Topics Ethics

Question Might it be true that certain practices of ethical philosophers are in some sense unethical? E.g., might it not be in bad taste (i.e., betray a bad character) to ask “Why shouldn’t I exploit my friends?” or “What’s so bad about pedophilia?”? This might apply more to an Aristotelian ethics, but in any case, it does seem to reflect certain attitudes in everyday modern life. E.g., we seem to place a higher ethical value on a person who is simply naturally good and doesn’t know or care about any reasons for being good (the picture of innocence).

Accepted:
December 15, 2005

Comments

Being naturally good in your sense would require knowing without further reflection how one ought to conduct oneself. But the modern societies in which we are participants are far too complex for us to have such knowledge. How can one know, without further reflection, one's responsibilities with regard to the poor and the unemployed, world hunger and climate change, fair trade coffee, quarrelling neighbors, shrinking rain forests, AIDS sufferers, and threatened species? How can one know how much weight (if any) each of these purported responsibilities, and dozens of others, merits, and how they are all best incorporated into a single moral life?

I see your point that the answers to some moral questions are obvious, and that it is offensive to raise such questions as if the opposite answer were perfectly respectable. But when philosophers raise such questions they typically have other reasons for doing so. Take a question that strikes many people nowadays as deeply offensive: "What is wrong with participating in terrorist attacks in which innocent civilians, including children, are hurt and killed?" I find this an interesting question to discuss -- not because I think that terrorism may turn out to be alright after all, but because I think we can make a lot of progress by appreciating the grounds on which our condemnation of terrorism is based.

Suppose, for example, that in the course of answering the question we appeal to a more general principle: that there is a strong presumption against harming innocent people, a presumption that can be overcome only when one can thereby prevent a much greater harm (measured in a way that discounts the hoped-for achievement by the probability of failure). We can then think more about this proposed principle, try to make it more precise, and draw out its implications for other, less obvious questions to see whether it can help us answer them. Insofar as it does, we will have learned to deal better, in our moral thinking and conduct, with those other, less obvious questions.

Engagement with the obvious question is likely to bring a further important benefit. A moral judgment is always also a moral commitment. A shrewd amoral person will try to keep his moral commitments to a minimum. Some politicians are like that: They condemn terrorism (doing so plays well in the media), but they refuse to say anything further about what makes it wrong (sometimes expressing outrage that anyone would dare ask such a question). Citizens and the media let them get away with this.

But it would be better if we didn't. If they felt compelled to give their reasons, they would incur more substantial moral commitments. Suppose politicians, in the course of giving reasons, committed himself to the above-contemplated strong presumption against harming innocent people (which can be overcome only when one can thereby prevent a much greater harm). This would make it much more difficult for them to justify supporting policies many of them have been supporting, policies that foreseeably impose great harms on innocent civilians including children: UN sanctions against Iraq before the latest war are estimated to have killed over a million Iraqi children, for example, and similarly staggering figures are reported about the effects of rich-country protectionism against poor-country imports and about bombing campaigns against civilian areas in World War Two and Vietnam.

For these reasons I believe, then, that we need more moral reflection, even on obvious cases, rather than less.