Justice

DOING THE RIGHT THING

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Note: Chapter 1

So you might say that ancient theories of justice start with virtue, while modern theories start with freedom.

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Note: Important Distinction between ancient and modern

To ask whether a society is just is to ask how it distributes the things we prize—income and wealth, duties and rights, powers and opportunities, offices and honors. A just society distributes these goods in the right way; it gives each person his or her due. The hard questions begin when we ask what people are due, and why.

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Note: Three approaches of justice

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Note: Three approaches of justice - Welfare, Freedom, Virtue

THE GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE / UTILITARIANISM

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Note: Chapter 2

These two ways of thinking about the lifeboat case illustrate two rival approaches to justice. The first approach says the morality of an action depends solely on the consequences it brings about; the right thing to do is whatever will produce the best state of affairs, all things considered. The second approach says that consequences are not all we should care about, morally speaking; certain duties and rights should command our respect, for reasons independent of the social consequences.

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Note: Two divergent views on morality

DO WE OWN OURSELVES? / LIBERTARIANISM

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Note: Chapter 3

Libertarians favor unfettered markets and oppose government regulation, not in the name of economic efficiency but in the name of human freedom. Their central claim is that each of us has a fundamental right to liberty—the right to do whatever we want with the things we own, provided we respect other people’s rights to do the same.

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Note: Basic libertarian principles - human liberty

He begins with the claim that individuals have rights “so strong and far-reaching” that “they raise the question of what, if anything, the state may do.” He concludes that “only a minimal state, limited to enforcing contracts and protecting people against force, theft, and fraud, is justified. Any more extensive state violates persons’ rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified.”

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Note: Robert nozick, defense of libertarianism , 1974

HIRED HELP / MARKETS AND MORALS

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Note: Chapter 4

children of policy-makers had had to share the burden of fighting

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Note: Dual consecutive had usage

One of the leading private military companies is Blackwater Worldwide. Erik Prince, the company’s CEO, is a former Navy SEAL with an ardent faith in the free market.

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Note: Notorious Blackwater

This is the sale of a child, or, at the very least, the sale of a mother’s right to her child, the only mitigating factor being that one of the purchasers is the father. … [A] middle man, propelled by profit, promotes the sale. Whatever idealism may have motivated any of the participants, the profit motive predominates, permeates, and ultimately governs the transaction.

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Note: Surrogacy and contract

Commercial surrogacy degrades children insofar as it treats them as commodities.”44 It uses them as instruments of profit rather than cherishes them as persons worthy of love and care. Commercial surrogacy also degrades women, Anderson argues, by treating their bodies as factories and by paying them not to bond with the children they bear. It replaces “the parental norms which usually govern the practice of gestating children with the economic norms which govern ordinary production.”

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Note: Elizabeth Anderson - against commercial surrogacy

The western Indian city of Anand may soon be to paid pregnancy what Bangalore is to call centers.

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Note: Legalised Surrogacy in india since 2002

WHAT MATTERS IS THE MOTIVE / IMMANUEL KANT

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Note: Chapter 5

Even John Locke (1632–1704), the great theorist of property rights and limited government, does not assert an unlimited right of self-possession. He rejects the notion that we may dispose of our life and liberty however we please. But Locke’s theory of unalienable rights invokes God, posing a problem for those who seek a moral basis for rights that does not rest on religious assumptions.

Page: 118, Location: 1797-1800

Note: John Locke

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) offers an alternative account of duties and rights, one of the most powerful and influential accounts any philosopher has produced. It does not depend on the idea that we own ourselves, or on the claim that our lives and liberties are a gift from God. Instead, it depends on the idea that we are rational beings, worthy of dignity and respect.

Page: 118, Location: 1801-1803

Note: Immanuel Kant

Here, then, is the link between freedom as autonomy and Kant’s idea of morality. To act freely is not to choose the best means to a given end; it is to choose the end itself, for its own sake—a choice that human beings can make and billiard balls (and most animals) cannot.

Page: 124, Location: 1893-1895

Note: Autonomy and Kant

It lets him live, not for his own sake, but so that other people can cross bridges without a second thought.

Page: 125, Location: 1916-1916

Note: Mill v Kant

These cases bring out the plausibility of Kant’s claim that only the motive of duty—doing something because it’s right, not because it’s useful or convenient—confers moral worth on an action.

Page: 128, Location: 1959-1961

Note: What's Right to do, not what it will entail in return

And he maintains that only the motive of duty confers moral worth on an action. The compassion of the altruist “deserves praise and encouragement, but not esteem.”

Page: 130, Location: 1981-1982

Note: Kant case against altruism

For Kant, suicide violates the categorical imperative in the same way. If I end my life to escape a painful condition, I use myself as a means for the relief of my own suffering. But as Kant reminds us, a person is not a thing, “not something to be used merely as a means.”

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Note: Kant equates murder and suicide

It also explains why the Kantian principle of respect lends itself to doctrines of universal human rights. For Kant, justice requires us to uphold the human rights of all persons, regardless of where they live or how well we know them, simply because they are human beings, capable of reason, and therefore worthy of respect.

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Note: Kant and the universal human rights

The effort to base morality on some particular interest or desire (such as happiness or utility) was bound to fail. “For what they discovered was never duty, but only the necessity of acting from a certain interest.” But any principle based on interest “was bound to be always a conditioned one and could not possibly serve as a moral law.”

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Note: Kant`s criticism of utilitarianism

What is the right thing to do? The Golden Rule would ask, “How would you like to be treated in a similar circumstance?”

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Note: Word

What matters is not how you (or your mother) would feel under these circumstances, but what it means to treat persons as rational beings, worthy of respect. Here is a case where compassion might point one way and Kantian respect another. From the standpoint of the categorical imperative, lying to your mother out of concern for her feelings would arguably use her as a means to her own contentment rather than respect her as a rational being.

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Note: Bding an asshole sometimes

Contrast 1 (morality): duty v. inclination Contrast 2 (freedom): autonomy v. heteronomy Contrast 3 (reason): categorical v. hypothetical imperatives Contrast 4 (standpoints): intelligible v. sensible realms

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Note: Kant's contrasts

We are not at our own disposal. In stark contrast to libertarian notions of self-possession, Kant insists that we do not own ourselves. The moral requirement that we treat persons as ends rather than as mere means limits the way we may treat our bodies and ourselves. “Man cannot dispose over himself because he is not a thing; he is not his own property.”

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Note: Kant vs libertarianism

Paradoxically, Kant’s conception of autonomy imposes certain limits on the way we may treat ourselves. For, recall: To be autonomous is to be governed by a law I give myself—the categorical imperative. And the categorical imperative requires that I treat all persons (including myself) with respect—as an end, not merely as a means. So, for Kant, acting autonomously requires that we treat ourselves with respect, and not objectify ourselves. We can’t use our bodies any way we please.

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Note: Paradoxical autonomy of kant - we dont own ourselves

“No one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the welfare of others,” Kant writes, “for each may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit, so long as he does not infringe upon the freedom of others” to do the

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Note: Kant v utilitarianism

THE CASE FOR EQUALITY / JOHN RAWLS

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Note: Chapter 6

Suppose I discover, after twenty years of faithfulness on my part, that my wife has been seeing another man. I would have two different grounds for moral outrage. One invokes consent: “But we had an agreement. You made a vow. You broke your promise.” The second would invoke reciprocity: “But I’ve been so faithful for my part. Surely I deserve better than this. This is no way to repay my loyalty.” And so on. The second complaint makes no reference to consent, and does not require it. It would be morally plausible even if we never exchanged marital vows, but lived together as partners for all those years.

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Note: Marriage and consent

This argument treats admission primarily as a benefit to the recipient and seeks to distribute the benefit in a way that compensates

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Note: Compensatory Argument

But as Dworkin points out, there is no such right. Some universities may admit students solely on the basis of academic qualifications, but most do not. Universities define their missions in various ways. Dworkin argues that no applicant has a right that the university define its mission and design its admissions policy in a way that prizes above all any particular set of qualities—whether academic skills, athletic abilities, or anything else. Once the university defines its mission and sets its admissions standards, you have a legitimate expectation to admission insofar as you meet those standards better than other applicants. Those who finish in the top group of candidates—counting academic promise, ethnic and geographical diversity, athletic prowess, extracurricular activities, community service, and so on—are entitled to be admitted; it would be unfair to exclude them. But no one has a right to be considered according to any particular set of criteria in the first place.

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Note: The right of admittance

WHO DESERVES WHAT? / ARISTOTLE

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Note: Chapter 8

How can you tell who is fit to be a slave? Aristotle asks. In principle, you would have to see who, if anyone, flourishes as a slave, and who chafes in the role or tries to flee. The need for force is a good indication that the slave in question is not suited to the role.31 For Aristotle, coercion is a sign of injustice, not because consent legitimates all roles, but because the need for force suggests an unnatural fit. Those who are cast in a role consistent with their nature don’t need to be forced.

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Note: Aristotle arguments on natural reasoning of slavery

WHAT DO WE OWE ONE ANOTHER? / DILEMMAS OF LOYALTY

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Note: Chapter 9

feeling. “It is a good thing that the humanity concentrated among fellow citizens takes on new force through the habit of seeing each other and through the common interest that unites them.”

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Note: Rousseau

The best argument for limiting immigration is a communal one. As Michael Walzer writes, the ability to regulate the conditions of membership, to set the terms of admission and exclusion, is “at the core of communal independence.” Otherwise, “there could not be communities of character, historically stable, ongoing associations of men and women with some special commitment to one another and some special sense of their common life.”

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Note: Anti immigration argument

parochial

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Note: Word

JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

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Note: Chapter

In earlier chapters, we consider the moral questions that arise, for example, when countries hire out military service and the interrogation of prisoners to mercenaries or private contractors; or when parents outsource pregnancy and child-bearing to paid laborers in the developing world; or when people buy and sell kidneys on the open market. Other instances abound: Should students in underperforming schools be offered cash payments for scoring well on standardized tests? Should teachers be given bonuses for improving the test results of their students? Should states hire for-profit prison companies to house their inmates? Should the United States simplify its immigration policy by adopting the proposal of a University of Chicago economist to sell U.S. citizenship for a $100,000 fee?

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Note: Moral questions to ponder upon

Crist rejected the notion that these “unconscionable” prices reflected a truly free exchange: This is not the normal free market situation where willing buyers freely elect to enter into the marketplace and meet willing sellers, where a price is agreed upon based on supply and demand. In an emergency, buyers under duress have no freedom. Their purchases of necessities like safe lodging are forced.9

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the arguments for and against price-gouging laws revolve around three ideas: maximizing welfare, respecting freedom, and promoting virtue. Each of these ideas points to a different way of thinking about justice.

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Outrage is the special kind of anger you feel when you believe that people are getting things they don’t deserve. Outrage of this kind is anger at injustice.

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the debate about price-gouging laws is not simply about welfare and freedom. It is also about virtue—about cultivating the attitudes and dispositions, the qualities of character, on which a good society depends.

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So when we probe our reactions to price gouging, we find ourselves pulled in two directions: We are outraged when people get things they don’t deserve; greed that preys on human misery, we think, should be punished, not rewarded. And yet we worry when judgments about virtue find their way into law.

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This dilemma points to one of the great questions of political philosophy: Does a just society seek to promote the virtue of its citizens? Or should law be neutral toward competing conceptions of virtue, so that citizens can be free to choose for themselves the best way to live?

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Aristotle maintains that we can’t figure out what a just constitution is without first reflecting on the most desirable way of life. For him, law can’t be neutral on questions of the good life.

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Aristotle teaches that justice means giving people what they deserve. And in order to determine who deserves what, we have to determine what virtues are worthy of honor and reward.

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By contrast, modern political philosophers—from Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century to John Rawls in the twentieth century—argue that the principles of justice that define our rights should not rest on any particular conception of virtue, or of the best way to live. Instead, a just society respects each person’s freedom to choose his or her own conception of the good life.

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If greed is the reason they don’t deserve the money now, on what basis can it be said they deserved the money then?

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The American public’s real objection to the bonuses—and the bailout—is not that they reward greed but that they reward failure.

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If big, systemic economic forces account for the disastrous loses of 2008 and 2009, couldn’t it be argued that they also account for the dazzling gains of earlier years? If the weather is to blame for the bad years, how can it be that the talent, wisdom, and hard work of bankers, traders, and Wall Street executives are responsible for the stupendous returns that occurred when the sun was shining?

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But the argument over the bonuses raises questions about who deserves what when times are good. Do the successful deserve the bounty that markets bestow upon them, or does that bounty depend on factors beyond their control? And what are the implications for the mutual obligations of citizens—in good times and hard times?

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But the notion that a just society affirms certain virtues and conceptions of the good life has inspired political movements and arguments across the ideological spectrum. Not only the Taliban, but also abolitionists and Martin Luther King, Jr., have drawn their visions of justice from moral and religious ideals.

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In medieval times, philosophers and theologians believed that the exchange of goods should be governed by a “just price,” determined by tradition or the intrinsic value of things. But in market societies, the economists observed, prices are set by supply and demand. There is no such thing as a “just price.”

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Sowell explained; they simply reflect the value that buyers and sellers choose to place on the things they exchange.6 Jeff Jacoby, a pro-market commentator writing in the Boston Globe, argued against price-gouging laws on similar grounds: “It isn’t gouging to charge what the market will bear. It isn’t greedy or brazen. It’s how goods and services get allocated in a free society.”

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First, markets promote the welfare of society as a whole by providing incentives for people to work hard supplying the goods that other people want. (In common parlance, we often equate welfare with economic prosperity, though welfare is a broader concept that can include noneconomic aspects of social well-being.)

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Second, markets respect individual freedom; rather than impose a certain value on goods and services, markets let people choose for themselves what value to place on the things they exchange.

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If you’re fleeing a hurricane with your family, the exorbitant price you pay for gas or shelter is not really a voluntary exchange. It’s something closer to extortion. So to decide whether price-gouging laws are justified, we need to assess these competing accounts of welfare and of freedom.

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A society in which people exploit their neighbors for financial gain in times of crisis is not a good society. Excessive greed is therefore a vice that a good society should discourage if it can. Price-gouging laws cannot banish greed, but they can at least restrain its most brazen expression, and signal society’s disapproval of it. By punishing greedy behavior rather than rewarding it, society affirms the civic virtue of shared sacrifice for the common good.

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Some people, including many who support price-gouging laws, find the virtue argument discomfiting. The reason: It seems more judgmental than arguments that appeal to welfare and freedom. To ask whether a policy will speed economic recovery or spur economic growth does not involve judging people’s preferences.

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Devoted though we are to prosperity and freedom, we can’t quite shake off the judgmental strand of justice.

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the real issue is about the meaning of the medal and the virtues it honors. What, then, are the relevant virtues? Unlike other military medals, the Purple Heart honors sacrifice, not bravery.

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the real issue is about the meaning of the medal and the virtues it honors. What, then, are the relevant virtues? Unlike other military medals, the Purple Heart honors sacrifice, not bravery. It requires no heroic act, only an injury inflicted by the enemy. The question is what kind of injury should count.

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So the debate over the Purple Heart is more than a medical or clinical dispute about how to determine the veracity of injury. At the heart of the disagreement are rival conceptions of moral character and military valor. Those who insist that only bleeding wounds should count believe that post-traumatic stress reflects a weakness of character unworthy of honor. Those who believe that psychological wounds should qualify argue that veterans suffering long-term trauma and severe depression have sacrificed for their country as surely, and as honorably, as those who’ve lost a limb.

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The dispute over the Purple Heart illustrates the moral logic of Aristotle’s theory of justice. We can’t determine who deserves a military medal without asking what virtues the medal properly honors

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Greed is a vice, a bad attitude, an excessive, single-minded desire for gain. So it’s understandable that people aren’t keen to reward it. But is there any reason to assume that the recipients of bailout bonuses are any greedier now than they were a few years ago, when they were riding high and reaping even greater rewards?

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The problem with the greed critique is that it doesn’t distinguish the rewards bestowed by the bailout after the crash from the rewards bestowed by markets when times were flush. Greed is a vice, a bad attitude, an excessive, single-minded desire for gain. So it’s understandable that people aren’t keen to reward it. But is there any reason to assume that the recipients of bailout bonuses are any greedier now than they were a few years ago, when they were riding high and reaping even greater rewards?

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Grassley’s comments support my hunch that the bailout anger was not mainly about greed; what most offended Americans’ sense of justice was that their tax dollars were being used to reward failure.

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Finally, we turn to theories that see justice as bound up with virtue and the good life. In contemporary politics, virtue theories are often identified with cultural conservatives and the religious right. The idea of legislating morality is anathema to many citizens of liberal societies, as it risks lapsing into intolerance and coercion.

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Perhaps the reason it is wrong to push is that doing so uses the man on the bridge against his will. He didn’t choose to be involved, after all. He was just standing there.

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The Afghan Goatherds

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But if this were true, moral persuasion would be inconceivable, and what we take to be public debate about justice and rights would be nothing more than a volley of dogmatic assertions, an ideological food fight. At its worst, our politics comes close to this condition. But it need not be this

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Elections are won and lost on these disagreements. The so-called culture wars are fought over them. Given the passion and intensity with which we debate moral questions in public life, we might be tempted to think that our moral convictions are fixed once and for all, by upbringing or faith, beyond the reach of reason. But if this were true, moral persuasion would be inconceivable, and what we take to be public debate about justice and rights would be nothing more than a volley of dogmatic assertions, an ideological food fight. At its worst, our politics comes close to this condition. But it need not be this way. Sometimes, an argument can change our minds.

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If moral reflection consists in seeking a fit between the judgments we make and the principles we affirm, how can such reflection lead us to justice, or moral truth? Even if we succeed, over a lifetime, in bringing our moral intuitions and principled commitments into alignment, what confidence can we have that the result is anything more than a self-consistent skein of prejudice?

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In Plato’s Republic, Socrates compares ordinary citizens to a group of prisoners confined in a cave. All they ever see is the play of shadows on the wall, a reflection of objects they can never apprehend. Only the philosopher, in this account, is able to ascend from the cave to the bright light of day, where he sees things as they really are. Socrates suggests that, having glimpsed the sun, only the philosopher is fit to rule the cave dwellers, if he can somehow be coaxed back into the darkness where they live.

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More demanding still is the company of political philosophers, ancient and modern, who thought through, in sometimes radical and surprising ways, the ideas that animate civic life—justice and rights, obligation and consent, honor and virtue, morality and law. Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls all figure in these pages.

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the utilitarian assumption that morality consists in weighing costs and benefits, and simply wants a fuller reckoning of the social consequences.

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If the killing of the cabin boy is worthy of moral outrage, the second objection is more to the point. It rejects the idea that the right thing to do is simply a matter of calculating consequences—costs and benefits. It suggests that morality means something more—something to do with the proper way for human beings to treat one another.

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Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)

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He heaped scorn on the idea of natural rights, calling them “nonsense upon stilts.”

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Its main idea is simply stated and intuitively appealing: The highest principle of morality is to maximize happiness, the overall balance of pleasure over pain. According to Bentham, the right thing to do is whatever will maximize utility. By “utility,” he means whatever produces pleasure or happiness, and whatever prevents pain or suffering.

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In deciding what laws or policies to enact, a government should do whatever will maximize the happiness of the community as a whole. What, after all, is a community? According to Bentham, it is “a fictitious body,” composed of the sum of the individuals who comprise it. Citizens and legislators should therefore ask themselves this question: If we add up all of the benefits of this policy, and subtract all the costs, will it produce more happiness than the alternative?

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All moral quarrels, properly understood, are

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All moral quarrels, properly understood, are disagreements about how to apply the utilitarian principle of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, not about the principle itself.

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He concludes that the sum of the pains suffered by the public is greater than whatever unhappiness is felt by beggars hauled off to the workhouse.

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Objection 1: Individual Rights The

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The most glaring weakness of utilitarianism, many argue, is that it fails to respect individual rights. By caring only about the sum of satisfactions, it can run roughshod over individual people.

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As reasons to oppose torture, however, they are entirely compatible with utilitarian thinking. They do not assert that torturing a human being is intrinsically wrong, only that practicing torture will have bad effects that, taken as a whole, will do more harm than good.

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Objection 2: A Common Currency of Value Utilitarianism claims to offer a science of morality, based on measuring, aggregating, and calculating happiness. It weighs preferences without judging them. Everyone’s preferences count equally. This nonjudgmental spirit is the source of much of its appeal. And its promise to make moral choice a science informs much contemporary economic reasoning. But in order to aggregate preferences, it is necessary to measure them on a single scale. Bentham’s idea of utility offers one such common currency.

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For a Benthamite, the smoking study does not embarrass utilitarian principles but simply misapplies them.

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fuller cost-benefit analysis would add to the moral calculus an amount representing the cost of dying early for the smoker and his family, and would weigh these against the savings the smoker’s early death would provide the government.

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Critics of utilitarianism point to such episodes as evidence that cost-benefit analysis is misguided, and that placing a monetary value on human life is morally obtuse. Defenders of cost-benefit analysis disagree. They argue that many social choices implicitly trade off some number of lives for other goods and conveniences. Human life has its price, they insist, whether we admit it or not.

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Utilitarians see our tendency to recoil at placing a monetary value on human life as an impulse we should overcome, a taboo that obstructs clear thinking and rational social choice. For critics of utilitarianism, however, our hesitation points to something of moral importance—the idea that it is not possible to measure and compare all values and goods on a single scale.

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We have considered two objections to Bentham’s “greatest happiness” principle—that it does not give adequate weight to human dignity and individual rights, and that it wrongly reduces everything of moral importance to a single scale of pleasure and pain.

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John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) believed they could be answered. A generation after Bentham, he tried to save utilitarianism by recasting it as a more humane, less calculating doctrine.

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Mill’s writings can be read as a strenuous attempt to reconcile individual rights with the utilitarian philosophy he inherited from his father and adopted from Bentham. His book On Liberty (1859) is the classic defense of individual freedom in the English-speaking world.

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Its central principle is that people should be free to do whatever they want, provided they do no harm to others. Government may not interfere with individual liberty in order to protect a person from himself, or to impose the majority’s beliefs about how best to live. The only actions for which a person is accountable to society, Mill argues, are those that affect others. As long as I am not harming anyone else, my “independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

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Mill thinks we should maximize utility, not case by case, but in the long run. And over time, he argues, respecting individual liberty will lead to the greatest human happiness. Allowing the majority to silence dissenters or censor free-thinkers might maximize utility today, but it will make society worse off—less happy—in the long run.

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First, respecting individual rights for the sake of promoting social progress leaves rights hostage to contingency. Suppose we encounter a society that achieves a kind of long-term happiness by despotic means. Wouldn’t the utilitarian have to conclude that, in such a society, individual rights are not morally required? Second, basing rights on utilitarian considerations misses the sense in which violating someone’s rights inflicts a wrong on the individual, whatever its effect on the general welfare. If the majority persecutes adherents of an unpopular faith, doesn’t it do an injustice to them, as individuals, regardless of any bad effects such intolerance may produce for society as a whole over time?

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Mill’s speculations about the salutary social effects of liberty are plausible enough. But they do not provide a convincing moral basis for individual rights, for at least two reasons: First, respecting individual rights for the sake of promoting social progress leaves rights hostage to contingency. Suppose we encounter a society that achieves a kind of long-term happiness by despotic means. Wouldn’t the utilitarian have to conclude that, in such a society, individual rights are not morally required? Second, basing rights on utilitarian considerations misses the sense in which violating someone’s rights inflicts a wrong on the individual, whatever its effect on the general welfare. If the majority persecutes adherents of an unpopular faith, doesn’t it do an injustice to them, as individuals, regardless of any bad effects such intolerance may produce for society as a whole over time?

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Conformity, in Mill’s account, is the enemy of the best way to live.

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So actions and consequences are not all that matter after all. Character also counts. For Mill, individuality matters less for the pleasure it brings than for the character it reflects. “One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam engine has character.”

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heresy. Since it appeals to moral ideals beyond utility—

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Mill’s robust celebration of individuality is the most distinctive contribution of On Liberty. But it is also a kind of heresy. Since it appeals to moral ideals beyond utility—ideals of character and human flourishing—it is not really an elaboration of Bentham’s principle but a renunciation of it, despite Mill’s claim to the contrary.

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Part of the appeal of Bentham’s utilitarianism is this nonjudgmental spirit. It takes people’s preferences as they are, without passing judgment on their moral worth.

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Part of the appeal of Bentham’s utilitarianism is this nonjudgmental spirit. It takes people’s preferences as they are, without passing judgment on their moral worth. All preferences count equally. Bentham thinks it is presumptuous to judge some pleasures as inherently better than others.

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Mill tries to save utilitarianism from this objection. Unlike Bentham, Mill believes it is possible to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures—to assess the quality, not just the quantity or intensity, of our desires. And he thinks he can make this distinction without relying on any moral ideas other than utility itself.

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Despite insisting that pleasure and pain are all that matter, Mill acknowledges that “some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others.” How can we know which pleasures are qualitatively higher? Mill proposes a simple test: “Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.”

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philistine.

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Mill concedes that “occasionally, under the influence of temptation,” even the best of us postpone higher pleasures to lower ones. Everyone gives in to the impulse to be a couch potato once in a while. But this does not mean we don’t know the difference between Rembrandt and reruns.

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Mill thinks the reason has something to do with “the love of liberty and personal independence,” and concludes that “its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other.”

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Mill makes this point in a memorable passage: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”

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Mill strays from the utilitarian premise. No longer are de facto desires the sole basis for judging what is noble and what is base. Now the standard derives from an ideal of human dignity independent of our wants and desires. The higher pleasures are not higher because we prefer them; we prefer them because we recognize them as higher. We judge Hamlet as great art not because we like it more than lesser entertainments, but because it engages our highest faculties and makes us more fully human.

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with individual rights, so with higher pleasures: Mill saves utilitarianism from the charge that it reduces everything to a crude calculus of pleasure and pain, but only by invoking a moral ideal of human dignity and personality independent of utility itself.

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Of the two great proponents of utilitarianism, Mill was the more humane philosopher, Bentham the more consistent one.

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Bentham died in 1832, at the age of eighty-four. But if you go to London, you can visit him today. He provided in his will that his body be preserved, embalmed, and displayed. And so he can be found at University College London, where he sits pensively in a glass case, dressed in his actual clothing.

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This utilitarian logic could be extended to support quite a radical redistribution of wealth; it would tell us to transfer money from the rich to the poor until the last dollar we take from Gates

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This utilitarian logic could be extended to support quite a radical redistribution of wealth; it would tell us to transfer money from the rich to the poor until the last dollar we take from Gates hurts him as much as it helps the recipient.

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This Robin Hood scenario is open to at least two objections—one from within utilitarian thinking, the other from outside it. The first objection worries that high tax rates, especially on income, reduce the incentive to work and invest, leading to a decline in productivity. If the economic pie shrinks, leaving less to redistribute, the overall level of utility might go down. So before taxing Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey too heavily, the utilitarian would have to ask whether doing so would lead them to work less and so to earn less, eventually reducing the amount of money available for redistribution to the needy.

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The second objection regards these calculations as beside the point. It argues that taxing the rich to help the poor is unjust because it violates a fundamental right. According to this objection, taking money from Gates and Winfrey without their consent, even for a good cause, is coercive. It violates their liberty to do with their money whatever they please. Those who object to redistribution on these grounds are often called “libertarians.”

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The libertarian rejects three types of policies and laws that modern states commonly enact: 1. No Paternalism. Libertarians oppose laws to protect people from harming themselves.

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No Morals Legislation. Libertarians oppose using the coercive force of law to promote notions of virtue or to express the moral convictions of the majority. Prostitution may be morally objectionable to many people, but that does not justify laws that prevent

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No Morals Legislation. Libertarians oppose using the coercive force of law to promote notions of virtue or to express the moral convictions of the majority. Prostitution may be morally objectionable to many people, but that does not justify laws that prevent consenting adults from engaging in it.

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No Redistribution of Income or Wealth. The libertarian theory of rights rules out any law that requires some people to help others, including taxation for redistribution of wealth. Desirable though it may be for the affluent to support the less fortunate—by subsidizing their health care or housing or education—such help should be left up to the individual to undertake, not mandated by the government. According to the libertarian, redistributive taxes are a form of coercion, even theft.

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The libertarian philosophy does not map neatly onto the political spectrum.

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During the 1980s, libertarian ideas found prominent expression in the pro-market, antigovernment rhetoric of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

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earlier, in opposition to the welfare state. In The Constitution of Liberty (1960), the Austrian-born economist-philosopher Friedrich A. Hayek (1899–1992) argued that any attempt to bring about greater economic equality was bound to be coercive and destructive of a free society.3 In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), the American economist Milton Friedman (1912–2006) argued that many widely accepted state activities are illegitimate infringements on individual freedom.

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in opposition to the welfare state. In The Constitution of Liberty (1960), the Austrian-born economist-philosopher Friedrich A. Hayek (1899–1992) argued that any attempt to bring about greater economic equality was bound to be coercive and destructive of a free society.

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penurious

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The government also violates individual freedom when it makes laws against employment discrimination. If employers want to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, or any other factor, the state has no right to prevent them from doing so. In Friedman’s view, “such legislation clearly involves interference with the freedom of individuals to enter into voluntary contracts with one another.”

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Nozick rejects patterned theories of justice in favor of those that honor the choices people make in free markets. He argues that distributive justice depends on two requirements—justice in initial holdings and justice in transfer.8 The first asks if the resources you used to make your money were legitimately yours in the first place. (If you made a fortune selling stolen goods, you would not be entitled to the proceeds.) The second asks if you made your money either through free exchanges in the marketplace or from gifts voluntarily bestowed upon you by others. If the answer to both questions is yes, you are entitled to what you have, and the state may not take it without your consent. Provided no one starts out with ill-gotten gains, any distribution that results from a free market is just, however equal or unequal it turns out to be.

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First, liberty upsets patterns. Anyone who believes that economic inequality is unjust will have to intervene in the free market, repeatedly and continuously, to undo the effects of the choices people make. Second, intervening in this way—taxing Jordan to support programs that help the disadvantaged—not only overturns the results of voluntary transactions; it also violates Jordan’s rights by taking his earnings. It forces him, in effect, to make a charitable contribution against his will.

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The libertarian sees a moral continuity from taxation (taking my earnings) to forced labor (taking my labor) to slavery (denying that I own myself

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bereft.

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Objection 1: Taxation is not as bad as forced labor. If you are taxed, you can always choose to work less and pay lower taxes; but if you are forced to labor, you have no such choice.

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Objection 2: The poor need the money more. Libertarian reply: Maybe so. But this is a reason to persuade the affluent to support the needy through their own free choice. It does not justify forcing Jordan and Gates to give to charity. Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor is still stealing, whether it’s done by Robin Hood or the state.

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Objection 3: Michael Jordan doesn’t play alone. He therefore owes a debt to those who contribute to his success.

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But these people have already been paid the market value of their services. Although they make less than Jordan, they voluntarily accepted compensation for the jobs they perform. So there is no reason to suppose that Jordan owes them a portion of his earnings. And even if Jordan owes something to his teammates and coaches, it is hard to see how this debt justifies taxing his earnings to provide food stamps for the hungry or public housing for the homeless. Objection 4: Jordan is not really being taxed without his consent. As a citizen of a democracy, he has a voice in making the tax laws to which he is subject. Libertarian reply: Democratic consent is not enough. Suppose Jordan voted against the tax law, but it passed anyway. Wouldn’t the IRS still insist that he pay? It certainly would. You might argue that by living in this society, Jordan gives his consent (at least implicitly) to abide by the majority’s will and obey the laws.

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Objection 4: Jordan is not really being taxed without his consent. As a citizen of a democracy, he has a voice in making the tax laws to which he is subject. Libertarian reply: Democratic consent is not enough. Suppose Jordan voted against the tax law, but it passed anyway. Wouldn’t the IRS still insist that he pay? It certainly would.

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If so, the majority may tax the minority, even confiscate its wealth and property, against its will. What then becomes of individual rights? If democratic consent justifies the taking of property, does it also justify the taking of liberty? May the majority deprive me of freedom of speech and of religion, claiming that, as a democratic citizen, I have already given my consent to whatever it decides?

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a further objection is less easy to dismiss: Objection 5: Jordan is lucky. He is fortunate to possess the talent to excel at basketball, and lucky to live in a society that prizes the ability to soar through the air and put a ball through a hoop. No matter how hard he has worked to develop his skills, Jordan cannot claim credit for his natural gifts, or for living at a time when basketball is popular and richly rewarded. These things are not his doing. So it cannot be said that he is morally entitled to keep all the money his talents reap. The community does him no injustice by taxing his earnings for the public good.

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The idea that I belong to myself, not to the state or political community, is one way of explaining why it is wrong to sacrifice my rights for the welfare of others.

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The idea that we own ourselves figures in many arguments for freedom of choice. If I own my body, my life, and my person, I should be free to do whatever I want with them (provided I don’t harm others). Despite the appeal of this idea, its full implications are not easy to embrace.

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One argument for permitting the buying and selling of kidneys rests on the libertarian notion of self-ownership: If I own my own body, I should be free to sell my body parts as I please. As Nozick writes, “The central core of the notion of a property right in X… is the right to determine what shall be done with X.”

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frivolous

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For the libertarian, laws banning assisted suicide are unjust, for the following reason: If my life belongs to me, I should be free to give it up. And if I enter into a voluntary agreement with someone to help me die, the state has no right to interfere.

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lurid

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sordid

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If the libertarian claim is right, banning consensual cannibalism is unjust, a violation of the right to liberty. The state may no more punish Armin Meiwes than it may tax Bill Gates and Michael Jordan to help the poor.

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The case for free markets typically rests on two claims—one about freedom, the other about welfare.

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The first is the libertarian case for markets. It says that letting people engage in voluntary exchanges respects their freedom; laws that interfere with the free market violate individual liberty. The second is the utilitarian argument for markets. It says that free markets promote the general welfare; when two people make a deal, both gain. As long as their deal makes them better off without hurting anyone else, it must increase overall utility.

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Conscription

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Though intended to offer exemption from service at a bargain rate, the commutation fee was politically more unpopular than substitution—perhaps because it seemed to put a price on human life (or the risk of death) and to give that price government sanction. Newspaper headlines proclaimed, “Three Hundred Dollars or Your Life.” Anger over the draft and the $300 commutation fee prompted violence against enrollment officers,

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Those who hired substitutes to fight in their place included Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, the fathers of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and future presidents Chester A. Arthur and Grover Cleveland.5

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The method of hiring differs, of course. Andrew Carnegie had to find his own substitute and pay him directly; today the military recruits the soldiers to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan, and we, the taxpayers, collectively pay them. But it remains the case that those of us who’d rather not enlist hire other people to fight our wars and risk their lives. So what’s the difference, morally speaking? If the Civil War system of hiring substitutes was unjust, isn’t the volunteer army unjust as well?

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misnomer.

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It is a professional army in which soldiers work for pay. The soldiers are “volunteers” only in the sense that paid employees in any profession are volunteers. No one is conscripted, and the job is performed by those who agree to do so in exchange for money and other benefits.

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the three ways of allocating military service we have considered—conscription, conscription with a provision for hiring substitutes (the Civil War system), and the market system. Which is most just? conscription conscription allowing paid substitutes (Civil War system) market system (volunteer army)

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the three ways of allocating military service we have considered—conscription, conscription with a provision for hiring substitutes (the Civil War system), and

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To explore these questions, let’s compare the three ways of allocating military service we have considered—conscription, conscription with a provision for hiring substitutes (the Civil War system), and the market system. Which is most just?

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If you are a libertarian, the answer is obvious. Conscription (policy 1) is unjust because it is coercive, a form of slavery. It implies that the state owns its citizens and can do with them what it pleases, including forcing them to fight and risk their lives in war.

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But even if you don’t consider conscription equivalent to slavery, you might oppose it on the grounds that it limits people’s choices, and therefore reduces overall happiness. This is a utilitarian argument against conscription. It holds that, compared to a system that permits the hiring of substitutes, conscription reduces people’s welfare by preventing mutually advantageous trades.

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So, from a utilitarian point of view, the volunteer army seems the best of the three options. Letting people freely choose to enlist based on the compensation being offered enables them to serve only if doing so maximizes their own utility; and those who don’t want to serve don’t suffer the utility loss of being forced into the military against their will.

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But at least two objections can be made to this line of argument. One objection is about fairness and freedom; the other is about civic virtue and the common good.

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Objection 1: Fairness and freedom The first objection holds that, for those with limited alternatives, the free market is not all that free.

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apartment. In order to know whether his choice reflects a preference for sleeping out of doors or an inability to afford an apartment, we need to know something about his circumstances. Is he doing this freely or out of necessity?

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If poverty and economic disadvantage are widespread, the choice to enlist may simply reflect the lack of alternatives.

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According to this objection, the volunteer army may not be as voluntary as it seems. In fact, it may involve an element of coercion. If some in the society have no other good options, those who choose to enlist may be conscripted, in effect, by economic necessity

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the force of law in the first case and the pressure of economic necessity in the second.

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draft. “As long as Americans are being shipped off to war,” he wrote, “then everyone should be vulnerable, not just those who, because of economic circumstances, are attracted by lucrative enlistment bonuses and educational incentives.”

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Notice that the coercion objection is not an objection to the volunteer army as such. It only applies to a volunteer army that operates in a society with substantial inequalities

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Objection 2: Civic virtue and the common good

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This objection says that military service is not just another job; it’s a civic obligation. According to this argument, all citizens have a duty to serve their country. Some proponents of this view believe this obligation can be discharged only through military service, while others say it can be fulfilled through other forms of national service, such as the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, or Teach for America. But if military service (or national service) is a civic duty, it’s wrong to put it up for sale on the market.

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onerous

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The reason we draft jurors rather than hire them is that we regard the activity of dispensing justice in the courts as a responsibility all citizens should share.

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According to this objection, hiring soldiers to fight our wars is wrong, not because it’s unfair to the poor but because it allows us to abdicate a civic duty.

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version of this argument. He argues that “the U.S. armed forces today have many of the attributes of a mercenary army,” by which he means a paid, professional army that is separated to a significant degree from the society on whose behalf it fights.

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He doesn’t mean to disparage the motives of those who enlist. His worry is that hiring a relatively small number of our fellow citizens to fight our wars lets the rest of us off the hook. It severs the link between the majority of democratic citizens and the soldiers who fight in their name.

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One of the most famous statements of the civic case for conscription was offered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the Geneva-born Enlightenment political theorist. In The Social Contract (1762), he argues that turning a civic duty into a marketable good does not increase freedom, but rather undermines it: As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the state is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home. … In a country that is truly free, the citizens do everything with their own arms and nothing by means of money; so far from paying to be exempted from their duties, they would even pay for the privilege of fulfilling them themselves. I am far from taking the common view: I hold enforced labor to be less opposed to liberty than taxes.

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strenuous

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Once you accept the notion that the army should use the labor market to fill its ranks, there is no reason in principle to restrict eligibility to American citizens—no reason, that is, unless you believe military service is a civic responsibility after all, an expression of citizenship. But if you believe that, then you have reason to question the market solution.

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In fact, the United States now outsources military functions to private enterprise on a large scale. Private military contractors play an increasing role in conflicts around the world, and form a substantial part of the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

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To answer this question, we have to resolve a prior one: Is military service (and perhaps national service generally) a civic obligation that all citizens have a duty to perform, or is it a hard and risky job like others (coal mining, for example, or commercial fishing) that is properly governed by the labor market? And to answer this question, we have to ask a broader one: What obligations do citizens of a democratic society owe to one another, and how do such obligations arise?

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The strongest argument in favor of upholding the contract is that a deal is a deal. Two consenting adults had entered into a voluntary agreement that offered benefits to both parties: William Stern would get a genetically related child, and Mary Beth Whitehead would earn $10,000 for nine months of work.

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Second, he rejected the notion that surrogacy amounts to baby-selling. The judge held that William Stern, the biological father, had not bought a baby from Mary Beth Whitehead; he’d paid her for the service of carrying his child to term. “At birth, the father does not purchase the child. It is his own biological genetically related child. He cannot purchase what is already his.”35 Since the baby was conceived with William’s sperm, it was his baby to begin with, the judge reasoned. Therefore, no baby-selling was involved.

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First, the consent was flawed. Mary Beth’s agreement to bear a child and surrender it at birth was not truly voluntary, because it was not fully informed: Under the contract, the natural mother is irrevocably committed before she knows the strength of her bond with her child. She never makes a totally voluntary, informed decision, for quite clearly any decision prior to the baby’s birth is, in the most important sense, uninformed.

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The argument for upholding the surrogacy contract draws on the two theories of justice we’ve considered so far—libertarianism and utilitarianism. The libertarian case for contracts is that they reflect freedom of choice; to uphold a contract between two consenting adults is to respect their liberty. The utilitarian case for contracts is that they promote the general welfare; if both parties agree to a deal, both must derive some benefit or happiness from the agreement—otherwise, they wouldn’t have made it. So, unless it can be shown that the deal reduces someone else’s utility (and by more than it benefits the parties), mutually advantageous exchanges—including surrogacy contracts—should be upheld.

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Objection 1: Tainted consent The first objection, about whether Mary Beth Whitehead’s agreement was truly voluntary, raises a question about the conditions under which people make choices. It argues that we can exercise free choice only if we’re not unduly pressured (by the need for money, say), and if we’re reasonably well informed about the alternatives. Exactly what counts as undue pressure or the lack of informed consent is open to argument.

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Objection 2: Degradation and higher goods What about the second objection to surrogacy contracts—the one that says there are some things money shouldn’t buy, including babies and women’s reproductive capacities? What exactly is wrong with buying and selling these things? The most compelling answer is that treating babies and pregnancy as commodities degrades them, or fails to value them appropriately.

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Underlying this answer is a far-reaching idea: The right way of valuing goods and social practices is not simply up to us. Certain modes of valuation are appropriate to certain goods and practices.

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Respect and use are two different modes of valuation.

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Commercial surrogacy degrades children insofar as it treats them as commodities.”44 It uses them as instruments of profit rather than cherishes them as persons worthy of love and care.

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Bentham invented the concept of utility for precisely this purpose. But Anderson argues that valuing everything according to utility (or money) degrades those goods and social practices—including children, pregnancy, and parenting—that are properly valued according to higher norms.

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This approach emphasizes the distinction between persons (worthy of respect) and mere objects or things (open to use) as the fundamental distinction in morality. The greatest defender of this approach is Immanuel Kant, to whom we turn in the next chapter.

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This “unbundling” of the supply chain, Spar explains, has prompted growth in the surrogacy market.51 “By removing the traditional link between egg, womb, and mother, gestational surrogacy [has] reduced the legal and emotional risks that had surrounded traditional surrogacy and allowed a new market to thrive.”

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poignancy

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How free are the choices we make in the free market? And are there certain virtues and higher goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy? 5.

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Thinking through the rights and wrongs of their situations brings us face to face with two of the questions that divide competing conceptions of justice: How free are the choices we make in the free market? And are there certain virtues and higher goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?

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If you believe in universal human rights, you are probably not a utilitarian. If all human beings are worthy of respect, regardless of who they are or where they live, then it’s wrong to treat them as mere instruments of the collective happiness.

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It is one thing to condemn the scenario of the suffering child because it reduces overall utility, and something else to condemn it as an intrinsic moral wrong, an injustice to the child.

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empiricist

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Five years after Jeremy Bentham’s Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780), Kant’s Groundwork launched a devastating critique of utilitarianism. It argues that morality is not about maximizing happiness or any other end. Instead, it is about respecting persons as ends in themselves.

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Kant’s emphasis on human dignity informs present-day notions of universal human rights. More important, his account of freedom figures in many of our contemporary debates about justice.

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I distinguished three approaches to justice. One approach, that of the utilitarians, says that the way to define justice and to determine the right thing to do is to ask what will maximize welfare, or the collective happiness of society as a whole.

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A second approach connects justice to freedom. Libertarians offer an example of this approach. They say the just distribution of income and wealth is whatever distribution arises from the free exchange of goods and services in an unfettered market. To regulate the market is unjust, they maintain, because it violates

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A third approach says that justice means giving people what they morally deserve—allocating goods to reward and promote virtue.

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Kant rejects approach one (maximizing welfare) and approach three (promoting virtue). Neither, he thinks, respects human freedom. So Kant is a powerful advocate for approach two—the one that connects justice and morality to freedom.

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exalted

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Kant’s more fundamental point is that basing moral principles on preferences and desires—even the desire for happiness—misunderstands what morality is about.

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The utilitarian’s happiness principle “contributes nothing whatever toward establishing morality, since making a man happy is quite different from making him good and making him prudent or astute in seeking his advantage quite different from making him virtuous.”2 Basing morality on interests and preferences destroys its dignity. It doesn’t teach us how to distinguish right from wrong, but “only to become better at calculation.”

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Kant argues that every person is worthy of respect, not because we own ourselves but because we are rational beings, capable of reason; we are also autonomous beings, capable of acting and choosing freely. Kant doesn’t mean that we always succeed in acting rationally, or in choosing autonomously. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t. He means only that we have the capacity for reason, and for freedom, and that this capacity is common to human beings as such.

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Kant means that we respond to our senses, our feelings. So Bentham was right—but only half right. He was right to observe that we like pleasure and dislike pain. But he was wrong to insist that they are “our sovereign masters.” Kant argues that reason can be sovereign, at least some of the time. When reason governs our will, we are not driven by the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain.

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Our capacity for reason is bound up with our capacity for freedom. Taken together, these capacities make us distinctive, and set us apart from mere animal existence. They make us more than mere creatures of appetite.

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Kant reasons as follows: When we, like animals, seek pleasure or the avoidance of pain, we aren’t really acting freely. We are acting as the slaves of our appetites and desires. Why? Because whenever we are seeking to satisfy our desires, everything we do is for the sake of some end given outside

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To act freely, according to Kant, is to act autonomously. And to act autonomously is to act according to a law I give myself—not according to the dictates of nature or social convention.

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Kant invents a word to capture this contrast—heteronomy. When I act heteronomously, I act according to determinations given outside of me. Here is an illustration: When you drop a billiard ball, it falls to the ground. As it falls, the billiard ball is not acting freely; its movement is governed by the laws of nature—in this case, the law of gravity.

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This is an example of what Kant would call heteronomous determination—doing something for the sake of something else, for the sake of something else, and so on. When we act heteronomously, we act for the sake of ends given outside us. We are instruments, not authors, of the purposes we pursue.

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For Kant, respecting human dignity means treating persons as ends in themselves. This is why it is wrong to use people for the sake of the general welfare, as utilitarianism does. Pushing the heavy man onto the track

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According to Kant, the moral worth of an action consists not in the consequences that flow from it, but in the intention from which the act is done. What matters is the motive, and the motive must be of a certain kind.

Page: 126, Location: 1919-1921

“A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes,” Kant writes. It is good in itself, whether or not it prevails. “Even if… this will is entirely lacking in power to carry out its intentions; if by its utmost effort it still accomplishes nothing… even then it would still shine like a jewel for its own sake as something which has its full value in itself.”

Page: 126, Location: 1921-1924

He’s simply observing that, when we assess the moral worth of an action, we assess the motive from which it’s done, not the consequences it produces.

Page: 126, Location: 1931-1932

So the shopkeeper does the right thing, but for the wrong reason. The only reason he deals honestly with the child is to protect his reputation. The shopkeeper acts honestly only for the sake of self-interest; the shopkeeper’s action lacks moral worth.

Page: 127, Location: 1942-1943

prudential

Page: 128, Location: 1952-1952

Most of the precautions we take to preserve our lives therefore lack moral content. Buckling our seat belts and keeping our cholesterol in check are prudential acts, not moral ones.

Page: 129, Location: 1964-1965

exemplars?

Page: 130, Location: 1989-1989

No, not exactly. Taking pleasure in doing the right thing does not necessarily undermine its moral worth. What matters, Kant tells us, is that the good

Page: 130, Location: 1989-1990

Taking pleasure in doing the right thing does not necessarily undermine its moral worth. What matters, Kant tells us, is that the good deed be done because it’s the right thing to do—whether or not doing it gives us pleasure.

Page: 130, Location: 1989-1990

echolalia,

Page: 130, Location: 1993-1993

As long as he did the right thing for the right reason, feeling good about it doesn’t undermine its moral worth.

Page: 131, Location: 2004-2005

The same is true of Kant’s altruist. If he comes to the aid of other people simply for the pleasure it gives him, then his action lacks moral worth. But if he recognizes a duty to help one’s fellow human beings and acts out of that duty, then the pleasure he derives from it is not morally disqualifying.

Page: 131, Location: 2005-2007

the feature of our good deeds that gives them their moral worth—namely, their principle, not their consequences.

Page: 132, Location: 2010-2011

heteronomy

Page: 132, Location: 2023-2023

Kant argues that all action is governed by laws of some kind or other. And if our actions were governed solely by the laws of physics, then we would be no different from that billiard ball. So if we’re capable of freedom, we must be capable of acting not according to a law that is given or imposed on us, but according to a law we give ourselves.

Page: 133, Location: 2040-2042

But where could such a law come from? Kant’s answer: from reason. We’re not only sentient beings, governed by the pleasure and pain delivered by our senses; we are also rational beings, capable of reason. If reason determines my will, then the will becomes the power to choose independent of the dictates of nature or inclination.

Page: 134, Location: 2042-2045

Thomas Hobbes called reason the “scout for the desires.” David Hume called reason the “slave of the passions.”

Page: 134, Location: 2049-2050

Reason’s work, for the utilitarians, is not to determine what ends are worth pursuing. Its job is to figure out how to maximize utility by

Page: 134, Location: 2051-2052

Reason’s work, for the utilitarians, is not to determine what ends are worth pursuing. Its job is to figure out how to maximize utility by satisfying the desires we happen to have.

Page: 134, Location: 2051-2052

Kant’s idea of reason—of practical reason, the kind involved in morality—is not instrumental reason but “pure practical reason, which legislates a priori, regardless of all empirical ends.”

Page: 134, Location: 2055-2056

Hypothetical imperatives use instrumental reason: If you want X, then do Y. If you want a good business reputation, then treat your customers honestly.

Page: 135, Location: 2060-2061

By “categorical,” Kant means unconditional. So, for example, when a politician issues a categorical denial of an alleged scandal, the denial is not merely emphatic; it’s unconditional—without any loophole or exception. Similarly, a categorical duty or categorical right is one that applies regardless of the circumstances.

Page: 135, Location: 2066-2068

“It is concerned not with the matter of the action and its presumed results, but with its form, and with the principle from which it follows. And what is essentially good in the action consists in the mental disposition, let the consequences be what they may.” Only a categorical imperative, Kant argues, can qualify as an imperative of morality.

Page: 135, Location: 2070-2072

A false promise is not morally wrong because, writ large, it would undermine social trust (though it might well do so). It is wrong because, in making it, I privilege my needs and desires (in this case, for money) over everybody else’s.

Page: 138, Location: 2103-2105

We can’t base the moral law on any particular interests, purposes, or ends, because then it would be only relative to the person whose ends they were.

Page: 138, Location: 2109-2110

This is the fundamental difference, Kant reminds us, between persons and things. Persons are rational beings. They don’t just have a relative value, but if anything has, they have an absolute value, an intrinsic value. That is, rational beings have dignity.

Page: 138, Location: 2115-2117

The duty of respect is a duty we owe to persons as rational beings, as bearers of humanity. It has nothing to do with who in particular the person may be.

Page: 140, Location: 2136-2137

But Kantian respect is respect for humanity as such, for a rational capacity that resides, undifferentiated, in all of us.

Page: 140, Location: 2142-2142

Acting freely, that is, autonomously, and acting morally, according to the categorical imperative, are one and the same.

Page: 141, Location: 2153-2154

QUESTION 1: Kant’s categorical imperative tells us to treat everyone with respect, as an end in itself. Isn’t this pretty much the same as the Golden Rule? (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”) ANSWER: No. The Golden Rule depends on contingent facts about how people would like to be treated. The categorical imperative requires that we abstract from such contingencies and respect persons as rational beings, regardless of what they might want in a particular situation.

Page: 141, Location: 2162-2167

contingent.

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Insofar as we exercise pure practical reason, we abstract from our particular interests. This means that everyone who exercises pure practical reason will reach the same conclusion—will arrive at a single (universal) categorical imperative. “Thus a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same.”

Page: 143, Location: 2190-2193

Freedom of the will is not the kind of thing that science can prove or disprove. Neither is morality. It’s true that human beings inhabit the realm of nature. Everything we do can be described from a physical or biological point of view. When I raise my hand to cast a vote, my action can be explained in terms of muscles, neurons, synapses, and cells. But it can also be explained in terms of ideas and beliefs. Kant says we can’t help but understand ourselves from both standpoints—the empirical realm of physics and biology, and an “intelligible” realm of free human agency.

Page: 144, Location: 2198-2203

As a natural being, I belong to the sensible world. My actions are determined by the laws of nature and the regularities of cause and effect.

Page: 145, Location: 2223-2223

As a rational being, I inhabit an intelligible world. Here, being independent of the laws of nature, I am capable of autonomy, capable of acting

Page: 146, Location: 2224-2225

As a rational being, I inhabit an intelligible world. Here, being independent of the laws of nature, I am capable of autonomy, capable of acting according to a law I give myself.

Page: 146, Location: 2224-2225

Another way of putting this point is to say that morality is not empirical. It stands at a certain distance from the world. It passes judgment on the world. Science can’t, for all its power and insight, reach moral questions, because it operates within the sensible realm. “To argue freedom away,” Kant writes, “is as impossible for the most abstruse philosophy as it is for the most ordinary human reason.”

Page: 147, Location: 2247-2251

That is because morality and freedom are not empirical concepts. We can’t prove that they exist, but neither can we make sense of our moral lives without presupposing them.

Page: 147, Location: 2253-2254

Kant’s case against casual sex Kant’s views on sexual morality are traditional and conservative. He opposes every conceivable sexual practice except sexual intercourse between husband and wife.

Page: 148, Location: 2259-2261

Casual sex is objectionable, he thinks, because it is all about the satisfaction of sexual desire, not about respect for the humanity of one’s partner.

Page: 148, Location: 2263-2264

Kant’s opposition to prostitution and casual sex brings out the contrast between autonomy as he conceives it—the free will of a rational being—and individual acts of consent.

Page: 150, Location: 2294-2295

Admittedly, helping a murderer carry out his evil deed is a pretty heavy “disadvantage.” But remember, for Kant, morality is not about consequences; it’s about principle. You can’t control the consequences of your action—in this case, telling the truth—since consequences are bound up with contingency.

Page: 151, Location: 2314-2316

expediency

Page: 152, Location: 2319-2319

Kantian thought that there is a morally relevant difference between a lie and a misleading truth.

Page: 158, Location: 2415-2416

The difference, I think, is this: A carefully crafted evasion pays homage to the duty of truth-telling in a way that an outright lie does not. Anyone who goes to the bother of concocting a misleading but technically true statement when a simple lie would do expresses, however obliquely, respect for the moral law.

Page: 158, Location: 2418-2421

In both cases, I am pursuing an admirable goal, that of protecting my friend. But only in the second case do I pursue this goal in a way that accords with the motive of duty.

Page: 158, Location: 2423-2424

austere

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Although Kant does not work out the implications in detail, the political theory he favors rejects utilitarianism in favor of a theory of justice based on a social contract.

Page: 160, Location: 2441-2442

Page: 160, Location: 2448-2450

Moral principles can’t be derived from empirical facts alone. Just as the moral law can’t rest on the interests or desires of individuals, principles of justice can’t rest on the interests or desires of a community. The mere fact that a group of people in the past agreed to a constitution is not enough to make that constitution just.

Page: 161, Location: 2459-2462

The rest of us are never required, or even asked, to give our consent. So why are we obligated to obey the law? And how can we say that our government rests on the consent of the governed? John Locke says we’ve given tacit consent. Anyone who enjoys the benefits of a government, even by traveling on the highway, implicitly consents to the law, and is bound by it.1 But tacit consent is a pale form of the real thing. It is hard to see how just passing through town is morally akin to ratifying the Constitution.

Page: 162, Location: 2475-2480

John Rawls (1921–2002), an American political philosopher, offers an illuminating answer to this question. In A Theory of Justice (1971), he argues that the way to think about justice is to ask what principles we would agree to in an initial situation of equality.

Page: 162, Location: 2482-2484

He doesn’t assume that we are all motivated by self-interest in real life; only that we set aside our moral and religious convictions for purposes of the thought experiment.

Page: 163, Location: 2498-2499

Rawls invites us to ask what principles we—as rational, self-interested persons—would choose if we found ourselves in that position. He doesn’t assume that we are all motivated by self-interest in real life; only that we set aside our moral and religious convictions for purposes of the thought experiment.

Page: 163, Location: 2497-2499

This is Rawls’s idea of the social contract—a hypothetical agreement in an original position of equality. Rawls invites us to ask what principles we—as rational, self-interested persons—would choose if we found ourselves in that position. He doesn’t assume that we are all motivated by self-interest in real life; only that we set aside our moral and religious convictions for purposes of the thought experiment. What principles would we choose?

Page: 163, Location: 2497-2500

The first provides equal basic liberties for all citizens, such as freedom of speech and religion. This principle takes priority over considerations of social utility and the general welfare. The second principle concerns social and economic equality. Although it does not require an equal distribution of income and wealth, it permits only those social and economic inequalities that work to the advantage of the least well off members of society.

Page: 164, Location: 2506-2509

The famous words of Don Corleone in The Godfather, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse,” suggest (in extreme form) the pressure that hovers, to some degree, over most negotiations.

Page: 165, Location: 2529-2531

Can consent create an obligation on its own, or is some element of benefit or reliance also required?3 This debate tells us something about the morality of contracts that we often overlook: actual contracts carry moral weight insofar as they realize two ideals—autonomy and reciprocity.

Page: 167, Location: 2546-2549

As voluntary acts, contracts express our autonomy; the obligations they create carry weight because they are self-imposed—we take them freely upon ourselves. As instruments of mutual benefit, contracts draw on the ideal of reciprocity; the obligation to fulfill them arises from the obligation to repay others for the benefits they provide us.

Page: 167, Location: 2550-2552

In practice, these ideals—autonomy and reciprocity—are imperfectly realized. Some agreements, though voluntary, are not mutually beneficial. And sometimes we can be obligated to repay a benefit simply on grounds of reciprocity, even in the absence of a contract.

Page: 167, Location: 2553-2554

First, the fact of an agreement does not guarantee the fairness of the agreement. Second, consent is not enough to create a binding moral claim.

Page: 168, Location: 2568-2569

When he was young, Hume wrote a scathing critique of Locke’s idea of a social contract. He called it a “philosophical fiction which never had and never could have any reality,”5 and “one of the most mysterious and incomprehensible operations that can possibly be imagined.”

Page: 169, Location: 2580-2583

It wrongly assumes that wherever there is an obligation, there must have been an agreement—some act of consent. It overlooks the possibility that obligation can arise without consent.

Page: 171, Location: 2620-2622

Contracts derive their moral force from two different ideals, autonomy and reciprocity. But most actual contracts fall short of these ideals. If I’m up against someone with a superior bargaining position, my agreement may not be wholly voluntary, but pressured or, in the extreme case, coerced. If I’m negotiating with someone with greater knowledge of the things we are exchanging, the deal may not be mutually beneficial. In the extreme case, I may be defrauded or deceived.

Page: 172, Location: 2635-2638

If you can imagine a contract like this, you have arrived at Rawls’s idea of a hypothetical agreement in an initial situation of equality. The veil of ignorance ensures the equality of power and knowledge that the original position requires. By ensuring that no one knows his or her place in society, his strengths or weaknesses, his values or ends, the veil of ignorance ensures that no one can take advantage, even unwittingly, of a favorable bargaining position.

Page: 173, Location: 2645-2648

Rawls calls “the difference principle”: only those social and economic inequalities are permitted that work to the benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

Page: 174, Location: 2668-2669

Underlying the device of the veil of ignorance is a moral argument that can be presented independent of the thought experiment. Its main idea is that the distribution of income and opportunity should not be based on factors that are arbitrary from a moral point of view.

Page: 176, Location: 2686-2688

According to the meritocratic conception, the distribution of income and wealth that results from a free market is just, but only if everyone has the same opportunity to develop his or her talents. Only if everyone begins at the same starting line can it be said that the winners of the race deserve their rewards.

Page: 177, Location: 2707-2709

Rawls concludes that the meritocratic conception of justice is flawed for the same reason (though to a lesser degree) as the libertarian conception; both base distributive shares on factors that are morally arbitrary. “Once we are troubled by the influence of either social contingencies or natural chance on the determination of the distributive shares, we are bound, on reflection, to be bothered by the influence of the other. From a moral standpoint the two seem equally arbitrary.”

Page: 178, Location: 2720-2723

Some critics of egalitarianism believe that the only alternative to a meritocratic market society is a leveling equality that imposes handicaps on the talented.

Page: 178, Location: 2727-2728

Rawls’s alternative, which he calls the difference principle, corrects for the unequal distribution of talents and endowments without handicapping the talented. How? Encourage the gifted to develop and exercise their talents, but with the understanding that the rewards these talents reap in the market belong to the community as a whole. Don’t handicap the best runners; let them run and do their best. Simply acknowledge in advance that the winnings don’t belong to them alone, but should be shared with those who lack similar gifts.

Page: 179, Location: 2744-2748

four rival theories of distribution justice: Feudal or caste system: fixed hierarchy based on birth. Libertarian: free market with formal equality of opportunity. Meritocratic: free market with fair equality of opportunity. Egalitarian: Rawls’s difference principle. Rawls argues that each of the first three theories bases distributive shares on factors that are arbitrary from a moral point of view—whether accident of birth, or social and economic advantage, or natural talents and abilities. Only the difference principle avoids basing the distribution of income and wealth on these contingencies.

Page: 180, Location: 2758-2764

Rawls is right, income inequalities are just only insofar as they call forth efforts that ultimately help the disadvantaged, not because CEOs or sports stars deserve to make more money than factory workers.

Page: 182, Location: 2777-2778

If Rawls is right, income inequalities are just only insofar as they call forth efforts that ultimately help the disadvantaged, not because CEOs or sports stars deserve to make more money than factory workers.

Page: 182, Location: 2777-2778

Rawls replies that even effort may be the product of a favorable upbringing. “Even the willingness to make an effort, to try, and so to be deserving in the ordinary sense is itself dependent upon happy family and social circumstances.”

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credit. “It seems clear that the effort a person is willing to make is influenced by his natural abilities and skills and the alternatives open to him. The better endowed are more likely, other things equal, to strive conscientiously…”

Page: 182, Location: 2786-2788

So, despite the talk about effort, it’s really contribution, or achievement, that the meritocrat believes is worthy of reward. Whether or not our work ethic is our own doing, our contribution depends, at least in part, on natural talents for which we can claim no credit.

Page: 183, Location: 2806-2808

our ordinary way of thinking about justice: “There is a tendency for common sense to suppose that income and wealth, and the good things in life generally, should be distributed according to moral desert. Justice is happiness according to virtue… Now justice as fairness rejects this conception.”

Page: 184, Location: 2811-2813

With a game of skill, unlike a game of chance, there can be a difference between who is entitled to the winnings and who deserved to win. This is because games of skill reward the exercise and display of certain virtues.

Page: 185, Location: 2835-2837

The successful often overlook this contingent aspect of their success. Many of us are fortunate to possess, at least in some measure, the qualities our society happens to prize. In a capitalist society, it helps to have entrepreneurial drive. In a bureaucratic society, it helps to get on easily and smoothly with superiors. In a mass democratic society, it helps to look good on television, and to speak in short, superficial sound bites. In a litigious society, it helps to go to law school, and to have the logical and reasoning skills that will allow you to score well on the LSATs.

Page: 187, Location: 2860-2863

Unlike Rawls, however, Friedman insisted that we should not try to remedy this unfairness. Instead, we should learn to live with it, and enjoy the benefits it brings:

Page: 190, Location: 2906-2907

Rawls proposes that we deal with these facts by agreeing “to share one another’s fate,” and “to avail [ourselves] of the accidents of nature and social circumstance only when doing so is for the common benefit.”

Page: 191, Location: 2922-2924

ARGUING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Page: 192, Location: 2931-2931

The real affirmative action debate is about two other rationales—the compensatory argument and the diversity argument.

Page: 195, Location: 2975-2976

This argument treats admission primarily as a benefit to the recipient and seeks to distribute the benefit in a way that compensates for past injustice and its lingering effects.

Page: 195, Location: 2979-2980

But the compensatory argument runs into a tough challenge: critics point out that those who benefit are not necessarily those who have suffered, and those who pay the compensation are seldom those responsible for the wrongs being rectified.

Page: 195, Location: 2980-2982

To answer this question, we need to know more about how moral obligations arise. Do we incur obligations only as individuals, or do some obligations claim us as members of communities with historic identities?

Page: 195, Location: 2989-2991

The diversity rationale is an argument in the name of the common good—the common good of the school itself and also of the wider society.

Page: 196, Location: 2995-2996

First, it holds that a racially mixed student body is desirable because it enables students to learn more from one another than they would if all of them came from similar backgrounds.

Page: 196, Location: 2996-2998

Second, the diversity argument maintains that equipping disadvantaged minorities to assume positions of leadership in key public and professional roles advances the university’s civic purpose and contributes to the common good.

Page: 196, Location: 2999-3000

The practical objection does not claim that affirmative action is unjust, but rather that it is unlikely to achieve its aims, and may do more harm than good.

Page: 198, Location: 3022-3024

Page: 198, Location: 3025-3027

The principled objection claims that, however worthy the goal of a more diverse classroom or a more equal society, and however successful affirmative action policies may be in achieving it, using race or ethnicity as a factor in admissions is unfair. The reason: doing so violates the rights of applicants such as Cheryl Hopwood, who, through no fault of their own, are put at a competitive disadvantage.

Page: 198, Location: 3025-3028

Dworkin’s point is that justice in admissions is not a matter of rewarding merit or virtue; we can know what counts as a fair way of allocating seats in the freshman class only once the university defines its mission. The mission defines the relevant merits, not the other way around.

Page: 200, Location: 3052-3054

The most obvious answer is that, in its segregationist days, the Texas law school used race as a badge of inferiority, whereas today’s racial preferences do not insult or stigmatize anyone. Hopwood considered her rejection unfair, but she cannot claim that it expresses hatred or contempt.

Page: 202, Location: 3084-3086

Because, following Rawls’s point about moral desert, no one deserves to be considered for an apartment or a seat in the freshman class according to his or her merits, independently defined. What counts as merit can be determined only once the housing authority or the college officials define their mission.

Page: 204, Location: 3114-3116

disquieting

Page: 204, Location: 3122-3122

moral desert

Page: 204, Location: 3118-3118

This conviction is at best a mixed blessing. Its persistence is an obstacle to social solidarity; the more we regard our success as our own doing, the less responsibility we feel for those who fall behind.

Page: 204, Location: 3125-3127

First, justice often has an honorific aspect. Debates about distributive justice are about not only who gets what but also what qualities are worthy of honor and reward.

Page: 205, Location: 3130-3132

Second, the idea that merit arises only once social institutions define their mission is subject to a complication: the social institutions that figure most prominently in debates about justice—schools, universities, occupations, professions, public offices—are not free to define their mission just any way they please. These institutions are defined, at least in part, by the distinctive goods they promote. While there is room for argument about what, at any moment, the mission of a law school or an army or an orchestra should be, it’s not the case that just anything goes. Certain goods are appropriate to certain social institutions, and to ignore these goods in allocating roles can be a kind of corruption. We can see the way justice is entangled with honor by recalling Hopwood’s case. Suppose

Page: 205, Location: 3132-3137

Page: 205, Location: 3132-3134

conscientious

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Dworkin’s expansive definition of merit, a student admitted to a school for the sake of a $10 million gift for the new campus library is meritorious; her admission serves the good of the university as a whole.

Page: 208, Location: 3178-3179

fairness requires is that no one be rejected out of prejudice or contempt, and that applicants be judged by criteria related to the mission the university sets for itself. In this case, those conditions are met.

Page: 208, Location: 3180-3182

As Dworkin points out, many factors beyond our control

Page: 208, Location: 3185-3185

As Dworkin points out, many factors beyond our control are legitimate factors in admission.

Page: 208, Location: 3185-3186

Perhaps what’s troubling about the auction has less to do with the opportunity of the applicants than the integrity of the university.

Page: 208, Location: 3186-3187

Here is my hunch: his resentment probably reflects a sense that Callie is being accorded an honor she doesn’t deserve, in a way that mocks the pride he takes in his daughter’s cheerleading prowess. If great cheerleading is something that can be done from a wheelchair, then the honor accorded those who excel at tumbles and splits is depreciated to some degree.

Page: 211, Location: 3230-3233

Notice the connection between the first question, about fairness, and the second, about honor and resentment.

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Notice the connection between the first question, about fairness, and the second, about honor and resentment. In order to determine a fair way to allocate cheerleading positions, we need to determine the nature and purpose of cheerleading.

Page: 212, Location: 3238-3239

Central to Aristotle’s political philosophy are two ideas, both present in the argument over Callie: Justice is teleological. Defining rights requires us to figure out the telos (the purpose, end, or essential nature) of the social practice in question. Justice is honorific. To reason about the telos of a practice—or to argue about it—is, at least in part, to reason or argue about what virtues it should honor and reward.

Page: 212, Location: 3248-3253

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) does not think justice can be neutral in this way. He believes that debates about justice are, unavoidably, debates about honor, virtue, and the nature of the good life.

Page: 213, Location: 3256-3258

For Aristotle, justice means giving people what they deserve, giving each person his or her due

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distributed. Justice involves two factors: “things, and the persons to whom things are assigned.” And in general we say that “persons who are equal should have assigned to them equal things.”

Page: 213, Location: 3261-3262

Aristotle’s point is that, in distributing flutes, we should not look for the richest or best-looking or even the best person overall. We should look for the best flute player.

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The purpose of flutes is to produce excellent music. Those who can best realize this purpose ought to have the best ones.

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The most obvious reason for giving the best flutes to the best flute players is that doing so will produce the best music, making us listeners better off. But this is not Aristotle’s reason. He thinks the best flutes should go to the best flute players because that’s what flutes are for—to be played well.

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(Teleological comes from the Greek word telos, which means purpose, end, or

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(Teleological comes from the Greek word telos, which means purpose, end, or goal.) Aristotle claims that in order to determine

Page: 215, Location: 3284-3285

(Teleological comes from the Greek word telos, which means purpose, end, or goal.)

Page: 215, Location: 3284-3285

Aristotle claims that in order to determine the just distribution of a good, we have to inquire into the telos, or purpose, of the good being distributed.

Page: 215, Location: 3285-3286

In the ancient world, teleological thinking was more prevalent than it is today. Plato and Aristotle thought that fire rose because it was reaching for the sky, its natural home, and that stones fell because they were striving to get closer to the earth, where they belonged. Nature was seen as having a meaningful order. To understand nature, and our place in it, was to grasp its purpose, its essential meaning.

Page: 216, Location: 3298-3300

Sorting out the telos of a university seems essential to determining the proper criteria of admission. This brings out the teleological aspect of justice in university admissions.

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Those who believe that universities exist to celebrate and reward scholarly excellence alone are likely to reject affirmative action, whereas those who believe universities also exist to promote certain civic ideals may well embrace it.

Page: 218, Location: 3330-3331

Aristotle doesn’t see it this way. For Aristotle, the purpose of politics is not to set up a framework of rights that is neutral among ends. It is to form good citizens and to cultivate good character.

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Aristotle criticizes what he takes to be the two major claimants to political authority—oligarchs and democrats.

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The purpose of politics is nothing less than to enable people to develop their distinctive human capacities and virtues—to deliberate about the common good, to acquire practical judgment, to share in self-government, to care for the fate of the community as a whole.

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Organizations such as NATO and NAFTA and the WTO are concerned only with security or economic exchange; they don’t constitute a shared way of life that shapes the character of the participants. And the same can be said of a city or a state concerned only with security and trade and that is indifferent to the moral and civic education of its members. “If the spirit of their intercourse were still the same after their coming together as it had been when they were living apart,” Aristotle writes, their association can’t really be considered a polis, or political community.

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Since the end of politics is the good life, the highest offices and honors should go to people, such as Pericles, who are greatest in civic virtue and best at identifying the common good. Property holders should have their say. Majoritarian considerations should matter some. But the greatest influence should go to those with the qualities of character and judgment to decide if and when and how to go to war with Sparta.

Page: 222, Location: 3393-3396

polis

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The moral life aims at happiness, but by happiness Aristotle doesn’t mean what the utilitarians mean—maximizing the balance of pleasure over pain. The virtuous person is someone who takes pleasure and pain in the right things. If someone takes pleasure in watching dog fights, for example, we consider this a vice to be overcome, not a true source of happiness. Moral excellence does not consist in aggregating pleasures and pains but in aligning them, so that we delight in noble things and take pain in base ones. Happiness is not a state of mind but a way of being, “an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”13

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Aristotle says we don’t become virtuous that way. “Moral virtue comes about as a result of habit.” It’s the kind of thing we learn by doing. “The virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well.”

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If moral virtue is something we learn by doing, we have somehow to develop the right habits in the first place. For Aristotle, this is the primary purpose of law—to cultivate the habits that lead to good character. “Legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.”

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Moral education is less about promulgating rules than forming habits and shaping character. “It makes no small difference… whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.”

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Miss Manners disagrees: “I think, to the contrary, that it is safer to hope that practicing proper behavior eventually encourages virtuous feeling; that if you write enough thank-you letters, you may actually feel a flicker of gratitude.”17 That’s how Aristotle conceives moral virtue.

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Moral virtue therefore requires judgment, a kind of knowledge Aristotle calls “practical wisdom.” Unlike scientific knowledge, which concerns “things that are universal and necessary,”

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First, the laws of the polis inculcate good habits, form good character, and set us on the way to civic virtue. Second, the life of the citizen enables us to exercise capacities for deliberation and practical wisdom that would otherwise lie dormant. This is not the kind of thing we can do at home

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Still, the historic persistence of these injustices does not exonerate Aristotle for accepting them. In the case of slavery, Aristotle not only accepted it but offered a philosophical justification.

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For Aristotle, justice is a matter of fit. To allocate rights is to look for the telos of social institutions, and to fit persons to the roles that suit them, the roles that enable them to realize their nature. Giving persons their due means giving them the offices and honors they deserve and the social roles that accord with their nature.

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Liberal theories of justice, from Kant to Rawls, worry that teleological conceptions are at odds with freedom. For them, justice is not about fit but about choice. To allocate rights is not to fit people to roles that suit their nature; it is to let people choose their roles for themselves.

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Slavery is necessary, Aristotle argues, because someone must look after the household chores if citizens are to spend time in the assembly deliberating about the common good. The polis requires a division of labor. Unless we invent machines that could take care of all menial tasks, some people have to attend to the necessities of life so that others can be free to participate in politics.

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For slavery to be just, according to Aristotle, two conditions must be met: it must be necessary, and it must be natural.

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By Aristotle’s own standard, their slavery is unjust: “Not all those who are actually slaves, or actually freemen, are natural slaves or natural freemen.”

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For liberal political theory, slavery is unjust because it is coercive. For teleological theories, slavery is unjust because it is at odds with our nature; coercion is a symptom of the injustice, not the source of

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For Aristotle, even consent against fair background conditions is not sufficient; for the work to be just, it has to be suited to the nature of the workers who perform it. Some jobs fail this test. They are so dangerous, repetitive, and deadening as to be unfit for human beings. In those cases, justice requires that the work be reorganized to accord with our nature. Otherwise, the job is unjust in the same way that slavery is.

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Finally, Scalia, by denying that golf has a telos, misses altogether the honorific aspect of the dispute. What, after all, was the four-year saga over the golf cart really about? On the surface, it was an argument about fairness. The PGA and the golfing greats claimed that allowing Martin to ride would give him an unfair advantage; Martin replied that, given his disability, the cart would simply level the playing field.

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Debates about justice and rights are often, unavoidably, debates about the purpose of social institutions, the goods they allocate, and the virtues they honor and reward.

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indemnity.”

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slavery. The Civil War promise of “forty acres and a mule” for freed slaves never came to be.

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The Civil War promise of “forty acres and a mule” for freed slaves never came to be.

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The main justifications for public apologies are to honor the memory of those who have suffered injustice at the hands (or in the name) of the political community, to recognize the persisting effects of injustice on victims and their descendants, and to atone for the wrongs committed by those who inflicted the injustice or failed to prevent

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Moral Individualism The principled objection to official apologies is not easy to dismiss. It rests on the notion that we are responsible only for what we ourselves do, not for the actions of other people, or for events beyond our control. We are not answerable for the sins of our parents or our grandparents or, for that matter, our compatriots. But this puts

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The doctrine of moral individualism does not assume that people are selfish. It is rather a claim about what it means to be free. For the moral individualist, to be free is to be subject only to obligations I voluntarily incur; whatever I owe others, I owe by virtue of some act of consent—a choice or a promise or an agreement I have made, be it tacit or explicit.

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An early version of the choosing self comes to us from John Locke. He argued that legitimate government must be based on consent. Why? Because we are free and independent beings, not subject to paternal authority or the divine right of kings. Since we are “by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.”

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Kant’s idea of an autonomous will and Rawls’s idea of a hypothetical agreement behind a veil of ignorance have this in common: both conceive the moral agent as independent of his or her particular aims and attachments. When we will the moral law (Kant) or choose the principles of justice (Rawls), we do so without reference to the roles and identities that situate us in the world and make us the particular people we are.

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When we think of states that try to promote virtue, we don’t think first of the Athenian polis; we think rather of religious fundamentalism, past and present—stonings for adultery, mandatory burkas, Salem witch trials, and so on.

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Aristotle offers a very different theory of the good. It is not about maximizing pleasure but about realizing our nature and developing our distinctly human capacities. Aristotle’s reasoning is teleological in that he reasons from a certain conception of the human good.

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The notion that justice should be neutral toward conceptions of the good life reflects a conception of persons as freely choosing selves, unbound by prior moral ties. These ideas, taken together, are characteristic of modern liberal political thought.

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myself. For MacIntyre (as for Aristotle), the narrative, or teleological, aspect of moral reflection is bound up with membership and belonging. We all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity. I am someone’s son or daughter, someone’s cousin or uncle; I am a citizen of this or that city, a member of this or that guild or profession; I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. Hence what is good for me has to be the good for one who inhabits these roles. As such, I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritances, rightful expectations and obligations. These constitute the given of my life, my moral starting point. This is in part what gives my own life its moral particularity.

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The contrast with the narrative view of the self is clear. For the story of my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity. I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, is to deform my present relationships.

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Unlike natural duties, obligations of solidarity are particular, not universal; they involve moral responsibilities we owe, not to rational beings as such, but to those with whom we share a certain history. But unlike voluntary obligations, they do not depend on an act of consent. Their moral weight derives instead from the situated aspect of moral reflection, from a recognition that my life story is implicated in the stories of others.

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THREE CATEGORIES OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY Natural duties: universal; don’t require consent Voluntary obligations: particular; require consent Obligations of solidarity: particular; don’t require consent

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apocryphal,

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demurs

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squeamishness,

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Is Patriotism a Virtue? Patriotism is a much contested moral sentiment. Some view love of country as an unassailable virtue, while others see it as a source of mindless obedience, chauvinism, and war. Our question is more particular: Do citizens have obligations to one another that go beyond the duties they have to other people in the world? And if they do, can these obligations be accounted for on the basis of consent alone?

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Patriotism, he suggests, is a limiting principle that intensifies fellow feeling. “It is a good thing that the humanity concentrated among fellow citizens takes on new force through the habit of seeing each other and through the common interest that unites them.”

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valorize

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Pride and shame are moral sentiments that presuppose a shared identity. Americans traveling abroad can be embarrassed when they encounter boorish behavior by American tourists, even though they don’t know them personally. Non-Americans might find the same behavior disreputable but could not be embarrassed by

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With belonging comes responsibility. You can’t really take pride in your country and its past if you’re unwilling to acknowledge any responsibility for carrying its story into the present, and discharging the moral burdens that may come with it.

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predicament

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indelibly

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One of the reasons Kant and Rawls reject Aristotle’s way of thinking about justice is that they don’t think it leaves room for freedom. A constitution that tries to cultivate good character or to affirm a particular conception of the good life risks imposing on some the values of others. It fails to respect persons as free and independent selves, capable of choosing their ends for themselves.

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The attempt to detach arguments about justice and rights from arguments about the good life is mistaken for two reasons: First, it is not always possible to decide questions of justice and rights without resolving substantive moral questions; and second, even where it’s possible, it may not be desirable.

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The debate over same-sex marriage is fundamentally a debate about whether gay and lesbian unions are worthy of the honor and recognition that, in our society, state-sanctioned marriage confers. So the underlying moral question is unavoidable.

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But the case for same-sex marriage can’t be made on nonjudgmental grounds. It depends on a certain conception of the telos of marriage—its purpose or point. And, as Aristotle reminds us, to argue about the purpose of a social institution is to argue about the virtues it honors and rewards.

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The issue, Marshall maintains, is not the moral worth of the choice, but the right of the individual to make it—that is, the right of the plaintiffs “to marry their chosen partner.”32

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not freedom of choice but whether same-sex unions are worthy of honor and recognition by the community—whether they fulfill the purpose of the social institution of marriage. In Aristotle’s terms, the issue is the just distribution of offices and honors. It’s a matter of social recognition.

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The real issue in the gay marriage debate is not freedom of choice but whether same-sex unions are worthy of honor and recognition by the community—whether they fulfill the purpose of the social institution of marriage. In Aristotle’s terms, the issue is the just distribution of offices and honors. It’s a matter of social recognition.

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This feature of marriage brings out its honorific aspect: “Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family.”36

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Many opponents of same-sex marriage claim that the primary purpose of marriage is procreation. According to this argument, since same-sex couples are unable to procreate on their own, they don’t have a right to marry. They lack, so to speak, the relevant virtue. This teleological line of reasoning is at the heart of the case against same-sex marriage, and Marshall takes it on directly. She does not pretend to be neutral on the purpose of marriage, but offers a rival interpretation of it. The essence of marriage, she maintains, is not procreation but an exclusive, loving commitment between two partners—be they straight or gay.

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Heterosexual couples who apply for marriage licenses are not asked about “their ability or intention to conceive children by coitus.

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She does so by showing that marriage, as currently practiced and regulated by the state, does not require the ability to procreate. Heterosexual couples who apply for marriage licenses are not asked about “their ability or intention to conceive children by coitus. Fertility is not a condition of marriage, nor is it grounds for divorce. People who have never consummated their marriage, and never plan to, may be and stay married.

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Over the course of this journey, we’ve explored three approaches to justice. One says justice means maximizing utility or welfare—the greatest happiness for the greatest number. The second says justice means respecting freedom of choice—either the actual choices people make in a free market (the libertarian view) or the hypothetical choices people would make in an original position of equality (the liberal egalitarian view). The third says justice involves cultivating virtue and reasoning about the common good.

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The utilitarian approach has two defects: First, it makes justice and rights a matter of calculation, not principle. Second, by trying to translate all human goods into a single, uniform measure of value, it flattens them, and takes no account of the qualitative differences among them.

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tumult

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Justice is inescapably judgmental. Whether we’re arguing about financial bailouts or Purple Hearts, surrogate motherhood or same-sex marriage, affirmative action or military service, CEO pay or the right to use a golf cart, questions of justice are bound up with competing notions of honor and virtue, pride and recognition. Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right way to value things.

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Our Gross National Product now is over 800 billion dollars a year. But that Gross National Product counts

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Kennedy said, “there is another greater task. It is to confront the poverty of satisfaction… that afflicts us all.” Americans had given themselves over to “the mere accumulation of things.”39 Our Gross National Product now is over 800 billion dollars a year. But that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts… the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of

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“Even if we act to erase material poverty,” Kennedy said, “there is another greater task. It is to confront the poverty of satisfaction… that afflicts us all.” Americans had given themselves over to “the mere accumulation of things.”39 Our Gross National Product now is over 800 billion dollars a year. But that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts… the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud to be Americans.

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parlous

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This has two bad effects, one fiscal, the other civic. First, public services deteriorate, as those who no longer use those services become less willing to support them with their taxes. Second, public institutions such as schools, parks, playgrounds, and community centers cease to be places where citizens from different walks of life encounter one another. Institutions that once gathered people together and served as informal schools of civic virtue become few and far between. The hollowing out of the public realm makes it difficult to cultivate the solidarity and sense of community on which democratic citizenship depends.

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So, quite apart from its effects on utility or consent, inequality can be corrosive to civic virtue. Conservatives enamored of markets and liberals concerned with redistribution overlook this loss.

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A politics of the common good would take as one of its primary goals the reconstruction of the infrastructure of civic life. Rather than focus on redistribution for the sake of broadening access to private consumption, it would tax the affluent to rebuild public institutions and services so that rich and poor alike would want to take advantage of them.

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spurious

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Rather than avoid the moral and religious convictions that our fellow citizens bring to public life, we should attend to them more directly—sometimes by challenging and contesting them, sometimes by listening to and learning from them. There is no guarantee that public deliberation about hard moral questions will lead in any given situation to agreement—or even to appreciation for the moral and religious views of others. It’s always possible that learning more about a moral or religious doctrine will lead us to like it less. But we cannot know until we try.

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DOING THE RIGHT THING

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Note: Chapter 1

So you might say that ancient theories of justice start with virtue, while modern theories start with freedom.

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Note: Important Distinction between ancient and modern

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Note: Three approaches of justice

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Note: Three approaches of justice - Welfare, Freedom, Virtue

THE GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE / UTILITARIANISM

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Note: Chapter 2

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Note: Two divergent views on morality

DO WE OWN OURSELVES? / LIBERTARIANISM

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Note: Chapter 3

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Note: Basic libertarian principles - human liberty

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Note: Robert nozick, defense of libertarianism , 1974

HIRED HELP / MARKETS AND MORALS

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Note: Chapter 4

children of policy-makers had had to share the burden of fighting

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Note: Dual consecutive had usage

One of the leading private military companies is Blackwater Worldwide. Erik Prince, the company’s CEO, is a former Navy SEAL with an ardent faith in the free market.

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Note: Notorious Blackwater

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Note: Surrogacy and contract

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Note: Elizabeth Anderson - against commercial surrogacy

The western Indian city of Anand may soon be to paid pregnancy what Bangalore is to call centers.

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Note: Legalised Surrogacy in india since 2002

WHAT MATTERS IS THE MOTIVE / IMMANUEL KANT

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Note: Chapter 5

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Note: John Locke

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Note: Immanuel Kant

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Note: Autonomy and Kant

It lets him live, not for his own sake, but so that other people can cross bridges without a second thought.

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Note: Mill v Kant

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Note: What's Right to do, not what it will entail in return

And he maintains that only the motive of duty confers moral worth on an action. The compassion of the altruist “deserves praise and encouragement, but not esteem.”

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Note: Kant case against altruism

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Note: Kant equates murder and suicide

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Note: Kant and the universal human rights

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Note: Kant`s criticism of utilitarianism

What is the right thing to do? The Golden Rule would ask, “How would you like to be treated in a similar circumstance?”

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Note: Word

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Note: Bding an asshole sometimes

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Note: Kant's contrasts

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Note: Kant vs libertarianism

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Note: Paradoxical autonomy of kant - we dont own ourselves

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Note: Kant v utilitarianism

THE CASE FOR EQUALITY / JOHN RAWLS

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Note: Chapter 6

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Note: Marriage and consent

This argument treats admission primarily as a benefit to the recipient and seeks to distribute the benefit in a way that compensates

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Note: Compensatory Argument

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Note: The right of admittance

WHO DESERVES WHAT? / ARISTOTLE

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Note: Chapter 8

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Note: Aristotle arguments on natural reasoning of slavery

WHAT DO WE OWE ONE ANOTHER? / DILEMMAS OF LOYALTY

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Note: Chapter 9

feeling. “It is a good thing that the humanity concentrated among fellow citizens takes on new force through the habit of seeing each other and through the common interest that unites them.”

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Note: Rousseau

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Note: Anti immigration argument

parochial

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Note: Word

JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

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Note: Chapter

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Note: Moral questions to ponder upon

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Outrage is the special kind of anger you feel when you believe that people are getting things they don’t deserve. Outrage of this kind is anger at injustice.

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Aristotle maintains that we can’t figure out what a just constitution is without first reflecting on the most desirable way of life. For him, law can’t be neutral on questions of the good life.

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Aristotle teaches that justice means giving people what they deserve. And in order to determine who deserves what, we have to determine what virtues are worthy of honor and reward.

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If greed is the reason they don’t deserve the money now, on what basis can it be said they deserved the money then?

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The American public’s real objection to the bonuses—and the bailout—is not that they reward greed but that they reward failure.

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Second, markets respect individual freedom; rather than impose a certain value on goods and services, markets let people choose for themselves what value to place on the things they exchange.

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Devoted though we are to prosperity and freedom, we can’t quite shake off the judgmental strand of justice.

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the real issue is about the meaning of the medal and the virtues it honors. What, then, are the relevant virtues? Unlike other military medals, the Purple Heart honors sacrifice, not bravery.

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Perhaps the reason it is wrong to push is that doing so uses the man on the bridge against his will. He didn’t choose to be involved, after all. He was just standing there.

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The Afghan Goatherds

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the utilitarian assumption that morality consists in weighing costs and benefits, and simply wants a fuller reckoning of the social consequences.

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Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)

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He heaped scorn on the idea of natural rights, calling them “nonsense upon stilts.”

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All moral quarrels, properly understood, are

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All moral quarrels, properly understood, are disagreements about how to apply the utilitarian principle of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, not about the principle itself.

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He concludes that the sum of the pains suffered by the public is greater than whatever unhappiness is felt by beggars hauled off to the workhouse.

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Objection 1: Individual Rights The

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The most glaring weakness of utilitarianism, many argue, is that it fails to respect individual rights. By caring only about the sum of satisfactions, it can run roughshod over individual people.

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For a Benthamite, the smoking study does not embarrass utilitarian principles but simply misapplies them.

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John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) believed they could be answered. A generation after Bentham, he tried to save utilitarianism by recasting it as a more humane, less calculating doctrine.

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Conformity, in Mill’s account, is the enemy of the best way to live.

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heresy. Since it appeals to moral ideals beyond utility—

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Part of the appeal of Bentham’s utilitarianism is this nonjudgmental spirit. It takes people’s preferences as they are, without passing judgment on their moral worth.

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philistine.

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Of the two great proponents of utilitarianism, Mill was the more humane philosopher, Bentham the more consistent one.

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This utilitarian logic could be extended to support quite a radical redistribution of wealth; it would tell us to transfer money from the rich to the poor until the last dollar we take from Gates

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The libertarian rejects three types of policies and laws that modern states commonly enact: 1. No Paternalism. Libertarians oppose laws to protect people from harming themselves.

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No Morals Legislation. Libertarians oppose using the coercive force of law to promote notions of virtue or to express the moral convictions of the majority. Prostitution may be morally objectionable to many people, but that does not justify laws that prevent

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No Morals Legislation. Libertarians oppose using the coercive force of law to promote notions of virtue or to express the moral convictions of the majority. Prostitution may be morally objectionable to many people, but that does not justify laws that prevent consenting adults from engaging in it.

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No Redistribution of Income or Wealth. The libertarian theory of rights rules out any law that requires some people to help others, including taxation for redistribution of wealth. Desirable though it may be for the affluent to support the less fortunate—by subsidizing their health care or housing or education—such help should be left up to the individual to undertake, not mandated by the government. According to the libertarian, redistributive taxes are a form of coercion, even theft.

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The libertarian philosophy does not map neatly onto the political spectrum.

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During the 1980s, libertarian ideas found prominent expression in the pro-market, antigovernment rhetoric of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

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penurious

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The libertarian sees a moral continuity from taxation (taking my earnings) to forced labor (taking my labor) to slavery (denying that I own myself

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bereft.

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Objection 1: Taxation is not as bad as forced labor. If you are taxed, you can always choose to work less and pay lower taxes; but if you are forced to labor, you have no such choice.

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Objection 3: Michael Jordan doesn’t play alone. He therefore owes a debt to those who contribute to his success.

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The idea that I belong to myself, not to the state or political community, is one way of explaining why it is wrong to sacrifice my rights for the welfare of others.

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frivolous

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lurid

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sordid

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The case for free markets typically rests on two claims—one about freedom, the other about welfare.

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Conscription

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misnomer.

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the three ways of allocating military service we have considered—conscription, conscription with a provision for hiring substitutes (the Civil War system), and

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But at least two objections can be made to this line of argument. One objection is about fairness and freedom; the other is about civic virtue and the common good.

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Objection 1: Fairness and freedom The first objection holds that, for those with limited alternatives, the free market is not all that free.

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If poverty and economic disadvantage are widespread, the choice to enlist may simply reflect the lack of alternatives.

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the force of law in the first case and the pressure of economic necessity in the second.

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Notice that the coercion objection is not an objection to the volunteer army as such. It only applies to a volunteer army that operates in a society with substantial inequalities

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Objection 2: Civic virtue and the common good

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onerous

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The reason we draft jurors rather than hire them is that we regard the activity of dispensing justice in the courts as a responsibility all citizens should share.

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According to this objection, hiring soldiers to fight our wars is wrong, not because it’s unfair to the poor but because it allows us to abdicate a civic duty.

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strenuous

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Underlying this answer is a far-reaching idea: The right way of valuing goods and social practices is not simply up to us. Certain modes of valuation are appropriate to certain goods and practices.

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Respect and use are two different modes of valuation.

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Commercial surrogacy degrades children insofar as it treats them as commodities.”44 It uses them as instruments of profit rather than cherishes them as persons worthy of love and care.

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poignancy

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How free are the choices we make in the free market? And are there certain virtues and higher goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy? 5.

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It is one thing to condemn the scenario of the suffering child because it reduces overall utility, and something else to condemn it as an intrinsic moral wrong, an injustice to the child.

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empiricist

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Kant’s emphasis on human dignity informs present-day notions of universal human rights. More important, his account of freedom figures in many of our contemporary debates about justice.

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A third approach says that justice means giving people what they morally deserve—allocating goods to reward and promote virtue.

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exalted

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Kant’s more fundamental point is that basing moral principles on preferences and desires—even the desire for happiness—misunderstands what morality is about.

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To act freely, according to Kant, is to act autonomously. And to act autonomously is to act according to a law I give myself—not according to the dictates of nature or social convention.

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He’s simply observing that, when we assess the moral worth of an action, we assess the motive from which it’s done, not the consequences it produces.

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prudential

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Most of the precautions we take to preserve our lives therefore lack moral content. Buckling our seat belts and keeping our cholesterol in check are prudential acts, not moral ones.

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exemplars?

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No, not exactly. Taking pleasure in doing the right thing does not necessarily undermine its moral worth. What matters, Kant tells us, is that the good

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echolalia,

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As long as he did the right thing for the right reason, feeling good about it doesn’t undermine its moral worth.

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the feature of our good deeds that gives them their moral worth—namely, their principle, not their consequences.

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heteronomy

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Thomas Hobbes called reason the “scout for the desires.” David Hume called reason the “slave of the passions.”

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Reason’s work, for the utilitarians, is not to determine what ends are worth pursuing. Its job is to figure out how to maximize utility by

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Reason’s work, for the utilitarians, is not to determine what ends are worth pursuing. Its job is to figure out how to maximize utility by satisfying the desires we happen to have.

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Kant’s idea of reason—of practical reason, the kind involved in morality—is not instrumental reason but “pure practical reason, which legislates a priori, regardless of all empirical ends.”

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Hypothetical imperatives use instrumental reason: If you want X, then do Y. If you want a good business reputation, then treat your customers honestly.

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We can’t base the moral law on any particular interests, purposes, or ends, because then it would be only relative to the person whose ends they were.

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The duty of respect is a duty we owe to persons as rational beings, as bearers of humanity. It has nothing to do with who in particular the person may be.

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But Kantian respect is respect for humanity as such, for a rational capacity that resides, undifferentiated, in all of us.

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Acting freely, that is, autonomously, and acting morally, according to the categorical imperative, are one and the same.

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contingent.

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As a natural being, I belong to the sensible world. My actions are determined by the laws of nature and the regularities of cause and effect.

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As a rational being, I inhabit an intelligible world. Here, being independent of the laws of nature, I am capable of autonomy, capable of acting

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As a rational being, I inhabit an intelligible world. Here, being independent of the laws of nature, I am capable of autonomy, capable of acting according to a law I give myself.

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That is because morality and freedom are not empirical concepts. We can’t prove that they exist, but neither can we make sense of our moral lives without presupposing them.

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Kant’s case against casual sex Kant’s views on sexual morality are traditional and conservative. He opposes every conceivable sexual practice except sexual intercourse between husband and wife.

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Casual sex is objectionable, he thinks, because it is all about the satisfaction of sexual desire, not about respect for the humanity of one’s partner.

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Kant’s opposition to prostitution and casual sex brings out the contrast between autonomy as he conceives it—the free will of a rational being—and individual acts of consent.

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expediency

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Kantian thought that there is a morally relevant difference between a lie and a misleading truth.

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In both cases, I am pursuing an admirable goal, that of protecting my friend. But only in the second case do I pursue this goal in a way that accords with the motive of duty.

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austere

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Although Kant does not work out the implications in detail, the political theory he favors rejects utilitarianism in favor of a theory of justice based on a social contract.

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He doesn’t assume that we are all motivated by self-interest in real life; only that we set aside our moral and religious convictions for purposes of the thought experiment.

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The famous words of Don Corleone in The Godfather, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse,” suggest (in extreme form) the pressure that hovers, to some degree, over most negotiations.

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First, the fact of an agreement does not guarantee the fairness of the agreement. Second, consent is not enough to create a binding moral claim.

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It wrongly assumes that wherever there is an obligation, there must have been an agreement—some act of consent. It overlooks the possibility that obligation can arise without consent.

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Rawls calls “the difference principle”: only those social and economic inequalities are permitted that work to the benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

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Some critics of egalitarianism believe that the only alternative to a meritocratic market society is a leveling equality that imposes handicaps on the talented.

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Unlike Rawls, however, Friedman insisted that we should not try to remedy this unfairness. Instead, we should learn to live with it, and enjoy the benefits it brings:

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ARGUING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

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The real affirmative action debate is about two other rationales—the compensatory argument and the diversity argument.

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This argument treats admission primarily as a benefit to the recipient and seeks to distribute the benefit in a way that compensates for past injustice and its lingering effects.

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The diversity rationale is an argument in the name of the common good—the common good of the school itself and also of the wider society.

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First, it holds that a racially mixed student body is desirable because it enables students to learn more from one another than they would if all of them came from similar backgrounds.

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The practical objection does not claim that affirmative action is unjust, but rather that it is unlikely to achieve its aims, and may do more harm than good.

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disquieting

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moral desert

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First, justice often has an honorific aspect. Debates about distributive justice are about not only who gets what but also what qualities are worthy of honor and reward.

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conscientious

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As Dworkin points out, many factors beyond our control

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As Dworkin points out, many factors beyond our control are legitimate factors in admission.

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Perhaps what’s troubling about the auction has less to do with the opportunity of the applicants than the integrity of the university.

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Notice the connection between the first question, about fairness, and the second, about honor and resentment.

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Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) does not think justice can be neutral in this way. He believes that debates about justice are, unavoidably, debates about honor, virtue, and the nature of the good life.

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For Aristotle, justice means giving people what they deserve, giving each person his or her due

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distributed. Justice involves two factors: “things, and the persons to whom things are assigned.” And in general we say that “persons who are equal should have assigned to them equal things.”

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Aristotle’s point is that, in distributing flutes, we should not look for the richest or best-looking or even the best person overall. We should look for the best flute player.

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The purpose of flutes is to produce excellent music. Those who can best realize this purpose ought to have the best ones.

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(Teleological comes from the Greek word telos, which means purpose, end, or

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(Teleological comes from the Greek word telos, which means purpose, end, or goal.) Aristotle claims that in order to determine

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(Teleological comes from the Greek word telos, which means purpose, end, or goal.)

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Aristotle claims that in order to determine the just distribution of a good, we have to inquire into the telos, or purpose, of the good being distributed.

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Sorting out the telos of a university seems essential to determining the proper criteria of admission. This brings out the teleological aspect of justice in university admissions.

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Aristotle criticizes what he takes to be the two major claimants to political authority—oligarchs and democrats.

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polis

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Moral virtue therefore requires judgment, a kind of knowledge Aristotle calls “practical wisdom.” Unlike scientific knowledge, which concerns “things that are universal and necessary,”

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Still, the historic persistence of these injustices does not exonerate Aristotle for accepting them. In the case of slavery, Aristotle not only accepted it but offered a philosophical justification.

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For slavery to be just, according to Aristotle, two conditions must be met: it must be necessary, and it must be natural.

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By Aristotle’s own standard, their slavery is unjust: “Not all those who are actually slaves, or actually freemen, are natural slaves or natural freemen.”

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Debates about justice and rights are often, unavoidably, debates about the purpose of social institutions, the goods they allocate, and the virtues they honor and reward.

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indemnity.”

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slavery. The Civil War promise of “forty acres and a mule” for freed slaves never came to be.

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The Civil War promise of “forty acres and a mule” for freed slaves never came to be.

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apocryphal,

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demurs

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squeamishness,

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valorize

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predicament

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indelibly

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The issue, Marshall maintains, is not the moral worth of the choice, but the right of the individual to make it—that is, the right of the plaintiffs “to marry their chosen partner.”32

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Heterosexual couples who apply for marriage licenses are not asked about “their ability or intention to conceive children by coitus.

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tumult

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Our Gross National Product now is over 800 billion dollars a year. But that Gross National Product counts

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parlous

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So, quite apart from its effects on utility or consent, inequality can be corrosive to civic virtue. Conservatives enamored of markets and liberals concerned with redistribution overlook this loss.

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spurious

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