Showing papers on "Morality published in 1975"

Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Basis for Morality? A Critique of John Rawls’s Theory

Abstract: John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice 1 is an important book. It is an attempt to develop a viable alternative to utilitarianism, which up to now in its various forms was virtually the only ethical theory proposing a reasonably clear, systematic, and purportedly rational concept of morality. I shall argue that Rawls’s attempt to suggest a viable alternative to utilitarianism does not succeed. Nevertheless, beyond any doubt, his book is a significant contribution to the ongoing debate on the nature of rational morality.

Outcasts From Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859-1900

Abstract: In the only book to date to explore the period between the 1859 publication of Darwin s "Origin of Species "and the discovery in 1900 of Gregor Mendel s experiments in genetics, John S. Haller, Jr., shows the relationship between scientific "conviction" and public policy. He focuses on the numerous liberally educated American scientists who were caught up in the triumph of evolutionary ideas and who sought to apply those ideas to comparative morality, health, and the physiognomy of nonwhite races.During this period, the natural and social scientists of the day not only accepted without question the genetic and cultural superiority of the Caucasian; they also asserted that the Caucasian race held a monopoly on evolutionary progress, arguing that "inferior races" were no more than evolutionary survivors doomed by their genetic legacy to remain outcasts from evolution.Hereditarians and evolutionists believed that "less fit" human races were perishing from the rigors of civilization s struggle and competition. Indeed, racial inferiority lay at the very foundation of the evolutionary framework and, remaining there, rose to the pinnacle of "truth" with the myth of scientific certainty."

The Morality of Consent

Abstract: "This short but provocative volume...is a fitting testimony to the author's extraordinary, though tragically brief, career as a constitutional scholar, lawyer and teacher. In just a hundred and a half literate pages, we are treated to vintage Bickel insight into every major political issue of the decade, from the civil rights movement, to the Warren Court, through the frenetic university upheavals, and-inevitably-to Watergate...A tapestry woven by a master of subtle color and texture."-Alan M. Dershowitz, New York Times Book Review "Presents the core of [Bickel's] legal and political philosophy...In the five essays that compose this volume Bickel explores the relationship between morality and law, examining the role of the Constitution and Supreme Court in our political process, the nature of citizenship, the First Amendment, civil disobedience, and the moral authority of the intellectual...All will be stimulated by Bickel's thoughtful message." -Perspective "[Bickel] wrote with astonishing clarity. It takes no legal training to understand his thinking about the law. Nor does it take a willingness to agree with him. All that's required of the reader of this important 'little' book is a concern that rivals Bickel's about the future of American society." -Newsweek "An illuminating, often a moving book, with all of Professor Bickel's rare ability to bring law to life in vivid words."-Anthony Lewis Alexander M. Bickel, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School, taught at Yale from 1956 until his death in 1974.

Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society.

Abstract: Robert Bellah (ed.), Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber Donald Levine, Visions of the Sociological Tradition Donald Levine (ed.), Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [but online translation OK] Other materials posted or linked on Blackboard

The development of moral judgments concerning capital punishment

Abstract: Data from a 20-year longitudinal study of the development of moral judgment in American males indicate that the most mature stages evince moral condemnation of the death penalty. The authors conclude that American moral standards are evolving towards a view of execution as unjust punishment. They contend that a theory of punishment based on the highest stage of moral reasoning is more valid than lower-stage justifications for capital punishment, and that it provides a rational basis for asserting the immorality--and unconstitutionality--of capital punishment, irrespective of uncertainties as to the deterrent efficacy of the death penalty.

Reason and Maximization

Abstract: Economic man seeks to maximize utility. The rationality of economic man is assumed, and is identified with the aim of utility-maximization.1 But may rational activity correctly be identified with maximizing activity? The object of this essay is to explore, and in part to answer, this question. This is not an issue solely, or perhaps even primarily, about the presuppositions of economics. The two great modern schools of moral and political thought in the English-speaking world, the contractarian and the utilitarian, identify rationality with maximization, and bring morality into their equations as well. To the contractarian, rational man enters civil society to maximize his expectation of well-being, and morality is that system of principles of action which rational men collectively adopt to maximize their well-being.2 To the utilitarian, the rational and moral individual seeks the maximum happiness of mankind, with which he identifies his own maximum happiness.3

The Just Community Approach to Corrections: A Theory

Abstract: This paper represents the attempt to apply to the prison situation the principles of moral development derived from the study of moral development in children. Existing correctional institutions do not provide the kind of experience which would foster moral growth in their inmates. In order for this to happen democratic situations have to be created in which staff and inmates can freely discuss moral issues and where staff are sufficiently aware of the nature of moral development that they can stimulate inmates to move to higher levels of moral thinking. An account is given of preliminary efforts to do just this.

Punishment and social organization: a study of durkheim's theory of penal evolution

Abstract: For Smile Durkheim, crime and punishment were integral features of organized social life. He considered the study of crime and punishment essential to the sociological enterprise precisely because these "social facts" revealed the inner workings of society and the mechanism through which societies change. In The Rules of Sociological Method Durkheim argues (1938:70) that "crime is ... necessary, it is bound up with the fundamental conditions of all social life," and that "it is no longer possible . . to dispute the fact that law and morality vary from one social type to the next, nor that they change within the same type if the conditions of life are modified." Because he viewed law as a reflection of basic social arrangements, Durkheim grounded his theory of social change in an analysis of comparative legal types. He assumed (1933:68) that "since law reproduces the principal forms of social solidarity, we have only to classify the different types of law to find therefrom the different types of social solidarity which correspond to it." In his central theoretical work, The Division of Labor in Society (1933), Durkheim linked the changing nature of legal controls (repressive to restitutive) to transformations in the nature of social solidarity (mechanical to organic). Durkheim's assertion that repressive controls were dominant in simple societies and restitutive controls in complex societies has been criticized by sociologists and anthropologists alike (cf. Merton, 1934; Schwartz and Miller, 1964; Barnes, 1966; Diamond, 1971; Lukes, 1972; Dubow, 1974). Restitution clearly represents an important principle in many undifferentiated (mechanical) societies (cf. Malinowski, 1926; Kuper, 1965), and the decline of repressive sanctions has not been as general or systematic as Durkheim (1933: 152-168) implied. Although many questions

Abortion, euthanasia, and care of defective newborns.

Abstract: Growing use of abortion to prevent births of infants with unfavorable prenatal diagnoses raises ethical questions about active euthanasia for newborn infants with similar impairments. Two opposing ethical arguments are those of Paul Ramsey, who equates genetically indicated abortion with infanticide disapprovingly, and of Joseph Fletcher, who equates the morality of abortion with selective euthanasia approvingly. Though radically different, these arguments treat the ethical aspects of the prenatal and postnatal situations as essentially similar. There are, however, different moral features between the two situations, in that the postnatal situation is characterized by the independent physical existence of the infant, the possibility of treatment, and the formation of parental loyalty to the infant. Thus, a decision for abortion after prenatal diagnosis does not necessarily commit parents to euthanasia in the management of a seriously damaged infant. (N Engl J Med 292:75–78, 1975)

The neglect of virtue

Abstract: Modem moral philosophy has devoted itself primarly to axiological and deontological matters.' There have been occasional stirrings-some recently-in the direction of what might be called agent-theory,2 but it is undeniable that ends, means, utility, values, rules, principles, duties, obligations, responsibilities, and desert have been in the forefront of discussion. Virtue has been and remains generally neglected, or discussed merely as a derivative concept. I want to make a plea for virtue-much in the spirit of Austin's plea for excuses-as a concept which should be central to moral theorizing. This has been done before,3 but it is clear that philosophers in general either still need convincing or need a more developed apologia than has yet been provided. I

Alternative Conceptions of Accountability: The Example of Health Administration

Abstract: Speakers and writers calling for greater accountability typically employ the term in three concrete contexts: to refer to greater responsibility and responsiveness; to allude to greater attention to the "community" (generally a euphemism for blacks, Mexican-Americans, American Indians, or other minorities); or the greater commitment to "values" (e.g., as in the phrase "higher standards of morality"). The unifying thread is the symbolic use of the term accountability. Though it may not necessarily be-indeed perhaps rarely is-the consciously intended meaning, the chief definition of this term which in fact emerges is that of "accountability as gesture." The hallmark of accountability as gesture is that it is pure norm with little or no instrumentality attached. That is,

The Tyranny of Convention in "The Phantom of Liberty"

Abstract: predominant negative tone by having a constant, whispering background of automobiles and street noise: the mechanized city is always somewhere behind the action. Thus, Retour D'Afrique and The Merchant of Four Seasons work differently from conventional propaganda in their attempts to merge the personal and psychological sides of human experience with political meaning and significance. They work on two levels, seeking to find the logic in emotions and the emotion in logic, the place of politics in the personality, the personal need for political change. For them, political expression is a fundamental side of personal expression. That they preach to the converted may well be irrelevant, for their arguments are at a level of sophistication and complexity that may be meaningful only to the converted. The one may be a little sermon on morality (Retour D'Afrique), the other on the problem of why there is evil in the world (Merchant), but in each case the didacticism is wholly secondary, or, more correctly, fully integrated into the whole. What remains ironic, however, is that after the short-lived and abortive pre-revolutionary ctivities of the late sixties, such typical seventies films come after the fact, as post-activity rationalization, perhaps, or as a testament to the way in which their makers' lives have been affected

A dialectical approach to moral judgment and self-esteem.

Abstract: Dialectical models emphasize continuing development as the result of the contradiction and synthesis of opposing aspects of reality. The subject-object interaction of the dialectical model elucidates the interdependence of moral judgments and self-esteem. In a mature, dialectical morality of mediation the individual recognizes his participation in his judgments and attempts to construct resolutions of moral conflicts through compromise. Moral development within the individual must be conceptualized within a cultural and historical context, and the reciprocal significance of individual moral development for changes in the family and the society should be recognized. A complete model of moral development ought to consider prosocial as well as antisocial behaviors.

Falstaff in windsor forest: villain of victim?

Abstract: unlike the famous ink blots, the figure of Falstaff is the result of conscious and sustained artistic creation. A subtle and complex character with some clearly fixed features emerges from Shakespeare's portrait of the man in three separate plays. We may argue ad infinitum about Shakespeare's original intentions and about the interrelation of the three plays, but discussion of this sort does little to clarify what can be established about the content of the separate plays. In this paper I shall confine myself to a study of the Falstaff of The Merry Wives of Windsor, directing special attention to the final scene. I shall assume that Shakespeare wrote this play in early I597,1 probably while he was working on 2 Henry IV, and that the series of linguistic symbols which we persistently think of as a "man" presents essentially the same character in the three plays about Falstaff. I shall ignore for the moment the question of the influences of their ages and their temperaments on the views of individual critics, and instead focus attention on the text of The Merry Wives itself in an effort to see what it really tells us about how to feel toward the Windsor Falstaff. Some critics of various periods have tended to rejoice that at Windsor the Falstaff who has so successfully lied, cheated, and bullied his way through i Henry IV, and has constituted a threat to Prince Hal's maturing into responsible kingship, here begins to get his comeuppance at the hands of those eminently sensible instruments of social order and morality, the merry wives. Georg Gervinus is typical of these critics when he concludes,

Abortion or the unwanted child: a choice for a humanistic society

Abstract: ' I ''he anti-abortion movement believes that the fetus, even in its embryonic stage of development, is human life and that any deliberate termination of embryonic or fetal life constitutes an "unjustified" termination of human life—that is, homicide. Conversely, proponents of abortion deny that the fetus is human life, particularly during its embryonic stage of development, and therefore believe that the termination of fetal life does not constitute homicide. Further, proponents of abortion justify the termination of fetal life by asserting that the woman has the ultimate right to control her own body; that no individual or group of individuals has any right to force a woman to carry a pregnancy that she does not want; that parents have the moral responsibility and constitutional obligation to bring into this world only children who are wanted, loved, and provided for, so that they can realize their human potential; and that children have certain basic human and constitutional rights, which include the right to have loving, caring parents, sound health, protection from harm, and a social and physical environment that permits healthy human development and the assurance of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These conflicts of "rights"—namely, the presumed rights of the fetus, the rights of the woman, the righjs of the child, the presumed rights of adults to unlimited reproduction, and the rights of 'society—need careful consideration in evaluating the morality of abortion. How do we order the priorities of competing "rights"? Since rights confer obligations, does the failure to meet those obligations mitigate or abrogate the rights that gave rise to those obligations?

Hume's Common Sense Morality

Abstract: Hume's moral theory, I shall here argue, is explicitly and in fundamental ways a common sense theory It is widely accepted, of course, that Hume found moral distinctions to rest on sentiment, and that he found in the principle of sympathy the means by which individual sentiments come to be experienced by others What has not received adequate attention is Hume's concern to refute moral skepticism and his explicit reliance on appeals to “common sense,” nor,so far as I know, has anyone suggested how these several features coalesce in an outlook which is appropriately designated a common sense theory To support my claim I shall first show that Hume is not, as is widely supposed, what we would term a “subjectivist” in morals, and that in fact he means to establish, in at least two important senses of the term, the “objectivity”of morals

Mr. Bennett on Huckleberry Finn

Abstract: Mr Bennett in his interesting essay in the April 1974 issue of Philosophy claims that ‘… in a particular case sympathy and morality may pull in opposite directions. This can happen not just with bad moralities, but also with good ones like yours and mine.’ By sympathy he says he means ‘every sort of fellow-feeling’. Although a triumph of sympathy over morality may be a good thing, it also represents a triumph of irrationality over reason (p. 126).

A Reply to Professor Frankena

Abstract: Professor Frankena finds himself in a state of bewilderment about my opinions, particularly about those expressed in two recent articles, ‘Morality and Art’ and ‘Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives’, which he discusses in an article pointedly entitled ‘The Philosopher's Attack on Morality’. To say, as he himself does, that he finds these articles ‘somewhat unclear’ seems on the internal evidence to be something of an understatement; he finds them full of uncertainties, contradictions, ambiguities and qualifications, and I do not know how he thinks anyone could have written such stuff.

Kant on beauty as the symbol of morality

Abstract: The paper attempts to show what Kant means by his claim that "the beau­ tiful Is the symbol of the morally good" In Section 59 of the Critique of Judgment. Part I explicates his notion of symbolism in general and in­ cludes a subsidiary explication of his notion of analogy. Part II deals with some special problems which arise when he seeks to apply that general notion of symbolism to the particular province of the beautiful. The con­ clusions drawn are that Kant means the following: that in the very act of appreciating a beautiful object and making judgments of taste thereon, we have some awareness of ourselves as free, supersensible beings, which awareness is analogous to our awareness of ourselves as free moral agents; that any beautiful object can, in this sense, serve as a symbolic presen­ tation of the morally good; but that the symbolic relationship between beauty and moral goodness does not constitute an argument for morality or for the actuality of human freedom, for it rather presupposes our aware­ ness of such, nor should it sinply be conflated with the beauty of nature bridging the noumenal and the phenomenal aspects of our selves, which is a further issue.