Topics Ethics

Question Why do we say that we should consider the moral values of a time when we evaluate people from the past? If were honest with ourselves the average American slave holder is actually much more morally reprehensible than a rapist. And if we consider that the average America supported slavery it follows that America was a very evil place before slavery was abolished.

Accepted:
May 12, 2011

Comments

I think the answer is that when we are considering how responsible people are for their beliefs and behavior, and considering how much blame they deserve, we think that the appropriate degree of responsibility and blame to ascribe depends in part on the degree to which the person (a) had the opportunity to know better and (b) was able to control her behavior accordingly. And we recognize that it is more difficult to know that X is wrong when most of the people in your society believe X is not wrong and have taught you that X is not wrong than it is to know that X is wrong when most people believe and teach that X is wrong. And even if one comes to understand that X is wrong, it is then more difficult to behave accordingly if most people in your society believe that X is not wrong and also set up systems to make it difficult to act against that belief. Figuring out exactly how difficult it was for the average American, especially in the South, to figure out that slavery is wrong is not easy to do, in part because it is so obvious to us that it is wrong. It is easier for us to imagine that it was difficult to behave accordingly, since we know what happened to people who advocated against slavery in the South and what happened to people who advocated for civil rights in the South up through the 1960s. It took a great deal of courage.

So, we might appropriately think that people are less blameworthy for being racist in racist societies. And that might lead us to make the mistake of thinking that racism was less morally wrong in those societies. I say it is a mistake because I think there are moral truths; I think there are facts about some societies having better moral beliefs and laws than others and about some people having better moral beliefs than others. But that does not mean that I cannot adjust my attitudes about how blameworthy people are for having the wrong moral beliefs and behaviors. So, I agree with you that slaveholders were perpetrating as much moral harm as rapists, and I agree that America was perpetrating evil before slavery was abolished. But I am also inclined to cut people a lot of slack given my views about human psychology and the difficulty of believing the right thing and acting accordingly in the face of majority opposition. And that makes me less inclined to say that people are evil in these societies.