Monthly Archives: March 2004

Jon Elster

It would be good if we could somehow insulate our passions from our reasoning powers; and to some extent we can. Some people are quite good at compartmentalizing their emotions. Often, however, they don’t have very strong emotions in the first place. They may get what they want, but they do not want very much. Granting supreme importance to cognitive rationality is achieved at the cost of not having much they want to be rational about.

Jon Elster, Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, Cambridge, 1989, p. 70

Shelly Kagan

Those readers troubled by the fact that millions of people will die this year, who could have been saved for a few dollars each, might want to consider making a contribution to Oxfam. In the United States, the address is: Oxfam America, P.O. Box 4215, Boston MA 02211-4215.

Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics, Boulder, 1998, p. 316

Alan Carter

Red flags and red guards, professional vanguards,
Stalin and Lenin, and rule from the Kremlin,
The Central Committee has told me to sing:
‘These are a few of my favourite things.’

Strict iron discipline and militarization,
Subject the nation to centralization.
Deep in my conscience I hear someone say:
‘When will the state start to wither away?’

When the Tsar falls,
Commissar calls,
Or I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember from March to September
Freedom was to…
Be had.

Alan Carter, ‘My Favourite Things’, in Marx: A Radical Critique, Brighton, 1988, p. xiv

James Hillman & Michael Ventura

We’re working on our relationships constantly, and our feelings and reflections, but look what’s left out of that. What’s left out is a deteriorating world. So shy hasn’t therapy noticed that? Because psychotherapy is only working on that “inside” soul. By removing the soul from the world and not recognizing that the soul is also in the world, psychotherapy can’t do its job anymore. The buildings are sick, the institutions are sick, the baking system’s sick, the schools, the streets—the sickness is out there.

James Hillman & Michael Ventura, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy–And the World’s Getting Worse, San Francisco, 1992, pp. 3-4

Liam Murphy

Deontology is individualistic: we are not in it together, but each on our own. To say that the compliance effects of a constraint against killing should be fairly distributed among all agents would be like saying that the children of two families that have no contact with each other should all be treated fairly by the four parents.

Liam Murphy, Moral Demands in Nonideal Theory, Oxford, 2000, p. 94

Gore Vidal

[E]very candidate of the party that votes is being forced this year to take a stand on abortion, and if the stand should be taken on law and not on the Good Book, the result can be very ugly indeed for the poor politician because abortion is against God’s law: “Thou shalt not kill.” Since this commandment is absolute any candidate who favors abortion must be defeated as a Satanist. On the other hand, any candidate who does not favor capital punishment must be defeated as permissive. In the land of the twice-born, the life of the fetus is sacred; the life of the adult is not.

Gore Vidal, ‘The Real Two-Party System’, in United States: Essays, 1952-1992, New York, 2001, p. 953

Thomas Schelling & Morton Halperin

Conflict of interest is a social phenomenon unlikely to disappear, and potential recourse to violence and damage will always suggest itself if the conflict gets out of hand Man’s capability for self-destruction cannot be eradicated–he knows too much! Keeping that capability under control–providing incentives to minimize recourse to violence–is the eternal challenge.

Thomas Schelling & Morton Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control, Washington, 1985, p. 5

James Griffin

The role that intuitions can play in moral philosophy is the role that we are content to let them play in other departments of thought (it is only in moral philosophy that they have risen so far above their epistemological station). In mathematics, the natural sciences, and other branches of philosophy, finding a conclusion intuitively repugnant does not close an argument; it is a reason to start looking for a good argument.

James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance, Oxford, 1986, p. 2

Thomas Pogge

[D]eveloped states have been more willing to appeal to moral values and to use such appeals in justification of initiatives—such as the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia—that would have been unthinkable during the Cold War. But these appeals only heighten the puzzle. If it makes sense to spend billions to endanger thousands of lives in order to rescue a million people from Serb oppression, would it not make more sense to spend similar sums, without endangering any lives, on leading many millions out of life-threatening poverty?

Thomas Pogge, ‘Priorities of Global Justice’, in Thomas Pogge (ed.), Global Justice, Oxford, 2001, pp. 6-7

David Schweickart

If one looks at the works of the major apologists for capitalism, Milton Friedman, for example, or F. A. Hayek, one finds the focus of the apology always on the virtues of the market and on the vices of central planning. Rhetorically this is an effective strategy, for it is much easier to defend the market than to defend the other two defining institutions of capitalism. Proponents of capitalism know well that it is better to keep attention directed toward the market and away from wage labor or private ownership of the means of production.

David Schweickart, ‘Market Socialism: A Defense’, in Bertell Ollman (ed.), Market Socialism: the Debate Among Socialists, New York, 1998, p. 11

Tim Mulgan

Deflating the exclusive question “A or B?” with the inclusive answer “Let’s have both!” is apt to look like a cop-out. [M]oving from monism to pluralism invariably raises more questions than it answers.

Tim Mulgan, ‘Two Conceptions of Benevolence’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 26, no. 1 (Winter, 1997), p. 78

John Stuart Mill

No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of poverty; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred, by the accident of birth both from the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against which mankind have hitherto struggled, the poor are not wrong in believing.

John Stuart Mill, Chapters On Socialism, London, 1879, ‘Introductory’

Will Kymlicka

Libertarians often equate capitalism with the absence of restrictions on freedom. Anthony Flew, for example, defines libertarianism as ‘opposed to any social and legal constraints on individual freedom’. He contrasts this with liberal egalitarians and socialists who favour government restrictions on the free market. Flew thus identifies capitalism with the absence of restrictions on freedom. Many of those who favour constraining the market agree that they are thereby restricting liberty. Their endorsement of welfare-state capitalism is said to be a compromise between freedom and equality, where freedom is understood as the free market, and equality as welfare-state restrictions on the market. This equation of capitalism and freedom is part of the everyday picture of the political landscape.

Does the free market involve more freedom? It depends on how we define freedom. Flew seems to be assuming a neutral definition of freedom. By eliminating welfare-state redistribution, the free market eliminates some legal constraints on the disposal of one’s resources, and thereby creates some neutral freedoms. For example, if government funds a welfare programme by an 80-per-cent tax on inheritance and capital gains, then it prevents people from giving their property to others. Flew does not tell us how much neutral freedom would be gained by removing this tax, but it clearly would allow someone to act in a way they otherwise could not. This expansion of neutral freedom is the most obvious sense in which capitalism increases freedom, but many of these neutral freedoms will also be valuable purposive freedoms, for there are important reasons why people might give their property to others. So capitalism does provide certain neutral and purposive freedoms unavailable under the welfare state.

But we need to be more specific about this increased liberty. Every claim about freedom, to be meaningful, must have a triadic structure-it must be of the form ‘x is free from y to do z’, where x I specifies the agent, y specifies the preventing conditions, and z specifies the action. Every freedom claim must have these three elements: it must specify who is free to do what from what obstacle. Flew has told us the last two elements––æhis claim concerns the freedom to dispose of property without legal constraint. But he has not told us the first-i.e. who has this freedom? As soon as we ask that question, Flew’s equation of capitalism with freedom is undermined. For it is the owners of the resource who are made free to dispose of it, while non-owners are deprived of that freedom. Suppose that a large estate you would have inherited (in the absence of an inheritance tax) now becomes a public park, or a low-income housing project (as a result of the tax). The inheritance tax does not eliminate the freedom to use the property, rather it redistributes that freedom. If you inherit the estate, then you are free to dispose of it as you see fit, but if I use your backyard for my picnic or garden without your permission, then I am breaking the law, and the government will intervene and coercively deprive me of the freedom to continue. On the other hand, my freedom to use and enjoy the property is increased when the welfare state taxes your inheritance to provide me with affordable housing, or a public park. So the free market legally restrains my freedom, while the welfare state increases it. Again, this is most obvious on a neutral definition of freedom, but many of the neutral freedoms I gain from the inheritance tax are also important purposive ones.

Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, Oxford, 1990, pp. 146-147

Thomas Pogge

When Hume’s reflections confronted him with the baselessness of all human reasoning and belief, he found it most fortunate that “nature herself” ensures that he would not long linger in such dark skepticism: “I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I wou’d return to these speculations, they appear so cold, so strain’d, and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any farther.”

When Parfit’s reflections led him to a reductionist view of personal identity, he found it unfortunate that one cannot long maintain this view of the world, which removes the glass wall between oneself and others and makes one care less about one’s own death. Focusing on his arguments, one can only briefly stun one’s natural concern for one’s own future by reconceiving oneself in accordance with the reductionist view.

Our world is arranged to keep us far away from massive and severe poverty and surrounds us with affluent, civilized people for whom the poor abroad are a remote good cause alongside the spotted owl. In such a world, the thought that we are involved in a monumental crime against these people, that we must fight to stop their dying and suffering, will appear so cold, so strained, and ridiculous, that we cannot find it in our heart to reflect on it any farther. That we are naturally myopic and conformist enough to be easily reconciled to the hunger abroad may be fortunate for us, who can “recognize ourselves,” can lead worthwhile and fulfilling lives without much thought about the origins of our affluence. But it is quite unfortunate for the global poor, whose best hope may be our moral reflection.

Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms, Cambridge, 2002, p. 26

Jean Drèze & Amartya Sen

A distinction is sometimes drawn between ‘man-made’ famines and famines caused by nature. […] Blaming nature can, of course, be very consoling and comforting. It can be of great use especially to those in positions of power and responsibility. Comfortable inaction is, however, typically purchased at a very heavy price—a price that is paid by others, often with their lives.

Jean Drèze & Amartya Sen, Hunger and Public Action, Oxford, 1989, pp. 46-47

Albert Einstein

It is […] nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of enquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.

Albert Einstein, ‘Autobiographical Notes’, in Paul A. Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Berkeley, 1949, p. 17

Jonathan Glover

Amoralits are sceptics about the claims of morality. They do not have to be ruthlessly selfish—they may have generous impulses and care about other people—but they are sceptical about claims that they ought to do things for others. An amoralist says about ‘ought’ what Oscar Wilde said about ‘patriotism’: it is not one of my words. The generous, caring amoralist is in practice not much of a problem. It is the ruthlessly selfish amoralist who arouses the hope that amoralism can be refuted.

Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, New Haven, 1999, p. 18

Peter Unger

In order to lessen the number of people who’ll die very prematurely, you needn’t cause anyone any serious loss, and you certainly needn’t cause anybody to lose her life. Indeed, all you need do is send money to UNICEF, or to OXFAM, or, for that matter, to CARE, whose address you can also know:

CARE
151 Ellis Street, N.E.
Atlanta, GA 30303

From this chapter’s first paragraph, most get what, for the bulk of our adult lives, is the most important moral message we need.

Peter Unger, Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence, New York, 1996, p. 84