In the beginning was the deed, not the word.
I can't remember if Goethe or the Allama first said this. Anyway, 'first' is not always a number.But to put it this way is not to suggest that action exists without 'thought' (what the Gita would call 'contemplation').
Holiness within, selfless action without.
----The Gita.
I see someone in pain. I stretch out a hand.
I do not ask: what is pain?
I do not think: is he really in pain, how do I know?
I do not calculate what the benefits and costs of action are, what the
overall calculus of pain and pleasure is.
I do not reflect: do I know this person,
is he my 'brother', am I his keeper?
The act is not a form of knowledge but an acknowledgement of otherness; but if it is not an 'idea', neither is it a feeling. Is it, then, out of a sense of duty that I am impelled to act or do the social norms condition me so?
Second thoughts: we enact morality.
It is tempting in this day and age to favour a conception of ethics that talks about duties and rights (the former cuts us off from happiness; the latter from political manipulation). The dominant paradigm, with its stress on consequentialism (itself part of utilitarianism), offers a rather shallow approach to life: pushpin is a as good as poetry and whether Van Gogh is a good painter or not becomes a matter of taste-and that only! The word 'taste' itself loses its older meaning, a meaning that is synonymous with 'judgement'. Instead, it is assumed to be a mere preference and that preference leads to the good (this itself is a mistake since according to Broome not even Bentham went this far). This empty freedom (what Augustine would call a 'lonely freedom') is, of course, deeply embedded in the market mentality and 'market society' (even though society is said to barely exists for the libertarians , or if it does then it does so as a constraint).
So, what do we have: an abstract individual with a narrow understanding of freedom.
Duty, then.
Immediately we must discount the notion that duty is for its own sake; instead; it is a duty to do something that is good (if there wasn't this connection with the good then the diligence of a Nazi to his duties would count as an ethical stance). But, alternatively, there must be some sort of obligation in a duty, a 'force' that doesn't stem from one's own feelings or interests: 'I am responsible to' puts an undue emphasis on the subject. A solution-if there are any such things as 'solutions'- to this quandary might be forthcoming in the requirement to understand that one's obligations must be as general as possible and addressed to the other person's humanity for them to be a universal principle.
But who has ever seen another person's 'humanity'? One can see the human gestures of a caring person, one can hear someone speak with a human voice, but 'humanity'? What is Man? Modernity struggles with this question and after Auschwitz it is not clear that it has any answer. The Rights of Man?!..the rights of an Englishman, said Berkely.
And what do we owe to the criminal who asks, like a wolf, where is my victim? Are we under any obligation to tell him the truth, no matter what the consequences? Are we not obligated to act toward this particular person, at this particular time, rather than some abstract notion: his humanity? Even the great Simone, who was kind of genius, seems to suggest this-and it is an intuitively appealing view: we can only respect or love that which is the same and what is the same is not the needs of the body but the Spirit in Man. I'm not convinced, though.
And what of tragedy? Sticking too close to principles can mean we miss out on the value of the road not taken: we may think it is right to act in a particular way, that we must act in such and such a way, but still recognize that there are trade-offs involved in doing so. The fragility of the good...
Levinas, then, offers us an approach that is far more radical since it is oriented to a startling otherness, a distance that cannot be breached but that must be acknowledged. Volo ut sis. There is nothing higher than this. Don't look for it. It is the supreme act of hospitality. I read the words of a Jew and understand something of what it is to be a Muslim. For this, an eternal debt of gratitude:
A responsibility stemming from a time before my freedom-before my beginning, before any present. A fraternity existing in extreme separation . Before, but in what past?Responsibility for my neighbour dates from before my freedom in an immemorial past, an unrepresentable past that was never present and is more ancient than consciousness of... This summons to responsibility destroys the formulas of generality by which my knowledge or acquaintance of the other man re-presents him to me as my fellow man. In the face of the other man I am inescapably responsible...
This is the anteriority and chosen nature of an excellence that cannot be reduced to the features distinguishing or constituting individual beings in the order of their world or people, in the role they play in history's social stage, as characters, that is, in the mirror of reflection or self-consciousness.
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4 comments:
Hullo,
When you say that a conceptual framework based on rights and/ or duties is the dominant paradigm in ethics are you referring to ethics as practised in a particular area such as law or public policy or on the level of personal morality, or something else?
I would argue that 'Rights' are an important part of the ethical framework we use in all of the above but there are many areas of life where they are clearly inapplicable e.g. an act of kindness towards a stranger. Saying that we have a right to demand kindness from others or a duty to provide it somehow misses the point. I do think though that 'rights' and particularly human rights are often (mis) used in a rhetorical way to add political clout to a statement 'it is our right that ....'. This of course does mean that such a right does or should exist.
Also, not all conceptions of rights have to be consequentialist. Some define a right to exist where we have cause to value something like autonomy because e.g. the act of choosing, is important in itself for human agents not because of what it may produce.
Hope things are well with you.
Beth
Beth, sorry. Should have made myself clearer (and please remember that these are just thoughts off the top of my head).
I think consequentalism is the dominant 'paradigm' (if that's the right word). Although I do think that rights-claims are of growing importance in terms of entitlements/claims.
of course, you can see my bias when I tend to think that economic thinking plays an increasingly greater role. So, what is 'fair' or just (in allocations of resources or exchanges between people) can be reduced to a description of efficiency (a narrow consequentalist view) or the welfare consequences for the parties involved.
Martha Nussbaum writes how this is increasingly important in law (the law and economics movement ) but I'm not in a position to say how valid that is.
your point about rights and needs is a profound one. Have you read Ignatieff's fascinating book, the needs of strangers?
But yes, which principle we think of dominating (rigths, utility, needs, functionings etc) is probably not a good way of going about it given that the answer is likely to depend on what type of 'good' it is (health, education etc). I guess the only justification I have for making sucha sweeping statement is that it seems that we increasingly think of policies or distributions that follow from them , in terms of their consequences ..the 'evaluative space' is well-being or what I think Hannah arendt pointed out: on our standard of living.
oh yes, when I said that rights cut us off from happiness I meant to say what you say more clearly: its value (politcal, say) is in its link with autonomy ..not the utility/happiness that it generates
i.e we have a right to something and part of its value lies in the possibilities we have , not the exercising of them..and they cannot necessarily be reduced to happiness/utility-even thought these things may accompany them.
Sorry, didn't mean to nitpick. Spending 2 years trying to define human rights has left its mark :-) I should be detoxing from my recent dissertation instead of feeding my argumentativeness....
I very much agree that cost effectiveness lurks within the practical implementation of many legal rights - for example what is considered to be a 'reasonable' standard of healthcare or 'reasonable measures' by courts when scrutinising if a right to health has been violated.
I haven't read the 'needs of strangers' though I have read his 'Human Rights as Idolatry' where his focus is somewhat different. I probably took the thought above about inapplicability of rights from this article by Parekh:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=182847§ioncode=26
I like your comment about the justification for a right may change depending on the good.
Its also fascinating that even if one thinks consequentially like a policy maker, the consequences of having the same legal right e.g. right to privacy in different contexts let alone different countries can be so very different.
Beth
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