Philosophy Assignment Questions

CHAPTER 10

Pleasure, Contemplation, and Judgment

The field of aesthetics casts a very wide net. The arts are many, and they happen in different places all over the world. They always have. Our enjoyment, appreciation, and judgment of art—together with the question of what defines art to begin with— are the key elements to consider in aesthetics. The word itself is derived from the Greek Αισθητικη ́ , aisthetikos, meaning “coming from the senses.”

More than any other branch of axiology, that is, of the philosophy of making value judgments, aesthetics has sensuality built into it as much as it has seductive, ineffable quality in its critical analysis. Still, though some philosophers disagree, it is not just a matter of taste.

Aesthetics, Art, and Criticism

You might ask, what is it critics do, exactly? Serious arts critics have to travel, usually a lot. They contemplate paintings in museums all over the world, listen to different orchestras in different concert halls, witness ballet and opera wherever they may come to life. Critics also often serve on juries, observe the impact of social and politi-cal forces on the art of their time, reflect on the art of the past and the art of the future and do so by experiencing that art in person. A literary critic can of course just sit and read a book, and that book will be the same artistic object that everyone elsewhere is reading. But the other arts, especially the performing arts, are different. To analyze painting and sculpture, or theater, music, dance, and opera, the critic has to travel wherever these artistic works may be.

Yes, critics travel. And the toughest journey a critic takes is the vast one from the statement “I like this”’ to “This is good.” The shortest distance between those two points is seldom a straight line.

“Today it goes without saying that nothing concerning art goes without saying. Everything about art has become problematic: its inner life, its relation to society, even its right to exist.”

—Theodor Adorno

One easy way of dividing the arts is between what we like, which must be good, and everything else. On some level, this remains the case even in the most complex aesthetics systems. Blaise Pascal’s clever littler dictum that “the heart has its reasons that reason does not know” is as unsettling as it is true. Say something strikes you as absolutely right in the concert hall, something in the theater has a powerful effect on you. You begin to articulate what you will choose to call the reasons for the work’s success. But maybe your heart still has other reasons; these reasons do not begin to touch. It is in this sense that criticism defines not so much what the work of art is as what happens when we witness it. The act of witnessing is what transforms a work of art standing alone into the object of our aesthetic experience. This is the moment of attention, the vehicle for the journey from the report of a private experi- ence—“I like this”—to the public utterance and judgment “This is good.”

“I like ‘x’” or “I don’t like ‘x’” are always true, and they also are not interesting unless you’re talking to your best friend or to your mother: these statement are sim- ply reports on one’s own feelings. On the other hand, “‘x’ is good” or “‘x’ is bad’” are judgments and require arguments with clearly defined reasons for each judgment.

POWERFUL ANALYSIS: DO THE KARDASHIANS MAKEGREATTV?

Critically analyze the difference between these two statements: • I like the TV show Keeping Up with the Kardashians. • Keeping Up with the Kardashians is great TV show.

How can you defend the truth of either statement?

Two things are going on here. First, the critic’s point of view is not that of the artist. It is, rather, that of the spectator, the witness. We are all witnesses, and art is intrinsically democratic in that sense. Second, there is an implied acknowledgment of the work of art’s unique sensuousness. There are real feelings at work, and these feelings not only color but actually may define the aesthetic experience.

And these feelings guide the critic’s journey. When we in the audience jointly con- spire in what the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1884) first noted amounts to a “willing suspension of disbelief ” while watching a performance, we also agree that there is much more to the object of our attention than its physical ingredients.

POWERFUL IDEAS: CRITICS

“Critics of words use words. Critics of music use words. Those thirteen syllables . . . are as pertinent as any I can make on the matter. If the final comment on a work of art is another work of art, might some critical prose, as art, equal the art it describes? Yes, but that very prose is independent of the art it describes. The best critical writing is superfluous to its subject, and musical criticism is the most superfluous of all.”

—Ned Rorem

The Phenomenology of Artistic Experience

This is the stuff of objective reporting, elements that are not a matter of opinion: the articulation of a cellist’s phrasing, the steps of a dance, the rhythmic texture of an aria, the words of a play, and the notes of a symphony. But the critic, along with the rest of the audience, responds to more than these objective components of a work of art. The object of our attention transcends its material character: suddenly, miracu- lously, steps are more than steps, words become theater, a string of notes can break your heart. That is why it is fair to call the aesthetic experience sensual.

Of course, it takes two to have any sensual experience. It takes not just the per- formance and performer, but also the witness who perceives them in a particular way. Our presence at a performance, our perception of a performance, and our feel- ings about a performance are the happy bundle of elements that create meaning in the arts. This is the phenomenological process, and it is particularly useful in talking about the performing arts. Examining the phenomenon of what happens onstage reveals not just the basic truth of a particular work but also its universality, its ines- capable humanity.

Context and dialectic are everything in aesthetics. There is no essential artistic meaning out there waiting to be discovered, and neither is there just a series of lan- guage relations waiting to be analyzed. In our time, even with today’s dreary decon- structionists or politicized critics, the role of the witness and the dialectic of witnessing remain ever more useful in talking about the arts.

A score unperformed, an aria unsung, a play unread, or a dance merely intended is never the point. Theories of textual truth, political relevance, or social benefit also are never the point. The experience of an actual performance is what matters in criticism. That said, it is also true that the critic cannot claim to be just another witness among many. A critic is not what Virginia Woolf had in mind when she famously described the common reader. There is such a thing as judgment, even if the term has become decidedly unfashionable both in philosophy and in mainstream popular arts criticism.

POWERFUL IDEAS: ART

“The word ‘art’ first signified a manner of doing and nothing more. This unlimited sense has disappeared from use . . . . Art, considered as contemporary activity, has had to submit to the conditions of the generalized social life of our time. It has taken its place in the general economy”

—Paul Valéry

What Makes a Critic’s Opinion Authoritative?

David Hume (1711–1776) believed that emotions are significant in both aesthetics and ethics, as we will discuss in the next chapter. In other words, he thought that a judgment consisted simply of approving or not, a matter of feeling. His theory has more adherents in aesthetics than in ethics today, particularly because aesthetics involves both contemplation and judgment. The problem remains, however, that “I don’t like that movie” is no better argument in aesthetics than “I don’t like those people” in ethics, although both statements are passed for arguments with alarming frequency.

Still, Hume has a point about the cultivation of taste, and a critic must cer- tainly have good taste and good judgment. A critic’s opinion, an aesthetic judgment, depends on knowledge, experience, and passion. Knowledge not just of the arts but also of the mechanics of criticism: aesthetics, logic, and rhetoric. Experience that must come from a thirst for knowledge and a wealth of opportunity. This last may seem cruel, but it remains true; all the theoretical knowledge of music in the world will not help in judging an orchestral performance if all you have heard is one orchestra in one hall, just as acquaintance with only a handful of museums or ballet companies is simply not enough in judging painting or dance with any perspective.

Context also is vital, and often it can help shape an aesthetic judgment. The Abstract Expressionists such as Willem De Kooning (1904–1997) and Robert Motherwell (1915–1991), who put American art on the map in the twentieth cen- tury, were often quite good at explaining their intentions. They were often as helpful and always at least as sensitive as philosophers and poets variously judged and praised their work. Words can help, no matter what the composer Ned Rorem may think.

Truth in Criticism

A critic’s passion must be a given. Criticism must be willing to make a case for the art that matters, not just for ways to pass the time. A creeping fear of authority is one of the most disturbing dangers of popular criticism: the suggestion that reviews are mere statements of preference, not judgments.

This is a lie. For example, if a critic believes that Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women’ is a sublime climax to a lifetime of genius, that Tom Morton-Smith’s Oppen- heimer is the most challenging and disturbing dramatic treatment to date of the ethics of the atomic bomb, or that cello concerto Philip Glass composed for the movie Naqoyqatsi is one of the most exciting and moving scores of the last 100 years, then that critic must argue vigorously to win over anyone who will listen. If a critic believes that something like So You Think You Can Dance? or The Voice are trash as dance, music, or television, it would be unimaginable defend it as anything else. The rest is misplaced politeness, timidity, and an abdication of critical responsibility.

Socrates roundly condemned the unexamined life as not worth living, but is the unexamined music worth hearing? Is the unexamined dance worth watching? Is it worth dancing? On one level, there must be such a thing as simple, unambi- tious, and even mindless entertainment. What can be the harm? And yet, what is it that makes a stupid piece irritating? Hope springs eternal each time, the curtain goes up; the joy of discovery is great, but disappointment can be bitter. If art is to matter—and a critic must believe that it does—judgments must be made with almost cruel clarity. Then, the expressions of utter joy at witnessing greatness onstage will ring true.

Powerful Thinkers: Richard Wagner

Radical, transgressive, and revolutionary Richard Wagner (1813–1883) sets out to reinvent theater at the decadent heights of the Romantic Revolution. His opera tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) premiered in 1876, in a theater built expressly for the then extraordinary staging demands the opera called for the Bayreuther Festspielhaus, where a festival of Wagner operas contin- ues to this day.

Wagner’s vision was to recapture the impact of ancient Greek drama, while synthesizing all the arts in a feast of music, dance, theater, and art—a total work of art, or Gesamtkunstwerk.

His influence was and is enormous. He explained Wagnerian aesthet- ics in a series of essays between 1849 and 1852; but it was in his operas, on stage, that his argument is proved. Particularly between Tristan and Isolde (1865)—an ode to impossible love beyond death— and his final masterpiece, the sacred mystery play Parsifal (1882), Wagner asks crucial questions about the possibility of ethics in a godless world and the importance of freedom to the fabric of humanity. His operas are about love and death, those constant ele- ments in the dialectic of the human condition.

In Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, the composer wanted most of all to recapture what he imagined to be the depths, simplicity, and truth of Greek tragedy. He succeeded in theater better than anyone since Shakespeare. He also succeeded in creating plays so rich in meaning that there has been room for wildly different interpretations. Der Ring des Nibelungen in particular has been at the mercy of—or has received the richest interpretations by—the greatest stage directors since its creation.

The mystical ring and the magical sword, enchanted water nymphs and flying warrior maidens, and even the building and destruction of the gods in Valhalla and perhaps the end of the divine and the birth of humanity—these have been fodder for interpretation and reinter- pretation in our time. There have been Marxist Rings—with the fall of the gods seen as the inevitable result of class struggle, just as once

there were Nazi Rings in which the Norse hero Siegfried was distorted into standing for the Aryan ideal. There have been Freudian and Jungian Rings, deconstructionist Rings, and postmodern Rings. The English National Opera set it in outer space, and the Paris Opera in a fashionable department store. Patrice Chereau’s controversial land- mark 1976 Bayreuth Festival production was the first to be filmed complete and is perhaps still the best acted, though it’s sweet New Left flavor dates it as a nostalgic pre-glasnost affair. Goetz Friedrich set his 1976 Ring in a time tunnel with designs inspired by the Washington, DC metro stations—a gift for the American Bicentennial that had a successful run at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Otto Schenck’s 1989 Ring for the Metropolitan Opera was a rarity by being free of anachronisms, innocent of ideological cant. The Met dropped that production in 2013, in favor of Robert LePage’s dementedly expensive, riotously unsuccessful version.

Wagner‘s Parsifal tells the tale of God’s own Holy Fool whose role is to save humanity. He is the Wagnerian hero closest to the ideal of Greek tragedy. The opera, Wagner’s last, carries an invitation to abstraction that—paradoxically—has made this character easy to recognize as Wagner’s creation even in the strangest productions. François Girard’s 2012 Met production, with Jonas Kaufmann as Parsifal in a musical and dramatic characterization that set a high standard for years to come, was set in what looked like a vast pool of blood.

Maybe each age has its own Wagner. The theater and opera director Goetz Friedrich once said that “It doesn’t really matter what directors do—the score will always be there, the music will always be there, Wagner will always be there.”

A critic’s work can be a lonely journey, a case of judging and writing against the grain. A critic should aim to rescue the details worth noting from what the great French novelist Nathalie Sarraute (1900–1999) called the magma of everyday banal- ity. Concepts as rich in meaning as “good” or “beautiful” are falling out of favor as popular criticism grows ever more innocent of moral authority.

Elitism and the Arts

In an age when being judgmental has become a bad thing, condemned by those who would destroy the canon and dumb down the arts as far as they will go, criticism may surrender its role out of a sense of survival: television arts critics remain on the air by summarizing movie plots, book reviews become book reports, rap and hip-hop are treated as if on the same level as Beethoven, the concept of elitism has become anathema to those who fund the arts, and even the rules of grammar are seen as quaint suggestions.

Maybe Elitism Is a Good Thing

An elitism of vision, excellence, imagination, and genius. An elitism of talent, taste and bravery are something to treasure. It is not for everyone, but it can represent the best in all of us and it certainly ought to be there for all of us to admire. These are strange times indeed, when the concept of elitism has become an insult, a way to smear the arts. Elitism, often in the eye of the beholder, has become doublespeak for exclusion, for everything that is not politically correct. To be placed in a position of defending, elitism is decidedly awkward.

Enemies of culture cry that the arts should be democratic, ergo the arts have failed. They presume that since not everyone can reach excellence, then excellence, too, is somehow undemocratic. They make use of perverse educational trends that, when arts education takes place at all, preach that everyone can be an artist while showing no one how to be part of an educated audience. Advisory committees, boards of directors, and tribes of ideological guardians today ensure the multicul- tural, pangeographic, and heterogeneous quality of funded artistic projects, as if great art ever had been created by committee rather than by an individual’s unique and passionate vision.

When artistic canons are devalued, and every opinion, no matter how base and uninformed, is worth the same as every other, mediocrity is rewarded and indi- vidual genius languishes unrecognized. Shunning the elite, we prop up the bland, the safe, hoping that if we call it great often enough we might believe in its greatness.

“Not every opinion is worth considering, just as not every work of art is worth our time. There are such things as stupid remarks, ignorant judgments, misplaced affections and, of course, there is such a thing as bad art”

—Octavio Roca

Yet consider, for example, that no one would choose a brain surgeon by neigh- borhood committee vote. If your country were invaded, you would want elite troops for your defense. Only the best will do for things we care about. Yet too often we let artistic discourse be shaped by those who care the least about the arts.

Why not aim for the best in the arts, humanity’s highest achievement, as we clearly do in other endeavors? Why allow ourselves to be embarrassed by our cul- ture’s greatness? Why tear down what is most sublime in our culture and vulgarize it to the lowest possible level just so everyone, no matter how crass or bigoted, will not be offended by it?

Elitism Is Not the Problem. Elitism Is the Answer

We may be in danger of forgetting how to have a meaningful argument about the arts, a true reckoning of aesthetics. The collectivization and internationalization of popular entertainment, and their worship in much of the popular press, are fast heading toward the hegemony of the banal.

Yet, contrary to popular cant, not every opinion is worth considering, just as not every work of art is worth our time. A flat note in opera is not a matter of opin- ion, and neither is flawed turnout or lazy épaulement in ballet. But we respond to more than these objective components of a work of art. The object of our attention tran- scends its material character. There are such things as stupid remarks, ignorant judgments, misplaced affections and, of course, there is such a thing as bad art.

Multiculturalism, Art, and Politics

Multiculturalism is at once a reality and a noble goal. But accepting its many advan- tages should not dampen our courage to call something civilized and something else barbaric, something advanced and something else retrograde, and something good and something else bad. Multiculturalism at its most vulgar amounts to this, in ordi- nary language: anything goes, so nothing is worth it. That is relativism at its worst.

There is an appalling lack of moral outrage in criticism these days, when few things offend some readers more than a critic’s taking offense at anything. With indulgences all but guaranteed for any art, no matter how low, having high standards is considered suspect. Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1783) remarked that “we ought to think with the learned and speak with the vulgar.” The Irish philosopher was not being cynical, just practical. Critics often are tempted to place their faith in small matters, not so much in acceptance of lowered expectations as in resigned enjoyment of modest details. Then just wait to be surprised.

POWERFUL IDEAS: LOOKING AT DANCE, JUDGING DANCE

The easiest way to look at a ballet is just that: look at it. Few things any- where compare with ballet in being easy to love. There are beautiful peo- ple, usually moving to ravishing music, using their bodies in ways that are at once athletic and sublime, telling tales in motion that reveal truths and suggest mysteries we might otherwise be too shy or afraid to see.

Details are everything, and they mean different things to different people. There is a small moment in the first ballet I ever saw that still breaks my heart every time.

In “Giselle,” an emotionally shattering ballet and one of the glories of romantic theater, a poor peasant girl suddenly faces a rich, elegant woman who is wearing what must seem like impossibly beautiful clothes: Giselle’s simple gesture as she reaches and almost touches the hem of Bathilde’s dress embodies innocent hope against all odds, longing for so much happiness that Giselle will never know, and ineffable sadness.

How each ballerina plays that moment can be as telling as how a Violetta in Act One of Verdi’s opera La Traviata notices the ravages of a fast life star- ing back in the mirror in the simple line “O, qual pallor.” “How pale I look.” Or it can be as devastating as how the dying Åse in Ibsen’s epic Peer Gynt can suggest irony, fervor, and terror all at once as she listens to her fantas- tical liar of a son describe the gates of heaven she will soon enter.

Dancers turn and run, lift and caress each other, stand very still. These are things all of us do in our everyday lives, but it would be wrong to say that dance is like everyday life. It isn’t. Every one of those moves is as different from the way ordinary mortals move as Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony is different from the actual sounds of a summer morning.

Then again, the power of suggestion may be the most staggering trick in an artist’s bag: almost everything listed just now, from balances to good looks, can matter not at all when a great dancer chooses to make us believe in his or her performance. Just as Maria Callas in her last tour had the power to make the audience believe that it had heard notes she clearly had not sung, so could the great Alicia Alonso (b. 1920) in her 50s be the most youthful Giselle we are ever likely to see.

Do we fall in love with the dancer or the dance? The story or the move- ment? The athletic prowess, poetic interpretation, or sexy good looks? With the emotions brought out by a series of steps or gestures, or with the dazzling geometry of these same phrases? Do we fall in love with the fact that this is the best we have ever seen, or just the first we have ever seen? All of these, as it happens, are good reasons. So is loving The Nutcracker’ because your little niece Consuelo is making her debut as a dancing lolli- pop. Whatever makes you return to the theater is a good reason, if only because chances are you will like it even better the next time. You might even begin to judge it.

Keep in mind that a critic most likely works from a theoretical framework as well as from a knowledge of history. But it is worth remembering, however, that what makes the difference in the success of a concerto, a play, or a dance is not its adher- ence to any theory at all. Bad criticism takes us away from the experience of the arts and into the realm of theory.

That is one problem with Marxist aesthetics, for example, or with other utili- tarian views of the arts that can turn critics into propagandists or censors. Talk of whether or not a concerto, a play or a dance is socially relevant or politically useful is all very nice, but the real question is whether it is good or bad. Does Pablo Picasso’s immortal Guernica (1937) require knowledge of the Spanish Civil War in order to be emotionally devastated by it? Is it part of our aesthetic appreciation or judgment of Dmitri Shostakovich’s symphonies or string quartets that they were composed by one of most tragic composer of our time whose life was made nearly impossible by Stalinism? Or can we just listen to it and still judge it to be great music, apart from its historical context?

The ballet Giselle (1841), the apotheosis and climax of the Romantic Era, is not a communist dance if it is performed by the Ballet Nacional de Cuba in Havana any more than it is a fascist or kleptocratic dance as performed by today’s Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, or a Republican or Democrat dance when brought to life by the Ameri- can Ballet Theatre in New York. It is just Giselle.

political criticism of art a form of ad hominem argument, or is all art political? Being able to tell the difference, performance by actual performance, moment by liv- ing moment, is a critic’s responsibility. And that means separating competence from incompetence, acting from acting out, professional polish from mere good inten- tions, and art from dross or worse.

The phenomenal thing about the arts—in every sense of that very useful term—is that it takes two to give meaning to the phenomenon. There is no unmedi- ated, essential truth in literature, painting, music, theater, or dance. The truth of those art forms arises not in a vacuum but in public, in real life, in the magical moment when the audience witnesses the performers in action.

How You Can Judge

Forget program notes, forget for now how wonderful the arts are for the community. Forget the artists’ heartwarming backgrounds or political associations. For heaven’s sake, forget Sigmund Freud and V. I. Lenin, whose aesthetic theories are at last achieving the neglect they so richly deserve. A critic first and foremost must concen- trate on what is happening on the page or onstage.

In the end, it is still the journey from “I like this” to “this is good,” from “I like Marcel Proust” to “Proust is sublime, beautiful, good” that matters.

Is this personal? Sure. Should anyone really want criticism to be impersonal, pretending to be objective, scientific? No. The truth is that, in the arts as in life, you fall in love all of a sudden. Then, if you are lucky, you spend a lifetime working out the details.

CHAPTER 11

The Meaning of Ethics

11

Upon completing this chapter, students should be able to meet the following Learning Outcomes:

11.1 Discuss the elements of any moral dilemma: the act, the consequences of the act, and the moral agent.

11.2 Critically analyze the false starts in moral philosophy including relativism and Divine Command.

11.3 Discuss the practical and logical problems with Aquinas’ Natural Law moral theory.

11.4 Explain how ethics can be said to be always personal and often political.

Ethics is, in a very real sense, philosophy in an emergency. Most philosophical ques- tions—everything from the possible existence of a god and our place in the universe to the nature of beauty and the pleasures of identifying it—invite leisurely discussion over long periods of time. Someone facing an ethical problem, on the other hand, more often than not has to make a personal decision about that dilemma with little chance of waiting around. Decisions concerning academic integrity, professional behavior, and sexual ethics, for example, often fall in this category. A woman who has just found out that she is pregnant and happens to be pondering the morality of abortion had better decide that moral point herself soon or the decision will be made for her.

POWERFUL IDEAS: BETTER TO BE SILENT

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

nglo-American analytic philosophers in particular tend to agree with Wittgenstein that, basically, if you can’t be clear about something, just be quiet. This tenet, nourished by an increasing trust in science as well as a trust that science has good foundational arguments for certainty, have led in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to a quasi-scientific view of moral philosophy and to such aca- demic balkanizations as met-ethics (asking “where did that moral question come from and what does it mean?”), normative ethics (asking “How do you define a moral standard?”), and applied ethics (at last asking “Now what should I do?”). Continental philosophers for the most part have stayed with this last question, often asserting that all ethics is applied and most often it is also political.

These philosophers, too, aim for clarity. But they also understand that clarity is not always possible and that action is always necessary. Civil rights, women’s rights,

reproductive rights, marriage equality, abortion, assisted suicide and euthanasia, , legalization of drugs, capital punishment—all of these burning issues need solid moral arguments and ethically justified action. The action is the aim of all moral theories discussed in this chapter. Questions about right and wrong and questions about the right way to live are the subject of ethics. In that sense, and, this is crucial, ethical theory is never abstract: it concerns real human problems. The discussion in this chapter is an introduction to moral philosophy. Moral philosophy will be consid- ered through critical analyses of the most common types of theories as well as of some examples that help illustrate these different ways to look at life. These include the theories underlying Aristotelian, Kantian, and Utilitarian arguments as they pertain to everyday life we live. Moral dead-ends such as relativism and divine command theories are also considered, along with the lasting influence of the Mid- dle Ages’ Natural Law ethics. The goal of this chapter is to apply critical thinking to help develop reasoned justifications for judgments on diverse moral issues, an exer- cise of reason that can point the way to better understanding of the role ethics plays in our daily lives.

Moral Dead-Ends

There are various moral dead-ends including all the people who think they are experts in ethics (without any formal study of the subject). Cultural relativism and the divine command theory of morals are in fact discredited in the field of philoso- phy, but both remain powerful in their cultural impact. Natural Law, which aimed higher than either of these but ultimately failed, is also examined later.

Cultural Relativism

The educator and critic Allan Bloom has noted with dismay that most of today’s stu- dents arrive at college as relativists. Remarks such as “Who’s to say who is right?” or “Who am I to judge” and “Maybe it’s right for them, just not for me” reflect com- mon and well-intentioned attitudes that nevertheless can destroy the possibility of responsible ethical judgment. While it is true that different cultures have different moral codes, must it follow that therefore there is no objective truth in morality? There are major drawbacks in accepting this form of cultural relativism, both from within a given culture and for outsiders to that culture.

If you are within the culture in question, relativism leaves no room for dissent or progress, since the culture is right by definition. If you are outside that culture in question, relativism leaves the outsider with no moral standing. The massacres com- mitted by the religious extremists of ISIS, the treatment of women in the Middle East, the lunching of Blacks in the American South, or the Holocaust murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis all would be beyond your judgment if you don’t hap- pen to be part of these cultures. The beheading of gays or the stoning to death of adulterous women, as our allies in Saudi Arabia do, is something we have every right to condemn even if you are not a citizen of that country. Relativism would force you to respect that culture to the point of standing by and not passing judgment at all.

Ethics, at the very least, should enable us to say that something is right or wrong, no matter where and no matter who is involved. Relativism precludes that judgment.

Divine Command

If relativism claims that the way we have always done things must be right for us, Divine Command claims that without doubt the right thing to do is whatever our god or gods command. Like relativism, this is one of the most primitive ethical theories. Some com- mon problems range from the difficulty of identifying and verifying god’s commands to the undeniable challenge that several competing gods present in a multicultural world. Whose god are we talking about? Whose scriptures, or whose interpretation of those scriptures? What about trusting the messenger? When several presidential candidates state that Jesus commanded them to run for president, and clearly only one of them might win an election, does that mean the Jesus was just messing with the others?

The biggest problem with Divine Command theory, however, is put most clearly, most unsettlingly, by Socrates in Plato’s Euthyphro: is something right because the gods command it, or do the gods command it because it is right? Why is this a problem?

POWERFUL ANALYSIS: THE EUTHYPHRO PROBLEM

Is something right because god said so, or did god say so because it is right?

Is It Right Because God Says It Is Right . . .

If something is right because god commands it, then given his omnipotence, god could command anything. Murder is wrong, but perhaps it will be right tomorrow afternoon at 3. This is not a frivolous crazy example—god commanded Abraham to slaughter his own child, and that act would be right as long as god said so. That mer- ciless god is not the one most people worship. It also makes ethics impossible in that you would have no way of deciding what to do since the concepts of right or wrong could change on a whim.

On the other hand, if your god wouldn’t do that and god commands some- thing because it is right—an omniscient god would not steer you wrong and, after all, he know everything—the you have diminished his authority and turned him into a good source of information. When you mother teaches you not to cross the street without looking both ways, she does so because she know better; once you learn that bit of truth, you don’t need your mother to tell you again. This second option turns god into a divine Google.

One way you take away your god’s power, the other way you take away his mercy. In fact, the omniscience and omnipotence of any god are a major dilemma for theologians to this day.

Either way, divine command theory destroys your idea of god. Theologians agree. And in fact St. Thomas Aquinas came up with a clever, but fatally flawed, way of avoiding the Euthyphro Problem.

Natural Law

St. Thomas Aquinas used Aristotle’s metaphysics to build a moral philosophy. The result was his Natural Law, a theory that is no longer taken seriously among most philosophers but one which nevertheless has remained influential in the public imag- ination. If reason reveals to us how nature works—as Aristotle believes—and if we also know that God made nature, then it follows that reason reveals to us that this is the way it has to work, since God made it that way. So it is the case that the right thing to do ends up being what God commands, but not because God commands it but rather because “in the light of reason” you yourself find that moral truth revealed to you. Unnatural equals bad, natural equals good. That is Natural Law according to St. Thomas Aquinas. Never mind that, for example, the most natural thing in life would be to die of cancer, slowly and in pain. It is a good bet few people today would call chemother- apy, radiation therapy, and pain killers wrong—though they are all certainly unnatu- ral. If you have ever taken an aspirin, you have committed an unnatural act. The idea that “unnatural” means “bad,” or that “letting nature take its course” is always a good thing are just two examples of the influence of Aquinas’ Natural Law—as is the Catholic church’s continuing endorsement of all of Aquinas’ teachings. This is not merely an academic topic: such current issues as the morality of condom use, abortion, and homosexuality are still discussed in some quarters in terms of Natural Law. Is there a natural way to do things? Do you think everything in the universe has a proper function? Does reason reveal this to you?

“An ‘is’ is not an ‘ought’”

—David Hume

David Hume, a brilliant Scottish philosopher, proposed some devastating cri- tiques of Natural Law, namely that one can’t get an “ought” out of an “is.” How is a law of nature different from a law of morals? Even if Aquinas had been right about every description of nature that his reason apparently revealed to him—and clearly he was not: the Earth is not flat, though many people were burned at the stake for saying that it wasn’t—merely describing something is not the same thing as prescrib- ing or judging it. Science is descriptive, ethics is prescriptive, normative.

One needs reasons, clear and impartial reasons, to begin making ethical argu- ments. One cannot obtain a prescriptive or normative statement—that is, a moral judgment—from a descriptive statement. As Hume pointed out in one of the most devastating, pithy claims in all of moral philosophy, an “is” is not an “ought.” Natural Law rests on a mistake.

POWERFUL IDEAS: HOW DO YOU JUDGE?

There are three elements to consider in making a moral judgment: the act in question, the consequences of that act, and the moral agent, that is, the person performing that act. Which do you think matters the most?

John Stuart Mill and the Utilitarians

Mill’s no-nonsense philosophy is behind most of today’s civil rights, privacy rights, marriage equality, and reproductive rights arguments. In his groundbreaking essay On Liberty, he points out that over one’s own body and mind, one is sovereign, and no

government or individual has a right to interfere. Classical utilitarianism, based on the ideas of Mill and others, is also called consequentialism and encompasses three propositions. First, in judging an action right or wrong, consider only the conse- quences; nothing else matters. Second, is assessing those consequences, consider only the amount of happiness or unhappiness they bring; nothing else matters. Third, and this remains perhaps the most controversial, the happiness of each and every person affected by the action counts the same.

CONSEQUENCES MATTER?

Are the consequences of an act what matter the most in making a moral decision? Would you call yourself a utilitarian? Why, or why not?

Immanuel Kant and the Categorical Imperative

Are some things simply always right and some others wrong no matter what? Kant’s philosophy is also called deontological, from the Greek word for duty. There are actions that reason shows us it is our duty to take, and actions that are always wrong no matter what. Kant’s Categorical Imperative revolutionized ethics and remain perhaps the most influential uses of reason applied to moral matters: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law,” and “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never only as a means.” In other words, don’t do something you wouldn’t want everyone else to do. And don’t treat people as things, because you know better.

This theory has wide implications. For example, it is wrong to kill innocent peo- ple and you would not want anyone to do that—that would go against the categorical imperative that your own reason shows you. So you can’t do it, even if the innocent person is a terminal cancer patient experiencing excruciating pain, even if it is you. The main argument against suicide today is Kantian. The main argument favoring assisted suicide is utilitarian: the consequences of the act are the end of suffering for the person who is suffering, that is a good consequence that it the patient’s choice, and no one else’s happiness or unhappiness is affected directly in the same way.

Aristotle and The Ethics of Virtue

The oldest moral philosophy we have is in many ways still the freshest. Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, tells us that ethics is about “no small matter, but how we ought to live.” Three generations after Socrates, around 325 BC, Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics—the first full, comprehensive treatment of the subject in the history of humanity—put this crucial question not in terms of the right thing to do, but rather of the right way to be: for Aristotle, ethics is a question of character. The most desir- able character is that of a virtuous person because, according to Aristotle, that per- son simply will fare better in life. That is, a virtuous person in the long run is likelier to be happy.

So What Is Virtue?

Aristotle defines it as a midpoint between two extremes, those of excess and defi- ciency. For example, a generous person is neither cheap nor extravagant. A coura- geous soldier is neither reckless nor coward—to which Aristotle adds that “courage in an unworthy cause is no courage at all.” These and other virtues are cultivated by habit: no one is born friendly, industrious, dependable, tactful, thoughtful, or tolerant. Just as it is only by practicing and competing that one becomes a great Olympic ath- lete, Aristotle mentions in one of his examples, it is only by doing the things a virtuous person does that one becomes virtuous. Loyalty, fairness, honesty, consideration, dis- cretion, and even love all are things we learn only by doing and by doing them well.

They are also qualities that are likelier to lead to a happy life.

The ethics of virtue has become a powerful force in current moral debates. Particularly in an increasingly secular world, the ethics of virtue provides common ground for dialog among believers and nonbelievers alike, as among Jews, Chris- tians, and Muslims—all of whom, incidentally, have been greatly influenced by Aris- totle in matters of theology as well as in ethics. Regardless of the source of one’s beliefs, it seems eminently sensible to ask both what makes people happy and what traits of character make for a good person. In other words, it makes more sense to ask “What kind of person would do this?” or “Would a good person do such a thing? than to ask “Is this right? or “Is this wrong?”

Elizabeth Anscombe, a British philosopher known not only for her neo-Kan- tian views but also for having gravitated toward Aristotle near the end of her life, perhaps put it best in her 1958 Modern Moral Philosophy when she claimed that “The concepts of obligation—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—and of what is morally right and morally wrong, and of the moral sense of ‘ought,’ ought to be jettisoned . . . . . It would be a great improvement if, instead of ‘morally wrong,’ one always named a genus such as ‘untruthful,’ ‘unchaste,’ ‘unjust.’.These, Aristotle and his followers believe, all are things everyone needs. That is, despite all our differences, we all want to be happy, and we all can approach happiness by leading virtuous lives.

POWERFUL ANALYSIS: DOING THE RIGHT THING

• MAKING AN ARISTOTELIAN MORAL ARGUMENT. —Would a virtuous person do this? —What kind of person would do this? —Would the kind of person I want to be do this?

• MAKING A KANTIAN MORAL ARGUMENT. —Am I acting as if according to a maxim that I would will to become a

universal law? —Am I treating humanity, in my own person as well as that of others, as

an end in itself and never as a means to an end?

MAKING A UTILITARIAN MORAL ARGUMENT.

—Consider the consequences of the act, not the act itself and not the moral agent.

—Consider the amount of happiness or the elimination of unhappiness those consequences bring. Nothing else counts.

—Everyone counts the same, if the consequences affect them directly in the same way.

MAKING AN EXISTENTIALIST MORAL ARGUMENT.

—Whatever reasons you choose to back up your argument—and any of the methods above can provide clear reasons that may be impartially applied—never lose sight of the fact that it is you who are choosing. Ethics is always, unavoidably and intensely personal. It really is up to you to choose.

Ethics Is Always Personal

Aristotelian ethics plays well with others, and it has not only gained ground among Kantians but also closed parallels in existentialist ethics of ambiguity. This ambigu- ity is always personal, and it is part of human existence.

POWERFUL IDEAS: LIFE HERE AND NOW

“From the moment he is born, from the instant he is conceived, man begins to die . . . Man knows it. For him, this life that makes itself by unmak- ing itself is not just a natural process; it itself thinks itself. He affirms him- self as pure interiority against which no exterior power could take hold, and he also submits himself as a thing crushed by the obscure weight of other things” (S. de Beauvoir, Introduction to an Ethics of Ambiguity)

The consoling metaphysics Beauvoir mentions in passing is actually a couple of thousand years’ worth of moral philosophy, from Aristotle to Kant and Mill, to this day. There is no such thing as ethics in a vacuum, as Aristotle noticed in his magisterial Nicomachean Ethics. Fond of using examples from sports and the arts— there were good games in nearby Olympia, after all, and Athens by all accounts had a fine theater scene—Aristotle points of what virtues are needed to help lead athletes and artists alike reach excellence in their chose fields.

According to Aristotle, we learn how to do something by doing it well, and by doing it that way often enough that it becomes a habit. Excellence in, say, playing the lyre requires many virtues including talent, education, persistence, practice and more practice and then actually showing up to play and play well. Excellence in sports wants many of the same virtues, talent, education, persistence, practice and more practice and then actually showing up to play and play well. Lionel Messi, arguably e world’s greatest football player, reached that goal of excellence through years of training, persistence, practice, and by making use of his talent by belonging to a great training program and a great team. He also showed up, and he keeps showing up, get- ting better and better—no one stays the same, and that direction up or down is always personal as well as in relation to material conditions. It is not what you mean to do or what you able to do that counts for Aristotle. It is what you actually do and do well.

In both sports and music, you also need equipment: the lyre player needs a lyre; the football player needs a ball and a team. Someone has to pay for these, and there the ethical question becomes political: a good piano, for example, costs about $30,000, and the most musically talented child may never reach his or her potential as a great pianist if that piano is not available. Who will pay for that? Who has the right to opportunity—the young musician with the talent or the one with the money? This particular element of the discussion is political and is at the heart of the chap- ter that follows.

In ethics, Aristotle was among the first to notice the obvious but often over- looked requirement talent, education, practice us to happiness, and how excellence in any of the virtues is likelier than its opposite to help anyone reach that happiness.

We are not alone here, we are with other people who themselves are facing the same moral decisions.

“. . . This means that in establishing a certain conduct as a possibility and precisely because it is my possibility, I am aware that nothing can compel me to adopt that conduct. Yet I am already there in the future, and in this sense there is a relation between my future being and my present being. But a nothingness has slipped into the heart of this relation. What I am now is not the foundation of what I will be. I am the self which I will be in the sense of not being it”

—Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness.

These hard questions don’t go away. Beauvoir and Sartre are right in their phenomenological description of what goes on when we make any moral decision. Moral pitfalls remain, too, and this is itself a good reason to strive for as much clarity as possible in making moral judgments. Different, sound moral theories from Aristo- tle to this day alarmingly can lead to different and often opposing ethical positions on specific ethical problems in everyday life. There is in fact a lot to be said for helping ourselves to these theories that have emerged over millennia of moral philos- ophy. But the moral decision is still yours to make, and the action is yours to take. Ethics is personal, and it is definitely on you.

CHAPTER 12

There are various questions raised by rise of civilized society and the formation of government. Governments are arranged in various ways. Some governments have a single leader, elected by no one while other governments are lead by leaders elected by the citizens. The economic distribution and redistribution also vary in a number of ways. In this chapter, we examine some classic views on government as well as some contemporary views on the notion of justice.

POWERFUL IDEA: SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT

Democracy—rule by the people, after Ancient Athens always through elected officials.

Socialism—rule by the people, with its elected government guaranteeing their welfare.

Monarchy—rule by a king. Oligarchy—rule by a group. Theocracy—rule by religious leaders.

Despotism or Dictatorship—rule by someone who has seized the government by force.

POWERFUL ANALYSIS: FREEDOM OR CONTROL?

What should the balance be between individual freedom, our individual autonomy, and social control?

Natural Right’s Theorists: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke both discuss their views on political philosophy within a school of thought known as natural rights theory. Natural rights are rights we have without a government. They are rights that we have in virtue of our humanity. Natural rights are akin to what we now call human rights although there are important philosophical differences. One key difference is that natural rights are argued to exist even in the absence of government or civil society. Many of the “human rights” argued for by groups like Amnesty International or the United Nations are the rights that could only be held within a civil society.

Often, when you hear people discussing human rights abuses, they mean abuses of certain basic rights. Unlike the notion of human rights (which can be rather muddled as various organizations and groups define such rights in different ways), natural rights have a long detailed history in philosophy. Rights such as the right to life or the right to liberty are often argued to be natural rights.

Natural rights are rights that people have without any legislation or action by the government; some (such as Hobbes and Locke) argue that they would exist even if there were no government. These rights should be distinguished from positive rights, which are created by an act of legislation by the government. The govern- ment makes a law, and a right is created. Dogs have positive rights. Even trees can have positive rights so long as the government passes a law granting them certain pro- tections. For example, at present, people living in the state of Colorado have a right to smoke marijuana, whereas no such right exists in the state of Florida. In Colorado, the voters (by means of political process) have obtained the right—a right which is not a natural right. Positive rights vary from state to state and country to country.

There is no clear philosophical foundation for natural rights. Writers such as Hobbes and Locke argued that natural rights were granted by God. However, this view carries little philosophical weight. It may simply be that there existence is simply a basic supposition of political theory.

POWERFUL ANALYSIS: WHERE DO RIGHTS COME FROM?

We assume we have many rights, but where do our rights originate? Do all of our rights come from the government?

Hobbes and Locke also argue for natural rights in the context of the state of nature. The state of nature is a hypothetical situation where mankind is living with- out any government. Rousseau discusses the state of nature as well, but mainly to criticize the conception of it presented by Hobbes and Locke.

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was born in Wiltshire, on April 5, 1588. His father was the vicar of a parish. He studied at Magdalen Hall in Oxford entering the college with a firm grasp of both Greek and Latin. He left Oxford in 1608 and became the private tutor for the eldest son of Lord Cavendish of Hardwick (later known as the Earl of Devonshire). He traveled with the Cavendish family across Europe tutoring their young son. Given his connections to the noble family, he had the opportunity to meet many of his contemporary thinkers including Francis Bacon, Herbert of Cherbury, and Ben Johnson.

In 1651, Hobbes published his most influential book, Leviathan. Hobbes argues that the government can be seen as a great creature (The leviathan, a mythical ser- pent) composed of the citizens with the king as its head. Hobbes argued that the government’s main purpose was the protection of people from their own selfishness. A ruler with absolute authority was the only one who could maintain peace.

Hobbes argues for this analysis of government by discussing the state of nature. According to him, mankind was born into the state of nature. As noted above, the state of nature is a hypothetical situation where mankind is living with no government. In such a situation, there is no one in charge to make political or legal decisions. On Hobbes’ view, life in the state of nature is “short, nasty, and brutish.” There are no arts or letters, only a “war of all against all.” In this state, all people have an equal right to everything. Right, in Hobbes’ view, is equal to freedom, “the freedom, to do what he would, and against whom he thought fit, and to possess, use and enjoy all that he would or could get.”

Although we have a bare right to all, we also have two natural rights. As Hobbes says, “The right of nature, which writers commonly call jus natural, is the liberty each man hath to use his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, his own life, and consequently, of doing anything which, in his own judgment and reason, he shall conceive to be the most apt means thereunto.” In other words, we are at liberty to do anything we must for the preser- vation of our life.

On his view, the life of war ultimately becomes tiresome, for even the strongest must sleep, and even then the weakest could kill them. The constant fear of death and loss leads mankind out of the state of nature. In order to leave the state of nature, we must employ our natural reason, which he believes allows us to be aware of two laws of nature. The laws of nature are to “seek peace and follow it” and two, “be willing, were others are willing to do so too, as far as needed for peace, and defense of himself as he shall think it necessary, to lay down his right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow against himself.” From these two laws of natural reason, Hobbes concludes that all men should lay down their bare right to everything and alienate all of their rights to one individual, the sovereign.

Hobbes goes on to argue that once we form a social contract and leave the state of nature, we are bound by the contract for eternity. In other words, we may not revolt against the government since we have promised to obey the sover- eign. The reality, of course, is that none of us where there when the original social contract was formed, so it is unclear if we are bound by the hypothetical/ historical oath.

Contemporary political philosophy may argue that although many citizens may have never given express consent to be governed, we give our tacit consent by remaining in the country. Express consent is when a person actually states an oath of allegiance or a promise to obey the government. Persons that become naturalized citizens do this when they take an oath, as do men whom are 18 years of age and fill out a draft card for military service. Tacit consent is consent that is “unexpressed, unspoken, unsaid, and implicit.” The fact that we remain present in the country is taken are our tacit consent to obey its laws and constitution.

John Locke

John Locke was born on August 29, 1632, in Warrington, a village in Somerset, England. In 1668, he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society; in 1674, he gradu- ated as a bachelor of medicine; and in 1675, he was appointed to a medical student- ship at the college. Although he was formally trained in medicine, he worked in a number of advisory positions to high-level government leaders such as the Earl of Shaftesbury who became Lord Chancellor in 1672.

Locke wrote his major political work, Two Treatises of Civil Government in the 1680s, but in a time of political turmoil and upheaval in England, the ideas and the works expressed were thought to be revolutionary and contrary to royal authority. Locke had to flee into exile in Holland during this period in his life. The work was finally published in 1690. In the works he puts forth his theory of natural law and natural rights in which he makes a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate civil governments. He also argues that there can be times when revolution is justified. He argues that the reason the government is established is to protect the life, liberty, and property of a people. If these goals are not fulfilled by the government, then rebellion is legitimate.

POWERFUL IDEAS: JOHN LOCKE AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

John Locke had a powerful influence upon the American Revolution. His ideas served as the basis for various documents including the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence readily admitted that he based it upon John Locke’s political philosophy. The most obvious example found in the Declaration is the phrase, “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,” which mirrors Locke’ notion of the natural rights to “life, liberty and property.” Locke’s philoso- phy provided a philosophical legitimacy for the American Revolution and revolutions against tyrannical governments everyone.

John Locke argues from the state of nature to the foundations of political society. Locke’s conception of the state of nature differs from Hobbes. He says that it is not a state of war but rather, “Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on Earth with authority to judge between them is, properly, the state of nature.” Locke argues that we have certain fundamental natural rights. We are endowed with these rights even in absence of any government or political association.

“The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property”

—John Locke, 1690, Two Treatises of Civil Government

Locke argues that mankind has three natural rights: life, liberty, and property. He says that in the state of nature, we can acquire property rights. He employs a notion known as the labor theory of property. The labor theory of property, succinctly put, states that if you work for something, and it is not already owned by someone, then you acquire ownership of it. This is to be distinguished from the the- ory of surplus value analyzed by Karl Marx, which is discussed below.

Locke argues that because we can have property rights in the state of nature, but we cannot adequately protect it, we ought to enter into a civil government. On Locke’s view, we do not give up all of our rights to the government rather the government has a duty to protect us and our rights. Governments that fail to protect our basic rights are illegitimate and we may revolt against them.

POWERFUL ANALYSIS: THE STATE OF NATURE

Compare and contrast the various views of Hobbes and Locke on the state of nature and natural rights.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau claims that both Hobbes and Locke mischaracterize the state of nature. In a true state of nature, man is not motivated by greed, envy, or acquisi- tion of material things. On Rousseau’s view, natural man (living in a true state of nature) is motivated by love of self and only cares about self-preservation. Natural man is not motivated by greed or love of material goods. One does not see wild ani- mals wearing gold and jewels. Even the higher primates do not acquire property—so in Rousseau’s mind, a true state of nature would be mankind living together in peace and harmony. He seems to assume there would be enough resources for people to survive without war or conflict, but in his view, that is a true and accurate represen- tation of the state of nature.

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody”

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754, Discourse on Inequality.

The state of nature presented by Hobbes and Locke is what Rousseau calls pre-political man. Pre-political man has yet to form a government but has been corrupted from the natural state by the goals of acquisition of property and wealth. Ultimately, mankind completely leaves its natural state and enters into civil society once we move from the goal of self-preservation toward the goal of acquiring property and wealth. At this point, mankind becomes motivated by greed and corrupted by envy.

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are”

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762, The Social Contract

Rousseau is highly critical of civil society. He is so critical in fact that he began his literary career by entering (and winning) an essay contest in which writers were supposed to applaud and praise civilization by writing an essay expressing the exact opposite views. He argued that morals had become corrupted by science and tech- nology and that mankind had placed too much emphasis on logic at the expense of our natural senses and feelings.

In regards to his political views, he argues that all of mankind is in chains. He thinks we are all prisoners and slaves of the government. We are controlled by laws, rules, and regulations we did not impose on ourselves but rather that were imposed on us from outside political forces and politicians. He thinks that we can only be truly free when we are part of a direct democracy. Direct democracy is the notion that each citizen has an active role in the government and has an equal say and role in the creation of laws. Given the fact that most countries have millions or hundreds of millions of citizens, it seems to be a very impractical (if not impossible) approach to governance.

Most democratic countries rely upon representative democracy. Under such a system, the citizens vote for representatives that represent their political interest.

Although Rousseau’s approach seems rather improbable, he does argue that it would lead mankind toward freedom in that we all would be executives and citizens at once. Each person would be the government, and at the same time, subject to laws of their own creation.

Rousseau continues his romantic idealism by maintaining that under such a system, the people must be guided by the general will. The general will is the opin- ion people will reach, if they consider a matter objectively and determine what is best for society as a whole (and are not swayed by their personal interest). Rousseau believes that if given the unbiased facts, everyone in a society could unanimously agree about what is the correct course of action that will benefit the common good of society.

In contrast to the general will, Rousseau discusses the dangers of the will of all. The will of all is simply the will of the majority, considering only their self- interest—not what is best for society. At present, it would seem most political elec- tions end in results which are motive by the will of all, not the general will. The will of all is the will of the majority, it is what the majority of people desire, it may not have the common good of all society as its goal. This notion of rule by majority is a serious problem for Rousseau, and in his view this leads to an immoral government.

Social Justice, Equality, and Liberty

John Stuart Mill was a social reformer and proponent of liberty and freedom. He worked to reform and revised Jeremy Bentham’s statement of the ethical theory of utilitarianism and was a precursor to libertarian ideals. In his essay On Liberty, he argues that the limiting principle against positive legislations of government is harm. The government must not extent into the private affairs of its citizens except to stop harm to others. So, the only legitimate laws according to Mill are laws that protect you from others, but not from yourself.

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill puts forth a famous liberty limiting principle that is known as “the Harm Principle.” This principle is probably the most per- missive of the liberty limiting principles. It says, in extended form, “ The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the lib- erty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right . . . The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

Libertarianism

John Hospers is a contemporary philosopher who argues for libertarian views. Libertarians argue for a limited government, one that has as its sole purpose, pro- tection. Hospers states that of the three types of laws that government enacts: 1) laws protecting you from yourself, 2) laws protecting you from others, and 3) laws making you help others, only the second class of laws are legitimate. The other two are the result of government superseding its bounds.

In his 1974 book, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Robert Nozick argues for a modern libertarian view, similar to that of John Hospers. Nozick argues for a minimalist state, one limited whose sole purpose is to provide to protection to its citizens. He maintains that citizens need protection from: force, fraud, and breach of con- tract. In his view, a government, which acts like more than a night-watchman, is infringing upon the rights and liberty of its citizens. Nozick also defends a view known as the entitlement notion of justice. Under this view, a person is entitled to what they have rightly acquired, and justice consists in each person’s retaining control over their acquisitions.

Justice as Fairness

John Rawls defined justice as fairness. He argues that everyone ought to have the same basic liberties, and any social or economic inequality ought to benefit the poor instead of the rich. Inequality, say in taxes, ought to be at the expense of the rich in order to benefit the poor. He argues that we would arrive at these principles if we were in the original position. The original position is a hypothetical situation where there is no government.

He argues that these two principles are the guiding force behind his conception:

1) Each person has an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all.

2) Social and economic inequalities are to meet two conditions: they must be (a) to the greatest expected benefit to the least advantaged; (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity (A Theory of Justice, 1971).

In the original position, each participant represents various social groups that are present in society. In the original position, each participant is under the veil of ignorance. The veil of ignorance is a hypothetical thought experiment where one is to imagine oneself as a representative of the populous as a whole. Under the veil, you will be looking for guiding principles of justice and begin to stipulate laws and regulations for your government.

POWERFUL ANALYSIS: RAWLS VS. NOZICK

Compare and contrast the views of Rawls and Nozick on Justice. Which, if any, seems to have a more reasonable notion?

Rawls believes that if you did not know if you were a man, a woman, or a minor- ity, you would not create laws that benefit one social group at the expense of another— since you are ignorant of your social status and position. Given that you do not know your race or your economic class, Rawls thinks that a reasonable person in such a situa- tion would adapt his strategy of maximizing the situation of those in the least advanta- geous social position. It is Rawls’ view that if one were to engage in such a thought experiment, then you could develop the most fair and just social principles and laws.

Powerful Thinkers: Karl Marx

Karl Marx (1818–1883) employs a dialectical analysis of history to argue that because of the exploitation of the workers by the capital- ist will lead to a revolution of the workers, to socialism where the pro- letariat’s interests and welfare will be guaranteed by the state; and eventually to communism, where the necessity for the state will dis- appear along with alienation of labor from life. Simply put, according to Marx’s analysis of society, it is not fair that the owners of business make all the money and profit, when the workers are the ones actu- ally doing the work.

This notion is captured by his theory of surplus value. In this the- ory, the harder you work for something, the more value it has. In his mammoth 1863 Theories of Surplus Value, intended as a fourth vol- ume of his revolutionary Capital, the value in question is the differ- ence between what it costs to have a worker create a product with his labor and what price the capitalist who owns the means of pro- duction can get for whatever the worker creates. In Marx’s view, the owners of the means of production do little but reap the rewards, and he proposes that those actually performing the labor should earn the money.

An anti-Marxist objection would suggest that Marx never spent any time in a middle management position. There is no question that day laborers work very hard, but perhaps the owner and manager have some say in a business’s success. Furthermore, the saying “work smarter not harder” may call this theory into question from a reac- tionary point of view. You could work very hard and struggle to climb a tree and pick a coconut, whereas someone else could use a pole and knock the coconut out of the tree with little effort, but at the end of the day, it is just a coconut—it has limited value. The value of

objects does not vary in accordance with how hard you worked to get or create the object in most cases. Marx’s point remains, however, that whoever owns the coconut gets to eat or sell it for a profit— whether he or she picked it or not.

It is important to note that Marx’s philosophy has little to do with the way his views were put to revolutionary use after his death. His early works in particular, from his 1841 doctoral dissertation on Democritus (460–370 BCE) and Epicurus (341–270 BCE) through The German Ideol- ogy (1845), The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), and the Communist Mani- festo (1848)—excerpted in this chapter—are primarily philosophical works that are far from the so-called “scientific materialism” of later developments in Marxism. Marx was not a materialist, though his views are certainly ambiguous on this crucial ontological issue. Marx’s later writings, which focus on the philosophical foundations of political action, did provide Vladimir Illych Lenin (1870–1924) the philosophical trappings of a practical plan for what would prove to be tragic and ruth- lessly opportunistic perversions of Marx’s own humanistic philosophy.

Criticism of what Marxism became after the Russian Revolution has been strong and pointed, from philosophers as diverse as Rosa Luxem- burg (1871–1919) in Leninism or Marxism? Georg Lukacs (1885–1975) in the visionary History and Class Consciousness; Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) in Reason and Revolution and One-Dimensional Man, and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) in The Ghost of Stalin and especially in his posthumously published masterpiece of political philosophy Critique of Dialectical Reason.

Making full use of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) dia- lectic method and his vision of the human being constantly making and remaking himself, Marx in fact anticipated much of today’s humanism in his own dialectical philosophy. What Sartre called humanism in action is at the heart of Marx’s vision, as the French phi- losopher explained in his celebrated preface to Franz Fanon’s (1925–1961) 1961 The Wretched of the Earth: “The demands of the least favored members of society express the truth of a society,” Sartre writes, “not least because their interests are often in clear contradiction with the values espoused by that society itself.”

Marx ultimately believes in an egalitarian society, where everyone is equal in social status. This type of humanism—egalitarianism in action has yet to happen.

“We work for the betterment of mankind, not material gain.”

— Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: First Contact

It should be pointed out that Marxist socialist views of the role of the state in guaranteeing the welfare of all citizens have become the current state of affairs in many, if not most, developed democracies: guaranteed free health care, guaranteed retirement with dignity, free education for everyone, a lessening rather than widen- ing gap in overall income, and heavy taxing of capitalist interests in order to pay for these social guarantees are more often the rule, not the exception, in post-World War II Western Europe. If anything, Lenin’s Russian revolution of 1917, held back the cause of Marxism as Marx himself envisioned it, and the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1989 is leading to a re-examination of Marx’s ideas in the twenty-first century.

Without doubt, socialism as Marx envisioned it has never been realized under the tyrannies of self-described Marxist societies, as Alan Ryan notes in “Socialisms” at the end of this chapter. From the Soviet Union’s murderously influential Marxism–Leninism and China’s Maoism with its bizarre transformation into a state- capitalist hybrid, right through Cuba’s Castrismo and Venezuela’s Chavismo during

and after the Chávez dictatorship, human rights, freedom, and life with dignity are not valued in any of these governments any more than well-planned economic development or general happiness.

Perhaps humanism in action, that elusive egalitarian society for which Karl Marx made the blueprint, has only been epitomized in Star Trek: First Contact, where Captain Picard once said, “We work for the betterment of mankind, not material gain.”

Ultimately, it is unfortunate but true that there is no agreement regarding the structure, nature, and purpose of government. History may be the ultimate judge of which systems work. It may be the case that certain systems can thrive at certain times and under certain social or cultural conditions.

SoWhatDoYouDoNow?

We are not alone here, and none of us lives in a perfect society. No question is posed in a vacuum, and few answers are perfectly clear when it comes to how to live and what to do. We don’t in fact all work for the betterment of mankind, as

Captain Picard would want us to in Star Trek. If we think about it, there is not a lot we can be sure of. In the meantime, we live, here and now, always with others. It is no accident that philosophy and democracy grew up side by side, that ethics in ancient Athens was from the beginning discussed in the polis, always leading to poli- tics. These are not just theoretical questions that philosophy is posing; these are powerful ideas that can point our way. Philosophy matters, particularly amid the balkanization of disciplines and fragmentation of learning that are all too com- mon. These are powerful ideas that lead us away from isolation and toward the immense diversity all around us.

So, what now? There is so much we don’t know. Philosophy as the first learn- ing discipline began with a thirst for knowledge. Philosophy began by asking what life means, and that is still an open question. It can be such a confusing and also fuzzy question that some philosophers shy away from asking it. Still, it seems like a perfectly good question, and it is your life after all that you are asking about.

Perhaps you find meaning in believing in another life after this one. Or not. Perhaps life has no meaning, as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre have suggested, except whatever meaning we create for ourselves. But, since we will all be dead in a hundred years, what does it matter anyway?

“It is better for a private citizen to live on equal terms with his fellows, and not to cringe and grovel or to hold his head too high, and in public affairs to support peaceful and honorable policies”

—Cicero

Maybe the meaning of life matters because we’re still here living it. If a desire for immortality makes no sense to you, maybe the meaning of life lies in a higher purpose, in living and working with others, in loving. In being part of a family, of a nation, and of humanity.

Powerful Ideas

Aristotle suggested that the purpose of human life is in fact happiness, eudaemo- nia, not any quick-fix passing pleasure but rather true happiness over an entire life. The post-Aristotelians proposed more modest goals, such as Epicurus’s concept of ataraxia, that is, freedom from worry. Concentrate on what really matters to you and just relax.

“Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality”

—Epicurus

Still, what Marx called material conditions always have been undeniable, and these conditions in fact place brutal limits on your possibilities. Political philosophy can only guide you a bit in affecting your situation in the here and now. What Marx called material conditions always have been undeniable, and these conditions in fact place brutal limits on your possibilities.

And what about suffering? According to both Buddhists and existentialists, life is suffering. For the Buddhists, suffering emerges from desire, so eliminating unneces- sary desire may put us on the right path to happiness. For existentialists, suffering and anguish are the flip side of blind faith. If indeed we are alone here—alone with other people, that is—in a world that will not give us any answers, then our situation is absurd. What meaning can we find in that?

Perhaps we can find meaning amid all the absurdity. All this philosophy seemingly has not led to clear answers so far. All these big abstract questions about what is real and how we know that, about how to love and what to do—none of these ever lead to answers that are as clear as 2 + 2 + 4. Philosophy may not give us clear answers, but isn’t it a great travel companion for this life journey?

“There is no shame in choosing joy”

—Albert Camus

Powerful ideas for centuries, for millennia, have set us on an intensely personal journey of discovery. “There is only one serious philosophical question,” wrote Albert Camus, “and that is suicide. Whether life is worth living or not amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” Start with that one and keep going.

As Camus describes the human condition in his Myth of Sisyphus, we are all condemned to roll a rock uphill ceaselessly and constantly, then we die. The catch here, and it’s a good one, is that we can choose our attitude. We can choose to be happy. No, we are not alone here. And it’s on us to make that happen.