Post No.: 0915
Furrywisepuppy says:
A hot debate in philosophy concerns determining the essential telos or purpose of things e.g. is walking the course on foot an essential element of Tour-level golf? The telos is crucial because you could serve the best moussaka ever… but it’d mean nothing if the purpose was to make the best tiramisu!
To answer these questions, we must debate about the honour and virtues of things e.g. what virtues should the game of golf honour? What features are essential rather than peripheral to the game? Consequently, should golf be honoured as a game of athleticism and skill, or just skill? Should disabled people be allowed to use golf carts when competing for the honour of ‘best golfer’? Are sports just for amusement or are they more than that?
An Aristotelian view of sports is that they’re not just for amusement or a spectacle – they’re also about appreciation and therefore aren’t solely utilitarian activities. Sport is a practice that calls forth, honours and prizes certain excellences and virtues, and those who appreciate those virtues are the true and informed fans. So for Aristotle, to debate about the purpose of things is to also debate about the honour and virtue of things, and vice-versa. The same in debates regarding justice.
One may claim that an organisation like the R&A can set its own rules for its own tournaments however it wishes. But what if it, say, sets a rule stating that women aren’t allowed to play in its tournaments? If they shouldn’t be able to set such a rule then one must be saying they cannot set their own rules for their own tournaments however they wish. In this example, one will have to look into whether gender is relevant to one’s ability to play golf – and to answer this, one must possess a view about what’s essential about the game of golf i.e. the telos of golf.
For Aristotle, one requirement for something to be just is for it to be firstly necessary for a good society to function. The other concerns the fit between a person’s virtues and excellences and their best/most appropriate purpose/role. (See Post No.: 0900 for more about virtue according to Aristotle.) But if so, what about people’s individual freedoms? Even if someone is the best at something – if they don’t want to do it then why should they?
Aristotle did at least recognise that if people are forced into doing things then that’s coercion – and if we have to coerce people into roles then that’s a sign that they’re probably not fit for those roles. So, for him, slavery, in principle, isn’t unjust per se – but if people have to be coerced into becoming slaves then that’d be unjust. During Aristotle’s time though, there were a subset of people whom were deemed ‘fitting slaves’, and slavery was deemed ‘necessary’ for society to function.
Now if we cannot come to a consensus concerning what the teleological purpose of something is – how should we break such deadlocks? Aristotle didn’t say. In a pluralistic society, we cannot even unanimously decide on what’s the purpose of life. And science cannot objectively answer such questions.
Most of modern political theory takes these worries about what is the good as their starting point, and concludes that justice, rights and constitutions shouldn’t be based on any particular conception of what is the good or the purpose of life but instead provide a framework of rights that leave people free to choose their own conceptions. It rejects teleology and the idea of tying justice to some particular concept of the good. It’s not that things don’t have teloses (even if it’s just ‘amusement’). The issue is whether all things have objective, unanimous, inherent and unquestionable teloses – and this clearly isn’t the case for most, if not all, things.
How does a government remain neutral (if it should) when determining what’s virtuous e.g. whether homosexual relationships are moral? Many injustices have been made in the name of ‘legislating morality’. Yet this doesn’t mean using laws to cultivate virtue is entirely wrong – it may just mean that we need to proceed carefully. Although one can think of some severe examples of legal injustices, one can think of many examples where great legal justices have been made and where society has been guided towards more harmonious outcomes through law – therefore laws are useful in guiding diverse citizens to live more virtuously together in a community. Yet maybe laws shouldn’t promote or prohibit actions merely on the basis of morality? And how should a government promote a good life e.g. incentives, punishments, directly, indirectly, softly or aggressively?
Aristotle’s particular notion of the ‘good life’ may not be the same as another’s hence it’d be coercion if one were made to live according to another person’s particular ideals. Immanuel Kant and John Rawls believed that we do need a fair framework of rights within which people can pursue their own conception of the good life and allow for different people to pursue different conceptions of the good life. This all highlights that the concept of ‘freedom’ is itself incredibly subjective e.g. Aristotle believed it meant to live to one’s full potential, whilst Kant believed it meant to act autonomously according to his stringent standards of what it means to be autonomous (a law one gives oneself that even nature didn’t prescribe – so free from history, tradition, inherited status or even the genes and natural urges that we didn’t ourselves choose).
Communitarians, like Michael Sandel, however argue that although individual freedom is appealing, it fails to account for certain moral and political obligations we commonly recognise and even prize, like loyalty, membership, solidarity and other moral ties that may claim us for reasons we cannot trace to an act of consent. What’s true friendship if it’s only based on the market norms of ‘I’ll only stick with you if I think I’m going to personally profit out of it and I’ll be disloyal if I don’t’?
Alasdair Macintyre posited a ‘narrative conception of the self’ – one can only answer ‘what am I to do?’ when one has answered the prior question of ‘what story/stories do I find myself a part of?’ He states, from this logic, that we are never able to seek for the good or exercise virtues only as individuals because we all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity e.g. one is someone’s son or daughter, a citizen of this or that country or city, tribe, clan or other group. Therefore what’s good for us needs to be good for someone who inhabits these roles too. What at least partly defines one as an individual is one’s community. We cannot understand ourselves without putting ourselves in the context of a broader community.
But a counterargument would be why should we be encumbered by the history or traditions of our ancestors or communities? Macintyre argues that if the history of our ancestors has affected our life in some way then we must bear it, at least to some degree. If one has inherited an unjust advantage then things must be corrected for that. If one has inherited an unjust disadvantage then one is entitled to receive correction for that. Even if one didn’t consent to receiving a benefit – if one did at the expense of another then one is obligated to recompense the disadvantaged party. However – where shall we draw the line where something has deemed to have affected our life today or not? How long is too long ago, and how do we determine which parts of our fuzzy ancestors’ histories have relevance today and which don’t without a potential cherry-picking bias?
Macintyre also contends that to ignore our collective responsibilities reflects a kind of moral shallowness; even blindness. For instance, Germans today – even those born after 1945 – should honour the memory of Jewish holocaust victims and maintain their memorials. The individualism expressed by contemporary, generally white, Americans who deny the beneficial effects on their lives from enslaved black Americans historically, exhibits a naivety. (Check out the Brattle Group report on reparations for transatlantic chattel slavery.) We have a responsibility towards what our ancestors did – not in terms of committing the wrongdoings but making adequate reparations for them. Schools should teach every pupil about the atrocities in our own nation’s history. We shouldn’t be or play ignorant to how they shaped our life paths today and how we unfairly benefited from what our ancestors did.
Like communitarians, liberals agree that moral and political obligations arise because there are natural obligations that we owe human beings as human beings – the duty of respect for persons as persons. These obligations are universal. Both also accept that voluntary obligations can arise when people agree to a promise e.g. a contract one signs. These obligations are only applicable to whom we’ve agreed them with.
But communitarians forward a third category that liberals wouldn’t accept – obligations of solidarity (or loyalty, membership or citizenship) e.g. family, or of a parent towards a child.
If two people were about to drown and one was a family member and the other a stranger, one would seem morally obtuse for not attempting to save the former first. Parents chose to have their children hence have a clear responsibility towards them.
However, what if we take the other side? Children never choose their parents. A child never even chose to have any parents at all!
But doesn’t it still feel like moral sense to help one’s own parent over a stranger’s instead of flipping a coin? Yet this moral sense wouldn’t be traceable to any notion of consent. If one admires someone helping their own parent instead of calling it some kind of troubling favouritism then communitarians would argue that this is because we do recognise these obligations of solidarity. Don’t you feel ‘something’ if your national team wins/loses, as if it represents a part of you in some way? It doesn’t have to be in a big way but it affects you relatively more than if another nation won/lost.
There’s family at one level, but there’s also patriotism, or even a prejudice for putting human beings above other animals; albeit Macintyre says that obligations of solidarity are only owed to a particular person or persons but not to all human beings as human beings, never mind animals as animals. But why did he draw the line there? Woof.
Why do people generally put members of their own country above (equally needy and equally as unknown i.e. strangers to them) members from other countries, even if they live just a few metres away from each other and are separated only by a national border?
What if we have to choose between one’s country and one’s species – a conflict of interest between national economics versus protecting the international environment?
A closer/tighter sphere may have priority over a broader one e.g. our city comes before our country (although some contend it should be vice-versa). But any form of priority for one social sphere over another would be arguably arbitrary. Well even though some memberships are natural, like being born to a certain family or as a Homo sapien, and some are merely socially constructed, like citizenship to a certain country – even the natural memberships aren’t based on our own choices and are therefore arbitrary or a lottery from an individual’s perspective.
If reciprocity is the only requirement for obligation then it’s also by lottery that one was born to a certain family or birthplace and therefore proximity to certain other people whom we’ll have a greater chance of interacting or having economic ties with, like others from the same country as you whose taxes are benefiting or have benefited you, or others from the same country as you benefiting or having benefited from your taxes.
We’ll continue with this debate on moral obligations and loyalty another time…
Woof!
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