not exhibit this behavior. The difference between the two is
that the prairie vole has vast regions of oxytocin receptors in its
brain; the montane does not.

x Churchland also noted that instincts of self-preservation and ability

to prioritize lead a social animal to behave to preserve the social
unit. In other words, the survival instinct may well lead social
animals to behave morallynot to kill, not to lie. Thus, not only
human beings but also nonhuman animals with social structures
have a rudimentary inclination toward what we call goodness.

5
 The Four Sprouts of Mencius
x Over thousands of years, many philosophers have argued that
human beings are naturally good. The 4th-century-B.C. Chinese
philosopher Mencius, for example, maintained that human beings
are born with the moral instinct. In his opinion, human beings are a
species of animal that works well in social structures that mutually
support one anothers efforts.

x In defense of his view that humans are naturally good, Mencius

used an example of how people react if they see a child falling into
a well. Anyone who sees the event, he says, will experience four
reactionsreactions he called the four sprouts, because they are
like the seedlings of goodness in us, which should be nurtured so
that we can all develop into virtuous human beings.

x When we see the child fall into the well, we immediately feel alarm
and distressintrinsically, not just because we want to appear to feel
that way. We also feel commiseration for the suffering of the child
and for the suffering of the childs family. We feel shame that we
were unable to help the child. We feel that the right action would
have been to prevent the child from falling into the well, and the
wrong circumstance was that such an accident was allowed to occur.

x Mencius argued that with the right kind of nurturing by society and
with personal effort and the application of work and reason, we will
naturally grow into people with humanity who act with propriety
in a morally righteous way that displays wisdom. Conversely, in
the wrong sort of society or no society at all, the four sprouts of
Lecture 1: Why Be Good?

goodness in human beings can be discouraged, stunted, twisted, or

even destroyed.

Original Sin
x Many thinkers in both the Western and Eastern traditions believed
that humankind was innately evil or that we are at best a mixture
of good and evil. For example, the 3rd-century-B.C. Chinese
philosopher Xunzi disagreed with Mencius, insisting that human
beings were born with a nature that was morally confused. He

6
 argued that we tended toward waywardness, and without strong
moral guidance from our teachers and society, we would seek base
and immediate pleasures, act violently, and be inclined toward
jealousy and hatred.

x In the Western tradition, the Christian philosopher Augustine

embraced the doctrine of original sin. There is something about
humans that is fundamentally evil, Augustine said. Given that
Augustine believed that we are made in the image of God, who is
perfectly good, this fundamental evil that lurks in us was proof of
the existence of original sin.

Humans Are Good; Society Is Evil

x Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains, the French
Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote. Like
Mencius, Rousseau argued that humans are naturally inclined toward
goodness. Unlike Mencius, however, Rousseau worried that when
people formed societies, their competitive instincts, combined with
the scarcity of natural resources, transformed us. For Rousseau,
human beings were good, but society was evil. Once we enter into
competition for resourcesincluding such social resources as
attention, esteem, and powerour good natures become warped.

x The dilemmas of everyday ethics emerged from the fact that we

are in competition with one another. After all, even if we are
naturally good, we will often be confused about the right thing to
do, especially when circumstances or competition are encouraging
us to do the wrong thing.

x In other words, no matter where we stand on the issue of whether

humans are born good, the fact of the matter is that we live in a
social context that persistently requires us to make moral decisions.

Thinking Through Ethical Dilemmas

x This series of lectures will help you approach the many difculties
of life and realize when you are doing the right thing for the right
reasons. To make progress in solving ethical problems, an important

7
 criterion is the ability to keep an open mind and to avoid assuming
that you already know the right answer. Because most of us have
many moral convictions, part of the enjoyment in these lectures will
be to constantly challenge them.

x Socrates, who is generally thought of as the founder of moral

philosophy in the Western tradition, was much better at asking
questions than he was at answering them. He well understood
that the rst step along the road to doing the right thing is to ask
ourselves tough questions about our own moral convictions. Do we
really know the right thing to do, or are we just acting according to
habit or social or cultural prejudice? Can we give good reasons for
our moral choices? And how do we decide what the right thing to
do is when both choices look goodor, more difcult, when both
choices look evil?

x In this course, well get down to the hard work of solving all the
worlds moral problems. If not that, well at least make some
progress on the fascinating, challenging task of thinking through
some of the complex ethical dilemmas that most of us face in our
ordinary, everyday lives.

Suggested Reading

Moore, Principia Ethica.

Plato (Grube and Reeve, trans.), Plato: Republic.
Wright, Ayer, and Williams, Varieties of Goodness.
Lecture 1: Why Be Good?

Questions to Consider

1. Why might a ring of invisibility incline a person to do immoral things?

Would a ring that made everything a person did visible to all make that
same person more moral?

2. What is morality? Is it mere custom? Or is it more than that? Why or

why not?

8
 Is It Ever Permissible to Lie?
Lecture 2

W
e all tell lies and probably more often than we admit. Whats
more, we often lie for what we believe are good reasons. Just
because many of us lie often, however, it does not follow that
it is morally acceptable to lie. As a rule, other moral prohibitions, such
as murder, are not so commonly and comfortably outed as lying. In this
lecture, well look at several philosophers in the Western tradition who have
had something interesting and important to say about lying and deception.

Plato and the Noble Lie

x Plato was the rst philosopher in the Western tradition to argue that
sometimes we must tell lies and for good reasons. He argued in The
Republic that the leader of an ideal society must tell a noble lie to
the citizens so that they will be content with their own roles within
the society.

x Platos concept that sometimes the government must lie to the

people for their own well-being has since become a relatively
standard view in political theory, even in democracies where
transparency and truthfulness in government are prized. The view is
justied on the philosophical principle known as paternalism, from
the Latin word pater, or father.

x The idea is that sometimes a government, ruler, or parent may know

what is better for us than we know ourselves. Sometimes this means
protecting us from the truth itself.

Mill and Soft Paternalism

x One of the most common and plausible justications of a paternalist
defense for lying comes from the lies we tell to children. Some of
the lies we tell are relatively benign, such as the story of Santa
Claus. But some lies carry a heavier moral weight. For example, if

9
 a young child asks a penetrating question about a painful concept,
such as death, most parents will not tell the unvarnished truth.

x The English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that a lie is justied
when the good consequences outweigh the bad consequences.
This sounds reasonable
enough, but one of the
bad consequences of
lying is that it tends
to corrode our trust in
both communication and

Ingram Publishing/Thinkstock.
each other.

x Mill appeals to what

we now call soft
paternalismthe notion
that sometimes we need
Paternalism is often used to justify
to tell lies for the good lying by the government, especially
of others. during times of national emergency.

Bonhoeffer and the Living Truth

x Dietrich Bonhoeffer also argued that it is sometimes permissible
to lie. He defended a concept which he called the living truth.
Lecture 2: Is It Ever Permissible to Lie?

According to Bonhoeffer, we very often mean something quite

different than the literal truth of what we say; whats more, we
are often understood by others to mean something quite different
than the literal truth. We have an obligation to think about how our
words are understood by others.

x Bonhoeffer maintained that many of the stories we tell each other

are not literally true. Nonetheless, they may communicate a living
truth that could not be better communicated through the literal use
of words.

x In the example of Santa Claus, explaining that giving to others is

a virtuous and kind thing to do and that we should try to behave
ourselves will make only so much headway with a small child. But

10
 telling a story about a good-natured, jolly fellow who spends the
whole year making toys for good children and ventures out one day
a year to give those toys away freethat lie teaches a living truth
about generosity and moral behavior that the child otherwise might
not understand.

Kant: Ought Implies Can

x In strong contrast to Plato, Mill, and Bonhoefferwho argued
that it is sometimes permissible to lie in the service of a greater
good or truthwas the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel
Kant. Kant maintained that it was always wrong to lie, under any
circumstances. This was one of the most controversial, fascinating,
and contested claims in the whole history of moral philosophy.

x Kants basic concept was that to act morally means to be free. He

summarized this in one of the greatest slogans of moral philosophy:
Ought implies can. In other words, if we say that a person ought
to do something, then it must follow that the person is free either to
do it or not do it.

x To be moral, we must be free. But to be free means to make choices.

And for our choices to be free, they must be based on beliefs and
reasons that we have willingly arrived at on our own. Kants
argument was that when someone lies to you, he enslaves you.

x Kant argued that there is a second reason it is always wrong to lie

because to act morally means to act rationally. Reason inclines us
toward the good. To be rational means to be consistent or logical.

x If it were acceptable to lie, then all condence would be destroyed

and we would be unable to communicate meaningfully with one
anotherwhich means it would be impossible to tell a lie in the rst
place. Lying is essentially irrational because it contradicts itself.

Rich: Lying Destroys Intimacy

x Another thinker who argued that it is almost always wrong to lie is
the American poet Adrienne Rich. Rich reasoned that it is wrong

11
 to lieespecially in contexts of trustbecause we build our entire
worldviews around the beliefs that we suppose are honestly reported
to us by the people we love. To nd out that we have been lied to by
an intimate, Rich said, is to feel as if we have gone insane.

x She also went further by saying that lying is terrible for the liar
because the liar leads an existence of unutterable loneliness. By
hiding their true beliefstheir true mindsfrom the people around
them, liars make it difcult (even impossible) to establish intimacy
between themselves and others.

Machiavelli and Situational Ethics

x When we hear the name Niccol Machiavelli, most of us think
of the 15th-century Italian philosopher as one of the few gures
in the history of Western thought who would certainly advocate
lying. After all, the adjective Machiavellian is synonymous with
deception and intrigue.

x In fact, however, Machiavelli believed that all modes of speech, and

especially truth and deception, were entirely pragmatic. He advocated
a kind of situational ethics, in which the decision of whether or not
to lie did not rest on moral principles or justiable intentions. Rather,
lying was a morally relative issue, and only individual considerations
Lecture 2: Is It Ever Permissible to Lie?

could determine whether or not a lie was virtuous.

x In most cases, Machiavelli observed, the truth is the quickest and

easiest way to deal with a problem. A lie, by contrast, usually
requires some form of salesmanship. Machiavelli warned the
leader that if he wanted to hear the truthsomething he thought
invaluable for a successful leader to hearthen he must make the
people below him understand that they will not benet from lying
to him and neither will they suffer for being honest with him.

x Should circumstances require it, however, Machiavelli believed

there was nothing morally blameworthy about telling a lie. It was
a viable option so long as it was the most practical way to achieve
ones goals.

12
Nietzsche and the Blue-Eyed Lies
x As it has with Machiavelli, todays popular culture has given the
19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche a somewhat
dubious reputation. If God is dead (as Nietzsche wrote), then why
worry about telling the truth? In fact, however, Nietzsche was a
vigorous champion for the truth.

x Nietzsche argued that we all learn to lie by rst lying to ourselves.

Whats more, he believed that we lie much more often to ourselves
than to other people. What is surprising here is that contemporary
scientic research on the subject conrms Nietzsches observation.

x Nietzsche, like Socrates, was convinced that the most dangerous

force in culture was our collective tendency to close our eyes to the
truth. The most dangerous lies, Nietzsche suggested, were what he
called blue-eyed lies: lies we tell ourselves before we tell them to
other people. This self-delusional process essentially means that we
want something to be true that we know is false.

x Like Machiavelli, however, Nietzsche did not believe that any

statement had an inherent moral quality. Statements were as good
or as bad as their circumstances and their outcomes made them.
Also like Machiavelli, Nietzsche thought that many good things can
be achieved only through deception (or self-deception).

x Although Nietzsche saw virtue in some types of lies, he feared the

corrosive consequence of the kind of lies told by people who refuse
to honestly seek and examine the truth before deciding whether or
not a lie is appropriate. For this great champion of truth, these sorts
of lies were both the most common and the most blameworthy.

The Truth Will Set You Free

x Conservative estimates show that most people lie at least once a
day, while other studies have shown that some groups of people
regularly lie as many as 40 times per day. To make things still more
complicated, recent research by evolutionary biologists has shown
that most of the time when we tell a lie, we do not even realize

13
 were doing so. This works to our evolutionary advantage because
we can bluff and lie more convincingly when we do not know we
are doing it. But even if lying is common and may confer all sorts
of social, economic, and even evolutionary advantages, that does
not make it morally desirable.

x George Orwell noted, In a time of universal deceit, telling the

truth becomes a revolutionary act. Once we admit that lying is
as common as it iswhich also means facing the fact that we all
lie more often than we would like to admitthen telling the truth
seems more interesting than it did before. At the very least, there is
a lot of power in telling the truth.

x We can learn much from the truth, especially what we may not want
to know about ourselves. And in identifying what makes it difcult
for us to be honest, we learn a lot about ourselves. Perhaps the truth
really can set us free.

Suggested Reading

Bok, Lying.
Trivers, The Folly of Fools.
Lecture 2: Is It Ever Permissible to Lie?

Questions to Consider

1. Is there something morally blameworthy about the lies we tell to

children about Santa Claus? What would Kant say?

2. Telling the truth is often hard; telling a lie is often easy. Why is that
the case?

14
 Arent Whistle-Blowers Being Disloyal?
Lecture 3

M
any of us have encountered ethical conicts or moral dilemmas in
the workplace, when we realize that a friend and coworker or our
company is doing something we know to be wrong. Obviously,
there are adverse consequences that come with whistle-blowing. But if people
do not speak out in the face of a moral wrong, they not only compromise
themselves but also encourage and promote that immoral behavior. The
philosopher Adam Smith worried that a marketplace without high moral
standards would be governed by force and fraud. In this lecture, we will
explore the three components of whistle-blowing that make it particularly
difcult: dissent, loyalty, and accusation.

Dissent
x Dissent occurs when a person or group disagrees in a public
way with the popular opinion or with the position maintained
by authority. Whereas social or political dissent can take many
formswith the law or government policies or religious views
the whistle-blower has a more focused goal of calling attention to a
specic abuse and pointing out the source of this abuse.

x Dissent means taking a risk. It is almost always easier to look the

other way or to conform with the established practice. Blowing the
whistle on some practice or person means bringing unwelcome
attention on ourselves and others.

x Furthermore, whistle-blowers, like all dissenters, often stand alone

against a powerful person or group that wants to maintain the
existing power structure. This can take enormous moral courage.
When Mahatma Gandhi was asked by a New York Times reporter
whether a small minority could stand up to the might of the British
Empire, he famously said, Even if you are a minority of one, the
truth is the truth.

15
 x Moreover, often the practices whistle-blowers expose are not
amended. This is what philosopher Michael Davis calls the rst
paradox of whistle-blowing, or the paradox of burdenbecause
such great harms are likely
to fall upon a whistle-
blower.

x Whistle-blowers who are

willing to speak out in
dissent should recognize
that they cannot rely upon
the good consequences
of blowing the whistle to
justify the action. It is only

Digital Vision/Photodisc/Thinkstock.
the certainty that the moral
principle they are acting
on is the right one that can
reliably justify the decision
to voice ones dissent.
Lecture 3: Arent Whistle-Blowers Being Disloyal?

Loyalty Entire companies have been closed

x The greatest concern facing down and thousands of jobs lost as a
any whistle-blower is the result of whistle-blowers.
question of loyalty. Loyalty,
particularly between friends and family members, has long been
considered one of the most important moral virtues. Loyalty and
good faith were the two chief virtues prized by the ancient Chinese
philosopher Confucius, because he saw that society could not
continue to exist and thrive unless we esteemed these values highly.

x The American philosopher Josiah Royce developed the most

complete account of loyalty in ethics. According to Royce, loyalty
was the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a
person to a cause. For Royce, in order for a person to be loyal
to something, it must have what he called inherent or intrinsic
value; that is, it is valuable not simply because it pleases us

16
 or is of use to us, but it has a goodness independent of our
particular interests.

x Furthermore, to be loyal to something, generally speaking, is to

be loyal to something greater than oneself. What Royce worried
aboutand this is why intrinsic value was so important to him
were the many cases where loyalty would mislead us into doing the
wrong thing.

Truth: A Good in Itself

x Loyalty means that you are willing to put the interest of what you
are loyal to ahead of your own particular interest. It means that the
object of your loyalty can count on you or trust in you. A person
counts on you or trusts in you, but so does a company, a group, or
even a country.

x Now you can see where we run into problems. On the one hand,
we have what philosophers call a prima facie duty not to betray
someones trust without good cause. The Latin phrase prima facie
means that the truth of a thing is obviousliterally, at rst face.
It is self-evident, so long as other things are equal.

x Say, for example, that you witness a friend and coworker acting
wrongly in the workplace. According to Josiah Royce, you have
a loyalty to something greater than your friend and coworker: the
business. The reason is that the business is bigger than the coworker
or younot just bigger in terms of size or number of people, but
bigger in terms of what it represents. A good business is the engine
of the well-being of our entire society. We cannot have a good
country without good businesses.

x There is something else a whistle-blower is loyal to: the truth. If you

tell the truth about your friend and coworker, you are expressing your
commitment to the idea that the truth is a thing that is good in itself.

x Aristotle stated, It is our sacred duty to honor truth more highly

[than friends]. Like most ancient Greeks, Aristotle thought that

17
 friendship was among the highest and most moral of goods that life
has to offer. Nevertheless, he prized the truth higher still, because
while friendship is something that takes place between two people,
the truth is something greater than any number of people. The truth
is something that everyone depends on and something that has a
profound and unique intrinsic value to us.

x Suppose, however, that now it is not your friend and coworker but
rather your company that is doing something wrong. Here again,
Royces account of loyalty comes to our aid, because what we
recognize when our company has gone astray is that it no longer
represents a good in itself; it is, in fact, doing evil.

Whistle-Blower Protections
x The 20th-century American philosopher Sissela Bok has pointed out
that often whistle-blowers do not act out of entirely pure motives;
they may also be angry at their companies, feel ignored, or are
upset about missing a promotion. According to Bok, it is perfectly
acceptable to do the right thing for the wrong reasons or for some of
the wrong reasons. That does not change the fact that it is the right
Lecture 3: Arent Whistle-Blowers Being Disloyal?

thing to do.

x The question of how much a person ought to be willing to suffer in

pursuit of a moral principle is one that each person must determine.
Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said that a life worth living must
include a principle worth dying for. We can hope that, for most
of us, if we truly believe that we had to expose a highly immoral
practice, we would nd the courage to do it.

x There are some protections for whistle-blowers. In 1989, the federal

government passed a whistle-blower protection act to protect the
jobs of any federal employees who reported agency misconduct.
Many companies and corporations have followed suit, writing
internal protections for whistle-blowers into their bylaws or codes
of ethics.

18
 x The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act
of 2010 created a rewards program for people who report to the
SEC violations of security laws that lead to legal enforcement of
SEC regulations. Under this act, whistle-blowers can receive as
much as 30 percent of any monies that the SEC recovers from a
rule-breaking company.

x Whistle-blower protection is actually an old tradition in America.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees
our right to free speech, is a massive whistle-blower protection act.
The First Amendment was originally designed to protect citizens
when they wanted to blow the whistle on their own government.
That was a right that was not guaranteed to British citizens at that
time, and its absence was fresh in the minds of the Founding Fathers
and the generations immediately following them.

Accusation
x The third difculty encountered in whistle-blowing is that of
accusation. It is difcult to accuse someone, especially a friend.
It involves social confrontation, which few of us enjoy. It often
provokes aggression, which most of us enjoy even less. It may
mean having the tables turned on you; the accused person or
company may feel that the best defense is a good offense, and the
accuser suddenly nds himself the accused. (This is common in
whistle-blowing cases.) Finally, most of us are uncomfortable in the
position of the accuser.

x Our discomfort with the role of the accuser reminds us that there
are cases when blowing the whistle is inappropriate. Most of feel
there is a basic moral right to privacy. When we feel as if someone
is going out of his way to try to nd questionable behavior, it feels
like a betrayal of that basic prima facie trust.

x Also, there are many behaviors that are so innocuous we think that
blowing the whistle is inappropriate. In general, before we blow the
whistle, we should use common sense to evaluate the seriousness
of the moral infraction. We should also ask ourselves some tough

19
 questions about our own behavior and motivations. We should
ascertain whether we are living up to the same standards to which
we are holding others. We should determine if there are minor
infractions we are also committingones that we would not want
to see exposed.

x In this examination of whistle-blowing, we have taken a look at

the best ways to speak out about what is right and wrong and the
difculties of speaking out. In other words, we have explored how
we talk in order to reinforce moral norms. In the next lecture, we
will examine the moral norms that govern how and when we speak.

Suggested Reading

Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty.

Swartz and Watkins, Power Failure.

Questions to Consider
Lecture 3: Arent Whistle-Blowers Being Disloyal?

1. How does loyalty relate to intrinsic value? Can we be loyal to things

that have merely instrumental value? Why or why not?

2. What are ve questions you might tell a whistle-blower to ask himself

or herself before blowing the whistle?

20
 Whats Wrong with Gossip?
Lecture 4

N
early every conversational act is also a moral act. The way we talk
about and to other people can have tremendous moral force, not
only in the development of our own characters but also in the way
that we reinforce the ethical norms of society. Simply standing around and
chatting with friends can turn out to be an important expression of the kind
of person we are and the kind of person we would like to beor rather not
be. In this lecture, we look at several types of moral problems related to
conversation: gossip, criticism, and attery.

What Is Gossip?
x If we are talking to the mechanic about our car or speaking with
a coworker about our vacation plans, we do not worry very much
about what we ought or ought not to say. But when we are talking
about each other, we often notice a twinge of conscience that is a
telltale sign that we are engaged in an activity that is governed by
moral rules.

x Think about the familiar saying Sticks and stones can break my
bones, but names can never hurt me. The rst part of that sentence
is true, but the second part is not: Names certainly can and do hurt
us, and there are laws in many societies governing the kinds of
names we can use to describe other people.

x This lecture deals with a more subtle kind of talkthat which is

potentially hurtful but not hateful: the phenomenon of gossip. A
2008 study published in Scientic American suggested that humans
are hardwired to enjoy gossip; it is part of our biological makeup as
social beings. When we are gossiping, however, we are talking about
someone or some group of people who, if they were present to hear
what we were saying, would not appreciate what we had to say.

21
 In Defense of Gossip
x Before we discuss
the moral dilemmas
associated with
gossip, lets take
a quick look at

moodboard/Thinkstock.
the pleasures
it provides us.
First of all, as
social beings, we
naturally enjoy it; The Mean Girl effect is the term used to
it would be classed describe the well-documented correlation
by Epicurus as a between popularity and the ability to gossip.
naturalthough
not a necessarypleasure. We could live our whole lives without
gossiping and never suffer (unlike sleeping, eating, or exercising),
but when we gossip, we add a little pleasure to our own lives.

x Whats more, talking about other people is one way we have of

establishing intimacy within a particular group. It is a means of
making friends and establishing social circles. To be included,
however, means that some people will be excluded. One of the
oldest human pleasures is the feeling of us and them, and gossip
is a way of establishing an us.
Lecture 4: Whats Wrong with Gossip?

x Gossip is also often simply funny, entertaining, or diverting:

Everybody loves a good story. Gossip is often about immoral or
dubious actscheating on a partner, dressing inappropriately,
being caught in a lie; thus, we not only feel justied in telling the
story, but we also take pleasure in reinforcing our own moral code.

x Gossiping in order to feel morally superior leads to another

naturalif not necessarily morally desirablesatisfaction of
gossip: the feeling of superiority. As Nietzsche pointed out, the
feeling of rank is one of the most basic human instincts, and to
gossip about someone else is to feel that you rank higher than that
personeven if, technically, that person ranks over you.

22
 x There is yet another pleasure in gossip, the enjoyment that was one
of the keys to Greek tragedy: watching the proud and the mighty fall.

Eastern and Western Injunctions against Gossip

x One obvious commonsense argument against gossip is that it
creates a groupthink that does not necessarily reect the facts. And
while it may be for entertainment, it also affects other peoples
reputations. Gossip brings out in us what Nietzsche called our herd
mentality: our tendency to think, act, and speak differently when
we are behaving as a crowd or a pack. The worst kinds of human
behavior can result when we start letting herd mentality settle the
question of what is true and false, what is right and wrong.

x Importantly, two ancient moral systems speak strongly against

gossip: the Judeo-Christian and the Buddhist ethical traditions. In
both the Old and New Testaments, there are prohibitions against
gossip. The apostle Paul was especially concerned about the
dangers of gossip because he saw how cliques could form within or
between Christian communities.
o These cliques could then use moral standards as weapons
against minorities or persons who saw things a different way,
and Paul specically did not want morality to be used as a
weapon against others.

o Morality was supposed to bring people together and allow them

to function as a group in a way that helped all of them, not in a
way that caused harm to some of them or destroyed that moral
community. The familiar Christian maxim Love thy neighbor
as thyself is in part an injunction against gossip.

x In the ancient Buddhist tradition, there is a similar restriction on

idle speech. For the Buddhist, gossip is a particularly pernicious
form of idle speech, because it harms others, excluding some
people from a social group, hurting their feelings, spreading
untruths about them, or interfering with their livelihoods. For the
Buddhist, the simple principle Avoid doing harm means that
one should never gossip.

23
 x Buddhists also argue that any kind of idle speecheven just
chattering away without saying anything negativeis morally
undesirable. Such chatter distracts yourself and others from better
uses of precious time, such as talking about things that might benet
you, studying, helping others, or meditating or praying.

The Happiness of the Group

x Like the apostle Paul, Buddhists were particularly concerned about
the damage gossip could do to communities (what the Buddhists
call sangha). In this way, both the Judeo-Christian and Buddhist
traditions anticipated the work of the American psychologist and
philosopher Carol Gilligan, who studied the differences between
how girls and boys developed their moral codes in early childhood.

x Studying children as young as four and ve years old, Gilligan

discovered that boys tended to emphasize rule following and
reasons in dening what was right and wrong. Girls, in contrast,
tended to emphasize the happiness of the group and feelings in
sorting out moral dilemmas.

x The girls way of thinking about gossip provides us with a guide.

Gossip about yourself is acceptable, and gossip about other people
is acceptable as long as they are clearly in on the gossip.
Lecture 4: Whats Wrong with Gossip?

Criticism
x Although there are clearly times when we need to criticize the
behavior of others, criticizing someone else simply for the pleasure
of feeling superior is not morally justied. Both the Scottish
philosopher David Hume and one of his fans, Friedrich Nietzsche,
agreed that we should take pride in our accomplishments; they both
argued against false humility. But that does not extend to criticizing
someone else simply because you take pleasure in doing so; that is
morally demeaning to the criticizer and is simply disguised cruelty.

x Consider the more common example of constructive criticism.

Here, Gilligan can instruct us: Preserving feelings and relationships
are useful moral guidelines rather than hard-and-fast rules about

24
 how a person ought to speak or behave. Proper criticism requires
what we call a situational and particularist ethic that recognizes
that every person must be handled differently.

Praise and Flattery

x The converse of criticism is praise and attery. Where praise
becomes morally complicated is when it approaches attery
that is, when the intent of the praise is to benet the person doing
the praising.

x Aristotles discussions of lying include the atterer. Aristotle

cautioned that we should be careful not to praise too muchor
we will look obsequious. What Aristotle was concerned about was
people who exaggerate the virtues of others or even tell others that
they have virtues they do not possess.

x Here, both Aristotle and Machiavelli are in strict agreement:

Flattery is morally wrong because people who believe attery will
expose themselves to risks and dangers that they otherwise would
not. A leader who is attered into thinking he or she is doing a great
job when, in fact, thats not the case will not be a leader for long.

x When is it acceptable to win friends and inuence people by looking

for the good in them and pointing it out to them? For Aristotle and
Machiavelli, it is best to do so when you have no ulterior motive
when the person you are praising or complimenting is not in a
position to directly benet you.

x Honest praise of a friend or someone doing a job well is, in fact, a

moral good. But praise of your superior, even when truthful, should
be given with greater caution. You should make sure that you are
not praising too much or too oftenand that you are not using
compliments as a form of currency.

25
 Suggested Reading

Bok, Secrets.
Chapman, The Five Keys to Mindful Communication.

Questions to Consider

1. Is gossip morally blameworthy for the same reasons that lying is morally
blameworthy? Why or why not?

2. What would be a few examples of morally justiable gossip?

Lecture 4: Whats Wrong with Gossip?

26
 Do I Have an Obligation to Be Healthy?
Lecture 5

L
egally speaking, we can eat, drink, and smoke tobacco as much as we
please. Liberty is one of the most important moral values in Western
society, and it is a key principle on which American society was
founded. As a people, we do not appreciate others telling us what to do or
how to live: We pride ourselves on our individualism. In this lecture, we
will look at three philosophers who address questions of liberty and self-
determination. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and the 20th-century
American philosopher John Rawls argued that a lifestyle of excess was
morally blameworthy. Another 20th-century American philosopher, Robert
Nozick, maintained that such a lifestyle has absolute moral legitimacy.

Eudaimonia
x A recent study of mandrills (a type of primate) revealed that when
the animals were allowed to eat as much as they wanted, they
died younger but showed every sign of being happy. By contrast,
mandrills that were kept on a lean, controlled diet lived 15 percent
longer but showed every measurable sign of being less happy.

x Like Socrates and Plato, Aristotle argued that happiness is the

moral ideal of all human beings. The Greek word for happiness
is eudaimonia, which literally means good spirits and is often
translated as ourishing. Flourishing is an excellent way to
think about this moral ideal, as opposed to happiness as a quiet
state of bliss.

x In an argument usually called the function argument, Aristotle

asked: What is the proper function of human beings? We want
to know this, he maintained, because whenever we are trying to
decide whether or not a thing is good, we look for the particular
function of that thing and assess how adequately it fullls that
particular function.

27
 x Aristotle asked: What is the function of a human being that will
create and sustain eudaimonia? When he considered the life of the
human being who simply lives to enjoy the senses, he dismissed it
as a life worthy only of beasts. All animals sense, he pointed out,
but there is something unique about the human species. According
to Aristotles famous denition of human beings, we are the animal
that reasons.

Aristotle and the Golden Mean

x Reason shows us that activitythe means by which we develop and
maintain our livesis best pursued with balance or in moderation.
If we are moderate in all our activities, we will nd that we achieve
happiness, eudaimonia, and have the time and capacity to develop
our minds and fully ourish. In all activities, Aristotle argued,
there is both an excess and a deciency, and between the two lies
moderation, or the golden mean.

x Aristotles idea of rational moderation that seeks excellence

usually called virtue ethicsadapts to different situations and to
different people in ways that many systems with rigid codes or
Lecture 5: Do I Have an Obligation to Be Healthy?

principles do not. For Aristotle, ourishing included psychological

virtues, such as courage and truthfulness, but also bodily virtues,
such as exercise and health. To be a happy human being is to be a
good human being: to live a long, full, and complete life.

x For Aristotle, as long as a person is knowingly undermining his

own health, he is acting irrationally and, therefore, not ourishing.
Moreover, if this person continues an unhealthy lifestyle, he will
develop habits that even his reason will not be able to break.
Aristotle called this phenomenon akrasia, or weakness of will.

John Rawls: Justice as Fairness

x Another, more commonly cited argument against a lifestyle of
excessive eating, drinking, and smoking is that if this person
continues, he will become sick and will place an unfair burden
on society. According to this line of argument, the over-indulger

28
 is acting in an unfair
or unjust way, using
an unequal share
of societys limited
resources.

x The 20th-century

iStock/Thinkstock.
American philosopher
John Rawls
maintained that a
just society required Rawlss view takes into account the fact
a just division of that when one rich person has a heart
property. The way attack, the cost of everyones health
insurance increases.
things are set up in
our current system, he
claimed, the rich tend to stay rich and the poor tend to stay poor.
Whether you are born rich with lots of advantages or poor with lots
of disadvantagesor somewhere in betweenis, in our current
system, merely a matter of luck.

x Leaving it all up to luck seemed deeply unfair to Rawls. A just

society, the kind that we want in America and, indeed, generally
believe that we have, should also be a fair society. Thus, the slogan
attached to Rawlss name and the title of one of his most famous
works was Justice as Fairness.

x Rawls suggested the following thought experiment: Suppose that,

before you were born, you had no idea who you were going to
be, but you had to make a decision about how property would be
divided. Rawls called this the original positionthe hypothetical
place we can imagine before property is divided. He said your
decision about property division was made from behind a veil
of ignorance.

x Some of us would probably roll the dice and hope for the best,
giving all the resources to only a few. Others might divide all
the resources equally, but then those who had other advantages

29
 would soon have the upper hand. What the rational ones among us
would do, Rawls argued, is arrive at a principle such that the most
disadvantaged members of our society were given the maximum
assistance in terms of resources.

x This argumentwhich justies, of course, the redistribution of

wealth and property, usually through a system of taxationis often
derided as creating a welfare state. But even if you disagree with the
politics of the argument, you can see the appeal in terms of fairness
and how, at the very least, it suggests that those who are born in a
position of privilege have the obligation, at a bare minimum, not to
place an undue strain on the society that has already provided them
with a great deal.

Robert Nozick: Liberty Is Paramount

x In contrast, the philosopher Robert Nozick pointed out that what
we are talking about is our own bodies and our own resources; why
should we not be allowed to do with those as we please? While
Rawls argued that justice is fairness, Nozick maintained that
fairness depends on an even more fundamental principle: liberty.
Lecture 5: Do I Have an Obligation to Be Healthy?

After all, our society is based on life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. Fairness may be attractiveand Nozick agrees with
Rawls that fairness is a good moral idealbut it is not anywhere
on that list.

x How, then, do we resolve questions about the distribution of

property and the basic principle of liberty?
o In a particularly ingenious philosophical thought experiment,
Nozick declared the following: Imagine any division of
property you like. Then, further suppose we are allowed to
exchange our propertythat is, we are free with respect to our
property. We have liberty to do with our property as we please.

o Now, nally, imagine that Wilt Chamberlain has decided to play

on selected nights of the week. On the nights Wilt is playing,
he puts a box outside the stadium, and he stipulates that he will
play only if everyone who is watching will put 25 cents in the

30
 box. We all know what will happen. Pretty soon, Wilt has a
great deal of money, and those of us who are basketball fans
whether we were advantaged or disadvantaged in the original
property distributionhave less money than we used to have.

x Nozicks point is elegant and simple: Given that we know that

people themselves are unequalwith unequal talents, abilities,
and motivesit is inevitable, given the freedom to distribute
property, that over time, inequities in the distribution of property
will occur. People are simply not equal, whatever ctional equality
we might give them in the eyes of the law, and inevitably, property
distributions will reect that fact.

The Government Versus the Individual

x When we try to control peoples eating and drinkingwhether by
charging a higher tax on french fries or soda or imposing a much
higher-than-proportionate rate for insurancewe are, in fact, doing
something unjust because we are interfering with a persons liberty.
We are telling people how to distribute their own property, and
coercing people with respect to their property is immoral in the
same way as coercing them with threats or force.

x We have a name for coercively taking away someones property.

It is called theft. Even if, like Robin Hood, we are stealing from
the rich to give to the poor, it is certainly not fair or just, Nozick
argued, and participating in such a system does not make for a
moral society or a moral person.

x That said, Nozick noted that as individuals we should all consider

the impact of our actions on the people around us. Nozick and
Rawls agreed that a good society will only come from the collective
effort of good people, all of whom have in mind both individual
well-being and the well-being of the society around them. The
difference between Rawls and Nozick on this point is not so much
how a person ought to act as who ought to have the nal say about
how a person ought to act.

31
 x Rawls believed that individuals should act according to a certain
vision of a good society, and when they are not so acting, the
society itself should have rules in place to reasonably govern that
persons behavior. Rawls is comfortable with the idea that some
of our behavior should be regulated by well-reasoned government
policies. For Nozick, the behavior of the individual, at the end of
the day, ought to be left to the individual, because the individuals
liberty is the highest good protected by our society.

Suggested Reading

Aristotle (Ostwald, trans.), Nicomachean Ethics.

Epicurus (OConnor, trans.), The Essential Epicurus.

Questions to Consider

1. Should we tax french fries to help pay for research on obesity and heart
disease? Why or why not?
Lecture 5: Do I Have an Obligation to Be Healthy?

2. Suppose you have a friend who never exercises. Do you have a moral
obligation to encourage that friend to start hitting the gym with you or to
go on a walk together?

32
 Can I Sneak a Grape or Two While Shopping?
Lecture 6

I
n a grocery store, say that you sample a grape or two. What you are doing
is shoplifting, which is a crime. Most of the laws in the United States
and the vast majority of the legal disputesare related to property. You
may have felt a twinge of guilt when you sampled the grape; the reason
for that is that you understood you were violating someone elses property
rightsand for most of us, that is a moral feeling. In this lecture, we will
discuss some of the philosophical history of how and why property, in our
culture and society, has become so closely tied to our feelings of morality.

John Lockes Labor Theory of Property

x The concept that property is an important moral entity entered
the Western mind most prominently in the 17th century with
the philosophy of John Locke. Prior to Locke, all property of
substancewhat we now call real property, or real estatewas the
province of kings. None of the kings subjects could own land.

x Locke had a completely revolutionary ideaone so radical that

it led to the French Revolution, the formation of the American
government, and political revolutions worldwide. He asked why the
land should belong to the king. The people who actually take the
untilled land and transform it through hard work, then till it and
grow food on it are the ones who make the property valuable.

x This is called the labor theory of property. Property, Locke

argued, should belong to the person who invests his or her labor
into it. Locke, in fact, insisted that if the king was not willing to
recognize that the property belongs to those people, the people
had the moral righteven a moral imperativeto overthrow
the government.

x Locke was tremendously important to the Founding Fathers of the

United States. His political philosophy provided justication for

33
 the American colonists to oust their British rulers, because they,
the colonists, were the ones working the land. In order to preserve
the public good, the central function of government must be the
protection of private property, Locke wrote.

Moral Justication of Property

x Lockes vision led to the phenomenon where people began to see
property as an extension of themselves. For the laborers of Lockes
day, as they worked the land and owned it, the land became an
important expression of themselves. It represented who they were.
It also represented their freedom because it was the source of their
independence and their ability to support themselves.

x Locke recognized that the people who managed the land were also
working it in another sense. But the basic idea was that property
is as valuable as the labor we invest into it, and therefore, those
who invest their labor into the property ought to own it and reap the
benets of it.
Lecture 6: Can I Sneak a Grape or Two While Shopping?

iStock/Thinkstock.

Property has become the most concrete expression of how we express our
moral worth in the world; its how we sustain ourselves, create happiness, and
express our freedom.

34
 x Here is what Locke set into motion: First, take the labor theory of
property. Then, add the emerging idea of free marketswhat we
now call capitalism. Now, stir in the idea that the free exchange
of property creates happiness for everyone involved in that free
exchange. Put it in the oven of emerging freedom and developing
prosperity of the Industrial Revolutionand what emerges is a
tremendous moral justication for property.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property

x Consider the utilitarian idea that whatever maximizes the happiness
of all is the most moral situation. Now, consider the situation in
which people own their own land, produce wealth from it, and
engage in the free exchange of that wealth, each of them for the
purpose of increasing their own particular happiness.

x When one person freely trades a pint of cows milk for a dozen of
someone elses eggs, the two are doing something that is morally
praiseworthy, because both are made happier by the exchange.
The labor theory of property and capitalism, combined with
utilitarianism, made money a moral entity.

x Living in a capitalist society, as we do, we understand that property

has a deep moral value. In fact, one of the rst drafts of the
Declaration of Independence called for life, liberty, and the pursuit
of property. The Founding Fathers thought that sounded crass and
changed it to the pursuit of happiness, but it is hardly trivial that
they thought the pursuit of property and the pursuit of happiness
were synonymous.

Ayn Rand and Ethical Egoism

x This line of thinking was made explicit by a great champion of
ethical egoism in the 20th century, the author and thinker Ayn Rand.
Writing under the inuence of vigorous champions of completely
free markets, such as the Austrian-born British philosopher
Friedrich Hayek, Rand argued that capitalism was the most moral
form of society.

35
 x In Rands view, so long as all we individually seek out own
best interestprimarily expressed through the accumulation of
propertyall of society will progressively become happier, richer,
and more ethical.

x For Rand, precisely because property is the source of moral

signicance and happiness, we ought never to take someone elses
grape. To steal a grape is, in effect, as grave a crime as injuring
another human being.

Milton Friedman and Social Responsibility to Seek Prot

x Economist and Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman made
arguments similar to Rands. For Friedman, not just individuals
pursuing wealth but also companies pursuing prots meant
maximizing the moral goodness and well-being of our entire
society. In a famous article, Friedman argued that the only social
responsibility of business is to seek prot. Anything else, he
claimed, is not only stealing from the stockholders of the company
Lecture 6: Can I Sneak a Grape or Two While Shopping?

but is also harmful to society as a whole.

x Friedmans argument is important for us because it further develops

the idea that propertyand protis a fundamentally moral
phenomenon in our culture. According to Friedman, if we want all
property exchanges to be free, we cannot have monopolies.

x If one company had a monopoly on grapes, then it could charge

whatever it wanted for grapes, and we could no longer say that
we were freely choosing to pay a certain price for the grape. The
problem would be even more egregious if the monopoly were on
necessities, such as gas, water, or electricity.

Prot as a Measure of Happiness

x Consider this example: Suppose it costs you 50 cents to produce a
bunch of grapes, and your customer is willing to pay up to $1.00 for
that same bunch. Because there are others in the marketplace also
competing to sell their grapes, you nally lower your price to 75

36
 cents. Both sides freely make the exchange: Your customer gives
you 75 cents, and you give the customer a bunch of grapes.

x The ideas of Rand and Friedman are most compelling if we

understand that at least one measure of moral worth is happiness.
The question is: What is the measure of happiness produced by the
grape exchange? It is the difference between what the grapes cost
you to make and what the customer was willing to pay for them
namely, the prot, or 25 cents.

Theft Steals from Everyone

x Suppose that you decide to give part of your grape prots to
a charitable organization. In Friedmans view, if you have
shareholders, you are stealing from them, unless they all also agree
to give the money away. Whats more, even if everyone wants to
do this, you are still reducing the prot of the transactionprot
that could be reinvested to produce more prot stilland, in fact,
diminishing the happiness produced by the transaction.

x Even if the group you give the money experiences some happiness,
that is a one-time benet. Whats more, you have no idea how much
happiness your act will produce because the group is not choosing
the transaction; it is simply the beneciary of the transaction.

x Theft is wrong for exactly the same reason. To take what is not
yours is to steal from all of society: When you eat those grapes, you
are eating up someones protstearing at the very fabric of our
free-market society.

Kenneth Arrow
x Another economist and Nobel Prize winner, Kenneth Arrow, agrees
that Friedmans argument is a tremendously powerful one. But if we
accept it, Arrow says, we must also accept some other conclusions.

x First, Arrow says, we should recognize that Friedmans argument

discourages philanthropy, and many of us might be uneasy with a
conclusion that philanthropy is something to be avoided.

37
 x Second, there is a chance that the majority of a societys wealth
will wind up in the hands of a minority. Free transactions can have
unequal consequences, especially over time, and result in vast
disparities in the distribution of wealth.

x Third, Arrow insists, we must have strict controls preventing

monopolies, price-xing, collusion, or any other way of coercing
transactions. The only way Friedmans free-exchange argument
maximizes happiness is if the transactions are truly free.

Arrows Arguments for Regulation

x Suppose two producers are selling organic grapes. Your grapes are
genuinely organic, while the other producer is fraudulently selling
nonorganic grapes for a lower price. Arrow points out that for the
free market to represent happiness and moral goodness with its
transactions, we must regulate it so that sellers stay honest.

x In another example, suppose one of the grape sellers is using toxic

Lecture 6: Can I Sneak a Grape or Two While Shopping?

chemicals to make the grapes bigger and heavier, then dumping

those chemicals into a river. Other people who are not even
involved in the exchange of the grape sale will be picking up the
costsin hospital bills for illness or in cleaning their land or water.

x As a result, there are participants in the exchange who are unhappy,

and the prot measure of happiness does not reect the real
collective happiness produced by the exchange. Thus, Arrow says,
any polluters must pay for the costs of their pollutionwhich again
requires regulation.

When a Grape Is Not Just a Grape

x When you pop that stolen grape in your mouth at the grocery store,
in short, you are attacking the fundamental moral principles of our
economy and our political structure. You are just like those free
riders who are selling fake organic grapes or polluting the waters.

x Respect for property is not just following a commandment: Thou

shalt not steal. It is showing an appropriate attitude toward that

38
 which makes our way of life possible and determines the well-
being of everyone else.

x Our prosperity depends on the way we understand and respect

property. And our prosperity is not just about our material well-
being; as we have seen, it includes a deep sense of who we are as
free, self-sustaining, moral individuals.

Suggested Reading

Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values.

Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
Rawls, (Kelly, ed.), Justice as Fairness.

Questions to Consider

1. Why might a credit score be a fair indication of a persons moral

character? Are most of the people you know with excellent credit scores
therefore good people? Are the ones with bad credit scores bad people?

2. Why might property, in our society, be viewed as an importantly moral

thing? Does it follow then that more property for all means a morally
superior society for all? Can everyone have more property? If not, is
that immoral?

39
 Is It Wrong to Make as Much Money as I Can?
Lecture 7

A
conict many of us have encountered is how much of our leisure
and family time we are willing to exchange for wealth and property.
Two familiar slogans illustrate the difculty: Whoever has the most
toys wins and You cant take it with you. On the one hand, we live in
a society that puts a premiumincluding a large social premiumon the
acquisition of wealth. On the other hand, making money takes time and
means sacricing other aspects of our lives, such as leisure and family time,
that matter deeply to us. In this lecture, we will examine what several great
thinkers have had to say about the role of money and work in the pursuit of
the good life.

Aristotle and Pleonexia

x Aristotle was the rst Western philosopher to discuss in detail the
Lecture 7: Is It Wrong to Make as Much Money as I Can?

fact that we need money in order to live a good, moral life. For
Aristotle, fostering such virtues as an educated mind meant having
the money to pay for teachers. Cultivating the virtue of generosity
meant having enough money to entertain and, when necessary, to
give money to friends and family in need. To be happy was the key
to living a moral life. To be happy meant to be free from worry and
want, and that required money.

x Aristotle wrote on how to manage a household with good economics

and how best to make an honest livingnot our standard idea when
we think of a philosopher talking about ethics. Aristotle thought
that the best, most reliable, and simplest way to earn a living was
through cultivation of ones land, because that depended entirely
on ones own labor. Making a living through trade relied on the
consent of others and included bargaining with people who might
not be as reasonable or honest as you are.

x Aristotle also thought that the key to understanding how money

promotes the good life was to recognize that the pursuit and

40
 management of wealth was like all other pursuits: It should be done
in moderation. Just as one can sleep too much or too little, eat too
much or too little, exercise too much or too little, Aristotle thought
that one can own too much or too little.

x Interestingly, for Aristotle, the vice of pleonexiawanting too

much or being greedywas damage that people did to themselves.
By failing to recognize that there is a healthy, moderate amount of
wealth that a person needed, the person who falls into the vice of
pleonexia throws his or her whole life out of balance and can no
longer live a good life.

x Aristotle also pointed out that, unlike happiness, wealth is not

worth pursuing for its own sake. It is good only to the degree that
it enables us to pursue those things that are good for their own
sake. There is nothing good about money in itself; it merely has
instrumental value.

The Tragedy of the Commons

x Mahatma Gandhi would no doubt have agreed with Aristotle. When
Gandhi argued that poverty is the worst form of violence, he
meant that, in most societies, wealth is distributed in an unequal
way, and inequality of wealth was difcult to overcome unless
people recognized that resources were scarce.

x A story called the tragedy of the commons is often used to illustrate

the problem of scarcity of resources and the need to share. Imagine
that we are all dairy farmers, sharing a plot of land. If all of us graze
our cows from 9:00 until 5:00, ve days a week, the grass will have
enough time to recover, our cows will have enough to eat, and we
can go on using this plot of land for many years to come.

x Because all our cows arrive to eat at the same time and leave at the
same time, all get their fair share. But suppose some farmer decides
to bring his cows to pasture at 8:00, rather than 9:00. By the time
the rest of us have brought our cows to pasture, his cows will have
eaten more grass than they normally would; the rest of our cows do

41
 not eat as much. Thus, the other farmers start to bring their cows at
8:00then at 7:00, then 6:00, and so on.

x We will all have fatter

and healthier cows,
but soon, the grass
will not have enough
time to recover, and
in the end, we will
have destroyed the

iStock/Thinkstock.
common pasture.
Without grass, all the
cows will die.
In the 2008/2009 collapse of the housing
Martin Luther and the industry, individuals allowed their own
personal desire to acquire wealth to eclipse
Protestant Work Ethic their knowledge that chasing money comes
x Interestingly, the at the expense of others.
value of hard work
Lecture 7: Is It Wrong to Make as Much Money as I Can?

which we believe will lead to the creation of more wealthis a

relatively new concept in Western society. The ancient Greeks
argued that work was a curse placed on humankind to keep us
from becoming too proud and to occupy us so that we would never
attempt to challenge the gods. During the Renaissance, when social
and nancial status was relatively xed, work was seen as good
only insofar as it was an expression of ones creative impulses.
Work that made beautiful things was highly valued, but otherwise,
it was something to be avoided.

x It was not until the religious reformer Martin Luther appeared in

the 16th century that what we now call the Protestant work ethic
was formulated. Luther convinced the people of his timeand
subsequently, in many ways, all of civilizationthat work was
morally praiseworthy.

x The reason was not that Luther thought that hard work would help
people break out of poverty; at that time, it probably would not
have helped. The reason was not that the Bible teaches us that hard

42
 work is good in itself; the Old Testament does include the proper
management of money as one of the virtues, but the Bible does not
insist that working hard is morally praiseworthy.

x It was not even that Luther thought that idle hands were a tool of
the devil. In fact, Luthers reasons were political; he thought that
the priests and monks of his day were living off the hard work
of the people they were supposed to be serving. He thought that
convincing people that hard work was a morally good thing would
lead to a revolution in the social and political structureand he
was right. This way of thinking about work was further promoted
by another Protestant religious reformer, John Calvin, who also
directly associated hard work with moral virtue.

x Sloth has been recognized as an undesirable vice throughout human

history. But the good life requires that we know when to work and
when to rest and enjoy other pursuits. Like money, work is not good
for its own sake; it is not what we would call an inherent or intrinsic
good, as pleasure is.

Work versus Leisure

x Most people work for the sake of other goals; it is those goals,
not work, that they value as such. Many would argue that they
work in order to have plenty of leisure and to fully enjoy that
leisurebecause it is in leisure that we can enjoy things that are
inherently good.

x The British philosopher Bertrand Russell argued that leisure was,

in fact, the most important aspect to living what he called a free
and happy life. It is our leisure hours that we devote to caring for
our families, talking with friends, and cultivating pleasures (such
as furthering ones education with a set of lectures, for example).
These are the activities that make life a pleasure rather than a pain.

x The philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon said it very well: If

money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man

43
 cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to
possess him.

x The happiest people, all the great philosophers agree, will seek as
much wealth as they need in order to take care of their needs and
the needs of those who depend on them, plus have a little set aside
for emergencies. But as Aristotle reminds us, this attitude should be
adopted with rational moderation in mind.

Conspicuous Consumption
x The 20th-century American philosopher, sociologist, and
economist Thorstein Veblen coined the expression conspicuous
consumption. In a wealthy society, he thought, people begin to
consume things simply in order to show others that they can.

x At some point, we no longer think we want a bigger house because

everyone else is getting one; we become convinced we need a bigger
housebecause so many of our wants are determined socially, and
Lecture 7: Is It Wrong to Make as Much Money as I Can?

social status matters to us very much. As long as we continue to

think of moneyand the display of wealthas an indication of the
kind of people we are, Veblen argued, we will continue to think we
need things that can only be provided by wealth.

x We might revise the slogan to read: Whoever has the most toys
gets buried beneath them. Clearly, material possessions and money
will not provide us with the good, happy life that all of us seek
and value.

Suggested Reading

Hayek, Prices and Production and Other Works.

Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class.

44
 Questions to Consider

1. Money is the root of all evil. True or false, and why?

2. Can you imagine a morally desirable society in which money didnt

exist? Try discussing the possibility with a friend or family member.

45
 What Are My Obligations to the Poor?
Lecture 8

W
hile North Americans annually consume about 900 kilogram
s of grain per person, people in developing countries consume
about one-fth that amount. Economists tell us that the problem
is not a shortage of wealth but a problem of the distribution of that wealth.
Just as the majority of the wealth in the United States is owned by only ve
percent of the population, the majority of the worlds wealth is owned by a
very small minority of the world population. In this lecture, we will look at
what several thinkers have had to say about charity. We know that most of
the great religious traditions recommend giving to the poor, so we will look
at some other arguments.

Aristotle: Generosity in Moderation

x Aristotles idea of a good life was to cultivate virtues that would
follow a principle of moderation so that an individual could be
excellent in as many ways as possible. Part of living a virtuous life
Lecture 8: What Are My Obligations to the Poor?

meant managing ones household and money well to provide for

ones own needs and the needs of family and friends.

x Among the virtues associated with managing money, Aristotle

argued, was the virtue of generosity: being able to give to family
and friends who needed a little helpand even to needy strangers.

x For Aristotle, the virtue of generosity beneted the person who

practiced it and who was seen as a source of nancial happiness to
his friends. And, of course, it advantaged the people surrounding
the generous person. It is a principle similar to share the wealth.

x As always with Aristotle, however, generosity should be practiced

in moderation. If you give too much away, you will ruin yourself
and become a burden to others. If you give away too little, you will
be viewed as cheap, and people will be less inclined to be friendly
to you and certainly less likely to help you should you ever fall on

46
 unexpected hard times. In this way, being generous is also a kind of
insurance policy.

Charity Begins at Home

x Aristotle lived in a relatively small community, where ones
reputation was of the utmost importance. Generosity, in his mind,
was essential to preserve a good reputation. To be generous to
people on the other side of the world or to be generous anonymously
would have struck Aristotle as highly peculiar.

x He believed that one might be generous to a friend solely for the

friends sakethis was in fact the purest form of friendship. But
to be generous other than to ones closest friends was really only
justied, for Aristotle, because of the good it did for you and your
family. Otherwise, you should sensibly conserve your resources
and let strangers take care of themselves.

x Recent ethicists have also argued that, given the scarcity of

resources in society, we have a moral obligation to recognize, in
the old saying, that charity begins at home. Following this line of
thought, we should care for those who we can see are in need, for
those in our families and our communities. Only when their needs
are adequately satised should we start to consider the needs of
strangers or people on the other side of the world.

Andrew Carnegie
x The famed American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew
Carnegie argued that simple charity to people in needgiving a
beggar on a street corner a dollar, for examplewas in fact one of
the very most immoral things a person could do.

x There is a familiar adage: Give a man a sh, and hell eat for a
day; teach a man to sh, and he can eat for a lifetime. But Carnegie
argued something beyond this. He maintained that it is actually
morally blameworthy to give charity to a beggar.

47
 x Carnegie believed that such an act teaches the beggar that begging
works. If he can make a living by begging, then he will never be
inclined to pursue any other profession. Anyone who gives to a
beggar is reinforcing in him a habit that is actually destructive.

Paternalism
x Implicit in Carnegies argument is the moral principle called
paternalism: the idea that sometimes we know what is better for
people than they know themselves, usually because they have been
blinded by their circumstances or their habits.

x Often, paternalism is justied because it is for the greater good

of society. For Carnegie, that was another reason that giving to
the beggar is wrong: You are not only showing the beggar and
the others around him that begging works, but you are also taking
away from the productive possibilities of his labor by reinforcing
this habit.

x When we are all working well and productively in a free capitalist

society, Carnegie argued, everyone benets, and we all become
Lecture 8: What Are My Obligations to the Poor?

wealthier and happier. By giving to the beggar, you are effectively

stealing the benets of his potential labor from the rest of us.

x Furthermore, you are acting on a principle that undervalues the

moral signicance of your own money. By throwing your money
away on someone elses bad habit, you are wasting a resource that
could have been productively used elsewhere. If you recognize the
power of money to produce greater good for you, your family, and
society as a whole, it is foolish to put it to a bad purpose.

Wealth: A Product of Our Society

x That said, Carnegie was deeply committed to the enormous good
that money can do. Once we have taken care of ourselves and those
who depend on us, we have a moral obligation to help our society
to enjoy the benets that wealth can provide because our wealth is
only possible because of our society. In Carnegies way of thinking,

48
 the money we create through hard work and intelligence is on loan
to us from society.

x We have the moral obligation to discover how and where the money
can do the most good, in an enduring way that will genuinely benet
both our current society and generations to come. In Carnegies
time, libraries were a great example of money wisely invested
by the philanthropist. And indeed, public libraries have helped
millions of people educate themselves and lift themselves out of
negative circumstances.

x For Carnegie, one of the worst moral sins a wealthy person could
commit was to go to the grave as a rich man. He did not believe
that the government should legislate over these questions, however.
Carnegie believed that would create inefciencies and disincentives
to producing wealth.
Nevertheless, we should
all recognize the moral
imperative to nancially
benet the society that had
provided the means for us
to create wealth.

Peter Singer
x What are our obligations
if anyto the millions
of people who live in
other countries and are in
desperate need?
Stockbyte/Thinkstock.

x The contemporary
Australian philosopher
and utilitarian Peter Singer
offered the following
example: Suppose you Many people who are truly poor have
no way to bring themselves out of
are hurrying to class and poverty.
notice that a small child is

49
 drowning in a fountain. If you stop and help the child, you will suffer
some inconvenience as a consequence of saving this childs life.

x Most people would insist that it would be a terrible moral lapse

if you did not help the child. The reason, Singer argued, is that
we all share a deep moral intuition that if you can do something
of tremendous signicance to help someone else, while yourself
suffering only modest inconvenience, you are always required to do
it. And, indeed, this principle seems unassailable.

Aligning Our Moral Compass

x Finally, lets consider a story told by Bowen McCoy, a successful
businessman who spent many years as president and chairman of
Morgan Stanley Realty. McCoy tells of how he was once on an
Everest climb with some friends. In order to get past a very difcult
pass, they had to climb very early in the morning, and there was
real urgency to the hike. Moreover, this was a climb that McCoy
had tried before and failed; thus, he really wanted to succeed this
time. As he and a friend approached the pass, one of the teams in
front of them came back from the pass with an Indian holy man, a
Lecture 8: What Are My Obligations to the Poor?

sadhu, who was half-frozen and near death.

x A New Zealander from the team who found the sadhu put some
clothes on the holy man and gave him to McCoys group, saying:
Ive done all I can for this man; I leave him in your hands. The
man was in terrible shape but clearly alive. McCoy helped get the
man a little more warmly dressed, then said to his friend, Im
going to press on, hurrying to get to the pass before it was too late.

x When McCoy met his friend again, McCoy was overjoyed after
making the summit. But his friend was furious. How does it feel
to know you contributed to the death of a fellow human being? his
friend accused him.

x McCoy never learned whether the sadhu lived or died, but the point
was that no onenone of the several hiking teams that passed him
that daydid what really needed to be done, which was to carry

50
 the man back down off the mountain to safety. Chances are, McCoy
hints, the sadhu did not make it. The question is: How could
everyones moral compass be so skewed that they would let a man
die who, with a little effort, could have been saved?

x We all have a million reasons to think about something other than

our fellow human beings, many of whom are in the same dire straits
as the sadhu. We hurry on up the mountain and hope that someone
else will do what we know should be done, but just do not have the
time or the resources to do ourselves.

Suggested Reading

Gates Sr., Gates, and Mackin. Showing Up for Life.

Singer, The Life You Can Save.

Questions to Consider

1. You just gave a dollar to an old woman with a bucket sitting on the
ground outside the movie theater. Was what you did right or wrong, and
why?

2. Should you give ve percent of your after-tax income to help starving

children in Third World countries? If not, why not? If so, are you
doing so?

51
 Can We Do Better Than the Golden Rule?
Lecture 9

I
n Matthew 7:12, Jesus says, Do to others what you would have them
do to you. That is the Golden Rule. It appears not only in the New
Testament but also in slightly different versions in a variety of different
ancient traditions. In the Udanavarga, for example, the following saying is
attributed to the Buddha: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would
nd hurtful. And in the Analects of Confucius, we read, Do not do to
others what you would not like yourself. This lecture will examine our
moral duties to others, as embodied in the Golden Rule.

The Golden Rule

x The Golden Rule is familiar to all of us, and in fact, it may have
been the rst moral principle that many of us were taught. But
because the Golden Rule is so familiar to us, we have a tendency to
underestimate its enormous moral power.
Lecture 9: Can We Do Better Than the Golden Rule?

x Lets use the Golden Rule as a touchstone against some moral

dilemmas. You wonder if it is ever permissible to lie. Simply
ask yourself if you like being lied to. None of us likes being
lied to, especially if a lie is being used to manipulate us or leads
us to believe false situations. Here, the Golden Rule is a good,
reliable guide.

x Lets apply the Golden Rule to gossip. If you dont like being
gossiped about, dont gossip about others. If you would appreciate
a handout if you were desperate, then you should give to the poor.

Immanuel Kant
x The noted philosopher Immanuel Kant was not a proponent of
the Golden Rule. Kant is often actually cited as the single greatest
philosopher in the Western philosophical tradition. Among his
many seminal works were the three Critiques: Critique of Pure
Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment.

52
 x These three works, along with his many other writings, have had an
enormous impact on philosophical discourse in the West since Kant
wrote them in the 18th century.

x Indeed, some of the more recent thinkers who factor signicantly in

this course, such as John Rawls, owe their largest intellectual debt
to Kant and describe themselves as Kantians. Jean-Paul Sartre,
the French existentialist philosopher, was a Kantian when it came
to his moral thought.

The Categorical Imperative

x Probably Kants most signicant legacy was his concept of the
categorical imperative. An imperative is a particular kind of
statement that commands.

x There are two different kinds of imperatives: hypothetical

imperatives and categorical imperatives. A hypothetical imperative
is an imperative that expresses a condition that allows for the
achievement of a specic goal. A categorical imperative, in
contrast, is a special kind of statement. It is a command that will
have authority in all circumstances.

x For Kant, categorical imperatives were exceedingly rare, and they

accorded with reason in such a way that they had moral urgency.
They were morally required.

x According to Kant, an act was morally justiable insofar as we can

imagine that act being universalizedthat is, applied to all human
beings in all places at all times. In other words, if you are acting
on a principle that is tied only to your happiness at this moment (a
hypothetical imperative), then you are not acting morally. For an
action to be moral, for it to apply categorically, it must be based
on a principle or a maxim that would apply regardless of your
particular feelings at any given time.

x Kant further noted, If youre acting solely out of what makes you
happy, chances are youre not acting in a moral way, because your

53
 intention should be to accord with what you would freely choose as
reason dictates to you. Thus, the categorical imperative will often
run, at best, parallel to your personal happiness and sometimes
contrary to it.

Maxims
x Categorical imperatives express maxims. A maxim is a subjective
principle of action. Kant meant that whenever we act, we act
according to rules that we formulate in our heads. A maxim is a
kind of rule we use to govern our behavior. We speak the truth most
of the time because we believe the rule that were not to speak
untruths. We respect each others property because we believe and
follow the rule, or maxim, that we shouldnt take what doesnt
belong to us.

x The rst version of the categorical imperative is the most famous

one: Act only according to that maxim such that you can, at the
same time, will that the maxim of your action should become a
universal law.
Lecture 9: Can We Do Better Than the Golden Rule?

x To explain this, well take the example of making a promise: I

promise to show up for work on time tomorrow. Suppose that you
universalize that promise. What if everyone, at all times, always
kept the promise of showing up for work on time tomorrow. Kant
asked whether it generated any kind of contradiction or whether
was it perfectly consistent. As a matter of fact, it works out just ne.
If everyone says theyre going to show up for work tomorrow and
then universally does show up for work tomorrow, no contradiction
is generated at all.

x Now suppose that the maxim youre following is promise breaking.

You say Im going to show up for work on time tomorrow, but
you dont. Suppose that everyone, universally, at all times, made
the promise to show up for work on time and then didnt. Then,
that promise would be meaningless because our ability to make a
promise depends on the idea that people will be able to count on
that promise.

54
Morality as an Absolute
x Kant also believed that as long as were looking at the consequences
of our actions for their moral value, we are leaving morality up to
chance, because we cant tell what the consequences are going
to be with any certainty. Kant thought we needed a much more
fundamental ground for something as important as morality than
events in the world or how our actions might turn out.

x What was absolutely certain, Kant believed, were the principles of

logic and reason. Consistent principles were few in number, they all
could be formulated as categorical imperatives, and they all would
turn out to be morally urgent.

x Kant locates morality in the absolute realm of what any rational

person would have to accept as true and authoritative in all places
and at all times. The Golden Rule, by contrast, locates morality in
the very particular realm of what one particular individual wants in
one specic place and specic time.

x Thus, when it comes to the question of how we should treat each

other ethically, Kant found the Golden Rule to be an unsatisfactory
ground for behavior. In fact, in his treatise Foundations of the
Metaphysics of Morals, Kant wrote that the Golden Rule contains
the ground neither of duties to ones self nor of the benevolent
duties to others.

Humans an End in Themselves

x Kant offered other guidance on how we should treat one another.
He derived a second formulation of the categorical imperativea
principle that was absolutely crucial to Kantian ethics. The principle
is this: Treat every human being never merely as a means but also
always as an end in themselves.

x What Kant was saying is that we must always be certain that we

recognize that the other person is a moral authority in just the same
way we are.

55
 x Lets think about Kants
maxim as it might apply
to other situations.
Consider the employee-
supervisor relationship
when an employee is

iStock/Thinkstock.
attering the supervisor.
The supervisor is
being treated merely
as a means and not In Kants view, consumer culture is based
respected as an end on an immoral understanding of human
in himself. relationships; advertisers view consumers
as merely a means to an end.

Objectication of Women
x Criticism of the objectication of women is essentially an extension
of Kants second formulation of the categorical imperative,
that we should treat all people not merely as means but as ends
in themselves.
Lecture 9: Can We Do Better Than the Golden Rule?

x The problem of objectifying women has been with us a long time,

but in the past couple of decades, it has, for some thinkers, taken on
new dimensions and new urgency. The Internet has made access to
sexual imagery and videos, especially involving women, routine to
the point of banality.

x One could argue that these viewing habits are a perfectly legitimate,
legal, and morally neutral exercise of our right to get pleasure out
of life. Whats more, some ethicists argue that properly regulated
pornography, in fact, shows an important moral respect for human
dignity and free choice.

x However, if we think like a Kantian, then these habits raise the

problem, very literally, of how we view others. Most objectication
of women involves the denigration of women, treating women as a
means rather than respecting women as an end in themselves.

56
 x There are also many other strong arguments against objectication
of women, including that it changes the way men view women,
changes social norms about acceptable sexual behavior, changes
female self-perception in a negative way, depersonalizes intimacy
between men and women, and undermines or even destroys one of
the most sacred and intimate of human experiences.

Morality and Freedom

x The idea here is that you are using someone as an instrument to get
what you want, rather than recognizing that, from the perspective of
reason and from the perspective of every other human being, each
of us counts just as much as the other.

x This is particularly true when it comes to freedom. As the French

existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, We will freedom,
for freedoms sake, in and through particular circumstances. And
in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon
the freedom of others, and that the freedom of others depends
upon our own.

x Thats not to say that we adopt the Golden Rule entirely but, rather,
for all of us, morality and freedom are equally important. Once we
recognize that, we simply mustif we are going to be rationally
consistent, if were going to follow the categorical imperative
treat all others with the respect and freedom that we know we
deserve for ourselves.

Suggested Reading

Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals.

Olcott, Golden Rules of Buddhism.

57
 Questions to Consider

1. What are some objections, morally speaking, to the Golden Rule?

2. What, according to Kant, is wrong with treating a human being in the

same way that you might treat, say, a beloved family pet?
Lecture 9: Can We Do Better Than the Golden Rule?

58
 Why Cant I Just Live for Pleasure?
Lecture 10

T
he English philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham
observed that if you desire a particular thing, your reasoning will
eventually lead back to the fact that it gives you pleasure. Bentham
further noted that the question of why we want to feel pleasure has nothing
but a circular answer. Its a primal urge, a basic truth: We all desire pleasure,
and we all seek to avoid pain. In this lecture, we will look at the history of an
ancient school of thought: hedonism. Derived from the Greek word hedon,
meaning pleasure, hedonism is the philosophy that pleasure is the highest,
most intrinsic good. In fact, hedonism has become one of the most powerful
moral theories in contemporary Western civilization.

Epicurus and Hedonism

x The greatest early advocate of hedonism was the 4th-century-B.C.
Greek philosopher Epicurus. According to Epicurus, human beings
make life much more complicated than it needs to be. He was a
student of the Greek philosopher Democritus and believed, like
Democritus, that there was nothing more to the universe than matter
in motion.

x For this reason, he rejected Greek religion, as well as any moral

precepts derived from religion. He believed that we should neither
expect paradise when we die nor fear any hell or purgatory. Epicurus
thought it was pointless to worry about the afterlife because, as he
famously wrote, When you die, your mind will be gone even faster
than your body. Therefore, he argued, we should simply listen to our
bodies and do what they guide us to do through pleasure and pain.

x That said, Epicurus pointed out that seeking pleasure and avoiding
pain is more complex than it might rst appear. Simply getting
drunk every night is not an option: You will soon be broke, hung
over, sick, perhaps addicted, and probably friendless. Thus,
Epicurus argued, we must use our reason, seek out rational long-

59
 term pleasures, and manage
our lives so as to avoid pains.

x The rst key to this, in his

view, was to live a simple life,
without many possessions,
needs, and obligations.
Although we need sufcient
material wealth to stay healthy

Getty Images/[Link]/Thinkstock.
and guarantee the well-being
of ourselves and those we
care for, beyond that, the
accumulation of material
goods tends to create problems
for us rather than solve them.
The average Greek was obsessed
Necessary and Natural Pleasures with the question of what happens
after death, but Epicurus believed
x According to Epicurus, that all talk of paradise, hell, and
pleasures fall into two purgatory was nonsense.
categories: those that are
necessary for the body (such as sleeping or eating) and those that
Lecture 10: Why Cant I Just Live for Pleasure?

are natural for the body (which include unnecessary pleasures, such
as playing chess, reading, or having a glass of wine). Epicurus also
warned of pleasures that are unnatural and unnecessary, such as
getting drunk.

x Natural pleasures should be indulged with moderation, Epicurus

noted, because some of themsuch as a glass of wine or a good
mealcan become unnecessary, unnatural, and destructive
pleasures when we overindulge in them.

x For Epicurus, the key to living the good life and being a moral person
was simple: Use your reason to guarantee your share of natural and
necessary pleasures, avoid unnatural and unnecessary pleasures, and
avoid pain. Of course, cultivating pleasure and avoiding pain requires
the active, daily use of reason. Fortunately, according to Epicurus, the
active, daily use of reason was also a pleasure.

60
 x What was missing from this picture, however, was interaction
with other people. Even though Epicurus insisted that we should
cultivate and care for our friends, today, we consider Epicurus an
egoist. Like the American philosopher Ayn Rand and the American
economist Milton Friedman, Epicurus thought it was best that we
seek our own individual pleasure and let other people take care of
their own pleasures.

Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism

x Jeremy Bentham was the 18th-century English philosopher who
revived Epicuruss philosophy and created what we now call
utilitarianism. Unlike Epicurus, however, Bentham was not an
egoist: He thought that the good person, before deciding what
action to perform, should look at the likely consequences of
that action.

x It is for this reason that we call utilitarianism one form of

consequentialism. Upon evaluating the likely consequences, a good
person will try to act in such a way as to maximize pleasure and
minimize pain for himself or herself and for all others immediately
involved in the action. Bentham called this performing a utilitarian
calculus, and referred to units of pleasure as utiles.

x Here is an example of performing a utilitarian calculus: Suppose a

tsunami is expected, and you have to decide whether to save three
people you know on one side of the island or ve strangers on the
other side of the island. Because there are more utiles in saving the
ve strangers, the good utilitarian, according to Bentham, will save
the ve strangers.

x Crucially, for Bentham, what matters are the consequences of your

actions. If you try to save the ve strangers and fail, you have
not performed a morally praiseworthy act simply because you
had good intentions. Maximizing happiness means making the
rational decision that truly will lead to the most happiness for the
greatest number.

61
 John Stuart Mill
x Benthams emphasis on the consequences of our actions was
profoundly important because it represented a radical course in
ethics at the time. When Bentham was writing, Western civilization
was dominated by the Judeo-Christian ethical system; from that
ethical perspective, the consequences of our actions count far less
than our moral intent.

x Further, the philosopher Immanuel Kant also believed that our

intentions were the morally relevant aspect, not the consequences
of our actions. Benthams suggestion was controversial indeed.

x John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Benthams godson, was raised on a

diet of utilitarianism. Mill was perhaps the greatest English-
speaking genius of the 19th century, producing important work in
mathematics, history, social theory, and philosophy.

x By the time Mill began advocating utilitarianism, the theory had

become one of the most popular moral theories in Europe. It is
still the most popular moral theory among most intellectualsand
many interesting objections have been raised against it.
Lecture 10: Why Cant I Just Live for Pleasure?

The Swine Objection

x A signicant objection to Mills version of utilitarianism was
known as the swine objection. According to the swine objection,
utilitarianism makes human beings seem like pigs rolling in the
mud and eating at the trough. If all we do is seek pleasure, how
are we any different than an animal that seeks pleasures and avoids
pains? Arent humans nobler beings than animals?

x Mill agreed with the complaint and said that we should not think
about maximizing pleasure but, rather, happiness. He divided
pleasures into two classes: lower pleasures and higher pleasures.
According to Mill, lower pleasures tended to be bodily and short-
lived, and they did not improve with practice.

62
 x Higher pleasures, however, were mental and endured over time,
improved with practice, and did not bring pains. Human beings
exposed to both classes of pleasure, Mill argued, will prefer the
higher to the lower and, thus, will create happiness. If we seek the
higher pleasures, Mill argued, we will be enduringly happy. True
utilitarianism advocated the greatest happiness for the greatest
numbera concept called the greatest-happiness principle.

Objection from Egoism

x A second important objection to utilitarianism was the objection
from egoism. Because each of us performs our own utilitarian
calculations, there is nothing to prevent us from doing the math
so that we can pursue whatever goal we please. In the tsunami
example, if we simply say that saving our friends lives would give
us a vast number of utiles of pleasure, the friends are saved and the
strangers drown.

x Here, too, Mill took the objection seriously and said that when
performing a utilitarian calculus, we must adopt the attitude of
the perfectly benevolent ideal spectator. This meant that when
calculating likely happiness outcomes, we must pretend to be
spectators; we must not value our own perspective any more than
that of anyone else in the situation.

x There are many other objections to utilitarianism. The most obvious

is that this theory commits us to sacricing the happiness of the
few on behalf of the greater happiness of the many. So does the
democratic process, the utilitarian would say, and many of the
decisions we make as a society.

x There have been many renements made to utilitarianism in order

to nesse the problem of human rights and other basic moral
decisions so that we do not make the mistake of justifying the death
of innocents in order to promote the happiness of many.

63
 Preference Utilitarianism
x To be morally praiseworthy, according to utilitarianism, we must
always act in a way that maximizes our own happiness and the
happiness of those around us. Having a one-night stand or lying
by the pool and drinking margaritas would, of course, generate
pleasure. But neither is the sort of activity that would cultivate
enduring pleasure over the long term. Also, neither activity will
contribute very much pleasure, if any, to the people around us.

x Because of the strengths and clarity of utilitarianism, it is the

tool that many contemporary economists use to solve virtually all
moral problems. For example, say that a commission has to decide
where to build a new highwaywhich will benet many but also
inconvenience many. We settle the question by taking a vote; that
is, we perform a utilitarian calculus to decide how the happiness of
the greatest number will be best served.

x This particular kind of utilitarianismcrucial to our democratic

systemis called preference utilitarianism. But it leaves out
some important criteria, such as our moral intentions, our sense
that wanting to do the right thing is important even when the
Lecture 10: Why Cant I Just Live for Pleasure?

consequences turn out differently than we expect.

x Although Epicurus might have endorsed informed leisure, his type

of hedonism would have discouraged casual sex with strangers or
drinking by the pool. We know that acts that we consider deeply
moralsuch as keeping a promisecan be fraught with pain, not
pleasure. Whats more, we should be aware of the tremendous
moral signicance of our intentions, not just the consequences.

Suggested Reading

Feldman, Pleasure and the Good Life.

Lucretius (Stallings, trans.), The Nature of Things.

64
 Questions to Consider

1. Your teenager is a self-declared hedonist. What are some guidelines you

might recommend to him or her?

2. Name some ways in which pleasures differ from one another. Why and
how are those differences morally relevant?

65
 Why Cant I Date a Married Person?
Lecture 11

T
he German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed that love was
the single most powerful creative force human beings possess.
Nietzsche argued that when we love, we create compelling illusions
about ourselves and the objects of our loveillusions that create the meaning
of life. A married couple has the obligation to try to use the full power of
their imaginations and their energy to bring as much life as possible into
their love relationship. They should see their love as a great work of art they
are struggling to create together, and they should not abandon that creative
struggle too quickly or easily. In this lecture, well explore the morality and
ethics of the bond of marriage.

Mythical Origins of Romantic Love

x Lets say that you are a single contractor who often has dealings
with a real estate salesperson, a young married woman. She says
she thinks her marriage is over. She tells you that shes not sure she
ever really loved her husbandand if she loves him now, its more
Lecture 11: Why Cant I Date a Married Person?

like a sister loves a brother.

x You ask yourself if you should date her to determine if the spark
between you is as strong as you both think it is. Suppose you go on
the date and the spark is explosively powerful. Does that justify her
breaking the vows of marriage? Are you doing something immoral
by encouraging her to break her marriage vows?

x Alls fair in love and war, the old saying goes, which suggests that
the rules of morality have no force when it comes to love. This is
in part due to the fact that romantic lovesometimes called erotic
loveinvolves one of our most basic instincts, the sexual drive. In
The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis argued that sex and erotic love may
be as close as many of us ever get to the love of God, which he
considers the very highest form of love.

66
 x In the Symposium, Platos famous dialogue on love, the poet and
playwright Aristophanes described the original state of human
beings as being, in effect, double what we are now. We were once,
he said, combined with another human being, with two heads,
four arms, and four legs. But because the humans were displaying
hubris, Zeus cut everyone in half.

x Aristophanes used this to explain the feeling of completeness we

have when we are in the throes of romantic love. The myth is
psychologically profound and accurate. It reects the fact that many
of us believe that we can achieve that feeling of completion with
another person in romantic love.

Four Kinds of Love

x The ancient Greeks identied four kinds of love.
o Eros is erotic or romantic lovean intimate and sexual kind
of love.

o Storge is the Greek word for domestic lovethe kind of love

we feel for our family, our spouse or partner, and our children.
Sometimes translated as affection, this is the kind of love
that unites a family in daily life.

o Philia refers to the love between friends; it may also be the

love of any deep intellectual interest.

o Agape, often translated as unconditional love, is the kind

of love that gives yet expects nothing in return. Interpreted
as charity in the Christian tradition, it is thought that God
and Christ have this kind of love for human beings, and in the
purest form of faith, we give this kind of love in return.

Moral Norms Governing Marriage

x First and foremost, the marriage bond is constituted by a promise
that each party in the marriage makes to the other. In the vast
majority of marriages, this includes the promise of sexual delity,
but even if sexual delity is not paramount, it includes the promise

67
 iStock/Thinkstock.
One reason the discussion of whether or not one can have an affair is so
pressing is that many people believe that marriage and family are at the moral
core of our society.

to maintain the familial bond with ones partner even when times are
Lecture 11: Why Cant I Date a Married Person?

difcult. The marriage vow is one of the most signicant promises

a person can ever make, in part because it is a very difcult promise
to keep.

x The promise we make when we marry has the moral force of a

contract. Furthermore, because it is a promise about loveperhaps
the most moral of our emotionsit has much more moral force than
most contracts and perhaps the greatest moral force of any contract.

x In the situation with the real estate agent, there is an immediate

moral norm in place: the promise that the real estate agent has made
to her husband. She has promised to try to make their marriage
work, evenor especiallyin the face of challenges to it.

x Whats more, you have a moral duty in this situation not to interfere
with the promise that the realtor has made. You may ask why you

68
 have a moral obligation here, why you dont have a right to pursue
your own good, or why you should worry about promises other
people have made to each other. There are two profound responses
to these questions. The rst comes from Kant and concerns the
rationality of promise keeping; the second comes from ancient
Greek thinking about love.

Kant and Promise Keeping

x According to Kant, an act is morally justiable insofar as we can
imagine that act being universalizedthat is, applied to all human
beings in all places at all times. An act that can be universalized is
one that shows itself to be noncontradictory and, therefore, rational.

x Consider the act of promise keeping. If people always kept their

promises, there is no contradiction. In fact, thats the morally ideal
situation; thats how it is supposed to work. If people always break
their own promises, however, then making a promise becomes
meaningless. Universal promise breaking would make it impossible
to make a promise at alla contradiction. Therefore, promise
breaking is irrational and immoral.

x But what about interfering with someone elses promise? According

to Kant, the principle behind interfering with someone elses
promise is not theoretically any different than breaking a promise
yourself. When you interfere with someone elses promise, you are
telling that person, in effect, you should break your promise.

x For Kant, it didnt matter who the particular promise breaker is:
The principle is promise breaking. Universal promise breaking is
irrational and immoral; it doesnt matter whether you are doing it or
you are encouraging someone else to do it.

x In some sense, for Kant, your encouraging the real estate to break
her promise is even worse than breaking the promise yourself,
because it seems as if you are treating both the real estate agent and
her husband as a mere means to the end of your own happiness.
You are not recognizing that both the woman and her husband

69
 are free moral beings just like yourself and that they deserve all
the moral respect that you demand. Thus, for Kant, you are really
making two grave moral errors when you encourage someone to
break a promise.

Diotimas Denition of Love

x Furthermore, you may be interfering with a more robust conception
of what it is to love. Lets consider Socratess account of love in
Platos Symposium. Socrates tells the group what he was taught by a
woman, Diotima, who knew a great deal about love.

x According to Diotima, Socrates says, love begins by attracting us

to the pleasing outer appearance of one particular person, what
we normally think of as erotic love. Next, it attracts us to what is
beautiful inside that person: the mind, emotional life, beliefs, and
principles. Once we recognize the beauty in that persons moral
beliefs, we will start to love moral principles more generally,
including the principles that create and guide the state (such as
the principle of marriage). Finally, we will come to love the very
highest principles that bring all of humanity together, such as
justice, harmony, and truth. We begin with eros, but eros leads us
Lecture 11: Why Cant I Date a Married Person?

into philia and agape.

x On Diotimas account, then, if you truly love the real estate agent,
you will also love in her the impulse that caused her to get married
in the rst place, and you will love the moral principles that guide
her. Practically speaking, this does not mean that you will stop being
attracted to her. But it does mean that a more cultivated love for her
will require you also to respect her marriage and the morality of
promise keeping that informs it.

x This approach respects the other kinds of love that the real estate
agent and her husband have for each other. It acknowledges that
their storge, or domestic love, is important. It respects the philia, or
friendship, they share. Finally, it is an example of agape, or seless
love. In insisting that her marriage is as important as your desire, you

70
 are elevating your erotic love to a nobler kind of love. Like many
moral decisions, this wont be easy, but it is morally praiseworthy.

x If the real estate agent goes through the proper steps and her
marriage nevertheless comes to an end, then both you and she
will begin your new relationship with the much more satisfying
feeling that you have done things in the best way. This may also
signicantly increase the feeling of trust you have for each othera
trust that could have been undermined if your relationship began
with secrets and lies.

x In short, it looks as if you cannot date the married real estate

agentat least not until she and her husband are divorced. If they
sincerely try to work out their problems, but their marriage simply
cant continue, and they mutually decide its time for the contract to
be dissolvedfor the promise to endthen, morally speaking, you
can come into the picturebut not before.

Suggested Reading

Carson, Eros the Bittersweet.

Lewis, The Four Loves.
Phillips, Monogamy.

Questions to Consider

1. We all talk about the marriage contract. Spell out, for a friend, ve
rules of that contract. Are they morally praiseworthy rules?

2. Is there some one person out there in the world who completes us?
How do we know that person when we meet him or her? What moral
impact does that have?

3. What are the four kinds of love, according to the ancient Greeks? Can
you think of any others?

71
 Are Jealousy and Resentment Always Wrong?
Lecture 12

A
great deal of emotion is invested in our everyday ethics. We should
also recognize, as American philosopher Robert C. Solomon
argued, that reasoning also factors into our emotions: Thinking
controls how we feel. Although heartbreak, jealousy, and resentment are
generally considered to be negative emotions, they are actually potent forces
that motivate our moral psychology. In this lecture, we will continue our
examination of moral psychology, exploring the complex terrain of how
emotions invest our lives with meaning. We will also analyze the arguments
of Friedrich Nietzsche and David Hume, who maintained that emotions serve
as the basis for our moral lives. These philosophers believed that emotional
responses can generate entire moral systems.
Lecture 12: Are Jealousy and Resentment Always Wrong?

Robert C. Solomon
x There is a debate in the philosophy of emotion about the level of
cognition in our emotional experiences. It began in American
academic philosophy with the work of the philosopher Robert
C. Solomon.

x Solomon argued that jealousy and similar emotions were actually

highly rational and moral experiences. Such emotions as heartbreak,
jealousy, and resentment are not just reactions, Solomon reasoned,
but decisions that we make.

x For many of us, this idea runs counter to our intuitions. The
traditional view is that our emotions build up or drive us to act
in certain ways. This is sometimes called the hydraulic, or drive,
theory of emotions.

x Solomon argued, however, that every time you feel jealousy, for
example, it is a consequence of how you think about the situation.
You perform all kinds of conscious acts and process all kinds of
judgments that add up to the larger emotional response that nally

72
 emerges as jealousy. You do not merely feel jealousy, Solomon
said; you think your way into it.

Heartbreak
x In the context of love, the nature of how emotions work has been
investigated by the contemporary American philosopher Martha
Nussbaum. Nussbaum argued that there are two ways to think
about the problem of how we come to have such emotions as love
and how they relate to the way we understand ourselves and our
ethical situations.

x One way of thinking is that we actually come to know or recognize

love in heartbreak. On this account, we simply do not understand
ourselves very well, especially when it comes to our emotional
lives. If we think about heartbreak in this way, we would say that
Solomon is wrong about our emotional lives. We do not think our
way into emotions; we simply suffer themor enjoy them.

x The other way of thinking is that the suffering of heartbreak is, in

fact, constitutive of love. On this account, we would tend to agree
with Solomons way of analyzing emotions: It is through thinking
about love that you come to an even greater desire for the lover and
a erce jealousy of him or her.

x A third option is that perhaps the pain we suffer in heartbreak is

yet another layer of self-deception. Painreal sufferingseems to
bear the mark of undeniable truth; nevertheless, the pain may be a
kind of half-truth, false belief, or strategic self-deception.

x The reason cognition matters is that pain seems primitive (and,

thus, somehow truthful) in a way that thinking does not. If
emotions are involved with thinkingif they are, as Solomon put
it (following the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre), judgments
or evaluationsthen they are much harder to grasp when they are
swimming in the muddy pond of self-knowledge.

73
 x Perhaps heartbreak is not so much a state or a judgment as it is
an activity; thus, our usual way of thinking about the emotional
condition does not t heartbreak very well. Judgments are part of
the activity of heartbreak but are not sufcient to its description.
(The judgment without the heartbreak, Kant would say, is empty.)
Heartbreak without judgmentswhat some have called primitive
pain and Proust simply called sufferingwould be blind.

Jealousy
x A broken heart is often the lovers rst real taste of jealousy. As
Freud insisted, we all experience jealousy rst with our mothers.
The psychoanalyst Adam Phillips wrote, Our mothers are a
model of indelity. They have lives of their own. They take an
interest in others. But because we understand that we must share
our mothersbecause they have authority over uswe reluctantly
accept the separation.
Lecture 12: Are Jealousy and Resentment Always Wrong?

x In heartbreak, separation from the beloved is already unbearable,

but when that separation is a consequence of someone else enjoying
the beloveds company, the heartbroken lover goes wild with pain
and anxiety. In the tempest of jealousy, there is no act the lover will
not perform, no lie he or she will not tell, no fantasy of betrayal
that is unbelievable, and no promise or moral code that cannot
be broken.

x It is probably supercial to suppose that feeling jealous is either

passive or active. In the philosophy of emotions, for centuries, it
was generally supposed that lovelike the other passionswas
something inicted upon a person and that love, jealousy, and other
passions were involuntary. Many of us still understand falling in
love in this way. The French call this coup de foudre: the lightning
bolt that strikes the lover.

x In the 20th century, however, especially with the work of Jean-

Paul Sartre and Robert C. Solomon, emotionsin particular, such
emotions as love and jealousywere understood as activities,
choices that we make.

74
Voluntary and Involuntary Components of Emotion
x The prevailing view is that a complex emotional experience, such
as jealousy, has both voluntary and involuntary components.

x The reason this question is philosophically difcult is that it reects

a more fundamental debate about what it is to believe at all. Lets
say you truthfully tell a friend, Im suffering jealousy. Is this the
same kind of statement as Its raining outside?

x On the one hand, insofar as you hold both beliefs and both beliefs
are true, the two statements seem the same. On the other hand,
the rst belief can only be known with certainty by you, while the
second belief is known by anyone who observes the state of the
weather.

x An involuntarist holds that our beliefs are inicted upon us,

independent of our will. A voluntarist holds that our wills are
involved with our states of belief.

x When philosophers advance this view, however, they admit that

certain sorts of beliefs, such as moral beliefs and the belief in the
existence of God, may be by their nature at least not involuntary. Of
course, these are precisely the sorts of beliefs we care most about.

Nietzsche and Inversion of Values

x Friedrich Nietzsche used his ideas about jealousy and a related
emotion, resentment, to analyze how an entire moral system
developed. Nietzsche argued that in society, before the development
of Judeo-Christian ethics, a different kind of ethics applied, what he
called master ethics and slave ethics.

x Master ethics placed an emphasis on health, the body, wealth, sex,

power, and pridemany of the aspects we associate with Aristotles
virtue ethics. Only the wealthy and powerful could enjoy this kind
of life, however. Meanwhile, another set of peoplethe slave
classNietzsche argued, felt jealous or resentful of the master
class. The slaves wanted what the masters had but could not get it.

75
 x What did they do? Nietzsche called this the greatest creative
moment in the history of Western civilization: They turned the
masters ethics upside down in what Nietzsche termed an inversion
of values.

x The slaves decided that whatever the masters valued, they would
value the opposite. Out of this basic emotional response of jealousy
and resentment (what Nietzsche actually called ressentiment, after
the French way of thinking about resentment and jealousy), the
entire Judeo-Christian code of ethics was generated.

x The problem, Nietzsche believed, was that the kind of negative

evaluation of life that we saw with heartbreak and jealousy stayed
with this ethical system. Dwelling on resentmentfounding a
morality on itends up turning all of life into a negative condition.
We say no to life rather than saying yes. There is a profound
psychological and moral point here: Resentment and envy are
Lecture 12: Are Jealousy and Resentment Always Wrong?

ultimately destructive moral forces.

David Hume
x The 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume argued that our
moral lives are simply an expression of our emotional lives. This
is sometimes called the sentimental theory of ethics. Reason is,
and ought to be, a slave
to the passions, Hume
famously wrote, and
he developed his entire
theory of ethics on this
core observation.
iStock/Thinkstock.

x Hume encouraged us to
think about our simple
emotional responses to
a variety of situations: a
Its important to try to nd a healthy
man who kicks his dog, a
balance between the rational life and the
beggar in abject poverty, emotional life and always observe that
a woman who steals they are working together.

76
 a loaf of bread. He asked us, however, to consider about how we
might feel if that person was a mother stealing a loaf of bread to
feed her starving children.

x Finally, consider how you feel when someone offers you a false
apology: Im sorry, but and then offers a imsy defense. You
have an ethical response: You feel outraged. By contrast, consider
how you feel when someone offers a sincere apology; you feel
forgiveness.

x Hume thought that, just as our bodies had a natural tendency to seek
pleasure and avoid pain, so our minds or our natures had a natural
tendency to move us in moral directions. This comes partly from
the society of which we are members and partly from the sort of
beings we are.

Suggested Reading

De Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter.

Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time.

Questions to Consider

1. Why might heartbreak be an important moral emotion? How does

it work?

2. Suppose a person lived his or her whole life without suffering the pain
of romantic loss. Do you think that would be a morally diminished life?
Why? Discuss with a friend.

77
 What Are the Rules for Respecting Privacy?
Lecture 13

P
rivacy issues have become even more pressing because of advances
in technology. Two philosophical issues are at work here: how
much privacy we are entitled to and why, and how intrusions into
our privacy affect our freedom and autonomy. These issues are deeply
interwoven, especially when it comes to the ways technology complicates
moral life. In this lecture, we will look at arguments for why our privacy and
autonomy might sometimes be sensibly compromised, as well as dangers
that technology poses to our privacy. You may have heard of the LoJack
vehicle tracking system, a technology for tracking a stolen car. A frustrated
parent of a teenager might well complain, Why cant I LoJack my kids?

The Right to Privacy

x In the United States, the right to privacy is not constitutionally
Lecture 13: What Are the Rules for Respecting Privacy?

guaranteed, although there is a body of law that suggests strong

constitutional support. That we have a right to privacy is more like
a moral instinct that we all share. The right to privacy, as we think
of it today, is often divided into four concerns:
o First is the concern over intrusion on a persons seclusion or
solitude or into his or her private affairs.

o Second is the concern over public disclosure of embarrassing

private facts about an individual.

o Third is the concern over publicity placing a person in a false

light in the public eye.

o Fourth is the concern for the appropriation of one persons

likeness for the advantage of another person (a form of
identity theft).

x For the purposes of this lecture, we will examine the morality

and dangers associated with the rst form of privacy: when there

78
 is intrusion into a persons private affairs, especially when that
intrusion involves a compromise of that persons autonomy or
freedom. Sometimes that intrusion may also mean making a
persons private life public or collapsing the difference between
the private and the public, which is another way of potentially
infringing on the right to privacy.

Public versus Private Life

x In a discussion of the violation of the right to privacy of one of his
characters, the writer Milan Kundera provided a powerful statement
of the distinction between the public and the private. The crucial
idea was that the difference between the public and the private is
the indispensable condition for a man to live free.

x The rst philosopher in the Western tradition to make a distinction

between the public and the private was Aristotle. Aristotle
distinguished between the public sphere of life, or the polis, and the
private sphere of life, the oikos, or family.

x For Aristotle, there were two quite different sets of rules that
governed how people behaved when they were in their homes with
their families and when they were out in public among the other
citizens of the city-state. The rules of the family were dictated by
the head of the household, but those rules were informed by the
needs of the household and its individual members.

x Once people entered the polis or the public sphere, they explicitly
relinquished that kind of privacy, however. In the public sphere,
individual freedom would be constrained by the way we all had
collectively agreed to behave in public, and people could not insist
that what they did or said would remain private.

Plato and the Noble Lie

x Aristotles teacher, Plato, thought rather differently about privacy
and autonomy than Aristotle did. Based on his concept of
paternalism, Plato believed that a ruler was justied in controlling
the lives and minds of the citizenry. Sometimes, Plato thought, the

79
 citizens must be protected from themselves for their own well-
being and happiness.

x For this reason, in his ideal state or republic, Plato eliminated

almost entirely the division between the public and the private.
He advocated that children be raised communally, for example,
because he thought that experts on child care would do a better job
than untrained parents.

x Plato even argued that the leader of the state could and should
invade the privacy of the minds of his citizens to control their
beliefs. Thus, he advocated the gennaion pseudos, or noble lie,
told to the citizenry to prevent civil strife or to promote the leaders
agenda.

Mill and Soft Paternalism

x The soft paternalism advocated by John Stuart Mill could also be
used to justify interference with our right to privacy. Consider the
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case of a friend who has a drug problem and needs help. Part of
intervening to help that friend is to invade his or her privacy. All
this can be justied because, according to soft paternalism, addicts
need the help they would wish for if they were in their right minds.

x There are many problems with this view. One difculty is

identifying who decides when addicts are or are not in their right
minds and how much of their privacy you are allowed to invade in
order to nd out the condition of their minds.

Privacy and Coercion

x Why worry about privacy at all? Some might nd it comforting
to live in an ideal state, such as Platos, where we have almost no
privacy but we feel completely secure and the government tells us
exactly what to do. For most people, however, this situation raises
moral hackles, because it attacks one of our most fundamental
values: liberty.

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 x Liberty requires privacy. The more public our activities are, the
more inclined other people are to try to manipulate or control us.
When your private behavior is made public, you submit to the
possibility of coercion; you have lost your autonomy.

Maternalism
x Another way of thinking about privacy and autonomy could be
considered maternalism, as opposed to paternalism. Maternalism
relates to the ethics of care advanced by many feminists.

x Consider as a moral ideal the best possible mother, both inquisitive

but respectful of developing autonomy. A good mother, operating
with respect for individuality, will know how much autonomy and
how much privacy each child needs (also how much paternalism).

x But supervising can easily turn into snooping, even spying, which
is destructive for everyone. For example, if members of the
government start feeling justied in spyinglike a good mom
might feel justied in doing some snoopingit can soon create
signicant problems.

x Furthermore, many feminists, such as Catharine MacKinnon, worry

that some privacy issues can be dangerous for women. Privacy has
often been used to hide repression of women and even physical
harm to them. It has also been crucial to the subjection of women
in the domestic sphere. Finally, the privatepublic distinction has
interfered with the development of the rights of women by insisting
that the state not be allowed to interfere in family matters.

Privacy in the Public Sphere

x Many employers are now legally treating employees as a parent
treats a child: reading their e-mails, monitoring their computer
time, observing their online searches, and so on. Furthermore, the
government now has the ability to monitor almost any activity you
pursue. For this reason, many contemporary philosophers advocate
a right they call privacy in the public spherethe legal right not
to be observed in many environments.

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 x Unfortunately, privacy in the public sphere is in stark contrast with
security necessities, and in our world of growing security threats,
especially terrorism and pointless acts of mass violence, security
will most likely win out over privacy.

Guidelines for Respecting Privacy

x Following are important guidelines for how businesses and
governments can use, rather than abuse, the power of monitoring,
without sweeping
invasions of privacy.

x First, businesses and

governments should
recognize, in some cases,
our desire to maintain

iStock/Thinkstock.
anonymity. This applies
to information about
medical history, sexual
Lecture 13: What Are the Rules for Respecting Privacy?

preferences, religious
beliefs, and even Todays technology makes spying much
easier than it was in the pastby family
purchasing history. members, corporations, computer
hackers, and our own government.
x Second, employers
should make a strong distinction between what is company time
and what is employee time. Employers should not be allowed to
monitor employees when they are off the clock.

x Third, corporations and the government should not have access to

any activity that could not possibly be deemed a threat to the public
security. There are express permission policies in place for the
release of nancial information and medical records; these kinds of
express permission clauses can be created and written into law to
govern other kinds of information.

Advantages of Transparency
x There are many advantages to keeping certain information in the
public sphere, however. To make facts public is to make them

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 transparent and open to all. In fact, weve seen frequently in this
course that one good guide to doing the right thing is simply to ask
yourself: Would I do this if everyone knew I was doing it?

x As often before, Aristotle has answers for us. Clearly, a moderate

approach to the privatepublic distinction allows us to maintain
healthy private lives while also guaranteeing the transparency that
we want from the public sphere.

Suggested Reading

Assange, Appelbaum, and Muller-Maguhn, Cypherpunks.

Brin, The Transparent Society.

Questions to Consider

1. Electronic surveillance is at an all-time high. You have nothing to

hide. Should you still be alarmed? Why or why not?

2. Should companies be allowed to tailor their advertisements to you

online according to your past purchasing historyregardless of where
the purchases were made?

83
 What Do I Owe My Aging Parents?
Lecture 14

A
s the American population ages and people live longer, many of
us nd ourselves in the position of caring for our aging parents.
Because our parents have always been a source of help to us, we
may think we do not have to realign our moral priorities based on our
parents needs. We know we have an obligation to care for our children,
but do we have a moral obligation to care for our parents? In this
lecture, well demonstrate that the decision is not just about the division
of resources; it is about ethical values and priorities. In essence, it is a
matter of respect.

A Perspective from Cultural Anthropology

x The anthropologist and philosopher Jared Diamond has
studied the way traditional societies cared for their elderly. He
maintained that their different approaches to care are all instructive
social experiments.
Lecture 14: What Do I Owe My Aging Parents?

x Although modern approaches to caring for the elderly are not ideal,
some traditional societies were often quite harsh in their treatment
of the elderly. In fact, murder of the elderly was not uncommon in
nomadic societies or under conditions of great scarcity.

x In some societies, however, the elderly are valued for practical

reasons, such as babysitting, ability to nd food, and life experience;
they are seen as sources of wisdom.

x Whats more, the lives of the elderly in traditional societies tend to

be much more socially rich and woven into the fabric of the society.
Consequently, Diamond believes, children in those societies
are much more self-assured because they gain condence from
interaction with their elders.

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Aging in America
x By contrast, in America, Diamond argued, being old is simply a
social handicap. As an example, a sociologist at Boston University
sent out identical applications for jobs. Half the applicants listed
their ages at 25 to 40, and the other half listed their ages at 45 to 60.
Employers were twice as likely to call the younger applicants. This
is signicant when you consider that older applicants presumably
have more knowledge, more experience, more resources, and more
skills.

x One reason Americans do not have a strong respect for the elderly
might arise from the Protestant work ethic. As we get older, we
obviously cannot work as hard. Americans prize the value of self-
reliance, and the elderly may be viewed as a kind of social handicap.

x Furthermore, in America, for better or worse, we idolize the culture

of youth. And because we have become an increasingly mobile
society, older people tend to be physically distant from their
children and friends.

Nick White/Digital Vision/Thinkstock.

Interestingly, single children are better at caring for their elderly parents than
multiple children are, perhaps because their priorities are different.

85
 x Modern society does present some positives when it comes to
the elderly: We have much longer lives than we had in traditional
societies; we have better health today; and we have many more
recreational opportunities.

Confucius and Xiao

x The Chinese philosopher Confucius (6th5th century B.C.) placed
lial piety, or xiao, at the heart of his ethical system. According to
Confucius, because we owed our parents our very existence, there
was no more fundamental moral obligation than our obligation to
our parents.

x Our parents, Confucius taught, form the basis of our entire lives,
and they embody the foundation of the social order. The very
fabric of our society, according to Confucius, therefore depends
on our attitude toward our parents. When we care for our parents,
we demonstrate the kinds of virtues we want to display when we
interact with everyone else.

x Xiao comprises three basic virtues: devotion, care, and obedience.

Devotion means showing an attitude of loving attention. Care
Lecture 14: What Do I Owe My Aging Parents?

means putting the other persons needs and wants thoughtfully at

the center of your attention and action, quite possibly ahead of your
own. Obedience means listening to your parents and doing your
best, within reason, to act according to their requirements.

Li and Ren
x The person displaying xiao will also behave with the proper manner
and appropriate expression of respect. In this way, Confucius says,
the child demonstrates the attitude of li, or proper social etiquette.

x Another key Confucian virtue is ren, which means to act with

humanity; it encompasses much of what Kant meant by treating
human beings as ends in themselves rather than mere means. Another
way of understanding ren, or the fundamental respect for human life,
is thatas we emphasize in both the Judeo-Christian and Buddhist
traditionsall of humanity should be treated with love.

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 x Confucius argued that if we all individually practice xiao, this
virtue will carry over into our interactions with other human beings
around us, and society as a whole will operate with greater care,
deference, and mutual respect.

Socrates in Crito
x One of the most famous analyses of what we owe to society and
to our parents is offered by Plato in the dialogue Crito. In Crito,
Socrates has been convicted of the crime of corrupting the youth,
conducting scientic research, and not respecting the gods.

x As he is sitting in prison, waiting for execution, Socrates is visited by

Crito, who presents an escape plan. Socrates looks at Crito and says
(characteristically) that he will escape if it is the right thing to do.

x Socrates then performs a thought experiment for Crito. He imagines

that the laws of Athens are speaking to him: Will you, O professor
of true virtue, say that you are justied in this [escape]? Has a
philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more
to be valued and higher and holier farther than mother or father
or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods
and of men of understanding, also to be soothed and gently and
reverently entreated when angry even more than a father, and if not
persuaded, obeyed?

x Although Socrates refers to the laws and the state, not to ones
parents, the analogy he uses is the duty that one owes to ones
parents; the moral force of his argument depends heavily on that
analogy and on obedience. In short, from Socratess point of view,
everything that we are, we owe specically to our parents.

Nel Noddings and the Ethics of Care

x In more recent ethical thinking, Nel Noddings championed the
Confucian virtue of care. Noddings, a contemporary American
feminist philosopher, argued that from the time we are children,
we act from a natural caring that motivates us to help othersnot
because we have some obligation to do so or even because our

87
 parents have taught us to do so, but simply because we have wired
into us a natural desire to help other people.

x In later life, we may feel we just do not have time to care for so
many. In this case, Noddings maintained, we have an obligation to
recognize that we must consciously choose to care for those who
need and deserve our care. Our elderly parents will be at the very
top of that list, along with our children. This was the foundation of
our moral way of life, according to Noddings.

x Noddings believed that we have the natural ability and even the
inclination to tap into that caring impulse that we all shared when
we were children.

x Noddings also argued (controversially) that women were better

caregivers, perhaps more natural caregivers, and took more pleasure
in caregiving than men do. Women also had a tendency to care to
such a degree that they neglected themselves.

William James and Pragmatism

x Finally, well turn to the 20th-century American pragmatist and
Lecture 14: What Do I Owe My Aging Parents?

philosopher William James, the founder of psychology in America.

Interestingly, James was also a proponent of Eastern philosophy.
When the Hindu philosopher Krishnamurti gave a lecture at Harvard
and explained some basic principles of his moral philosophy, James
leapt to his feet and cried out, This is the philosophy of the future.

x The basic idea of moral pragmatism is that one should experiment,

then practice what works. Lets see how this operates in the decision
to care for aging parents.

x Consider two siblings, John and Wendy, caring for an aging father.
First, John could try bringing his father into his large home, in
which he lives alone, and experiment to see if it is possible to
incorporate his father into his life. Wendy could come over during
the week to help John. In fact, that would be a sensible arrangement

88
 and respectful of the fact that both of the siblings should care for
their parent.

x If that arrangement didnt work, Wendy could try having their

father live in her apartment with her; John could come over and
provide some of the care. Alternatively, they could try different
sorts of nursing homes.

x The fundamental idea is that there is never just one solution,

according to the pragmatist. In the case of caring for our aging
parents, we must experiment in order to nd the best solution, and
we must be practical and see what actually works. We wont know
what works best, however, until we try it.

x Although we have a preeminent moral duty to respect our parents

and care for them, as moral pragmatists, we should try out different
experiments to see what works best for us, for our families, and for
our parents.

Suggested Reading

Weiming, Confucius.
Weisheit, Aging Parents.

Questions to Consider

1. Why and how might lial piety be the sort of moral value that could
provide a moral framework for an entire society?

2. Why does respect for the needs of our parents seem to be diminishing in
contemporary civilization, especially in the West?

89
 Should I Help a Suffering Loved One Die?
Lecture 15

M
ost people believe that there is nothing more morally signicant,
nothing more sacred, than human life. In this lecture, we will
explore whether or not you should have the ability to decide
when and how you or someone else dies. In most states, you are, in fact,
not allowed to make that decision. The state has already made it for you:
You cannot choose to decide whether or not you live or die. You must die of
natural causes and only of natural causes. Given that death is irreversible and
life is the most profound moral value that humans share, is it not incumbent
on us to protect human life at all costs?

Euthanasia
x Euthanasia derives from the Greek words eu, meaning good,
and thanatos, meaning death. Most of us have a commonsense
notion of a good death and a bad death. No one wants to die alone
Lecture 15: Should I Help a Suffering Loved One Die?

in terrible pain. Most of us would like to die a relatively painless

death surrounded by our family and friends.

x Once we know that we are going to diesay, within weeks or even

dayshaving the ability to choose just when we will die may seem,
to many of us, like a gift. To others of us, it might seem like having
too much power. Or it might seem like a decision we cannot bear
to make.

x A good death, in the context of contemporary medical debates,

includes three different but related types: death that is entirely in
ones own hands (conditional suicide), death that requires the help
of someone else (physician- or family-assisted suicide), and death
that one cannot obtain on ones own because one is no longer in a
position to choose (for instance, withdrawal of life support for a
patient in a vegetative state).

90
 x The problem of euthanasia is relatively new and is growing. Thanks
to advances in medical technology, people now live much longer,
and their lives can be prolonged even when they are very sick and
in terrible pain. In short, as our ability to extend life grows, so does
the question of the morality or immorality of euthanasia.

Allowing or Assisting: An Important Distinction

x For our purposes in thinking this question through philosophically,
we are particularly concerned with the difference between allowing
someone to die (pulling the plug or not administering a life-
extending treatment) and assisting someone to die.

x Suppose, for example, that you hear a small child drowning in a

bathtub. You know what is happening, but you wait outside the
door and let the child die. Is there any difference, morally speaking,
between your behavior and drowning the child yourself? Whether
it is your direct action or your grossly negligent inaction, many of
us would believe you have been directly involved in a preventable
death. Either way, morally speaking, you are to blame.

x But consider the following case, proposed by the 20th-century

British philosopher Philippa Foot. Suppose you are on an island
and you have the only vehicle that can drive to the beach during
a terrible storm. Two groups of peopleon opposite sides of the
islandare trapped and will be killed by the storm. On one side
are two people; on the other side, ve people. The answer seems
obvious to all of us: Save the ve people. We certainly will not
blame you for the deaths of those other two people.

x Foot then continues: Imagine the same example, but to get to the
ve people, you have to drive over a collapsed bridge. Beneath that
collapsed bridge a man is trapped. If he is left alone, he will be
saved soon. But if you drive over the bridge to save the ve people,
you will kill him.

x This dilemma is much more difcult because there is a very

important distinction in our mindsand in our moral psychology

91
 between letting someone die and actively killing someone. On this
account, then, we would argue that not administering life-extending
treatments is a signicant moral distinction from helping someone
to commit suicide.

Arguments for Life

x Many believe that allowing a human life to end is always wrong.
There are four standard arguments that defend that position.

x First, it is argued that the mere suggestion that a critically ill person
should commit suicide is a way of abandoning that person. It is
important for those who are dying to know how important their
lives are to us, and part of that knowledge comes from our refusal
to let them go.

x The second argument concerns miracle cures. The reason we ought

to keep a person alive as long as we possibly canwhether he or
she is conscious and in pain or in a vegetative stateis that science
constantly surprises us. Miracle cures may emerge just when we
Lecture 15: Should I Help a Suffering Loved One Die?

think all hope is lost.

x The third argument reasserts the premise that we can never choose
death over life.

x The fourth argument is that taking action when a person is dying

interferes with Gods divine plan. This argument is most compelling
when we consider the case of active euthanasia, or what we also
call assisted suicide. Nearly all religious traditions, which deeply
inform our moral precepts and intuitions, agree that suicide is
wrong.

Right to Suicide
x There are ve main arguments on behalf of pulling the plug
and more active forms of ending a human life, including assisted
suicide. The rst of these arguments asserts that individuals have
rights over their own bodies, lives, and deaths. On this account, if it

92
 makes sense to say that we have any rights at all, we ought to have
the right to take our own lives.

x Many eminent philosophers have argued this positionperhaps

most notably the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David
Hume, who said, No man ever threw away life while it was worth
keeping. Even Socrates chose hemlock over exile.

x There are many problems with this argument, but at least two are
focal. First, severe suffering, whether physical or psychological,
distorts our thinking, and few people actually choose to commit
suicide when they are in the best position to make that decision.
Second, taking ones own life causes harm to many other people,
especially loved ones, friends, and family.

x The right-to-suicide argument is stronger in cases when a person

is going to die soon, has moments of lucidity, and friends and
family support the wish.

Right to Refuse Treatment

x The second argument for allowing a patient to end life arises from
the fact that, since the Patient Self-Determination Act of 1991,
people in the United States have a right to refuse treatment. This
includes the right to make an advance directive or to appoint a
surrogate who will make health-care decisions for a patient.

x This argument is hard to attack. Most of us believe, morally

speaking, that we should be permitted to tell people that we do not
want to have a treatment performed on us. This right seems basic to
our self-determination as human beings.

x But the right to say no to treatment will only apply in cases where
extraordinary means are being used to keep a person alive. In other
words, it will handle pulling the plug or passive euthanasia cases,
where life support can be withdrawn. It will not help with cases
when treatment has ended and only palliative care is being used.

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 Other Arguments for Euthanasia
x The third argument in favor of allowing someone to die is that
doing so will shorten suffering. Objections to this argument are
threefold, however: the suffering might be temporary; the suffering
distorts judgment; and it is difcult to determine exactly how much
suffering justies euthanasia. Also, once other people are involved
in deciding how much suffering we can endure, they may interfere
with our autonomy.

x The fourth argument is that patients have the right to die with
dignity, and a death that is unnecessarily prolonged eliminates that
possibility. Objections to this argument are that it is difcult to
decide what counts as dignity, and that death is most dignied when
we allow God to decide how it will proceed.

x Finally, some argue that there can be a duty to die: that some
people may reach a point in their lives when they are draining
societys resources and the resources of friends and family.
This is probably the least persuasive of the arguments in favor
Lecture 15: Should I Help a Suffering Loved One Die?

of euthanasia.

Hospice Care
x Before leaving the complex and compelling topic of euthanasia,
lets consider the hospice approach to death. With hospice, patients
die in their own homes, surrounded by their families, and with little
or no medical technology supporting life. There is an emphasis on
comfort and care rather than curing and healing.

x Hospice care is a team approach, designed to provide support for

patients and families. It recognizes the difference between acute
and chronic pain and treats acute pain. It respects the idea that
chronic painpain that simply is never going to go awaymay be
cause for keeping patients under heavy sedation for most or all of
their nal days.

x Hospice care is much less expensive than dying in the hospital and
provides the family with freedom from nancial worry, in addition

94
 to bereavement counseling before and after the death. It is often
argued that hospice provides a more natural death in a family
context.

x Finally, this approach obviates most of the need for mercy death and
mercy killing, because the patient is, generally speaking, relatively
free from suffering and does not receive the extraordinary means of
medical care that would prolong his or her life beyond its natural
limits. Hospice care seems like one practical way of providing a
good death.

Suggested Reading

Dworkin, Frey, and Bok, Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide.

Orfali, Death with Dignity.

Questions to Consider

1. Is suicide always wrong? Why or why not?

2. How do you want to die? What would you describe as a good death?
Do you think modern medicine is likely to help with that goal?

95
 Is Genetic Enhancement Playing God?
Lecture 16

B
ringing a new life into the world is, without a doubt, the single most
signicant act we can perform. Moreover, the moral implication of
creating new life is even more momentous. As Immanuel Kant argued,
human beings are like morality machines: We are free. We can choose. We can
reason. We can create moral laws and follow them. In fact, conceiving a human
life is, in essence, creating an entirely new moral universe. We are creating
a moral agent. This lecture will explore the ethics of genetic enhancement,
or genetic engineeringwhether we have the right to control or coerce that
moral agent or decide what capacities he or she will have.

Genetic Engineering
x Imagine being able to choose your babys gender, eye color, and
hair color. Going a step further, say that you can control for diseases,
such as leukemia, diabetes, or alcoholism. Or consider that you
Lecture 16: Is Genetic Enhancement Playing God?

have the ability to manipulate genes to create a baby who is athletic,

musically talented, and intelligentbut not too intelligent.

x You might think that this all sounds fairly far-fetched, but in fact,
its not. Advances in reproductive technology, gene mapping, and
genetic engineering are progressing at such an astonishing rate
that the scenario described could very easily present itself in your
lifetime. We are already testing for various genetic defects at very
early stages of fetal growth.

x Evolutionary biologists maintain that we are attracted to certain

qualities in others simply because we perceive themalbeit often
subconsciouslyas more t for making babies with us. The
question is: Through genetic engineering, are we not just doing
consciously and deliberatelyprecisely and scienticallywhat
we have always been doing in choosing a mate?

96
Playing God
x Many religious traditions have a strong and straightforward argument
against genetic engineeringan argument against playing God.
Kant gives extra emphasis to this argument; if we genetically program
an unborn child, we are treating that baby as a mere meansas a
kind of slave to our wishesrather than recognizing that the baby we
are making is a moral being, like ourselves.

x With genetic engineering, we are controlling aspects that normally

are left up to individual choices. We are controlling that babys
autonomy, and when we do that, according to Kant, were doing the
worst thing we can possibly do to another human being.

x Furthermore, when we play God, we inevitably deal with

unforeseen consequences. If we leave things up to nature or up to
Gods will, we accept the child as he or she is born and work with
those capacities.

x But when we play God, when we control what that child is going
to look like, how that child is going to think, what that child will
pursue in life, we take direct responsibility for the way that child
comes into the world. If something goes wrong, we have no one to
blame but ourselves (and our doctor). For many of us, that is much
more responsibility than we want or can handle.

x There are two additional arguments to consider that speak against

genetic enhancement. The rst is based on the question of social
fairness, and the second is based on the question of the importance
of human uniqueness and human will.

Gattaca: A Metaphorical Tale

x Before we address those arguments, lets look at a thought-
provoking case provided by the lm Gattaca. This lm is set in
the not-so-distant future, at a time when liberal eugenics, or the
use of genetic and reproductive technologies to enhance human
characteristics and capacities, has become widespread.

97
 x In the lm, the hero, Vincent Freeman, has been conceived without
genetic enhancement. He is myopic, he has a heart condition, and
he is expected to die at age 30. Vincents younger brother, Anton, on
the other hand, has been genetically enhanced; thus, he is stronger,
more handsome, and smarter, and he should live a long and full life.

x Vincents dream is to become an astronaut, but his genes make

this impossible. He is simply genetically inferior to the enhanced
applicants, and this fact is constantly made explicit. For example,
part of the job interview to enter the astronaut training program is a
DNA test. Vincents DNA alone would rule him out because other
applicants will simply show that they have superior genetic proles.

x One day, Vincent runs away from home and purchases what is called
a borrowed ladder. That is, he buys hair, tissue, and urine samples
from an enhanced citizena genetically improved individual
and assumes that persons identity. With a bit of subterfuge,
he completes the DNA test and is admitted to the space training
program, Gattaca, as a legitimate genetically enhanced person.
Lecture 16: Is Genetic Enhancement Playing God?

x Then, in the climax of the lm, Anton, who has suffered a

debilitating injury and can no longer enjoy his vastly superior
physical powers, kills himself; he decides that his life as a physically
challenged person is no longer worth living.

John Rawls and Social Justice

x In the society of Vincent and Anton, the wealthy can afford to create
genetically superior beings, who then have the most desirable jobs
and lifestyles. The poor cannot afford to create those superior
children and have to settle for whatever happens naturally.

x As sophisticated moral theorists, lets consider some of the

problems of this metaphorical tale and the arguments related to
genetic engineering. Consider the viewpoint of the American
philosopher John Rawls, for example.

98
 x For Rawls, this looks like a straightforward case of social injustice.
We are creating a class of human being that is superior to another
class of humans simply because we have the wealth and resources
to do so.

The Veil of Ignorance

x According to Rawls, before we decide how to distribute resources,
we are supposed to step behind the veil of ignorance. If we are
behind the veil of
ignorance, it is rational
to distribute money in
such a way that the most
disadvantaged members
of society will receive the

iStock/Thinkstock.
most help.

x Actually, according to
Rawlss logic, if anyone
is going to obtain genetic Advances in genetic enhancement
introduce new moral questions: Do we
enhancement in the have an idea of the perfect human
society of Gattaca, it being in mind, and what do we lose by
ought to be poor people, seeking that ideal?
not wealthy people. The
poor are the ones who really need to advance themselves. The
society of Gattaca has it exactly backwards.

x Furthermore, from Rawlss perspective, our situation in the present

day is a kind of genetic lottery. Before a baby is born, we are taking
a chance at what sort of human being we have conceived.

x In a sense, we are having our children from behind the veil of

ignorance, because we do not really know how they will look
when they are born or what their capacities will be. As it stands,
this genetic lottery actually works in favor of a more just society
because physical and psychological traits are distributed with some
surprises by nature.

99
 x For Rawls, the genetic lottery is fair rather than biased in favor of
those who have resources to guarantee superiority. According to
Rawls, as long as the particular characteristics of a new baby are
more or less randomly assigned, thats a fair and reasonable situation.

A Utilitarian Perspective
x In contrast, lets consider the case of Vincent and Anton from a
utilitarian perspective. If we follow the logic of the lm, it looks
as if, again, the Gattaca society has the situation upside down. The
happiness of the fewthose wealthy people who can genetically
program their children for advantagesis being provided for by the
unhappiness of the many.

x One portion of society is very happy but only through the effective
creation of a slave state of poor people who are not able to enjoy the
benets of genetic engineering. After all, not everyone can be an
astronaut or have the most desirable position in society. The most
successful people in Gattaca are those who have been genetically
engineered with superior capacities, talents, and intelligence.
Lecture 16: Is Genetic Enhancement Playing God?

The Good Life

x In an interesting twist, it looks as if genetic engineering has given
Anton a confused idea of the good life.

x In some ways, Antons life accords well with what a utilitarian

might call a good life. Utilitarianism is just an advanced form of
hedonism, and it certainly seems as if a genetically superior or even
genetically perfect human being can enjoy all sorts of pleasures that
a less genetically advantaged one could not.

x Thus, Anton expects to live a long life full of pleasures because he

has a perfect body, with no disabilities, and is highly intelligent,
whereas Vincent has numerous disadvantages and will die young.
From a utilitarian perspective, we might choose to be Anton rather
than Vincent.

100
 x But then, Anton suffers an injury and nds that he is no longer
superior. When he has a little instance of what we often call moral
bad luck, life loses all meaning for him.

x This is either a problem with utilitarianismif it gives us such a

circumscribed notion of the meaning of life that Antons life really
is more desirable than Vincentsor a problem with understanding
genetic enhancement as an expression of utilitarianism. Perhaps
one of the pleasures of life is to be more like Vincent, who has to
struggle and work with the materials he has to achieve his dreams.

Suggested Reading

Mehlman, Wondergenes.
Sandel, The Case against Perfection.

Questions to Consider

1. Suppose I can genetically program my unborn child not to have cancer.

How is that different, morally speaking, from genetically programming
my child to be extraordinarily good at basketball?

2. Should all genetic enhancement be banned? If not, what sorts of

enhancement should we allow and why?

101
 Is Conscientious Objection a Moral Right?
Lecture 17

I
n a famous historical account, as a matter of conscience, Sir Thomas
More, the renowned 16th-century Lord Chancellor of England, declined
to sign a letter asking Pope Clement VII to annul Henry VIIIs marriage
to Catherine of Aragon. More objected on the grounds that he could not
deny the popes supremacy in ecclesiastical matters. When he refused
to compromise, he was executed. We continue to face such crises of the
fundamental moral concept of conscience even today. In this lecture, we
will explore the evolution of the concept of conscience and examine several
examples of crises of conscience.

Pharmacists and the Right to Life

x The Plan B drug, or morning-after pill, created a crisis of conscience
for many pharmacists because prescribing it conicted with their
Lecture 17: Is Conscientious Objection a Moral Right?

religious convictions about the right to life. Pharmacists also felt

especially challenged to prescribe it to customers under the age of 18.

x Some pharmacies developed opt-out plans for those pharmacists

so that they could simply ask another pharmacist to prescribe the
pill. Some pharmacies created conscience clauses that allowed
pharmacists to refuse to ll prescriptions for the morning-after pill
to women age 17 and under. Under such policies, pharmacists who
objected to the contraceptive were allowed to ask their coworkers
to ll prescriptions as long as it did not interfere with the sale.

x Its interesting to ask whether this is an effective solution to the

problem and whether handing the prescription to another pharmacist
solves the crisis of conscience. Today, the Plan B problem has
grown still more complex because the drug is widely available over
the counter. Some cashiers refuse to sell the drug because of the
claims of conscience.

102
 x One might argue that the pharmacist or cashier should quit his or
her job. In other words, if your conscience is offended, act like
Sir Thomas More and accept the consequences. That may be a
morally praiseworthy solution, but the question remains whether it
is morally required.

What Is Conscience?
x Conscience is a crucial part of a moral tradition in the West that
goes back at least as far as Socrates. Socrates claimed to have a
daimon, or spirit, who instructed him morally. Interestinglyand
this is common when it comes to appeals to conscienceSocratess
daimon never told him what he ought to do, morally speaking; it
simply told him what he could not do. According to Socrates,
his conscience kept him out of moral trouble without giving him
specic moral duties.

x The term conscience generally refers to our ability to judge our

own actions. As in the case of Socrates, it is most often referred to
as a kind of naysayer. That is, we generally become aware of our
conscience when we have done something wrong; we feel a pang
of conscience.

x Conscience comes from the Latin conscientia, a direct translation

of the Greek syneidesis, which means being aware of something
or knowing something in common with someone.

x The second meaning could be applied in judicial contexts. If you

know something that someone else knows, you might be aware of
his or her secrets, and you might, therefore, be able to serve as a
witness against that person. In some cases, syneidesis began to refer
to bearing witness against oneself.

Evolution of a Moral Tradition

x Medieval philosophers understood the conscience as having two
elements. One part, syneidesis, referred to an ultimate, infallible,
innate moral core, which they believed was human nature. The

103
 second part, conscientia, referred to our judgments prior to taking
action, whether moral or immoral.

x Medieval thinkers were particularly interested in the failings of

conscientia and the question of where mistakes in moral reasoning
would leave a person.

x In the 17th and 18th centuries, philosophers did away with that
distinction and dealt solely with what medieval philosophers
would have termed conscientia. There were two basic schools
of understanding. One saw conscience as the thought process
preceding action. The other dened it as the feelings and judgments
that follow an action, whether that action is moral or not.

Bishop Joseph Butler

x The English philosopher and religious leader Bishop Joseph Butler,
born in 1692, dened conscience as an innate disposition to judge
actions as right or wrong. Butler said that the human mind is wired
Lecture 17: Is Conscientious Objection a Moral Right?

to think about its actions and their consequences; that is, he argued
that judgment was innate.

x For Butler, conscience was not necessarily an absolute moral

guidea kind of kneejerk this is right or this is wrong. Rather,
conscience was the voice of God in us that said, Stop and think
about what youre doing. Apply your reason to the situation.
Evaluate whats going on. Butler maintained that conscience
stimulated us to use our reason to evaluate.

x Butler believed that the conscience had authority but not power.
For example, imagine that you have an extramarital affair, and
you justify it by declaring that you cannot control your passion.
According to Butler, you will never quite fool yourself. Your
moral authority may not have the power to coerce your willthat
is, to make you do the right thingbut your conscience will still
maintain its authoritative judgment.

104
Return to Crito
x Consider again the story of Socrates told in Platos Crito. In Crito,
Socrates obeyed the law when he was in prison because the laws
were the source and substance of everything he was and everything
he enjoyedeven though, after his conviction, the law had become
decidedly inconvenient for him. In fact, the law was going to
execute him.

x This is the beginning of what is called social contract theory, which

is also the origin of our idea of professional responsibility.

Thomas Hobbes
x The 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes proposed
what has become the basis of all later forms of social contract
theory.

x Consider life in the state of nature, Hobbes speculated. He asked

us to imagine human beings before we were all gathered together
in societies. Life in the state of nature, Hobbes wrote, would be
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

x The reason for this was that all human beings were naturally selsh
and would seekand, in fact, were morally obligated to seek
their own well-being, their own self-preservation.

The Social Contract

x In Leviathan, Hobbes tells the story of the beginnings of civil
society through an ingenious thought experiment: Imagine that you
are a farmer with a few cows; you have a neighbor with a few cows.
A man who lives nearby and who is bigger and stronger than you
and has weapons threatens to steal your cows.

x The solution to the problem, says Hobbes, is that you and your
neighbor band together. But as we band together in larger and larger
groups, soon we will nd that we are having disputes, and we need
a way of settling those disputes.

105
 x We then come up with rules governing our behaviorrules
determining whose cows belong to whom, whose property belongs
to whom, and how we treat one another. We call those rules laws.

x Now we have to guarantee those laws, argued Hobbes. We need

some force to guarantee them or, of course, people will break their
promises. We need a police force. We will also need to organize a
certain part of our society to defend our group: a military to protect
us from outside threats.

x Further, in order to protect us against possible abuses of power by

the police or the military, we need to appoint someone in charge of
these people. For Hobbes, that had to be an absolute authority, or a
king. Of course, the philosopher John Locke later rened this view
to propose other forms of government.

A Perplexing Dilemma
x The social contract institutes a complex set of agreements that
Lecture 17: Is Conscientious Objection a Moral Right?

establish our obligations to one another. Part of our social contract,

our network of promises, includes professional obligations. For
example, a doctor has a set of
promises to keep: a special
kind of social contract that
goes all the way back to the
Hippocratic Oath. First and
foremost, the doctor has a
promisea contractnot to
cause any harm.

x Consider the pharmacists

Stockbyte/Thinkstock.

in the Plan B situation. As

members of our society, they
have a set of obligations to
all the other members of
The agreement between a lawyer and
our society. Part of their a client is a particular kind of social
profession is the promise contract that is crucial to the success
to provide medications. If of our society.

106
 they want to continue to ll that social role, they have a profound
obligation to do so.

x This all comes down to a perplexing dilemma. It looks as if a moral

claim of consciencesomething that would normally force us to
respect othersis, in essence, demanding that we act selshly. It
requires that we put our own sense of moral authority ahead of what
we owe to someone else.

x Whats more, the belief that we should all act selshlythe social
contract theory offered by Hobbesstipulates just the opposite.
The social contract demands that we serve someone else.

Accepting Consequences
x Consider other noteworthy crises of conscience. During the
Vietnam War, for example, some college students faced the question
of whether or not they should serve their country in a war that they
morally opposed.

x According to the context of social contract theory and Socrates

in Crito, someone facing the draft who has a crisis of conscience
nevertheless has an obligation to serve the society of which he or
she is a part and to follow the laws of that society.

x The student who is facing the draft would either have to do what
the laws commanded and ght in the war or take the consequences
and go to prison. By the same token, the pharmacist who wants
to follow his or her conscience must quit the job and accept the
consequences of that decision.

Suggested Reading

Strohm, Conscience.
White, The Works of Bishop Butler.

107
 Questions to Consider

1. What kind of thing is a conscience? How does it work?

2. If your conscience tells you to do one thing and your work demands that
you do another, what should you do and why?
Lecture 17: Is Conscientious Objection a Moral Right?

108
 Is It Always Wrong to Fight Back?
Lecture 18

I
n this lecture, well examine three emotional and moral responses: anger,
revenge, and forgiveness. These phenomena are much more closely
interrelated than we might think. Surprisingly and perhaps contrary to
our initial intuitions, all three of themanger, revenge, and forgiveness
can contribute to living a good life. Well look at the thinking of several
philosophers who present analyses of anger and suggest that it can be
usefully incorporated into the larger structure of our morality.

Stoics and Skeptics

x Anger is an important moral emotion that, although sometimes
dangerous, can be incorporated into our thinking about the good
life. In many ways, anger is a destructive force in our lives. Many
of the worst decisions we make are made when we are angry. Anger,
when it is out of control is, we can all agree, highly undesirable.

x Some philosophers have inclined in the same direction. The ancient

Greek and Roman stoics, for example, thought that anger was a
form of lust and was a straightforward example of a vice. They
believed that a good stoic should cultivate a life and a character that
did not include anger as part of the emotional structure.

x Similarly, the ancient skeptics, who went out of their way to

disagree with the stoics on every other point, maintained that a
wise person would generally not display anger. For the skeptics,
an angry response to a phenomenon would always be an excessive
responsea response that gave the phenomenon or the problem
more weight than it deserved.

Christ and Buddha

x The moral teacher we might suppose least likely to approve of anger
is Jesus Christ, who vigorously championed Love thy neighbor as
thyself. However, when anger was appropriate, even Christ acted

109
 with outragefor example, in Matthew 21:12, turning over the
tables of the moneychangers in the temple to make his point.

x Similarly, most of us expect anger to be discouraged in the Buddhist

tradition. However, according to Buddhist philosophy, a moral
genius might use anger to protect another being. In the Buddhist
view, a persons intention was the important thing. If his or her
motivations were compassionate, the actions did not really matter.

Aristotle
x According to Aristotle, anger was a surge of heat around the heart,
accompanied by a desire to cause pain in return. Both the physical
and vindictive aspects of anger were caused, Aristotle said, by an
insult to ones self or to ones friends, nation, or family.

x Aristotle dened hatred as the calcication, cooling, and

generalization of anger. He also argued that it was, along with
love and delight, the bedrock of virtue. For Aristotle, anger was an
impassioned wish to harm a person who has harmed you, and it
evolved into hatred over time. For Aristotle, this kind of hatred was
purely rational and morally necessary.
Lecture 18: Is It Always Wrong to Fight Back?

Saint Augustine
x The Christian philosopher Saint Augustine wrote, Hope has two
beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage. Anger
at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain as
they are.

x For Augustine, anger had an entirely appropriate role in our

emotional and spiritual lives. Anger helped us to see when an action
or a situation was morally inappropriate, and it motivated us to
change that situation.

x Augustine also wrote of self-directed angerwhen we become

frustrated with ourselves to achieve morally important goals. When
we are appropriately angry with ourselves, Augustine said, that
anger can provide us with a motive to do better.

110
 x Interestingly, this was very much how the atheist moral philosopher
David Hume also viewed anger. Hume argued that our emotional
life was the foundation
of our moral life.
Accordingly, for
Hume, the emotion
of anger was a crucial
aspect of our larger
moral sense of what

Photodisc/Thinkstock.
is right and wrong,
especially what is just
and unjust.

According to the philosopher David Hume,

Revenge: Eye for an Eye
anger is a bit like a moral red ag, telling
x The oldest and us that something immoral might be taking
simplest way of trying place.
to right a wrong
is to seek vengeance. In Homers The Iliad, the word for justice
simply means vengeance. Thats how deep this runs in our
cultural history.

x The ancient Greeks of Homers time believed in vengeance pursued

even beyond the bounds of balancing the scales of justice. In The
Iliad, when someone, such as Helen, offends you, you dont just
punish her. You raze the entire city of Troy and sow the ground with
salt so that nothing can ever grow there again.

x The Old Testament injunction eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth
does not encourage bloodshed; rather, it afrms that justice requires
measure, proportion, even moderation. And in the New Testament,
vengeance is given such high importance that it is taken out of our
hands and put in the hands of the higher power of God.

Solomon on Vengeance
x The philosopher Robert C. Solomon has questioned whether we
have taken an important psychological and moral phenomenon

111
 namely, vengeanceout of the way we live and somehow made
ourselves less human in doing so.

x Solomon dened vengeance as personal. He has said that in

America, we have handed over many of our personal concerns
to the government, and he thinks that this is a real loss for us as
people. He points out that in many traditional societies, it is, in fact,
the responsibility of the individual or the family to enact retributive
justice in the form of vengeance.

x The idea of impersonal punishment is also morally dubious,

according to Solomon. After all, in many situations, the wrong we
have suffered is a deeply personal onenot a legal or objective
wrong that we would want to be handled by a jury and judge.

x Fighting back can actually be a morally superior option in many

circumstances, Solomon argues, because it reestablishes fairness.
We feel as if the wrong has been righted, while also respecting the
person who has committed the wrong as an equal.

x Fighting back can also be a necessary precursor to forgiveness,

Lecture 18: Is It Always Wrong to Fight Back?

Solomon says, rather than holding on to resentment or bearing a

grudge. Think about an argument between a husband and wife. The
argument very often is not settled until both people have had their
say, until the vicious words have gone back and forth. Sometimes
that can be hurtful, but a little hurt, in this context, might provide for
the possibility of forgiving each other, moving on, and improving
the relationship.

Nietzsche and Order of Rank

x Nietzsche, like Solomon, reasoned that revenge was an important
psychological and moral phenomenon, and that it was crucial for
reestablishing equality between people. For Nietzsche, in fact,
revenge was often essential for the possibility of forgiveness.

x For Nietzsche, human beings are constantly mindful of what he

called the order of rank. That is, we see each other on a kind of

112
 ladder of social esteem. When one person inicts harm on another,
thats a way of shoving the person down the ladder. In order for
real forgiveness to occur, he said, the person who was pushed down
must be lifted back up again. In order to climb back up the ladder
of prestige, Nietzsche thought, we must allow for personal revenge.

x He thought that revenge was much healthier, morally speaking, than

harboring a grudge or resentment. He also thought that forgiveness
only counted when it came from an equal. Revenge was designed to
reestablish equality after a moral wrong had been done.

Plato and the Chariot Metaphor

x According to Plato, forgiveness was a way of reestablishing balance
within the soul. Plato divided the soul into three parts, using the
metaphor of a chariot with two horses. One of the horses was the
spirited part of the soul: our will. The other horse was the appetite,
or desirous part of the soul. The chariot driver represented reason
and logic, managing the two horses.

x When we get angry, one of the two horses is going faster than the
other one. Either our will or our desires are pointed in the wrong
direction. The soul is out of balance. For Plato, the way to get the
soul back into balance is through forgiveness.

Kohlbergs Stages of Moral Development

x Lawrence Kohlbergs theory of how morality works is useful to
us in thinking about forgiveness. According to Kohlberg, moral
development occurs in six stages.
o An individual functioning at the rst stage evaluates an action
by asking, How can I avoid punishment?

o The second stage of moral development is self-interested; an

individual asks, Whats in it for me?

o At stage three, an individual obeys social norms.

113
 o The fourth stage is oriented toward the preservation of law
and order.

o The fth stage adheres to the social contract, which sees

multiple perspectives at odds with one another and values
respecting each, acknowledging the necessity for compromise.

o The sixth, most evolved, stage is based on reason and

fundamental abstract ethical principles, such as justice,
fairness, and happiness.

x For Kohlberg, forgiveness could take place at any of the six stages,
but robust, true forgiveness, he argued, required the ability to see
that it was the rational and moral thing to do. Ultimately, we forgive
for the sake of the person who has wronged us, not for our own
sake. We forgive because we see that it is right to forgive.

Carol Gilligan
x In her seminal work In a Different Voice, the feminist philosopher
Carol Gilligan criticized what she saw as the sexism implicit in
Kohlbergs work. In the research on which it was based, women
Lecture 18: Is It Always Wrong to Fight Back?

were found to be of lower moral evolution than men.

x According to Gilligan, Kohlberg took justice as the foundation for

morality, an approach she maintained favored masculine values.
She went on to argue that if one founded morality on compassion or
care, women would, in fact, score better than men.

Suggested Reading

Dershowitz, The Genesis of Justice.

Solomon, A Passion for Justice.

114
 Questions to Consider

1. Is anger ever morally appropriate? When and why?

2. Is revenge ever morally appropriate? When and why? Should the state
be allowed to take revenge? If not, why not?

115
 Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?
Lecture 19

T
he United States is one of the few Western nations that still has the
death penaltyas of 2013, in 32 states. In fact, the United States
is one of the major executioners of murderers in the world. In this
lecture, we will examine the arguments surrounding the use of the death
penalty for murder. Arguments in favor are usually called retentionist
arguments; their proponents argue that states with the death penalty should
retain it and convince other states to adopt it. In the other camp are the
abolitionists, who would abolish the death penalty. Abolitionists maintain
that the issue should be settled at the federal level rather than being left up to
individual states.

Revenge
x The arguments for justice and punishment are couched in terms of
revenge, retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence. The simplest
Lecture 19: Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?

defense of the death penalty

is that it is a justied form of
revenge.

x In contemporary society,
however, few people appeal
to revenge as a justication
for punishment because it
undermines the larger system of
justice as a wholeand, indeed,
the very fabric of society.
iStock/Thinkstock.

x We created a social contract in

the rst place, in part, to protect
us from justice as revenge, if
only because revenge is usually Revenge as a system of justice
would lead to vigilantism, which
motivated by passion and, is not how we want our laws to
therefore, often misguided or operate.

116
 completely mistaken. A society governed by revenge would quickly
degenerate into a state of nature.

Retribution
x The most noted argument in favor of the death penalty in Western
civilization comes from the Old Testament, which states that when
you have taken another persons life, your life will be taken. The
principle here is very simple and is based on the idea that justice
should be strictly retributive. If someone has taken something from
someone else, then the guilty party should pay an exact retribution
to the person who has been victimized.

x Strict retributivism is rarely argued as a system of justice these

days; instead, we usually talk about some form of moderate or
proportional retribution, where the punishment is supposed to
reect the seriousness of the crime.

x In matters regarding money, this is often easy, and most of those

crimescorporate misconduct, copyright infringements, pollution
offenses, and the likeare usually settled in civil courts.

x The state nes people or puts them in prison as a form of

proportional retribution. This serves as retribution for the crime
that is, it balances the scales of justice. The idea of justice as
a kind of balancing of the scales between two parties is the most
fundamental, enduring, and effective metaphor we have for justice.
Justice reestablishes social balance.

Kant on Punishment
x The most compelling advocate of the death penalty as the only
appropriate retribution for the crime of murder was the German
Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant thought that the
basic moral principle behind all punishment was that justice was a
kind of balancing of the scales.

x For Kant, a murderer is acting so irrationallyin such stark

contradiction to any sense of how morality functionsthat the

117
 only possible way of balancing the scales of justice is to take the
life of the murderer. In fact, Kant goes so far as to argue that it
is our moral duty to execute murderers. When we dont execute
them, he maintains, we fail morallynot only with respect to our
duty to society and justice but with respect to what we owe the
murderers themselves.

x If we recognize that murderers are human beingsmoral

creatureswe owe it to them to show them how immorally they
have acted. This is why we do not necessarily execute animals that
kill human beings; according to Kant, they are not part of the moral
order. Although Kant is a proportional retributivist when it comes
to all other crimes, we often call him a strict retributivist when it
comes to the crime of murder.

Other Retentionist Arguments

x Its a helluva thing, killing a man, Clint Eastwoods character
Will says in the movie Unforgiven. You take away all hes got,
and all hes ever gonna have. This argument, a variation of the
Lecture 19: Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?

argument made by Kant in the 18th century, is still the most powerful
argument in favor of the death penalty.

x If we put a murderer in solitary connement for the rest of his life,

with no parole, we can take away everything he hasexcept his
life. The only way to completely deprive a murderer of everything
he has taken from his victimto completely balance the scalesis
to take away his life.

x Retentionists also offer other arguments offer in favor of the death

penalty. A recent, comprehensive study conducted by several of
Americas best law schools concluded that the death penalty does
have a modest deterrent effect. This means not only that we are
saving at least some lives by having the death penalty in effect in
the states where it is law, but also that when we fail to execute a
murderer, we are effectively valuing the murderers life higher than
that of the person who might have been spared through the deterrent
effect of execution.

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 x Finally, retentionists argue that the families of murder victims
deserve the closure provided by the execution of the murderer. We
should recognize that this is a version of the revenge argument: It
is an emotional justication of execution. But that does not make it
illegitimate; revenge is an instinct as old as the human species, and
if the families of victims indeed nd solace in the execution of the
murderer, we would need strong arguments to deny them that.

Scott Turow
x As with arguments for retaining the death penalty, some of the most
vigorous arguments for abolishing the death penalty come from our
religious traditions.

x In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the eye for an eye ethic of the Old
Testament is radically changed by the Love thy neighbor as thyself
ethic of Christ and the New Testament. For most thinkers who use
the New Testament as a principal ethical text, the value of human
life is so sacred that no one must take another human life under any
circumstances. Human life is understood as divinely granted; thus, it
can and should be taken away only through divine power.

x One of the most persuasive arguments for abolishing the death

penalty comes from the famous lawyer and author Scott Turow.
After he spent two years studying death penalty cases in Illinois, he
became an abolitionist. Turow determined that because the system
of justice had so many aws and complexities, innocent people
were being convicted of murder and executed. Some people were
even executed after their innocence had been proved.

x Because the system of criminal justice is so complicated, because

alleged murderers are often poor and consequently have an
inadequate defense, and because it is almost impossible to prove
guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt, Turow concluded that we
should abolish the death penalty.

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 Arguments for Abolition
x A more vigorous abolitionist argument is that the state should never
have the power to execute a citizen, under any circumstances. These
abolitionists point out that the United States was founded with an
emphasis on three principal rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. The right to life is the most fundamental of these. If
the state abuses its power by imprisoning an innocent, it can make
some amends for depriving that person of liberty. It can make no
amends for depriving an innocent person of his or her life.

x Some abolitionists argue that life in prison without parole is, in fact,
a more severe punishment than the death penalty. Abolitionists also
maintain that it is more expensive to execute someone than it is to
keep a convicted murderer in prison for life because of Americas
costly and complex system of appeals.

x Although many of us believe that the best justication for

punishment is that it educates or rehabilitates the criminal,
abolitionists point out that the very possibility of rehabilitation
Lecture 19: Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?

is negated by the death penalty. Others have noted the social

disparities in the application of the death penalty.

x There are also psychological factors that would seem to favor

abolition of the death penalty. Most murderers come from abusive
homes; they were victims before they became perpetrators.
Furthermore, murderers have the lowest rates of recidivism of any
criminal; murder is almost always a one-time crime. Therefore, the
need to prevent a murderer from ever committing the crime again
is actually signicantly lower, statistically speaking, than it is with
every other criminal activity.

Albert Camus
x Probably the strongest argument against the death penalty is
made by those who appeal to the notion of moral progress and the
development of standards of civilized behavior. These abolitionists
argue that if we look at the development of civilization, we are

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 growing away from corporal or bodily punishments toward mental
or psychological punishments.

x The death penalty, they argue, is the last remaining punishment that
accords with that old way of thinking about punishmentthat the
criminals body is the appropriate place to inict punishment.

x One last argument against the death penalty comes from the French
philosopher and novelist Albert Camus. It is the worst form of
torture and barbarism, he contended. Camus worried that the state,
when it executes, is, morally speaking, far worse than the most
vicious murderer.

x Camus writes: Capital punishment is the most premeditated of

murders, to which no criminals deed, however calculated, can be
compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would
have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date on
which he would inict a horrible death on him and who, from that
moment onward, had conned him at his mercy for months.

Suggested Reading

Prejean, Dead Man Walking.

Turow, Ultimate Punishment.

Questions to Consider

1. Is corporal punishment immoral? Why or why not? Should we perhaps

have more corporal punishments?

2. If we deter even one murderer from taking a human life because of the
deterrent power of the death penalty, are we morally required to retain
it? Why or why not?

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 Is Torture Ever Acceptable?
Lecture 20

I
magine a scenario in which a terrorist group has hidden a nuclear
device in Washington DC, and it will explode in a matter of hours
killing hundreds of thousands and paralyzing the government. One of
the terrorists, Sam, admits that he knows where the ticking time bomb is.
Whats more, once before, while in prison, Sam broke under torture to reveal
a terrorist plot. What do we do? This is a classic scenario in the philosophical
debate about torture, called the ticking-time-bomb defense. Although the
situation is not exactly everyday ethics, it is relevant to us because we live in
a world where such frightening scenarios have become possible.

International Law
x Many governments have participated in torture in recent years
sometimes for good reasonsor shipped suspects off to countries
where torture is legal. A variety of national and international laws
prohibit torture, including most famously the Geneva Conventions
of 1949.

x For our purposes, the United Nations Convention against Torture

Lecture 20: Is Torture Ever Acceptable?

and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,

ratied in 1984, is the best current guideline for international
consensus about what constitutes torture and other forms of
unacceptable treatment of persons, especially prisoners.

x The U.N. convention, like many other bodies of law, distinguishes

between torture and other kinds of inhumane treatment, such as
humiliation, morally or religiously degrading treatment, or more
modest corporal punishments, such as ogging, which many
countries consider to be a cruel and inhumane punishment but not
as severe as torture.

x In the United States, torture is against the law. Torturing the terrorist
Sam would be illegal. An important question, however, is whether

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 or not torture is morally wrong, merely morally dubious, orgiven
the ticking-time-bomb scenariomorally required.

U.N. Convention against Torture

x The U.N. Convention against Torture identies four reasons for
torture: (1) to obtain a confession, (2) to obtain information, (3) to
punish, and (4) to coerce the prisoner to act in certain ways.

x Many philosophers would argue that torture to obtain a confession

and torture to punish are straightforward examples of moral evil.
What makes torture morally suspect is that if we torture Sam, we are
doing it with the specic purpose of getting him to say something
that he truly does not want to say.

x We are denying his autonomy; we are controlling his will.

According to Kant, one of the tests for what is right or wrong is that
an activity is moral if everyone is engaged in it freely. If someone is
being coerced into the activity, however, Kant calls this treating the
person as a mere means rather than as an end in himself. Something
immoral is taking place.

Religious Approaches
x For the Buddhists, any time that we cause harm, we are doing
something morally blameworthy, no matter what the outcome
of our actions. Some Buddhists argue that torture, as a matter of
fact, is even worse than killing. The act of torture is a morally
blameworthy act of the highest order.

x Similarly, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, although torturing a

person may not be as bad as taking his or her life, it is such an
unnatural act that it cannot be justied by any ethic that denes
itself in terms of Love thy neighbor as thyself. Torture is never a
morally praiseworthy act.

Kantian Objections
x Kant would have four objections to torture. The rst is that when
we torture Sam, we are treating Sam as a mere means to an end,

123
 rather than recognizing that he is an end in himself. Sam is a
human being and, as such, is a source of moral law. He is free
and rational, and he must be treated in a way that accords with his
freedom and rationality.

x The second Kantian objection is that torture is always coercive.

It prevents the victim of torture from exercising his freedom. The
torturer deliberately sets out to break and control the will of the
torture victim, which means, according to Kant, the torturer is
acting in the most immoral way imaginable.

x The third Kantian objection is that torture deliberately destroys the

victims capacity to reasonwhich, again, removes the victim from
the realm of the moral domain. To be able to think is to be able to
choose. When we torture someone, we are eliminating that persons
ability to reasonthat is, to be moral. The torturer is effectively
transforming his victim into an insane person or a beast.

x The nal Kantian objection is the question of whether or not

torture is a rational way to treat another human being. If torture
were universalized to every case, that would mean using reason to
generate and rely upon irrationalitya dubious proposition at best.
Lecture 20: Is Torture Ever Acceptable?

x This nal objection generates the most likely outcome in cases

of torture, which is that it simply does not produce reliable
information. If we are forcing someone to be irrational, what should
we expect from that person other than irrationality?

Rule Utilitarianism
x Lets look at some arguments that maintain we can torture Sam but
only under specic constraints. The moderate utilitarian will argue
that we can torture Sam, but we have to form a specic rule to allow
it. This is called rule utilitarianism.

x In rule utilitarianism, we formulate rules that we think will generate

the most morally desirable consequences. We build in a number of
constraints to the rule.

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 o First, we only torture in instances when we know that the
torturer is already guilty of a crime.

o Second, we must know that the danger is real, signicant,

and imminent.

o Third, we must know that, by torturing Sam, we can and will

achieve a good outcome.

o Fourth, we must know that the torture will, in fact, provide us

with the information that we need.

o Fifth, torture will be undertaken only in these very rare

circumstances and will never be adopted as a general principle.

o Sixth, the torturer himself must be willing to face the

consequences of his actions.

The Black Box

x The strong utilitarian position is that we are morally required to
torture Sam, and it might even be morally heroic to do so.

x A famous thought experiment in utilitarianism is called the black

box. Imagine that you have the power to end all human suffering
forever and create a perfectly happy world. All you have to do is
ip a switch on a black box. When you are about to ip the switch,
you notice a little girl standing in the corner. You are told that the
child powers the box, and after the box is powered, for the rest of
her life, the child suffers terrible torture. But everybody else in the
world will be happy and healthy.

x The strong utilitarian pulls the switch. This thought experiment

illustrates both the greatest strengths and the greatest weaknesses
of utilitarians: The utilitarian simply must accept the fact that, very
often, we will sacrice the interest of the few in pursuit of the good
of the many.

125
 Strong Utilitarianism
x According to the strong utilitarian, in the case of Sam, he is a
terrorist and has caused misery for many people for a long time.
What Sam is doing is the opposite of utilitarianism.

x Furthermore, Sams physical suffering will probably be brief and

minor compared to the vast unhappiness that will result if we do not
torture Sam.

x In fact, Sam may prove to be happier in the end if he is

tortured, because at least Sam will not be burned alive in the
ery nuclear explosion that he is determined to unleash on an
unsuspecting population.

x The torturer who extracts the information from Sam will likely
be viewed as a hero because he or she saved the lives of hundreds
of thousands of innocentsanother good result, according
to utilitarianism.

x Therefore, even the torturers may come out of this situation feeling
happy because of the enormous moral good they have produced.

x The strong utilitarian does not need to know for certain that
Lecture 20: Is Torture Ever Acceptable?

torturing Sam will yield the desired results. He or she has only to
make the best bet that it will.

The Moral Supererogatory

x A nal question about the morality of torture is referred to as the
problem of what is morally supererogatory. Supererogatory means
going above and beyond the call of duty.

x We tend to think that if we are willing to torture Sam in order

to achieve the greater good, thats an excellent example of going
above and beyond the call of duty; it is an act of incredible
moral courage.

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 x But the utilitarian, who must focus on the greater good, cannot
make that appeal. In fact, from a utilitarian perspective, the torturer
would still not be a moral hero even if he or she was imprisoned for
life after torturing Sam.

x The utilitarian would say that given the greater good, the torturers
action was not supererogatory or moral heroism; the torturer simply
did what was morally required.

Suggested Reading

Mill and Bentham (Ryan, ed.), Utilitarianism and Other Essays.

Waldron, Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs.

Questions to Consider

1. Would you torture a ticking-time-bomb terrorist? Why or why not?

Do you think the government should have the power to do so?

2. Suppose a scientist had the cure for cancer in her headand we knew so
for certainbut she refused to disclose it. Would we be morally justied
in torturing her to get the cure? Why or why not?

3. What is rule utilitarianism?

127
 Do Animals Have Rights?
Lecture 21

T
his lecture addresses the question of whether or not nonhuman
animals have some basic rights, just as humans do. Kant thought that
because all our rights derived from the fact that humans are moral
beingswhich means free and rationalit was nonsense to suggest that
animals could have rights. Others believe, however, that all sentient beings
are deserving of respect and we should avoid harming them whenever
possible. An important question is whether animals have a certain quality
that would indicate that they are moral creatures. If so, that might suggest
that we should not eat them, perform experiments on them, or even keep
them in zoos and other forms of captivity.

Morality as a Function of Rationality

x For thinkers who suppose that our rights arise as a result of our
social contractthe system of laws and protections that we
establish when we create a societythe easy answer to whether
animals have rights is no. Human societies are formed for the
benet of other human beings.

x Many of us believe that there is something more fundamental about

Lecture 21: Do Animals Have Rights?

us that gives humans at least certain basic rights, such as the right
to life, the right to freedom, or the right to be treated equally under
the law.

x The Judeo-Christian way of thinking about this question is that

there are certain God-given rights granted to usand that we
must respect in one anotherbecause we are made in the image
of God. On this account, animals have no rights at all; indeed, the
Old Testament states clearly that humans will have dominion over
the animals.

x Kant endorsed this view of animal rightsthat human beings could

do with them as they pleasedbecause, as Kant insisted, morality

128
 is a function of rationality, and animals do not have reason. He goes
on to say, however, that although they do not have reason and we
do, we should treat animals with kindness and respect; we are their
stewards and caretakers and should show compassion for them.

Singer and Speciesism

x The Australian moral philosopher, utilitarian, and animal rights
activist Peter Singer disputes Kants argument. Singer contends that
Kant is merely claiming that the reason human life is specialthe
reason we deserve rights and other animals do notis just that we
are human: a circular argument.

x Singer not only calls Kants argument circular, but he maintains that
Kant is guilty of what Singer calls speciesismthat is, we have
rights because we are the species Homo sapiens, and other species
do not have rights because they are not. Speciesism, in Singers
view, is no better than racism or sexism.

Degrees of Sentience
x In the Buddhist tradition, starting in about the 4th century B.C.,
a very different view of animal rights was offered. The Buddhist
concept is that all sentient beings are deserving of respect, and we
should avoid harming them whenever possible.

x Sentience is the ability to enjoy pleasure and to suffer pain. But

the crucial idea here is that sentience is the relevant moral criterion
for establishing a beings right not to suffer, and it is our moral
obligation to avoid and even prevent that sentient being from
coming to harm. This explains, of course, why most Buddhists
are vegetarians.

x Singer, like the vast majority of utilitarians, insists that sentience

comes in degrees. For utilitarians, as we have seen, the relevant
moral criterion is the quantity of pleasure and pain. For example,
the life of a child is more valuable than the life of an old man close
to death; similarly, the life of a pig, a very intelligent animal, is
more valuable than the life of a mosquito.

129
 x In a famous and highly controversial article, Singer went so far
as to suggest that, for the utilitarian, if one had to choose between
the life of a mature cat and a newborn infant, one should in fact
save the cat. He argued that the conscious life of the catthe
cats sentiencewas more
fully developed and more
prone to pain than the
newborn babys.

x Naturally, the majority of

us reject this extreme view.
Singer himself, given the
choice, would save the baby;
he admits as much. But, he
says, he would be doing
so not for good, rational,

iStock/Thinkstock.
utilitarian reasons but simply
because of his emotional
prejudice as a human being.

As we know, dolphins are among

Animals and Cognition
the most intelligent of animals;
x Even those who are not in Switzerland, there is even a
utilitarians can see the appeal movement to classify dolphins as
of the objective to minimize nonhuman persons.
Lecture 21: Do Animals Have Rights?

suffering for beings that can

clearly experience pain. We should respect the sentience of those
creatures with which we are intimately connected, with which
we occupy the planet, and with which we share many
evolutionary traits.

x For example, wolves have complex family structures, as do whales

and dolphins; the octopus can solve complex puzzles; rats are
nearly as intelligent as dogs; and pigs seem to be much smarter than
either species.

x A 2013 study showed that dolphins have a longer social memory

than any other nonhuman animal. Dolphins seem to remember

130
 each otherand other animals, including humansvery nearly as
long as we do. This is widely considered to be one of the most
important criteria in evaluating what it is to be an intelligent,
cognitive being. Just because nonhuman animals do not use the
same kinds of tools we do, it does not follow that they do not have
rich cognitive lives.

A Better Way to Eat

x Humans are the kind of animal that likes to eat other animals,
as well as plants. This fact of life does not make humans moral
monsters. This reality can be incorporated into what we might call
a more moral approach toward the treatment of animals. We can
strive to attain the Buddhist ideal: Although we cannot altogether
eliminate suffering from the process of living, we can do our best to
cause less suffering rather than more.

x It is this observation that has led popular contemporary thinkers,

such as Michael Pollan, to argue that we should take a careful
look at our farming practices and determine that there are, morally
speaking, better and worse ways to eat.

x Increasingly, in America, we are seeing support for small, local

farms. In many cases, these are farms where cows, sheep, and pigs
are raised with room to graze, have social interaction, and live a
comparatively contented life before they are quickly and humanely
slaughtered. Few Buddhists would agree with this approach,
and Peter Singer opposes it, but for many of us, it seems to be a
signicant step in the right direction.

x There is even recent research that supports the idea that an animal
raised and slaughtered in a healthy environment is a better product
to eat. This is hardly surprising, when you consider the difference
in taste between a wild Copper River salmon and one raised
through aquaculture.

x A salient characteristic of organic foods or free-range animals,

however, is that they are more expensive. Such foods are a privilege

131
 for members of a wealthy society. But most societies are not as
wealthy as we are, and there is poverty in our own country. Perhaps
that extra money for organic foods would be better spent on feeding
or clothing the poor at home. A worthy goal would be to eliminate
human suffering rst, then go to work on animal suffering.

Animal Testing
x Much of the animal suffering that takes place in this country is not
to provide food, but to provide safe cosmetics and personal care
products and, importantly, life-saving drugs. Animal testing
which can sometimes mean animal tortureis a crucial part of our
economic and scientic culture. Utilitarians argue that it is done for
the greater good, but one wonders if the suffering of the monkeys
and mice could ever be considered morally praiseworthy.

x As with many of the other everyday ethical questions we have

considered, the best we can do with regard to animal suffering is
to recognize that there is, in fact, a better and worse way to livea
more moral approach and a less moral oneand try as we might to
take steps in the right direction.

Zoos
x Zoos have been moving in the direction of more ethical treatment
of animals for quite some time now, doing their best to re-create
Lecture 21: Do Animals Have Rights?

natural environments for caged animals, to keep only animals that

have been bred in captivity (rather than moving them out of the
wild), and to encourage breed-and-release programs.

x No zoo is perfect; animals in many zoos still display the signs of

insanity, such as incessant pacing or self-destructive behavior,
that we associate with humans kept in solitary connement. But
for advocates of animal rights, the point is not to eliminate zoos
altogether; it is to slowly change the way we think about how best
to treat animals other than ourselves. It is to start to recognize that
animals other than ourselves may deserve rights and maybe for
precisely the same reasons that we do.

132
 Suggested Reading

Conn and Parker, The Animal Research War.

Singer, Writings on an Ethical Life.
, Animal Liberation.

Questions to Consider

1. What is speciesism? How is the term used in the debate about animal
rights?

2. Suppose a cow has been treated lovingly throughout its life and has
been given a good death. Does that change the morality of eating the
cow? How and why?

133
 Why Should I Recycle?
Lecture 22

T
he debate over the environment has changed in recent years. As
one philosopher wrote, the question used to be: What matters more,
people or penguins? Today, as far as the environment is concerned,
people and penguins are pretty much in the same circumstances. Were both
dealing with the accelerating decline of the planet. In our relationship with
the environment, we do a lot of damage that we can see, but at the same
time, much of our negative impact is done without our knowing. Those who
believe the environment is in trouble think we have a duty to do something
about it.

Kohlberg Applied to the Environment

x In thinking about the environment, there is still a great deal of
tension between our short-term needs as a society and our duty to
future generations. In order to clearly outline the arguments for
and against recycling, lets turn again to American psychologist
Lawrence Kohlbergs stages of moral development.

x Stage one is concerned with avoiding punishment. At best, this is

how many of us handle recycling and pollutionboth as individuals
and as companies. We pollute until we get caughtand then we
Lecture 22: Why Should I Recycle?

stop for awhile and start polluting again, or we nd a different way

to pollute.

x Kohlbergs second stage of moral development asks the question:

Whats in it for me? This sort of attitude would lead someone to save
and return high-dollar organic milk bottles for the $1.00 deposit.

x At stage three, individuals obey social norms. They behave in

such a way that others will regard them as good citizens; they will
recycle in order to be regarded as environmentally conscientious.
However, this stage is effective only when the social norms convey
that the environment is in trouble. In many developing nations,

134
 environmental damage is still a much lower priority than other
problems; such places lack the social norms to encourage recycling.

x The fourth stage is oriented

toward the preservation of
law and order. We recycle
simply because it is the law.

x Kohlbergs fth stage

adheres to the social
contract. It sees multiple
perspectives at odds with one
another, and it compromises.
A person operating at this
level might say, Its wrong
not to recycle, but because
I am too lazy to recycle,

iStock/Thinkstock.
Im just going to stop
buying anything packaged
in plastic.
For many of us, our recycling
The Social Contract and Recycling behavior falls into the rst stage
x The social contract theory of of Kohlbergs hierarchy; we do
why we ought to recycle and it to avoid nes imposed by our
how we ought to treat the communities.
environment is the one that
is most often appealed to in the international arena. In this line of
thinking, all nations have a kind of social contract with one another
when it comes to the environment. Therefore, we have to accept
certain restrictions on our freedoms in order to enjoy certain kinds
of privileges.

x The problem in any social contracteven if we all agree that its a fair
contractis that there will be rule breakers, or free riders. Those
are peopleor nationswho take advantage of the fact that others
are following the rules in order to benet themselves by breaking

135
 the rules. Its always easier and cheaper to produce a product if you
dump the pollution made in the process into the ocean.

Nature as Sacred Expression

x The sixth and most evolved of Kohlbergs stages is based on abstract
ethical principles and reason. At this level, one would recycle in
order to preserve nature. Some philosophers, such as Mark Sagoff,
argue that the purely ethical or rational way of thinking about the
environment is simply to realize that it is directly connected to the
divine. Nature is part of Gods plan, a spiritual expression of Gods
nature. He wrote, The reasons for protecting nature are often
religious or moral.

x In a recent survey, Americans from various walks of life agreed by

large majorities with the statement Because God created the natural
world, it is wrong to abuse it. The anthropologists who conducted
this survey concluded that divine creation is the closest concept
American culture provides to express the sacredness of nature.

Aldo Leopold
x The American philosopher, novelist, and environmentalist Aldo
Leopold is widely considered the founder of the environmental
movement in the United States. In many ways, he was the
embodiment of Kohlbergs sixth stage of moral development when
it comes to the environment.
Lecture 22: Why Should I Recycle?

x Leopold was the model of the altruistic conservationist. He

summed up his position best: We abuse land because we regard it
as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community
to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
Leopold was a true lover of nature; he regarded animals, plants, and
even sand and dirt as innitely precious.

Jared Diamond
x In a lecture at Duke Universitys Nicholas Institute Environmental
Summit, the philosopher Jared Diamond asked three signicant
questions: Does the environment really matter? Do we really

136
 need to preserve the environment? Should environmental policies
compromise with corporate interests?

x The question Should I recycle? is, at heart, Diamonds rst

question: Does the environment really matter?

x There are many arguments against recycling. Some critics claim

that recycling wastes more energy than it saves. In fact, as it turns
out, that claim is not true; it does not take more energy to produce
products from recycled materials.

x According to the Environmental Information Administration, paper

mills use 40 percent less energy to make paper out of recycled pulp.
According to the EPA, manufacturing an aluminum can out of
recycled aluminum uses 95 percent less energy than manufacturing
one from its source, bauxite.

x Others point out that jobs in the recycling industrypicking up

bottles, for exampleare not as good as the jobs they eliminate in
such industries as logging and mining. This argument is correct;
the elimination of jobs in logging and mining is a sacrice. The
economist Steven Landsburg has pointed out that paper mills
create forests; they replant the trees they cut down. He argues that
recycling actually eliminates these farm forests.

x Environmentalists point out, however, that farm forests and virgin

forests are very different. Farm forests are heavily fertilized and
have little biodiversity, and the conditions of farming often result
in soil erosion.

Corporate Interests and the Environment

x Diamonds ultimate point is made most clearly in the answer to his
third question: Should environmental policies compromise with
corporate interests?

x Corporate interests argue that environmental regulations reduce

their prots. An important question is whether lawmakers are

137
 obligated to acknowledge and protect both corporate interests and the
environment, especially when numerous jobs are at stake. That would
be an example of Kohlbergs stage vewhen multiple perspectives
are acknowledged and a compromise between them is found.

x Diamond maintains that corporate interests try to view their net

returns as independent of their assets. He notes that the usual
talk about balancing the environment and economy has it exactly
backwards. The strongest motive for taking good care of the
environment is that a healthy environment and population is the
bedrock on which a healthy economy rests.

Environmental Regulation
x The American philosopher Stephen Meyer goes even further. In a
paper titled Economic Impact of Environmental Regulation, he
asks how much money we would make if we were to eliminate
environmental regulation. The answer to the question, according to
Meyer, is Nobody knows.

x According to Meyer, accounts of companies destroyed by

environmental regulations or brought back from the brink by
deregulation are all anecdotal. A rigorous, independent, economic
study of the effects of deregulation on prots at a nationwide
levelaccording to Meyerdoes not exist.
Lecture 22: Why Should I Recycle?

x Meyer analyzed statewide studies and determined that deregulation

does not benet corporations or raise prots. Although deregulation
tailored to a specic companys interests can assist that company,
the picture is too complex for a widespread deregulation to benet
companies in general.

Other Perspectives
x Throughout history, Native Americans have treated animals well
because they believed animals could be from the spirit world. They
revered plants for the glimpses they offered into the supernatural.
And they thought the land revealed God. Fundamentally, they
treated the natural world, and every space they came to, as though

138
 it were sacred. One could argue that this is a stage seven moral
evolutionone that goes beyond Kohlbergs principled reason.

x The Dalai Lama wrote: I believe that to meet the challenge of

our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of
universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not for his
or her self, family, or nation, but for the benet of all mankind.
Universal responsibility is the real key to human survival. It is
the best foundation for world peace, the equitable use of natural
resources, and through concern for the future generations, the
proper care of the environment.

Suggested Reading

Roberts, What Would the Buddha Recycle?

Sagoff, The Economy of the Earth.

Questions to Consider

1. No one else in my neighborhood or county recycles. Its very

inconvenient for me to do so. Am I still morally obligated to do it?

2. I am thinking about buying a green car, even though it makes no

economic sense to do so. What would you advise me and why?

139
 Does It Matter Where I Shop?
Lecture 23

I
n this lecture, well examine what kinds of responsibilities we have as
citizens and as consumers in how we do business, as we vote for economic
policies, and, perhaps most important, in the way we spend our money.
Central to the debate is the question of what kinds of markets we should
support and what our accountability is within those markets. We will review
the theories of two renowned economists with opposing views, Friedrich
Hayek and John Maynard Keynes, and evaluate the morality of the everyday
decisions we make as consumers, as businesspeople, and as citizens.

Friedrich Hayek
x According to the economist and Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Hayek,
we are morally obligated to buy the cheapest products available in
our particular marketplace. Otherwise, we are undermining freedom
and democracy and embracing totalitarianism.

x Hayek argued that the government should not stimulate the market
or attempt to control it in any way. His reason for this was to protect
liberty. According to Hayek, a free market could be managed only
Lecture 23: Does It Matter Where I Shop?

by a centralized authority. But the creation of an authority, he

reasoned, would inevitably lead to totalitarianism.

x According to Hayek, to be effective, a central planning authority

would have to be endowed with powers that would control social
life because the information required for centrally planning an
economy is inherently decentralized and would need to be brought
under control. And that, of course, was highly dangerous.

x Hayek also argued that government intervention and the

redistribution of wealth created only a temporary solution to social
problems, such as unemployment. According to Hayek, economic
problems could never be solved by articial stimulus.

140
 x In fact, he argued that economic problems stem from a previous
unsustainable episode of government interference with markets
for example, articially low interest rates that were not determined
by the natural forces of the market but by government.

The Invisible Hand

x Hayek maintained that what an individual product costsits
pricetells us an innite number of facts about that product.
When wages are not set by unions, Hayek argued, hourly rates and
salaries are a reliable indicator of which professions are desirable
and lucrative.

x When the government increases ination to reduce unemployment,

it hinders the free play of the market. It interferes with the invisible
handa metaphor that Adam Smith introduced into our thinking
to describe the self-regulating behavior of the marketplace.

x Any policy that redistributes incomes will discriminate against

certain parts of the population. Once we allow the government to
make those kinds of decisions, we set a perilous precedent.

x Hayek reasoned that if it is permissible to tax investments and

not incomethat is, to tax the wealthythen it would arguably
be permissible to tax District A and not District Bthat is, to
tax people of a certain background according to where they live
or to tax people of a particular profession. This would give the
government entirely too much power.

x Hayek believed that a government is responsible for providing a

safety net or the minimum requirements for sustenance to citizens
who are in need. But he would argue that many Western countries
have created a kind of welfare state by providing too large a safety
net.

John Maynard Keynes

x In contrast, according to British philosopher John Maynard
Keynes, markets must be regulated by the government, or they will

141
 inevitably tend toward unfairness and instability. A certain small
minority of the population will guarantee their own wealth at the
expense of the vast majority.

x As this happens, both demand and supply will become unbalanced

once the workersgrowing numbers of the lower middle class
or the poorcome to realize that their conditions are unfair or
unreasonable.

x Keynes argued that we cannot let supply and demand determine

the markets. We must interfere, or people will rebel and interfere
themselves. Workers will compete for jobs, and wages will get
lower, but there will be a point at which workers will rebel. They
will unionize, strike, or insist in some other way that the government
intervene.

x Even Adam Smith insisted that for markets to work, basic moral
principles of fairness and justice had to be in place. Unrestricted
free trade would produce diminishing quality in products and
injustice for workers, and both consumers and workers would react.
We are indeed beginning to see moral reactions to that free market.

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Lecture 23: Does It Matter Where I Shop?

x The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, who grew up in Ghana,

introduced the concept of the citizen of the world. He pointed out
that he did not coin the term; it was rst used by Diogenes, a Greek
philosopher who lived in the 4th century B.C.

x We can think of ourselves as world citizens even if we do not share a

governmentor maybe especially if we do not share a government.
As world citizens, we must care about what happens to everyone in
the world, not just to our families, friends, and countrymen.

x Conversation between cultures is important. Appiah noted that

globalization has made those conversations possible and made the
ideas of others relevant. We are all citizens of the same world, and
we have obligations to each other as world citizens.

142
Price Stickiness
x For Appiah, we have the obligation to investigate where our
dollars are going because those dollars are part of the conversation.
They have a direct impact on people. We should not buy locally
just to stimulate our local economies or to help the people in our
neighborhoods or our cities.

x We should also be willing to pay higher prices for certain items.

The idea that sometimes it is morally right to pay a higher price was
rst discussed by Keynes in his argument for price stickiness. When
we are willing to pay a higher price, we are, in fact, supporting the
general rise of value in certain goods and services.

x The line of thinking is that as producers see our dollars going to

companies that pay a living wage, they will experiment with living
wages themselves.

x Both Appiah and Keynes would advise us to spend our money with
so-called fair trade companiesespecially international onesthat
guarantee good living conditions for their workers.

Thomas Friedman and Globalization

x American journalist Thomas Friedman has dened globalization as
follows: Globalization means the spread of free market capitalism
to virtually every country in the world. Globalization also has its
own set of economic rulesrules that revolve around opening,
deregulating, and privatizing economies.

x Friedman offers a variety of ways to characterize globalization.

The global market is dynamic and unpredictable. It incorporates
markets, nations, and technology quickly, and it allows corporations,
individuals, and nations to reach around the world to communicate
in both positive and negative ways. Globalization is increasingly
homogenous, and it is increasingly homogenizing our world.

x One example of globalization, Friedman points out, is Walmarts

recent adoption of organic products. Nevertheless, Walmart seeks

143
 to buy and sell those organic
products at the very cheapest
price, and that decision
entails compromises.

Globalizations Structure of Power

x Globalization has a dening
technology, Friedman
maintains, and that dening
technology is the World
Wide Web. He says, If the
Berlin wall symbolized the
Cold War, the World Wide

iStock/Thinkstock.
Web symbolizes our new
global economy.

x Corporations are now Products that are made with

determining the way the world an eye to quality rather than
works. Globalization has its mere protability become more
desirable, allowing employers to
own demographic pattern; for increase workers wages.
example, people are moving
from rural to urban areas and into urban areas linked with global
trends in food, fashion, markets, and entertainment.
Lecture 23: Does It Matter Where I Shop?

x Globalization has a unique structure of power, built around three

balances: the balance of power between the United States and other
nations, the balance between nation-states and global markets, and
the balance centered around super-powered individuals.

x Because people are able to communicate freely with other people all
around the world, certain individuals, Friedman argues, are able to
shape the political and nancial landscape for better and for worse.

Buying Local and Fair Trade

x Another aspect of globalization is the question of buying local
versus fair trade. Friedman points out that fair-trade products
constitute a $4 billion industry worldwide (and growing) and a $2

144
 billion industry in the United States alone. More than 70 percent
of the money spent on local goods is reinvested in the community,
while only 10 percent of money spent at major chain stores makes it
back into the local economy.

x Such items as coffee, bananas, tea, and sugar generate far more
prot for producers when they are sold as fair-trade products
internationally than when they are sold locally.

x Prot is certainly not inherently bad; in fact, in many ways it is

crucial to doing good. We want and need companies to be protable,
and we want and need fair-trade products in the marketplace. The
fact that companies can be more protable while engaging in fair-
trade practices is positive progress.

x On the other hand, we also want to be sure that local economies

are not deprived of the staples that they need or that those staples
become too expensive for the people who produce them. We must
keep one eye on the living conditions of the people in countries
where companies get their fair-trade products.

Keeping Markets Free

x Consider the example of the company Foxconn, with plants in
China. It was reported that 17 of Foxconns workers had committed
suicide in ve years. The news struck a chord on the Internet
because Foxconns partner was Apple. Consumers were outraged.

x In this case, technology had an unexpected benet. Because of the

widespread reporting of the story and the way it was circulated
throughout the Internet to millions, general outrage created a
change in Foxconns policies.

x Foxconn is reportedly changing the way it does business, pledging

to pay its workers a living wage and creating a more stimulating
work environment for employees.

145
 x This case study is an example where the greatest impactin fact,
the only real impactcame not from government regulation but
from consumers.

x In this way, Keynes was wrong and Hayek was right. The
market ends up doing most of the work. As far as our individual
ability to inuence the market is concerned, we actually have
tremendous power.

Suggested Reading

Klein, Fences and Windows.

Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents.

Questions to Consider

1. I am a very thrifty person. Why shouldnt I always simply buy the

cheapest product I can nd in my area?

2. I always only buy from local producers. Am I therefore always on safe

ground, morally speaking?
Lecture 23: Does It Matter Where I Shop?

146
 What Would Socrates Do?
Lecture 24

D
istraction and preoccupation are two of the most profound moral
evils facing modern societyso argued the 19th-century Danish
philosopher Sren Kierkegaard. It is our own fault, he said, because
humans prefer a lazy state of self-deception, and it is our cultures fault,
because as mass media increasingly dominate our daily attention, we become
absorbed in trivial matters. We do not stop and think about complex and
demanding issues, such as questions of morality. In our nal lecture, well
see why thinking about moral questions might be just as importantor even
more importantthan nding moral answers.

Euthyphro
x In one of Platos earliest dialogues, Euthyphro, he tells the story
of Socrates and a young man named Euthyphro. Socrates has been
in court answering charges brought by Meletus that he is guilty of
corrupting Athenian youth. Meeting Socrates on the courthouse
steps in Athens, Euthyphro says that he is bringing criminal charges
against his father for neglecting one of his slaves, which resulted in
the slaves death.

x Euthyphro claims to be an expert when it comes to piety and is

consequently also an expert in all moral mattersso much so that
he feels completely comfortable prosecuting even his own father.

x Socrates is shocked that the son would bring charges against his
father. He says, Rare friend! I think that I cannot do better than be
your disciple. You, Meletus, as I shall say to him, acknowledge
Euthyphro to be a great theologian, and sound in his opinions; and
if you approve of him you ought to approve of me, and not have me
into court; but if you disapprove, you should begin by indicting him
who is my teacher, and who will be the ruin, not of the young, but
of the old; that is to say, of myself whom he instructs, and of his old
father whom he admonishes and chastises.

147
 x Socrates is already employing his notorious technique of eironia
or ironyand soon poor Euthyphro is subjected to the kind of close
philosophical grilling that led to Socratess reputation as the gady
of Athens.

x Before the dialogue is nished, Euthyphro will have offered half

a dozen different denitions of piety to Socrates, but none of
them will stand up to the Socratic elenchus, or technique of cross-
examining and scrutinizing the details of a proposed denition or
solution. Finally, by the end of the dialogue, we see that Euthyphro
has not made any progress on a denition of pietyand has not
provided Socrates with any support for his assertion that he should
feel comfortable bringing charges against his own father.

x At the end of the dialogue, Socrates asks Euthyphro, What is

piety? Speak out then, my dear Euthyphro, and do not hide your
knowledge. Euthyphro responds, Another time, Socrates, for I am
in a hurry, and must go now.

The Importance of Moral Questions

x Euthyphro nds himself in the
position of many of us when
we think about our moral
convictions. We cannot really
Lecture 24: What Would Socrates Do?

say in a satisfactory way why

we do what we do or think
what we think; thus, we simply
decide to worry about it later.

x There are three ways of

iStock/Thinkstock.

avoiding thinking about

morality, ethics, and how we
should live: (1) supposing that
you already know what you do
Socrates was careful not to claim
not in fact know (the case of knowledge about many things,
Euthyphro); (2) telling yourself especially about matters of
that you are too busy to think morality.

148
 about these issues right now; and (3) perhaps most dangerous for us
today, allowing ourselves to be distracted from thinking about what
really matters.

x In fact, moral questions might be just as importantor even more

importantthan moral answers. The mistake Euthyphro makes
is that he supposes he knows what he does not know. That is, he
acts according to convictions that he does not understand and
cannot defend.

x Euthyphro is in a morally dangerous state of ignorance, Socrates

reasoned, because he has beliefs, but he cannot provide justication
for them, and he does not even know whether or not they are true.

What Is Knowledge?
x One of our oldest denitions of knowledge comes to us from Plato.
Plato believed that knowledge had three components.

x First, to have knowledge, we must actually hold a belief; that is,

to know something is to have a kind of proposition in ones head.
Second, the belief we hold must actually be true. You could not say
that you had knowledge about a subject if you held the belief, but
the belief was false.

x For the third element of knowledge, we turn to the 20th-century

British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Say that you are walking
around in London, Russell proposed, and suddenly you realize
that you might be late for an appointment. But youve forgotten
your watch. You look up at Big Ben and note that it is 12:15.
Comforted, you hurry off to your appointment and arrive at 12:30.
Later, however, you nd out that Big Ben was broken and has been
showing 12:15 for a week. But you got lucky; by sheer chance, you
glanced at Big Ben at the exact time the clock was actually showing
the correct time.

x This ought to trouble us, Russell argued (and Plato agrees). You had
the belief that it was 12:15; you have satised the rst requirement

149
 of knowledge. The belief you held was true; when you believed
it was 12:15, it was in fact 12:15. Youve satised the second
requirement of knowledge. But crucially, the fact that your belief
was true was merely a matter of good luck. The third requirement
of knowledge, according to Plato, is that we must have proper
justication for our beliefs.

The Socratic Paradox

x This demand for certainty in what we know is why mathematics
was so fundamental to Platos way of thinking about knowledge
and the world. We can know with excellent justication, Plato
thought, what the relationship is between a circles radius and its
circumference, or why the square root of 4 is always 2. In fact, Plato
loved mathematics so much that above his school of philosophy,
called the Academy, he had this motto inscribed: Let no one enter
here who has not studied mathematics.

x Socrates acquired a reputation for wisdom because the oracle at

Delphi once insistedcontrary to his own beliefthat he was
the wisest of men. As Socrates said in Platos dialogue Apology,
however, Although I do not suppose that either of us knows
anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he isfor
he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor
think that I know.
Lecture 24: What Would Socrates Do?

x This is the famous Socratic profession of ignorance, sometimes

called the Socratic paradox. This is the simple wisdom Socrates
possessed that gave him a moral advantage over the rest of us: He
doesnt pretend to know what he doesnt, and he doesnt suppose
that he knows things that he doesnt. He only knows that he does
not know.

The Importance of Skepticism

x This attitude of skepticism is actually much more powerful than it
initially appears. First, as Socrates himself maintained, it keeps us
from falling into all kinds of grievous moral errors. Think about the
events of September 11, 2001; the terrorists had been convinced and

150
 had convinced themselves that what they were doing was morally
desirable. Dogmatism and moral certainty have led individuals,
political parties, and entire societies into the gravest of moral errors.

x By contrast, skepticism, or the belief that we dont really know, puts

us in the position of Socrates. Through pride we are ever deceiving
ourselves, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote. But deep down
below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says
to us, something is out of tune.

x An important question is whether skepticism leads to moral

nihilism. The answer is no. A skeptic, such as Socrates, doesnt
draw the conclusion that there simply are no moral solutions. As
weve seen repeatedly in this course, some ways of acting truly are
to be preferred to others. The Greek word skepsis means an inquiry,
an examination, a searchand no one searched for moral truths
more ardently than Socrates.

x Another benet of skepticism, as Jung hinted, is that it frees us

from the danger of moral hypocrisy. One of the easiest moral traps
is Euthyphros trap: the belief that because we are in possession of
moral truth, we can judge otherseven, perhaps, our own parents.

Moral Particularism
x The 20th-century British philosopher Bernard Williams argued that
if we avoided moral hypocrisy and maintained an attitude of moral
curiosity, we would recognize that the world is full of a vast variety
of different moral goods. This is the ethical theory that has come
to be called moral particularism. The idea is that an open-minded
person will discover many good things and even good principles
that he or she can follow in order to lead a good life.

x At times, open-minded people will face dilemmas, when the goods

they discover are incompatible or the principles they follow seem
contradictory. But at those times an alarm bell will go off. Thinking
people will recognize that they are engaging with a moral dilemma.

151
 For the moral particularist, what is most important is that we dont
assume we already know the right answer.

x We began this course by discussing the Ring of Gyges: Platos

mythical magic ring that could make one invisible. We shouldnt
suppose that on the basis of 24 lectures, weve been transformed
into perfectly moral people; were probably just as morally fragile
as we ever were. But theres one thing the Ring of Gyges cant give
ussomething that we might want more than anything else. The
Ring of Gyges cant make us moral. And that, we might think, is the
very best thing to try to be.

Suggested Reading

Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy.

Nozick, The Examined Life.
Phillips, Missing Out.
Romano, America the Philosophical.

Questions to Consider

1. What is moral hypocrisy, and why might it be morally dangerous?

Lecture 24: What Would Socrates Do?

2. Is it possible that moral questions could be more important than moral

answers? But if thats so, how will I ever know the right thing to do?

152
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