[lit-ideas] Re: A serious inquiry: Hannah
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 19:43:37 -0230
Thanks John, but your post is travelling on different rails. See specific
replies below.
Quoting John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>:
> On 8/11/06, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I am not sure what kind of help you are seeking, but
> > for what it's worth I think that political judgements
> > entail moral judgements. More specifically, they seem
> > to include judgements on which ends are desirable (i.e
> > moral) and practical judgements on whether these ends
> > are attainable and how they are to be attained. It's
> > mistifying to me then how moral judgements can contain
> > components that are absent from political judgements.
>
> One empirical possibility is that the scope of morality is restricted
> to the range of what Meyer Fortes (a British social anthropologist)
> labeled "the axiom of amity," i.e., that set of social relations that
> fall within the boundary that divides kin from non-kin. Where kinship
> is perceived, morality applies. Non-kin have no right to assert moral
> claims.
W: Kinship, along with all other cultural or "ethical" categories" can yield
only hypothetical imperatives not categorical imperatives. Only the latter is
the true province of morality. Kinship, as you render it, seems to violate the
Principle of Equal Respect for Persons, a fundamental feature of the form of
law for Kant.
> This pattern is a familiar one in tribal and traditional societies
> where kinship and humanity are equivalent, so that non-kin equals
> non-human and exploiting, torturing or killing non-humans is, thus,
> not a moral issue.
W: Squirrely stuff. Wouldn't fly in a constitutional democracy like Canada. Such
a democracy constitutes a Republic of Ends - a form of governance grounded in
the Categorical Imperative of Equal Respect for Personhood. (Factors of
identity such as gender, sexual preference, religious affiliation, cultural
affiliations are irrelevant.)
> From this perspective, liberal moral squeamishness reflects our
> embrace of the Kantian proposition that moral judgments should be
> universally applicable, at least in regard to members of the human
> species.
W: The idea is that the universalizability of maxims entails moral
permissibility for any rational form of life, human or otherwise. This may not
seem important today, but wait until the aliens land on the outskirts of
Arizona. Music or mathematics won't sufficiently cut it, I don't think.
>
> Tangentially, this may, at least in part, explain the attachment of
> conservative thinkers to scriptural literalism and Linnaean
> classificaitons. Darwinian evolution is, among other things, a ground
> for regarding every member of the species homo sapien as kin; thus
> falling within the boundary to which moral judgments apply.
W: "Personhood" is not a count noun. It applies equally to all forms of
rationally autonomous being. We each possess personhood in our"individual"
being, but that predicate is not owned by any member of the class. It is shared
across rational forms of life. Hence the universalizability criterion as a test
of moral permissibility and obligation.
>
> Regardless, however, of philosophical wisdom, the persistence of our
> basic "tribal" mindset is evident from the labeling and images that
> appear whenever armed conflict between human groups
> occurs:"Barbarians," "Huns," "Japs," "Gooks," now "Hadjis" are only a
> few familiar examples.
W: That's empirically true but philosophically irrelevant. Ignorance and bad
manners require education. "Cosmopolitan education" as thought of by Kant,
Nussbaum and others. What people actually do has no necessary moral status;
what morality requires is not determined by canvassing various tribes, cultures
or religions in some anthropological way. At least that's what Kant thought. I
think he's right.
Walter C. Okshevsky
Memorial University
>
> John
>
>
> =====
>
>
> John McCreery
> The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
>
> US CITIZEN ABROAD?
> YOU'RE THE DECIDER!
> Register to Vote in '06 Elections
> www.VoteFromAbroad.org
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
