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PROFESSOR: So what I want to do in today's lecture is to
shift gears somewhat from what we've been talking about in
the first unit of the course.
As you know, the first unit of the course was focused on a
set of texts that we're concerned with what is
involved in human flourishing.
And though our opening text, Glaucon's challenge from
Plato's Republic concerned itself with morality and the
way in which morality contributes to human
flourishing, we haven't, up until this point, given much
attention to what philosophers have had to say about the
nature of morality.
And so goal in this unit is, in an incredibly accelerated
fashion, to introduce you today and next Tuesday to two
of the most prominent moral theories in the Western
tradition and then it then the remaining sessions before
March break to talk to you about some of the empirical
research about these questions.
And I know we have a wide range of
backgrounds in this class.
Some of you are now taking your first philosophy course.
Some of you have taken an entire course on ethics.
And so I've tried to pitch the lecture in such a way that it
brings everybody up to speed, but that it does so in a way
that I hope won't bore those of you who have encountered
this before.
In particular, to make up for the fact that there's very
little empirical psychology in this lecture I have six
polling slides.
So those will come in in the middle of the lecture right
when all of you are zoning out because you got two hours of
sleep last night.
So even if you don't pay attention for the first part,
you'll get to vote in the middle.
All right, so what is it that moral
philosophy sets out to do?
What is it to provide a
philosophical account of morality?
What moral philosophy is the systematic endeavor to
understand moral concepts and to justify moral principles
and theories.
That is: moral philosophy, even if it ends up giving a
non-systematic answer to how it is that morality works and
what it is that morality does, does so within the endeavor of
thinking systematically about the nature of morality.
What do I mean by morality?
I mean that moral theories aim to provide accounts of terms
like "right" and "wrong," "permissible" and
"impermissible," "ought" and "ought not," "forbidden,"
"good," "bad," and the like--and to provide an
account of the behaviors to which those terms apply.
It is fundamentally, to remind you of a terminological
distinction that we've made before, a normative as opposed
to a descriptive enterprise.
Philosophical moral theory doesn't aim to tell us how
people act.
It aims to tell us how people ought to act if they wish to
conform to the constraints that morality places on them.
In particular, moral philosophy is concerned with
providing a principled answer to three kind of questions.
The first kind of question we encountered already in the
context of Glaucon's Challenge.
It's the question of moral motivation.
"Why should we want to act in keeping which what morality
demands of us?
And a minute I'll give you a sense of the range of answers
that have been provided to that question.
So the first question that moral philosophy asks is why
would we even want to be moral.
It then asks the particular question, "what should we do
insofar as we seek to act morally?".
And about that we've had very little to say so far.
We know that according to Aristotle, to be brave, one
acts as the brave one does.
But Aristotle just put forth bravery as a virtue without
any explanation of what it was that made bravery fall into
the category of virtues and cowardice fall into that
category of vices other than the very general
analysis of the mean.
And we haven't looked at any specific claims about
particular actions being morally acceptable or not.
So the second sort of thing that a moral theory tries to
do-- and, again, I'll give some examples in a minute--
is give us specific answers to the question "is this act
morally OK?".
In addition, what a moral theory aims to do is to tell
us why we gave the answers that we did in question two.
"In virtue of what common feature are the acts that fall
into the category of moral to be distinguished from the acts
that fall into the category of immoral?" So what do answers
to these three questions look like?
Let's start since we've encountered it already with
the question of moral motivation.
So one category of answers that one might give to why it
is that we would be moral, act in keeping with the
constraints of morality, is a self-interest account.
So one might give an account which says when you behave
morally, things run smoothly.
As Socrates argues in response to Glaucon, when you behave in
keeping with the constraints of morality, there is harmony
in your soul.
And that provides you with the possibility of a certain kind
of flourishing.
Or you might have what's implicit in the very first
argument that Glaucon gives, a view that morality provides a
certain kind of stability in society.
Each of us behaving in pro-social ways increases the
likelihood of others around us behaving in pro-social ways.
And so we reach a kind of equilibrium state whereby
things run smoothly if everybody behaves
pro-socially.
And we'll talk about that again at the beginning of the
political philosophy section.
So one kind of self-interest theory is a theory that
appeals to a certain kind of coordination, either a
coordination among the parts of the soul, or coordination
across individuals in a society.
A second kind of self-interest theory is what we might call a
get good stuff theory.
So this lies at the heart on some religious traditions.
Here's what you get if you act in keeping with the
constraints of morality: you get eternal life in a really
nice place.
Here's what you get if you don't act in keeping with the
constraints of morality: you get eternal continuation in a
really unpleasant place.
So the notion that there is some reward beyond earth for
behaving in moral ways is an example of a self-interested
justification of morality.
Or one might give the sort of justification that Adeimantus
gives in response to Glaucon's challenge.
Adeimantus point out that one of the things morality
provides you with is enhanced reputation.
So as a result of behaving in keeping with the standards of
morality, you come to be perceived as having behaved in
that way, and that reputation brings to you some value.
Or it might be, as Aristotle discusses at the end of Book
10, that society is structured in some way that motivates
people to act in keeping with the constraints of morality
because doing so is a way of avoiding punishment.
Many of us obey speeding laws for precisely that reason.
We obey them most especially when there are flashing lights
in our vicinity.
But we can have an internalized version of the
reduction of punishment as well.
Part of the Freudian picture that we heard about in the
Divided Soul lecture discussed the development of conscience
as an internalization of external rules, whereby the
super ego gets upset when the id behaves in ways that aren't
in keeping with the constraints of morality.
And one can have a non-Freudian version of that
as well that appeals to the notion of conscience.
So the idea that what morality brings you is either the
possibility of salvation or enhanced reputation or the
possibility of not being punished by external laws or
the possibility of not being punished by one's conscience
is another version a self-interest theory.
So that's one kind of justification one might
provide for behaving in moral ways.
A second very different kind of justification says the
reason we act morally is because normative features are
fundamental features of the world.
There's a brute "ought" out there.
It's a fact about reality that what we are morally obliged to
do is to act in whatever ways it is that morality demands
and not out of self-interest, but simply because we are
responsive to that feature of the world, we are motivated to
act morally.
A third kind of justification, third kind of explanation of
more motivation, is what we might call a factive theory
that says roughly this is just the way people are.
So evolutionary accounts that say pro-social behaviors have
been selected for, perhaps because they enable the
resolution of coordination problems. But whatever the
explanation, pro-social behavior says this theory had
been selected for.
So it's a brute fact about the world that we behave in
pro-social ways--not a brute normative fact about the
world, just a brute descriptive fact about the
world that we behave in that way.
Or you might have, not an evolutionary based version of
this, but a version that says look, this is just the way the
human soul expresses itself when it conforms to its
natural state.
So you might have a theory of morality that says the reason
to behave morally is out of self-interest. You might have
a theory of morality that says the reason to behave morally
is because of altruism.
You might have a theory of morality that says the reason
to behave morally is just that's the way we do behave.
Or you might have some sort of combination theory.
And we've talked already about the first of these, the
self-interest theory.
And as this section of the course goes on, we'll talk
more about some of the other sorts of explanation.
So those are some examples of the kinds of answers that are
given to the first question, the question of moral
motivation.
What kinds of issues arise when we think about the
question of moral behavior?
Well you saw a number of examples of this in the
reading that we did for today.
One kind question that moral theories set out to provide
answers to is the question of whether it's either morally
required or morally permitted to harm one person in order to
help many others.
So Bernard Williams' story of Jim and the Indians, where Jim
is presented with a case where if he's willing to shoot one
of 20 prisoners, the other 19 will be set free, whereas if
he's unwilling to shoot that one, all 20 of
them will be shot.
Or the Omelas story, where we're told the story of a
society whose flourishing depends upon the suffering of
a single child.
Or the trolley cases that I presented you with in the very
first lecture, where a trolley is headed down a track towards
five people, and we're in a position to deflect the
trolley in some way so that one ends up
being killed instead.
Those are examples of schematic representations of
the kinds of questions that moral theories
confront all the time.
Whenever we think about deferrals of threat --
is it right to quarantine a population suffering from a
particular illness in a way that will cause harm to them
but benefit the rest of society? --
we are thinking about these sorts of questions.
So one sort of question that moral philosophy aims to
answer is the question of whether this sort of trade off
is morally required or morally permitted.
A particularly profound version of that question comes
out when we think about what our moral duties are to those
who are less fortunate.
So the philosopher Peter Singer has famously argued
that the entire structure of the first world and the third
world is a morally illegitimate one because it
involves an unwillingness on the part of those in the first
world to do what is morally demanded of them, namely to
take a large proportion of their resources and
redistribute those to people who are suffering from
extraordinarily easily curable illnesses.
People who don't have mosquito nets, people who don't have
vaccinations, people who don't have clean water, people who
don't have access to basic medical care in the first five
years that would, for example, prevent lifelong blindness.
So another question that moral theory asks--in some ways of
version of the earlier question--is in general what
our duties are to those who are less fortunate.
It also asks questions like this: Are these sorts of
behaviors morally mandatory?
Is it morally mandatory for us to behave in ways that help
the environment, say by recycling?
Is it morally mandatory for us to act in certain ways towards
non-human animals, perhaps by being vegetarian?
Is it morally required of us to worship a
deity in some way?
Is religious worship something that's morally mandatory?
Is something like respect for elders, a fundamental part of
traditional moral frameworks, morally mandatory?
And moral theories also ask questions like: Are these
kinds of things morally permissible.
Is abortion morally permissible?
Is euthanasia morally permissible?
Is capital punishment morally permissible?
How about sex before marriage?
How about lying for one or another motivation?
How about, as Kant's going to argue in our next reading,
failing to cultivate one's talents, which Kant thinks is
a violation of moral mandate?
So these are the kinds of questions that moral theories
aim to provide answers to.
And it might seem like a heterogeneous bunch.
But it gives you a sense of the generality of explanation
that moral theories seek to provide.
So let's turn to four major moral theories in the western
tradition and think about how it is that they could simply
categorically provide answers to this
wide range of questions.
So the kind of moral theory that we're going to discuss in
today's lecture primarily is a moral theory known as
utilitarianism.
It tells us an act is moral insofar as it produces the
greatest good for the greatest number.
It takes as its fundamental notion the notion of good.
And it gives us answers to the questions that we've
previously asked ourselves as long as we know how goods are
distributed in response to them.
So if we know what it is that produces happiness in sentient
beings, then utilitarianism will give us an answer to the
question of whether being
vegetarian is morally mandated.
It'll tell us to take the amount of happiness that's
distributed across sentient beings, and look at which
distribution is going to maximize
the amount of happiness.
So utilitarianism gives us one sort of systematic answer to
this question.
A second sort of answer to this question, which we'll
discuss in lecture on Tuesday, is the answer given by Kant
and the deontological tradition.
What Kant says is that an act is moral insofar as it's
performed as the result of acting with the correct sort
of motivation.
It takes as its primary notion not the notion of goodness,
but rather the notion of rightness.
And on that basis, Kant is going to give a bunch of
answers to our specific questions.
In particular, he's going to argue that it's not OK to
sacrifice the good of the one for the good of the many.
And he's going to argue that lying is morally unacceptable.
And we'll talk next class about how from a very abstract
principle like this one one can derive these sorts of
particular answers.
We've already looked at the ancient traditional answer to
this in Aristotle, that an act is moral insofar as it's
performed as the results of having a virtuous character.
And so what Aristotle says to us is look and see how the
well-raised one would behave. And once you see what is that
the virtuous one does, you can learn through his or her
example what it is that morality demands of us.
And a final tradition about which we won't have much to
say in this lecture is, of course, a basis for morality
which has stood at the center of western culture for at
least 2,000 years, which is the idea that an act is moral
insofar as it conforms to what the divinity demands of us.
So one can provide an explanation, as the
utilitarian does, that makes appeal to
the notion of goodness.
One can provide a justification that makes
appeal, as deontology does, to the notion of rightness.
One can provide a justification that makes
appeal, as virtue ethics does, to the notion of virtuousness.
Or one can provide an account that makes appeal, as
religious ethics does, to the notion of divine mandate.
So let's think a little more about the relation among these
three particular theories, the ones on which we're going to
focus in the context of this class, as a way of coming to
understand the particular theory that we're thinking
about today, namely utilitarianism.
So virtue ethics focuses its attention on the actor, not
the person who stands up on the stage and recites lines
from Hamlet, but rather the actor who performs an act that
will be moral or not.
Deontology focuses its attention on the act.
It looks not at who's doing it, but rather at what act is
done and under what description.
consequentialism, by contrast, looks not at who does the act
and looks not at the description under which the
act is done, but looks rather at the consequences that the
act brings about.
And we've encountered virtue theory in the voice--
see if you recognize this gentleman--
in the voice of Aristotle.
We will encounter deontology in the voice of Immanuel Kant.
And what we're going to discuss today is
consequentialism and, in particular, utilitarianism in
the voice of John Stuart Mill.
So let's look now at what it is that Mill has to say about
the fundamental nature of morality.
So what Mill contends--
and let me say we're coming up on the clicker slide, so if
you're zoning out, it's time to pull out your clicker.
And in about four or five minutes, we'll
be doing some polls.
So Mill contends that the right kind of framework for
thinking about moral theories is a consequentialist
framework, so not one that looks at the actor as virtue
theory does, not one that looks at the act as deontology
does, but rather one that looks at the consequences in
the way that consequentialism does.
The degree of moral rightness of an act is determined by its
consequences.
And Mill provides a particular version of this.
He says the degree of moral rightness of an act is
determined by a particular kind of consequence, namely
the utility that the act produces.
So you might have a consequentialist theory that
says the degree of moral rightness of an act is
determined by its consequences, namely, for
example, the amount of bananas that it produces.
It would be an odd moral theory, but it would be a
consequentialist theory that says the degree of moral
rightness of an act is determined by its
consequences, in particular by its degree of banana
production.
So that would be a very general kind of
consequentialist theory.
Utilitarian theories are a particular kind of
consequentialist theory that says the degree of moral
rightness of an act is determined by its
consequences, in particular by the amount of
utility--usefulness, happiness in Mill's account of what kind
of utility we're concerned with--by the amount of utility
that it produces.
That means, to remind you of the handouts that you got in
section this week, that to be utilitarian is a sufficient
condition to be consequentialist, but not a
necessary one.
And to be a consequentialist is a necessary condition on
being a utilitarian, but not a sufficient one.
And if what I just said isn't completely obvious to you,
take a look at the second side of the handout that you got in
section this week.
So Mill not only makes a utilitarian commitment, he
actually in the course of making that commitment makes
two very particular claims that I now want ask you to
think about in light of some particular cases.
The first is the famous formulation of the greatest
happiness principle, which in your text appears right at the
beginning on page 77 in the reprint.
Mills says famously, "Actions are right in proportion as
they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend
to promote the reverse of happiness." And he continues a
few pages later to clarify that what he means is not the
agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned.
In a minute we'll think through what that implies.
The second commitment of Mill's that I want you to
think about is one runs straight on in opposition to
what we talked about in Aristotle last week.
Mill says the motive has nothing to do with the
morality of the action.
"He who saves another creature from drowning does what is
morally right whether his motive be duty or the hope of
being paid for his trouble." The motivation with which an
act is performed, says Mill, tells us nothing about the
morality of the act.
He doesn't deny that it tells us something about the actor.
He's perfectly happy to say that somebody who does the act
out of the hope of being paid is in some way different from
the person who does act out of a sense of duty or moral
obligation.
But as far as the moral value of the act itself is
concerned, Mill thinks there is no difference.
So that's the first question that I wanted to ask you.
Take the case that Mill's described.
You see somebody drowning in a lake.
And the question is this, is your act of saving that person
morally right, morally virtuous, moral only if it's
done out of duty?
I want to save that person because it's the right thing
to do or some other sort of pro-social motive.
If you think that, push one.
Or is the act morally right regardless of its motive even
if you do it because there's a big sign up on the trees that
say save a drowning person: $10,000 reward.
And so you think: "$10,000, that's good money." And in you
jump into the water.
All right, I'll push the ten second timer.
We have roughly 50 of you, 70 of you.
Good, numbers are jumping up.
Let's just see whether instinctively this room is
filled with Kantians or filled with consequentialists.
So, interestingly, there's a pretty close to even split.
Most of you seem to side with Mill on the question that an
act is morally right regardless of the motive.
But a sizable portion of you are going to be pleased when
we read Kant, who gives the answer that you offer.
And one of the things that we want to do in section next
week is to have those of you who fall on one or the other
side of this question talk through with others around you
why it is that you either fell into this group or you felt
into this one.
So, so far Mill's doing pretty well.
He has a slight majority of you on his side.
I now want to present you with a series of cases to ask what
you think about the greatest happiness principle.
Remember, Mill says that an act is moral insofar as it
produces the greatest happiness for the greatest
number, where we're not concerned with how that
happiness is distributed across individuals.
So let's start with a following case.
There's an act which you can perform which will give you
100 units of happiness.
Each of those colorful smiley faces--
aren't you all feeling pro-social in their light?
Each of those smiley faces
represents 10 units of happiness.
So suppose you have a fan.
It's a very hot day, and you have a fan
that blows upon you.
And the coolness of that fan just provides you with 100
units of happiness.
Or suppose you have some delicious cookies, and eating
those cookies provides you with 100 units of happiness.
In addition, performing that act provides 100 other people
with one unit of happiness each.
Suppose your fan blows a little bit outside of your
room so that in addition to cooling you off 100 units, it
cools the people in the next room off one unit apiece.
Or supposed that when you finish eating your 100
cookies, there are 100 cookies left over, and each of 100
people get to have one cookie, and it brings
them one unit of happiness.
OK.
So that's act one.
It has a total of two hundred units of happiness.
You get 100 units, and each of 100 other people get one unit.
So your choice is between performing that act and
performing an act which I'm going to call act two, which
has exactly the same effect for you, right?
It brings you 100 units of happiness.
So here you are with your 100 units of happiness.
But in this case, if you made a slight change in the angle
of your fan, for example, you would be just as cool as you
were in the first case.
But it would double the amount of happiness of the people on
the outside, right?
You angle this fan slightly differently.
And instead of being cooled one unit, the people are
cooled two units.
Or instead of throwing out your trash at the end of
eating your cookies so that people only get one unit of
happiness, you leave the other cookies around so that
everybody else gets two units of happiness.
In this case, by performing an act which has no different
consequences for you as far as happiness is concerned, you
double the happiness of a hundred other people with
respect to the act.
So the question is simply this.
Given the choice between act one, which brings a total of
200 units of happiness, 100 units for you and one unit for
each of 100 other people, or act two, which brings the same
amount of happiness to you, but 200 units of happiness to
others and hence a total of three hundred, do you think--
push one if you think only act one is moral.
That is only the one where you get 100 units, and everybody
else gets one.
Push two if you think only act two is moral, the one where
you redirect your fan slightly or whatever it is that you do
to double the happiness of those around you, or three,
that either one of those is a moral act.
OK.
And I'm going the turn our timer on so that we have 10
seconds to see how it is that your first take on Mill's
greatest happiness principle goes.
And let's see how the numbers come out.
OK.
So very few of you think that the moral act as the one
whereby you get 100 units of happiness, and the 100 others
get one unit.
But you're roughly equally divided on the question of
whether morality mandates that you redistribute your
resources in such a way that they go also to others.
So most of our discussion in the remaining slides will be
concerned with when this 44 percent moves
over to another place.
But I'll be interested to see how all of this plays out.
OK.
So that was our first case, the case where at no cost to
yourself you can bring happiness to others.
Let's now contrast exactly the same first case.
You get 100 units of happiness; 100 others
get one unit each.
So there's a total of 200 units, with the second case,
we'll call this act three, where in order to redirect the
goods, you bring your own happiness down to 50 units.
So in order to redirect your fan in such a way that the
other people get two units each, you have a slight
reduction in the amount of utility for you.
But it's still the case that this is
more beneficial overall.
So act one you get 100 unit of happiness,
other people get one.
Act two, you've reduced your happiness, you've redirected
the fan, you're eating fewer of the cookies, but you've
distributed it in such a way that others
get their two units.
OK.
So the question is only act one, where you get 100 units,
and everybody else gets one, only act two, where you get 50
units, and everybody else gets two, but the total is higher,
or either one?
And, again, we'll open polling with the ten second timer.
And let's see how the numbers go.
All right.
So little bit of change over to either act being moral.
More of you think that it is morally required to increase
the happiness of those around you when there's no harm to
yourself than if you think is required when there is some
cost to yourself.
Notice that Mill is very clear that what is morally required
is number two here, that only the act which brings the
greater amount of utility to the community as a whole is
morally required.
Turn to a third case.
The first version is the same as before.
You get 100 units.
Everybody else gets one.
Now, in order to do the good for others you have to
experience some kind of disutility.
You turn your fan totally away from yourself.
But the result of that is that 100 others
get three units each.
So now the question is this.
Is the act that is morally permitted of you, or is the
act, that is a moral act, the one that we've initially
presented, the one where you have some disutility, but
other people get utility?
Or are these of equal value?
Notice the total of 200 units, 250 units.
So the first case, our classic case, the second case one
where you experience some discomfort.
But in exchange for that discomfort, other people, not
you, experience some good.
OK.
Let's turn on the 10 second timer and see
how this comes out.
OK.
So in this case, it appears that very few of you are
siding with Mill.
A certain number of you are here, saying that what we need
to do is to provide the greatest good for
the greatest number.
And a sizable percentage of you is growing to think that
perhaps morality doesn't demand any sacrifices of you.
Let's go on.
Next case exactly like the last one, except it's somebody
else who has 50 units of disutility in order to
distribute three units of utility to others.
So here's the case.
Either you get 100 units of happiness, and others get one
unit each for a total of 200 units.
Or let's assume you preserve your 100 units
of happiness here.
We're leaving you out of the equation.
And the question is this.
Suppose you are distributing resources for
society as a whole.
There's a case where actually, this act one ought to also be
someone else, so the case where someone else gets 100
units of happiness, and 100 others get one unit each, or a
case where somebody else loses 50 units of happiness, but 100
others get three units each.
OK, so let's replace this you in act one with someone else
and as the question of whether a distribution of resources
across society, which produces 200 units of good in this form
or a distribution of resources across society, which produces
250 units of good in this form, a minor 50 units of
suffering by one for three hundred units
of benefits by another.
Which one of those do you take to be what morality demands?
And five, four, three, two, one.
And let's see if there's any change from the previous case.
OK.
All of a sudden, here we get a radical
shifting of the graphs.
Almost 50 percent of you are clear that the act that
requires bringing suffering to one person, a reduction of
utility is not morally mandated.
Later in the section that we are encountering in the class
right now, we will consider the question of whether
there's actually a fixed matter of where the baseline
is and whether in fact this radical shift that we get when
we moved from increasing utility to decreasing utility
in people's psychology about what morality demands is in
fact picking up on an artificial difference.
Let's move to our final case.
So our final case is one where either someone gets 100 units
of happiness, and 100 others get one unit each.
So there's 200 units of happiness, or a case--
hmm--
where someone gets 5,000 units of happiness taken away, but
100 other people get five hundred units each so that
there are 45,000 units of happiness produced by the
performance of act six.
So the case here is either a place where nobody has
anything bad going on, but the total units of happiness are
only 200, or one person has a lot of suffering going on, but
the total units of happiness are 45,000.
OK.
And let's put the poll on with our 10, nine, eight, seven,
six seconds and see how it is that you
come out on this question.
All right.
On this question, which I know already for many of your
reading responses to the Omelas case, on which this is
model, it seems clear to a lot of you that suffering of one
is not something that morality demands of us even if the
result is an increase in general utility.
Now, as you know, the Omelas story tells the story of a
society where there is a community of people, each of
whom has thousands and thousands of units of utility.
They're incredibly happy in how they live.
But that society exists as it does only because there is a
child locked away whose suffering permits the
society's joy.
And as you know in the story, when children reach adulthood,
they are brought to see the suffering child.
And most of them return to the community of which they were a
part aware of this, shaped by this, but
willing to tolerate it.
A smaller number of them, upon seeing this, leave the society
altogether.
Now, the question that I want you to think about in light of
your answer a few minutes ago about what is demanded by
morality is some things that seem to have the structure of
the Omelas story.
I take it that at some point in the last 18 years or so,
someone has let you in on the secret that the pleasure that
comes from eating meat depends, as does the joy of
Omelas, upon the suffering of a large number
of non-human animals.
I take it that you noticed last week and the week before,
when the snow was falling long Yale's campus, and the routes
were made clear for you to get to classes, that the
possibility of you walking across campus depended upon a
large number of people whose lives are already difficult
getting up very early in the morning and doing
back-breaking shoveling work in the ice cold.
I trust that somebody has let you in on the secret that the
clothes that you wear and from which you take a certain
amount of pleasure are in a great number of cases produced
as a result of something quite close to the Omelas story,
namely child labor.
Indeed I take it that most of you are aware that the
structure of the modern world bears a rather shocking
similarity to the Omelas story.
The possibility of flourishing in the first world is in many
ways a consequence of an inequitable structure with
regard to the third world.
Now, almost all of you gave an answer that said this sort of
structure is at least schematically morally
acceptable.
And the question is what is going on there.
Le Guin in her story suggested you as college students are at
exactly the age where the salience of this may affect
you most profoundly.
So she writes --
after being exposed to these sorts of facts -- she says
"often the young people go home in tears or in a tearless
rage when they've seen the child on whose suffering the
fate of their society depends and face
this terrible paradox.
They may brood over it for weeks or years.
But as time goes by," she says, "they begin to realize
that even if the child could be released it would not that
much good if its freedom, a little vague pleasure of
warmth and food, no doubt, but little more."
Now one of the interesting things about literature in
contrast to philosophy is that it leaves it to you to
interpret what's going on.
And the fundamental question, I think, of the Omelas story
is whether this sentence, "They begin to realize that
even if the child could be released, it would not get
much good if its freedom, a little vague pleasure of
warmth and food, no doubt, but little more," is in fact
true--or whether it is the sort of rationalization that
recognition of one's comfort brings with it.
She goes on perhaps explaining, perhaps protesting
too much, to say the following, "It's too degraded
and imbeciled to know any real joy.
It has been afraid for too long ever to be free of fear.
Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane
treatment." Indeed think about arguments about bringing
democracies to countries with no tradition of democracy.
"After so long, it would probably be wretched without
walls about it to protect it and darkness for its eyes, its
own excrement to sit in.
Their tears at the bitter justice dry when they begin to
perceive the terrible justice of reality and to accept it."
Now, I don't have an answer to which of the two readings that
I proposed is the right one to make of the Le Guin case.
Is she contending there or helping you to recognize there
that early feeling of rage at the fact that your well-being
depends upon the suffering of others is, in fact, and
immature response to an inevitable structure of
inequity in the world?
Or is she suggesting that in coming to think that way you
are letting go of your only chance for moral behavior,
that it's at the moment when you are profoundly exposed to
injustice, and it hits you in the form of tears or rage that
you are in a position to bring that into your life?
She suggests regardless that living your life with your
eyes open to the fact that your well-being depends upon
the suffering of others is morally mandatory.
"It is their tears and anger," she continues, "the trying of
their generosity and the acceptance of their
helplessness, which is perhaps the true source of the
splendor of their lives.
They know that they, like the child, are not free, that they
live in a world of mutual interdependence.
"They know compassion.
It is because of their awareness of suffering in the
world," she writes, "It is because of that child that
they are so gentle with their children.
They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling
in the dark," if we were not provided with the resources
that let the first world thrive as it does, "the other
one, the flute player would make no joyful music." All of
the things that we benefit from, the greatness up this
university, wouldn't be here.
"No joyful music as a young writers line up for their
beauty of the race in the sunlight on the first morning
of summer."
So I want to leave you with that as one of the many things
which we can take from the Omelas story and as an
introduction to what really goes into making a claim like
the one Mill does.
And what we'll talk about next class in the context of Kant
are some systematic critiques which are offered of the
utilitarian framework from the writings of Bernard Williams
and our alternate which is offered in the writings of
Immanuel Kant.
So I'll see you on Tuesday.