Abstract
The Critic of Morality and Ethical Scepticism
Morality is about right action. Ethics is about the good life. At times, the two seem to be in conflict: The pursuit of personal happiness might sometimes demand the neglect of moral rules. But are there also tensions or even contradictions within the moral system and ethical reasoning themselves? This is what the critics of morality and ethical sceptics since Nietzsche argue: In pointing to apparent conflicts, they question the rationality of moral principles and ethical judgements altogether. How can moral theory and ethical thinking meet this challenge?
The first part of my work deals with morality. At least in philosophy, the moral point of view has often been associated with an impersonal perspective - some authors call it the "impartial" or "universal" view. In the case of moral judgement, following philosophers in the Kantian tradition, we are not concerned with a particular person's wishes, but with the demands pertaining to everyone. In moral judgement, we must abstract from our social status, from our ethnic origin, from our sex, age, and physical abilities. The result is a point of view from which any proposal for a moral rule shall be judged . For a rule to pass the test, it must be possible for it to be agreed upon by everybody, i.e. by people of all ethnic or social origins, sexes, or ages.
Recently, some philosophers have criticized the ideal of impersonality with reference to so-called "agent-relative" moral directives. The core of the argument is a certain phenomenological evidence which has been invoked by Thomas Nagel. He observes instances in which moral reasons seem to be 'individualized' in a strange way. Following Nagel, I make a distinction between three basic kinds of morally relevant agent-relative reasons, centred around three kinds of phenomena: scruples, personal relationships, and private projects. a) As for scruples, Nagel speaks of (moral) reasons that "have their full force against your doing something - not just against its happening"; b) Concerning our personal relationships, he postulates "special obligations toward those to whome we are closely related". c) With regard to private projects - such as climbing the Kilimanjaro - he points to the particular commitment, i.e. the personal reason the climber has to get to the top: According to Nagel, this reason cannot be preserved by the process of 'objectification' which the moral point of view demands: "If I have a bad headache, anyone has a reason to want it to stop. But if I badly want to climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, not everyone has a reason to want me to succeed." In all three cases, there is a back-reference to agent. This is why rules, which state, e. g.,that one has to care for one's children, are called "agent-relative" as opposed to the agent-neutral rules, to which belongs also the principle that one has to make sure that every child is cared for by his own parents. The first part of my thesis discusses different ways of specifying the agent-relativity of rules for acting. It ends with the adoption of a model that has been proposed by David McNaughton and Pierce Rawling, which is more precise less problematic han the initial proposal by Thomas Nagel or a certain other conception of agent-relativity that has been put forward by Amartya Sen.
The conclusion which I draw from the confirmation of the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction is a dualism of moral value, quite similar to Max Webers famous distinction between "Gesinnungsethik" and "Verantwortungsethik". I try to show that agent-relative and agent neutral rules cannot be subsumed under the same general principle. Thus, the morality of the impersonal view is basically incomplete: If we stick to our moral intuitions, which accord to the mentioned cases of scruples and of concern for close relatives, we have acknowledge the existence of a moral system that allows significant exceptions to the the principle of impersonality. But my proposal has even stronger implications: I argue that not only the morality of the impersonal view but any moral theory will have to face the possibility of contradiction between different moral rules, as I have tried to demonstrate before in the case of agent-relative vs. agent-neutral rules for acting. In order to provide a theoretical background for moral dualism, I adopt Bernard Williams' model of moral justification which is known as moral "internalism". Internalism states that all reasons, even moral reasons, are rooted in wishes or so-called pro-attitudes and that we cannot say that someone has a reason to do something unless he has an appropriate wish.
The second, shorter part of my thesis is concerned with the rationality of ethical judgments, i.e. answers to the question "How shall I live?" Here I deal with several objections which have been brought up by ethical sceptics. My general concern is to clarify to what extent those objections to theories of the good life represent a challenge to the rationality of ethics altogether. I argue that even if one agrees that, in general, valuations are only possible within a framework of "thick predicates" and "strong valuations" which are culturally shared, intersubjektive values, there is still room for individual idiosyncrasy in particular cases.
Other issues that I deal with are David Wiggins' 'ethical nihilism' (the kind of ethical scepticism which states that there is no meaning to life at all) and Nietzsche's criticism of the morality of happiness: the question of whether there is any general core-concept to a good life at all.
My last point is the romantic query of the ideal of prudential calculation: How is it possible that there are moments in life - moments of happiness, love, of mystic or religious contemplation, or even of drug experience -the respective values of which cannot be explained with regard to their contribution to a good life as a whole? I argue that even though the authority of such lucky moments cannot be reduced to any form of prudential calculation, they nevertheless presuppose that when making ethical judgments, we generally consider our lifes as wholes: Episodes of overwhelming happiness are so exceptional because they transcend our everyday ethical conceptions. The conclusion of the second part is that ethical scepticism leads to a wider range of ethical reasoning - but in the end, it leaves the rationality of Ethics basically intact. |
