Topics Ethics

Question Should moral obligations be constructed to fit within the real world, or within a hypothetical utopia? For example, I recognize that utilitarianism is the system most likely to be enacted by a ruling majority, because it will favor that majority, should my moral obligations reflect utilitarianism, even though I do not think it is the right system?

Accepted:
August 20, 2015

Comments

Morality must, I think, be

Morality must, I think, be something that can guide our choices and actions. And to do this, it must take account of what is realistic - morality needs to be morality for human beings, with the kind of psychology and concerns that we have. But what is 'realistic'? It's not the same as how we find many people behaving, but how it is possible for them to behave. What we can realistically hope for from people is less than utopian behaviour, but it is much more than a more pessimistic view of 'the real world'.

Your example about majority rule is a case in point. Democracy respects majority rule more than any other political system, and yet from its beginnings, at least in modern times, it has also incorporated restrictions on what the majority can do. And that is because we can not only hope, but expect, people to take account of the interests of those they disagree with (altruism is just as much part of human nature as selfishness - the trouble is usually with how the two balance out).

I think it is perfectly possible that our moral obligations don't reflect our favoured normative theory (someone is going to be wrong, given all the disagreements, as long as we reject subjectivism). So, if utilitarianism were the right system, then your moral obligations would reflect that, even if you disagree. But I agree with you that utilitarianism is the wrong moral system. One reason I think this is that I find it very unrealistic, psychologically (this has been discussed at length in the work of Bernard Williams, among others). Like Williams, I think that moral obligations have been constructed to fit the real world, but also - like him - I think that many of these reflect past prejudices and imbalances of power, and that we would do better to change these as we come to recognise their origins.