William SweetPresident, Canadian Philosophical Association

Professor of Philosophy

Director, Centre for Philosophy, Theology and Cultural Traditions

St Francis Xavier University, Canada

The Dialogue of Cultural Traditions: a global perspective

Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and Ethics

Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and Ethics

General Problematic

Old ways of thinking about ethics Religion-based / traditional (Enlightenment) Reason-based Affectivity and ‘intuition’ based Generic humanistic and ‘conventionalist’

accounts

Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and Ethics

General Problematic Ethics and values as central to culture Ethics deals with ways of living BUT, in a world

that is Pluralist and diverse that is Postmodern In which we are aware of historicity, subjectivity, and

contingency

how can we be ethical?

Old ways of thinking about ethics

1. religious / tradition-based focus on 3

classical Jewish/Christian/Islamic approaches classical Asian approaches to ethics Aristotelian virtue ethics; Stoic (and later) natural law

religious / tradition-basedJewish/Christian/Islamic

1. What are the key ethical principles?

10 commandments (Hebrew Scriptures) sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7), also

Matthew 22: “The Greatest Commandment” Qur’an / Sunna and Hadith; also Sharia

religious / tradition-basedJewish/Christian/Islamic

2. What is the nature of this ethics? - rules /laws - sometimes abstract; sometimes concrete (e.g.,

love thy neighbour vs. dietary laws) - the aim of ethical behaviour is….. - difficult to separate ‘purely’ ethical from the

religious

religious / tradition-basedJewish/Christian/Islamic

3. What is the source of this ethics? / How is this ethics authoritative?

from God or conventions or past practice from interpreters of

texts (rabbis, imams, etc….) perhaps rules are reasonable or ‘natural’, but not

why they command / are authoritative

religious / tradition-basedJewish/Christian/Islamic

4. this ethics depends on God

universal and particular Why does God command this? (any reason?) Are God’s reasons good reasons? (Euthyphro

problem) OR are these beyond reason?

religious / tradition-based Classical Asian approaches

A preliminary question. Is there Asian philosophy? Asian philosophy as a western invention distinguish original (and/or philosophical) Confucian

ism, Buddhism and Taoism from Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist popular cultures or spiritual life.

religious / tradition-based Classical Asian approaches

Asian philosophy?recognizes:

the value of diligence and work the value of studiousness the value of the family and relatives the value of community and one’s responsibilities to

the community.

religious / tradition-based Classical Asian approaches

Nature of ethics abstract principles AND concrete rules of conduct the aim is to do one’s duty

of varna [caste] / classes of society or social life may involve rites and rituals

development of (personal) virtue – i.e., it is a personal task, not subjective

to achieve enlightenment (moksa) / liberation (nibbana)

applies to all nature

religious / tradition-based Classical Asian approaches

Source of ethics Sometimes theistic, sometimes not A principle of order (e.g., Heaven [T’ien]) Natural law or nature

e.g., karma in Indian philosophy BUT not obviously human nature

rooted in texts / scriptures

religious / tradition-based Classical Asian approaches

So, this ethics depends on nature and tradition V V V V V

religious / tradition-based Aristotelian / Stoic

Nature of ethics abstract principles fewer concrete rules Role of practical wisdom [phrónêsis] and

[phronimos] . e.g., be virtuous "moral virtue/excellence": “a disposition or

characteristic involving choice in observing the mean relative to us” Nicomachean Ethics II, 6

religious / tradition-based Aristotelian / Stoic

seek happiness: Happiness = df "an activity of the soul in conformity

with virtue through a complete life via acting in accord with the rational element of the soul (I, 7)

religious / tradition-based Aristotelian / Stoic

courage {Gk. andreia]} between rashness and cowardice;

temperance {Gk. sophrosúnê]} intemperance and insensibility;

generosity between wastefulness and stinginess; magnanimity {Gk. [megalopsychia]} between vanity

and pusillanimity.

religious / tradition-based Aristotelian / Stoic

social, but also self-directed again, involves the development of (personal) virtue particular duties determined by function an obligation to contemplation, meditation? ultimately to achieve happiness

religious / tradition-based Aristotelian / Stoic

Source of ethics How do we know the good? What is reasonable (cosmopolitan) Natural law or nature Determined by function In fact, determined largely by tradition

religious / tradition-based Aristotelian / Stoic

So, it depends on….

Enlightenment / reason-based

- most modern ethical theories 4 principal kinds (though there are more) - contract based - principle based (deontological) - consequence / result based (e.g., utilitarianism) - right-based

Enlightenment / reason-based

contract based Rousseau; Hobbes, Locke, Plato (Thrasymachus);

John Rawls What principles would a (rational,) self-interested,

individual agree to, in order to live in society? ‘social contract’ not “purely” rational (see Hobbes); a desire to avoid

pain and suffering some general ‘natural laws’

Enlightenment / reason-based

principle based (deontological) Kant Again, what would a rational being discover and

‘assent to’? Law Can be rationally grasped and recognised as true

(and obligatory) by all rational beings (not just human beings)

autonomy = giving this law to oneself

Enlightenment / reason-based

principle based (deontological)

How is this law known?

the categorical imperative: “act only in accordance with that maxim through

which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.”

"Act so as to use humanity, in your own person or in others, always as an end, and never merely as a means."

Enlightenment / reason-based

principle based (deontological) universal and absolute – a priori – (without

exception) ‘recognized’ and enacted by reason alone doesn’t matter if people agree to it or not does not – cannot – depend on external lawgiver does not depend on consequences or results

Enlightenment / reason-based

consequence / result based Again, what would a rational being discover and

‘assent to’? e.g., Mill also Jeremy Bentham, William Godwin, Henry

Sidgwick; today: Peter Singer. “The creed which accepts as the foundation of

morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Ch 2.

Enlightenment / reason-based

consequence / result based not proven from 1st principles, but still proven see Utilitarianism Ch 4 “happiness is a good: that each person's happiness

is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.”

Enlightenment / reason-based

consequence / result based has a lawlike character Can be seen by all rational beings ‘reasonable’ rather than “purely” rational In a way this is universal and in a way absolute What utilitarianism amounts to in practice depends

on the circumstances important to have experience, be attentive to

details, and develop moral expertise does not depend on any external lawgiver BUT

does depend on a theory of motivation

Enlightenment / reason-based

Right based e.g., Locke? Again, what would a rational being ‘assent to’? Based on ‘natural law’ = ‘a law of reason’ preservation of life and liberty Liberty fundamental:

“natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.” - Second Treatise of Government, Ch 4:

State of nature: "A state of perfect freedom...within the bounds of the law of nature".

Enlightenment / reason-based

Right based limits on what we can do: not violating a like liberty/freedom ‘as much and as good for others’ Can be seen by all rational beings more ‘reasonable’ than “purely” rational Is this universal and absolute? empiricistic depend on an external lawgiver? Unclear (probably not)

Sentiment / pitié

E.g., Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). 4 basic, inborn characteristics of humans:

Basic drive to care for self (amour de soi) pitié Perfectibility Freedom

How ought people to treat others ? First, amour de soi also la pitié – pity (or sympathy or empathy for t

he other).

Sentiment / pitié

What is pity? In Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (1755), 1ère partie :

“pity is a natural feeling, which, moderating in each individual the activity of the love of oneself, contributes to the mutual conversation of all the species. It is it which carries us without reflexion to the help of those that we see suffering; it is it which, in the state of nature, holds place of laws, manners, of virtue, with this advantage that no one is not tempted to disobey its soft voice;

Sentiment / pitié

not something rational Not mutual does not imply a shared sentiment or interest or mu

tual recognition; one simply has this “reaction”. Not clearly moral; no sense to say that one (morall

y) ought to “feel” sympathy. pitié exists regardless of social life or socialization, Needs imagination (i.e., the capacity to imagine

beyond our own interests)

Sentiment / pitié

David Hume (1711-1776). judgments / traditional morality arise from a moral

sense, not reason. A matter of fact (discoverable by experience), virtue

is always accompanied by a feeling of pleasure, and vice by a feeling of pain.

moral approval is a feeling, similar to an aesthetic feeling; not an act of reason, like a mathematical inference.

Humanistic ethics / ethics by convention

E.g., Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) human centred conventional (Jack Donnelly) designed to achieve certain underlying values

E.g., human being as autonomous and equal has become "deeply rooted" and is recognised No moral or natural foundationalism. Rights - the product of historical accident; may change. serve as a regulative political ideal