[lit-ideas] Re: Giving Reasons [Iraqi] with morality considered
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 12:56:02 -0700
I'm seeing both the Hussein and Bush reasons as exceptions to your criteria
-- unless you are implying that there may be "moral principles and norms"
which have nothing to do "with quality, autonomy, reciprocity and
universality." If so then I misread you, but I now see that is a possible
interpretation of your first sentence in Version A -- although "equality,
autonomy, reciprocity and universality" are so abstract that I could fit
Hussein's & Bush's reasons into them -- perhaps in "autonomy." Hussein has
his reasons, according to Bowman, but they may or may not be moral. They
are, Hussein thinks, expedient. Does morality even enter in it? And
Version B is no further help because given Hussein's reasons morality isn't
learned. He thinks it the prudent or wise thing to do but I fail to see
morality here.
In regard to Bush's decision, perhaps autonomy is the abstract term that
comes closest to the decision he made; although a case could be made for
reciprocity, but only in senses that preclude their being "moral norms."
The US had been attacked and his inaccessible reason is that to avenge the
9/11 attack by an attack against Iraq will be fitting according to an
ancient Honor Code. Perhaps we could say that this action will (according
to the Honor Code) make it less likely that America's autonomy will be
impinged. But Bush probably isn't aware of this reason according to Bowman
and so doesn't engage in any language game to justify it. Furthermore since
it isn't accessible, it isn't relatable to morality. Even if it were
accessible it wouldn't necessarily be relatable to morality. Actions by
heads of state may be prudent and necessary and only moral insofar as it is
needful that the head of state do them and not shirk his duty.
I don't know, Walter, are there questions here? I guess the implicit
questions were intended to be "aren't these two examples exceptions?" If
they aren't, I don't see why they aren't.
Lawrence
Included as reference:
Version A
Moral principles and norms having to do with equality, autonomy, reciprocity
and universality are general criteria which we apply to different contexts,
actions, policies, etc.. Reason-giving is one particular activity or
language-game. We can do it either in accordance with the above stated moral
norms or we can engage in the activity while violating those same norms.
Moral principles originate within our socialization into a particular
culture, set of traditions, etc.. So we, for example, come to learn to
respect the equal freedom of all persons and then we apply this norm within
our particular activities, one of which is reason-giving. (Or we fail to do
so.)
Version B
Moral principles conceptually originate within the activity of giving
reasons.
The former necessarily presuppose the latter. Without this practice, we
could not learn, nor would we have, moral concepts such as equality,
autonomy, right and wrong, obligation, etc.. It's not that these moral
principles and concepts are available to us first, learned first within
acculturation, and then applied to various activities and contexts, one of
which is reason-giving. Rather, what it means to respect others as free and
equal persons, what it means to have an obligation, etc., are intelligible
to us only because we understand what it means to give reasons.
-----Original Message-----
From: wokshevs@xxxxxx [mailto:wokshevs@xxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, September 04, 2006 11:46 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Lawrence Helm
Subject: Re: [lit-ideas] Giving Reasons [Iraqi] with morality considered
Lawrence --
I'm afraid I'll have to ask the question I am infamous for at meetings of
Senate: Is there a question you wish to eventually raise here that is
relevant
to the topic of this discussion? I'm unable to find any question here at
all.
(I know you said "slowly" ... :-)
Labouring on Labour Day,
Walter C. Okshevsky
Memorial U
Quoting Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> I'm going to have some things to say about Walter Okshevsky's concern -
sort
> of, but I'll be leading up to it slowly:
>
>
>
> 1. James Bowman* has some rather interesting things to say about the
> reasons for our invading Iraq. Bowman says that Saddam Hussein lied about
> having WMDs. "Simply put, Saddam lied repeatedly because he was part of
an
> honor culture that demanded he lie."
>
>
>
> "Kenneth Pollack, who has written widely about pre-and postwar Iraq,
doesn't
> quite accept this explanation, but proposes one not unlike it himself,
> writing that Saddam 'may have feared that if his internal adversaries
> realized that he no longer had the capability to use these weapons they
> would try to move against him. In a similar vein, Saddam's standing among
> the Sunni elites who constituted his power base was linked to a great
extent
> to his having made Iraq a regional power base was linked to a great extent
> to his having made Iraq a regional power - which the elites saw as a
product
> of Iraq's unconventional arsenal. Thus openly giving up his WMD could
also
> have jeopardized his position with crucial supporters.'
>
>
>
> "This is only to say that Saddam's honor - his reputation for being
> formidable, warlike and dangerous - was as important to those 'crucial
> supporters' within Iraq as it was to other Arab leaders, and indeed to
> himself . . . In the end, writes Mr. Pollack, what all this amounts to is
> that Saddam 'chose not to "come clean" and cooperate with the U.N. for
fear
> that this would make him look weak to both his domestic enemies and his
> domestic allies, either of whom might then have moved against him."
>
>
>
> 2. Also from Bowman: "President Bush's pre-war speech to the American
> Enterprise Institute, later reiterated in his second inaugural Address and
> elsewhere, that democracy in the Middle East was the best bulwark against
> Middle Eastern Terrorists in America, and that the more important purpose
of
> deposing Saddam was to establish democracy in Iraq as an example to the
rest
> of the Arab world. It seems to me that the president rally believed this,
> just as he really believed in the reality of the WMDs, but that neither
> belief was inconsistent with the idea that both were necessary to fill the
> space left by the unmentionability of honor - and the need that it implied
> to take a further revenge beyond the overthrow of the Taliban regime in
> Afghanistan in order to wipe away the shame, the stain upon American
honor,
> of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
>
>
>
> "American leaders, that is, might conceivably be supposed to care as much
> about looking strong before the world as Saddam Hussein did - and so,
> perhaps, to have come to the conclusion that something more needed to be
> done by way of providing a forceful demonstration to our enemies and
> potential enemies that America was not to be attacked with impunity. Of
> course there was no possibility of the president's saying this. You only
> have to look at the outcry that greeted such occasional forays into
> Texas-style bravado or machismo, so typical of honor cultures but so
> disreputable in our own, as his invitation to the jihadist enemy to 'Bring
> it on.'"
>
>
>
> ". . . it would have been out of the question to mention anything so
> primitive as the retaliatory principle. Yet that principle - what Francis
> Bacon called the 'wild justice' that honors revenge visited upon friends
and
> relatives even unto the most distant cousins of the perpetrator - could
> surely have been invoked against Saddam Hussein, with his history of
> hostility to the United States. Such indiscriminate retaliation simply
has
> no political resonance in the highly moralized and idealized world of
> international relations as it is understood by the average American
voter."
>
>
>
> In regard to (1) if we assume Bowman is correct then Saddam could not give
> reasons let alone confess that he had no WMDs. Was his decision moral? I
> don't know. I only read the Koran once and don't recall anything that
> addressed that specifically. From our standpoint in the West he would
have
> prevented a war if he could have brought himself to bow to the UN's
demands,
> but it would have been dishonorable (in his own eyes and in the eyes of
> Arabs generally) for him to have so bowed.
>
>
>
> In regard to (2) if we assume Bowman is correct then there was a hidden
> reason for going to war with Iraq, the ancient but not utterly irrelevant
> Western Honor Code. It is safe to say there wasn't a single "real" reason
> for invading Iraq, but here we encounter a reason that may not have been
> conscious in anyone's mind. It may have been a valid reason for the war,
> but it was suppressed either consciously or unconsciously, and it was
> officially unacceptable. As a nation we don't get even.
>
>
>
> Neither Saddam nor Bush was in a position to produce all his reasons. We
> can assume that at least Bush wasn't cognizant of all his reasons, and
> Saddam may not have been either. The relation of these reasons to moral
> codes is in doubt. Does the Arab honor system correspond to the Koran or
is
> it something that preceded the Koran and is retained as a custom. Is
> revenge a natural reaction? Bowman thinks it is. He sites children
playing
> in a sandbox. If one hits another, he (or she) is sure to get hit back.
No
> one teaches this behavior. It is instinctive.
>
>
>
> At the national level not hitting back may encourage a bully to keep on
> hitting. We didn't hit back during the Clinton administration and Osama
bin
> Laden was encouraged to keep on hitting. He expressed confidence that he
> could hit the US out of existence the same way he hit the USSR out of
> existence.
>
>
>
> To the extent we hit Iraq as a lesson to the others, that lesson seems not
> to have made much of an impression on Ahmadinejad.
>
>
>
> * Bowman, James. Honor, a History, 2006. Encounter Books
>
>
>
> Lawrence
>
>
>
>
>
>
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