Moral reasoning
Consequentialist: locates morality in the consequences of an act (ex. Utilitarianism)
Categorical: locates morality in certain duties and rights (Kant)
Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham
Maximizing total utility(balance between pain and pleasure)
“The greatest good with greatest number”
Cost benefit analysis be used to determine value of life?
Objections: 1. Fail to respect individual rights. 2. Not possible to aggregate all values and performances (using $) (is there a distinction between higher and lower pleasures)
“The quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry.” — Bentham
John Stuart Mill: the way to test whether a pleasure is higher or lower is whether someone has experienced both would prefer it.
Justice and individual right can lead to larger utility for human beings in long period.
(Objections to this: 1. What if sacrifice one person’s right benefits all human beings in long run
2. Is this the only reason why we should respect individual right)
Libertarianism
As separate individuals, we have the fundamental right of liberty (free choice) , and we should not be used to fulfill the society’s desire. (provided we respect other individuals’ right to do the same)
Robert Nozick
3 things that is unjust for the government to do (in the eye of libertarianism):
1. Paternalist legislation (passing laws for people to protect themselves)
2. Moral legislation (laws promote virtue of citizens)
3. Redistribution of income from rich to poor (taxation)
Nozick: What makes income distribution just?
1. Justice in acquisition (initial holding) (Do people get their initial wealth from theft of working or sth)
2. Justice in transfer (free market)
Nozick’s view:
Taxation = taking of earning = taking of fruits of my labor
The government taking fruits of my labor is morally equivalent to the government claiming portions of my labor
Taking of earring = forced labor
Forced labor = slavery (if I don’t have the sole right to my own labor, it means the government is a part owner of me)
Violate the libertarian’s idea of self possession (own myself, we belong to ourself)
Objections to libertarianism:
1. The poor need the money more
2. Taxation by consent of the government is not coerced
3. The successful owe a debt to the society
4. Wealth depends partially on luck so it isn’t deserved
John Locke
Right of property/life/liberty is pre-political, natural right
People are free and equal in the state of nature ( a state without government and a state of nature and liberty)
Constrain of nature / law of nature: we can’t give up our natural right or take somebody’s else (unalienable rights)
Reason of constrain: 1. These natural rights belongs to god 2. Reasoning of the meaning of “free”
(This constrain, this unalienable rights makes Locke different from libertarians)
From “we own ourselves” to “we own our labor”
“As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labor does, as it were, enclose it from the common.”
No law can violate people’s natural right
A legitimate government is founded on consent
The nature state (without consent and without government) brings inconvenience that everyone is executer of his or her law of nature. Everyone can punish people who offend their right in whatever ways he or she wants.
To escape from such state of nature, people consent to give up their enforcement power and create a government where there’s legislation and everyone agree the decision of majority.
The majority cannot violate people’s right of life, liberty and property. However, what accounts property is up to the government. Taxation is a collective consent when people enter the society.
There’s a difference between arbitrary government ( for example pointing a particular person and takes his or her property ) and general law (taxation or conscription). Locke thinks that general law is permissible.
Difference between libertarian and Locke:
1. Locke thinks that there’re some inalienable rights, so we don’t own ourselves actually.
2. Locke thinks that a general law is permissible.
2 cases consent is invalid: 1. The consent is coerced. 2. The consent is not truly informed.
Immanuel Kant
We’re all rational beings, beings who are capable of reasoning. We’re also autonomous beings.
Kant thinks that we should not be dominated by pain and pleasure (like Bentham claims). It’s our rationality that sets us aside mere animals.
We’re not free when we seek for pleasure or satisfaction, because that means we are slaves of those appetites and impulses. Freedom is the opposite of necessity.
To act freely is to act autonomously, and to act autonomously is to act according to a law I give myself.
The opposite of autonomy is heteronomy (to act according to desires I haven’t chosen myself)
To act freely is to do something for its own sake but not for the end of it. (If we do something for the end of it, we become the instrument of our desires. But to act freely, autonomously is to think ourselves as ends of ourselves.) This capacity to act freely gives human life special dignity. This is why to use people for the sake of other people’s well-being or happiness is (namely utilitarianism) morally wrong, and why we should respect human dignity.
Moral worth of an action depends on motive (do right thing for right reason)
Duty (moral motive) vs. inclinations (desires).
Reverence of moral law is also a moral incentive.
As rational beings, all of us share the same capacity of reasons. This is why we should respect others’ dignity, and the reason that we have a shared moral laws.
