What’s the supreme principle of morality?
3 contrasts:
i) (Morality): duty (moral motive) vs inclination
It’s fine to have sentiments and feelings, as long as they don’t provide the reason for your act. (They can exist, but as long as your action is driven by duty, it is moral.)
ii) (Freedom): Autonomous (act according to a law we give ourselves) vs heteronomous
The law we give ourselves comes from reason.
iii) (Reason): Categorical imperative (action is good for itself, without referring to the end) vs Hypothetical imperative (if you want X they do Y, cause and end reason)
3 formulas for categorical imperative
i) The formula of universal law
“Act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
Ex. Action: making a false promises when needing money.
Universalize the action: If everyone makes false promises, nobody will believe these promises, so the promises don’t exist.
Since there’s a controversy when universalizing the action, it is not consistent with categorical imperative.
ii) The formula of humanity as end
“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time, as an end.”
As rational beings, we have absolute values in ourselves rather than just relative value. So people should be the end of themselves.
Ex. Commit suicide and murder are the same morally, because both treat human life as a mean for certain purposes. Thus, suicide and murder are not categorical imperative.
Respect of dignity is different from emotions like love, sympathy or altruism, because respect is for humanity which is universal, for rational capability which is universal. It’s not to particular people but to all humans.
We live simultaneously in two realms: the realm of freedom and necessity. This is why there’s always a gap between what we do and what we ought to do. Therefore, morality stands at a certain distance from the empirical world. No science could deliver moral truth.
Kant thinks that there’s a huge difference between a lie and a misleading truth, even though they may lead to the same consequence (he doesn’t care about consequence). A white lie is immoral, but a misleading truth is acceptable. Because even though a misleading truth has a motive of misleading others, there’s also part of the motive to respect, to follow the moral law, which makes it a categorical imperative.
Kant’s political philosophy: there exists a social contract that generates justice. The contract is not concrete, because if it is, then it only reflects the difference in bargaining power or self interest. The contract is an idea of reason. It is hypothetical.
John Rawls
“A Theory of Justice”
2 parallels between Rawls and Kant:
1. Both criticize utilitarianism.
2. The idea that principles of justice can be derived from a hypothetical social contract.
“Veil of ignorance”
People gather together to make decisions behind the veil of ignorance, which helps assure equality. Only then the principle people agree to will be the principle of justice.
What is the moral force of such a hypothetical contract? Is it stronger that real contract?
Q1. How do real contract bind or obligate? (In two ways. Contract can be instrument of mutual benefit in exchange; it can also have moral weight itself, which is related to the idea of autonomy)
Q2. How do real contracts justify the terms they produce? (Answer: they don’t. Themselves are not self-sufficient moral instruments. They have some moral limits)
Moral limit of real contract: The fact of agreement never guarantee the fairness of it. Therefore, an actual contract is not sufficient, or even not a necessary condition of being an obligation.
Consent based obligation and interest based obligation
Real contract has the moral power from autonomy and reciprocity. However, these two ideas may fail in real life. Autonomy may not be realized because there’s a difference in bargaining power. Reciprocity may not be realized because there’s a difference in knowledge in the two parties so they may misidentify what really counts as having equivalent value. The equality of power and knowledge can only be created in the case of “veil of ignorance”. Thus, for Rawls and Kant, a hypothetical contract is the only way to think about principles of justice.
People behind the veil of ignorance won’t choose utilitarianism, because they don’t want to be minority.
Principle of justice chosen by people behind the veil of ignorance:
Principle 1: We won’t trade our fundamental right and liberties for economic benefits (against utilitarianism)
Principle 2: the Difference Principle. We shouldn’t just eliminate all equalities, but only those inequalities that work to benefit the bottom of the society are just.
Distribution of income, opportunity, wealth shouldn’t based on morally arbitrary principles (like meritocracy)
“Those who have been favored by nature, whoever they are, may gain from their good fortune only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out.”
Theories of distributive justice:
i) Libertarian -free market system
Everyone is placed in a free market. All careers, all opportunities are open to everyone.
However, in such a market, the difference in born, education opportunity will live better, and the consequence is not fair.
ii) Meritocratic -fair equality of opportunity
However, even everyone is at the same starting point, the fastest runner wins.
iii) Egalitarian -Rawls’ difference principle
Objections to Rawls’ difference principle:
i) less incentive
(tax rate can be adjusted if too much tax may hurt people of the bottom)
ii) What about effort and moral deserve?
It’s not effort but contribution that meritocratic believes in distribution, and contribution is based on natural talents.
iii) What about self-ownership?
(Rawls thinks that we can defend our rights, but we don’t own all benefits of our work in a market society)
There’s a difference between entitlement to legitimate expectations (win by chance or luck) and moral desert (win by skill)
Even though I own the talent, there’s still contingency that the society I live praises my talent, which is not decided by myself and cannot be called as “moral desert”.
If I change to another society which doesn’t reward my talent, my entitlement may decrease, but my moral desert won’t. This is the same for those in our society whose talent happens not to be rewarded.
Many philosophers, including Rawls, Kant, libertarian and egalitarian philosophers, think that justice is not a matter of rewarding or honoring virtue or moral desert, because tying them together is going to lead away from freedom. However, there’s one philosopher different:
Aristotle’s view about Justice
Justice is giving people what they deserve. It’s a matter of figuring out between persons, with their virtues, and their appropriate social rules.
“Persons who are equal should have equal things assigned to them.”
The concept “equal” depends on what thing we are distributing.
The best piano for the best pianist, because that’s what pianos are for. Piano playing is for the purpose of producing excellent music, and the best pianos can achieve this goal best.
Telos: the point, the end, the goal
Teleological reasoning: reasoning from the telos
To decide who should rule we should first look at the purpose of politics. Aristotle thinks that politics is about forming good character.
Rawls and Kant may think that government and politics are existed to ensure human rights and freedom, but Aristotle thinks that “the end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the institution of social life are means to that end.”
Only participate in politics do we fully realize our nature as human beings.
“A man who is isolated, who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or who has no need to share, because he’s already self-sufficient, such a person must be either a beast or a god.”
Only in a political community can we exercise our ability of language and deliberate right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust, because political life is necessary for virtue.
Virtue is only something we can acquire by practicing and exercising.We can’t learn it from books. We get virtue only from deliberating with citizens about the nature of the good. Politics is about the acquisition of civic virtue.
Objection: if justice is fitting people to roles, what leaves people’s right and freedom to choose their social rules? What room does teleology leave for freedom?
Aristotle defends slavery. He thinks that slavery is necessary for citizens to be free from menial tasks and deliberate the good in his society. Also, he thinks that for some people, being a slave is fitting and appropriate condition.
Kant and Rawls may challenge Aristotle by saying that if we tie justice to a specific social rule or a conception of good, then there’s no room of freedom, because freedom should be independent from any conventional, particular social rules. For Kant, government and legislation is not for promoting specific character, but for building a framework under which people can pursue their own conception of good life.
The origin of the disagreement between Kant and Aristotle on the concept of justice is that they have different views on freedom. Aristotle thinks that freedom is for people to fulfill their potential, to find the position that fits them the most in the society. Kant thinks that freedom is the capacity of autonomy.
On liberal conception, there’re two ways moral and political obligation may arise. One is natural duty (person equal person, for example). The other is voluntary obligation (obligation through a promise, consent or contract). The point is that communitarian thinks there’s a third obligation: obligation of solidarity, loyalty or membership (such as children to parents, or patriotism) .
Objections to communitarian: i) if we are in multiple communities, does that mean our obligations may conflict with each other?
ii) is it sentiment (or emotions) or moral obligations?
ii) these obligations can also be categorized under voluntary obligations
Kant and Rawls emphasizes the importance of an universal duty (treating person equally) over particular community. However, in such an ideal society, people will treat the most distant stranger the same way as their friend. So there’ll be no friends. And it’s hard to image a human society to be like that.
Justice should not be tied to convention (there’re conventions like segregationist). It should be judged on whether its end is for human good.
But how do we reason about “good”? There’s no a single principle. Rawls argues for reflective equilibrium at this point.
“Reflective equilibrium”: moving back and forth between considered judgments about particular cases and the general principle we articulate to make those judgements.
“A conception of justice cannot be deduced from self-evident premises. Its justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent view.”
“Moral philosophy is Socratic. We may want to change our present considered judgements once their regulative principles are brought to light.”
Rawls thinks that reflective equilibrium can generate shared judgement about justice, but not about good life, because there’s too many disagreements about good life, morality and religion. However, even with those unsolvable disagreements, we still keep going, because we live some answer to these questions all the time.
Skepticism is a resting place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wonderings, but it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement. To allow ourselves simply to acquiescence in skepticism or complacence can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.
