Moral And Existential Philosophy

What is morality/ethics?     

Anything that deals with the question of good vs. evil. Moral actions are always directed towards other subjects Anthropomorphism Good is good because it brings welfare to other subjects while evil does the otherwise What is good and evil then? This is the question that moral philosophers attempt to answer

Importance of moral philosophy  Classical

philosophers have one central concern in mind: What is the right way to live?  All other discussions about metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics go towards their arguments about the right way to live, i.e. morality

Why moral and existential philosophy?  Moral

actions are not only measured by the consequences they have on other subjects, but by the intent  E.g. man-slaughter vs. murder, juvenile vs. adult crimes  Morality presupposes freewill  Existential philosophy deals with the implications of freewill

Topics in Moral Philosophy  Meta-ethics

(the origins and nature of ethics)  Normative ethics (what makes an act good or evil?)  Applied ethics (application of meta-ethics and normative ethics onto everyday issues, e.g. abortion)

Meta-ethics Two origins of morality:  Other-worldly: the divine, e.g. God, Heaven, etc.  This-worldly: biology, psychology, culture, i.e. nature or nurture? Epistemological problem: how do we know where morality comes from? Semantics: what do we mean by good or evil? Is lying necessarily evil?

Why meta-ethics? Moral absolutism/universalism: to find absolute criteria for moral action and intent  E.g. Morality is intended by God; good is what God does and bad is what the devil does (problem of judgment) 

Problem: if there are absolute criteria for good and evil, does that mean we have no freewill? If we cannot judge what is good or evil, how can we claim to have chosen good over evil?

This-world sources: biology and psychology Biology: we are programmed to behave in certain manners (e.g. Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene). But how do we account for our differences? How about freewill?  Psychology: what are the intentions behind being moral? Are all moral actions motivated by egoism? Why do strangers risk their lives for other strangers? Are moral actions due to individual agency? Then it makes no sense to speak of moral absolutes! 

This-world sources: culture  Moral

relativism: what is good or evil depends on the cultural contexts  Can we reduce everything to culture? E.g. “it is other people’s culture to engage in honorkilling”  Should we intervene in the name of moral absolutes? E.g. free Muslim women from wearing the Hijab

Normative ethics Searching for a single principle to guide our actions. Three primary perspectives:  Virtue theory  Deontology (Kant)  Utilitarianism

Virtue Theory    

Developing good virtues that results in good actions E.g. courage, compassion, wisdom, humility, benevolence E.g. Aristotle and Confucius: the golden mean Emphasis on good education

Problem: why are these virtues good? Should we be compassionate towards tyrants?

Deontology: Immanuel Kant  Non-consequentialist:

fulfil the duty without regards for consequences

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Categorical Imperative: Kant’s synthesis of the concerns for universalism, freewill, reason, and this-worldly sources of morality

Arriving at the Categorical Imperative The synthetic apriori proposition  

Analytic apriori: truth-preserving and before experiences Synthetic aposteriori: knowledge expanding and after experiences

Moral principles must be knowledgeexpanding so that we can know how to act, and they must be apriori so that they are universal and unadulterated by subjective experiences

Kant’s synthesis  

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Morality must come from freewill, if not they are meaningless Freewill comes from exercise of reason, if not we are mere slaves to desires or biological laws (hypothetical imperative)  you should not like what you are doing! Universal because all humans have reason Reason is unadulterated by experience for we are all born with it

Synthetic apriori Example: Cause and effect Notion of cause and effect has apriori origins: we all intuitively see A as a cause of B. Synthetic: we apply our intuition about cause and effect onto the systematic study of nature – Science Synthetic apriori: merely an explication of intuition?

The Categorical Imperative Reason tells us: “Act on maxim that you can will to be universal law” Synthetic: tells us how to behave in any given situation, long as I can will any principle to be a universal law Isn’t that the same as the principle: “do unto others what you want others to do unto you”!

Critiques of Kant 

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Problem 1: I would want it to be a universal law, i.e. I want others to do it. But that doesn’t mean that I myself should do it! Problem 2: Why should I obey my reason only? Am I not also an emotional being? Problem 3: Is freewill really that important? What good does freewill bring? Erich Fromm: Escape from Freedom: people do not want choices for it leads to angst (Nazi Holocaust) Problem 4: reason not that universal (Sadomasochist would want everyone to hurt themselves, someone suffering from chronic sickness would want euthanasia for everyone) Problem 5: sticking to duty may result in a lot of suffering for others (E.g. Killing Hitler to save the world, capital punishment)

Critiques of Kant II Problem 6: is it reason that tells me to will it to be universal law? Hume: reason is always a slave to passion  Moral preferences no different from artistic ones: they are results of passion rather than reason The only universal is human potential for ‘sympathy’: being able to feel what others feel. But the action that comes after is another question  If it is passion rather than reason, makes it a hypothetical imperative, and therefore not product of freewill? If not product of freewill does it make morality meaningless?

Critiques of Kant III Problem 7: The exercise of reason becomes enslaving: I must do what reason tells me to. That’s a paradox! 

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Durkheimian solution: reason, categorical imperative, etc. have origins in society. Inasmuch as society does not want to give us too much or too little freewill, reason has come to be the tool that develops such behaviors in us Elementary forms of religious life: respect is the emotional manifestation of the paradox of reason: free and not free = love and fear  “respect”

Utilitarianism: the maximization of general happiness Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill 

An act is morally good if the end result maximizes general welfare E.g. Killing Hitler to save millions of lives

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A consequentialist conception of morality: the ends justify the means

Critiques of Utilitarianism 

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Problem 1: technical problem. How can I predict the consequences of my action? Perhaps killing Hitler will not end the war but make it worse? Probability and causality problem. Problem 2: what do we mean by welfare? Maybe others don’t want whatever we mean by welfare? E.g. Liberating Afghan women from the Hijab. Problem 3: contradiction with deontology – should a doctor lie to his patient about the latter’s illness? Problem 4: discount the quality of each individual. But ‘welfare’ has a qualitative dimension, e.g. ‘happiness’ and each human understand and experience ‘happiness’ differently Application to distributive justice: allocate resources so that total welfare is maximized. E.g. split up a liver to give to two persons or give it to an old man to prolong his life? Problem 5: purely future oriented so it discounts retributive justice E.g. Give organ to a doctor rather than a war veteran Problem 6: how to calculate ‘maximum welfare’? Should I kill 1 million people infected with virus in order to save 1 million and 1 people? What if the 1 million includes people like Mother Theresa?

Other theories: human rights Rights theory: it is morally good to let people exercise their rights Rights and duties are two sides of a coin: others have a duty to respect my rights  E.g. Locke’s ‘natural rights theory’: laws of nature mandate that we should not harm anyone’s life, health, liberty or possessions  Problem: how do we know what laws of nature are? Even if we can, why should we follow them? Some say laws of nature dictates that we are all heterosexuals, does that mean that homosexuals should be eliminated? Do laws of nature come from observing what other animals do? If that is the case then we should not wear clothes, use utensils, comb our hair, etc.

Four principles of moral rights First, rights are natural insofar as they are not invented or created by governments.  Second, they are universal insofar as they do not change from country to country.  Third, they are equal in the sense that rights are the same for all people, irrespective of gender, race, or handicap.  Fourth, they are inalienable which means that I cannot hand over my rights to another person, such as by selling myself into slavery. 

Problem 1: Why do we have these rights? What are the foundations of these rights? Are they needs or desires? There is always a need to…what is the to? Problem 2: we don’t even know what human nature is, how can we talk about what is natural and what is universal? Is there no such thing as culture? Are we merely products of nature?

Applied Ethics Abortion:  Rights of baby vs. rights of mother  Does a baby have a right? What makes a human? Anthropomorphism  Deontology vs. utilitarianism: duty not to kill, but allowing baby to live may make it and the mother suffer more Euthanasia:  Same issue with abortion  Quality of life vs. quantity of life (question of what we mean by ‘welfare’)  ‘Sanctity of life’: meta-ethical question (e.g. if God does not exist then it is meaningless to talk about sanctity of life)

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Some principles of applied ethics Personal benefit: acknowledge the extent to which an action produces

beneficial consequences for the individual in question (utilitarianism) Social benefit: acknowledge the extent to which an action produces beneficial consequences for society (utilitarianism) Principle of benevolence: help those in need (virtue theory, deontology) Principle of paternalism: assist others in pursuing their best interests when they cannot do so themselves (deontology) Principle of harm: do not harm others (deontology) Principle of honesty: do not deceive others (deontology) Principle of lawfulness: do not violate the law (deontology) Principle of autonomy: acknowledge a person’s freedom over his/her actions or physical body (deontology) Principle of justice: acknowledge a person’s right to due process, fair compensation for harm done, and fair distribution of benefits (rights theory) Rights: acknowledge a person’s rights to life, information, privacy, free expression, and safety (rights theory)

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What is existential philosophy? Human existence is different from that of animals because we know that we exist as free individuals distinct from the world

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This knowledge comes from the ability of consciousness to be conscious of itself

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What then makes me so? Why and how am I so? What shall I do with it? “The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made”

: - A. E. Housman, on being a homosexual in a heterosexual world

Existential philosophers/writers  Friedrich

Nietzsche  Soren Kierkegaard  Martin Heidegger  Jean-paul Sartre  Albert Camus  Theodore Dostoevsky  Maurice Merleu-ponty

Jean-paul Sartre: We are condemned to freedom 

Ontological position: set out to deal with what it means to be human

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Epistemological position: via analyzing the nature of human consciousness

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Ethical position: morality is meaningful insofar as actions are chosen and not coerced

Nature of consciousness 

From Edmund Husserl: there is no such thing as ‘pure’ consciousness; consciousness is always consciousness of something

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Consciousness is directional, i.e. intended

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When I am conscious I am always conscious of something. This makes me conscious of the act of consciousness, which precludes the one who is conscious – I. I am therefore responsible for all acts of consciousness, regardless of how spontaneous my consciousness is

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Implication for psychology: we always have choices, unlike Freud’s argument that there are factors beyond the grasp of our consciousness.

The Flee 

What makes me conscious of A rather than B?

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Consciousness always suffers from a ‘lack’, and thus it is always directed towards that which fills this ‘lack’

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Consciousness has no content; it is a fleeing towards the world in search of being

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The fact that we can ask questions shows us the transcendental and the temporal nature of consciousness and the nothingness of being.

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Freedom not defined as ability to act, but the ability to be free in thoughts. We are so free that we are unable to not make choices! (Bourdieu: provided we are always conscious. But many a times we act unconsciously because we are embodied creatures.)

Facticity and Freedom 

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I often think I am a unity, but the act of being selfconscious makes me a duality or a multiplicity: the one who reflects and the one who is the object of reflection, the one who reflects upon the one who reflects and the one who is the object of reflection and so on Yet we still seek unity or what Sartre calls ‘being’. Consciousness is uncomfortable with its freedom. Insofar as we are always conscious, human ontology is always unstable, for consciousness is always in flight, denying its being in search of other beings. “We are not what we are and we are what we are not” Any being is a facticity that lies in the past, and every act of being conscious of this facticity is an act of freedom in its seeking of facticity. My being is therefore always suspended in time, in my flight from the here and now to some where and some time else.

Bad Faith: self-deception and inauthenticity Belief in a stable essence of being  A contradiction between being a facticity and a freewill.  In seeking a being, a person is in an act of freedom that denies freedom. After settling into a being, it does not mean that the consciousness extinguishes itself. But in order to achieve stability in being, people give themselves all sorts of justifications. E.g. ‘fate’, ‘God’, ‘society’, ‘no choice’. Bad faith is essentially a form of self-deception.  Ontological, traditional, positivistic, stoical 

Sartre’s point 

The underlying motivation for action is to be found in the nature of consciousness, which is a desire for being. Each person must exercise his freedom in such a way that he does not lose sight of his existence as a facticity and as a free human being. Only in so doing can he understand the relationships between choices and the values therefore projected. Authenticity is the recognition of how our freedom interacts with our facticity, and not utter freedom.

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Facticity refers to the past that is already given. It is a being that cannot be freed. Everything else that comes after that can be chosen.

Sartre’s Ethics 

There is no apriori normative moral values in our actions, but in choosing, the agent creates the value the same way an artist does in his drawing. These values are universal because humans are, so any artist put in my situation will be able to make sense of those values

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The value of morality lies in the act of choosing, and not the act itself

On Human Relations 

Shame and guilt is a product of my awareness that I have been objectified by the freewill of others, and to deal with this, I objectify others. Human relationships are therefore constituted by this constant struggle between trying to be a subject while being aware that one is being objectified. This is understood as inter-subjective bad faith

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Love is essentially a paradoxical experience

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“The desire of a freewill to possess another freewill”

Implications Can I ‘choose’ to believe in something?  Am I able to find purpose in this-worldly values?  How do I know that I am free?  Do I have to be free? What’s so good about being free?  Isn’t the act of denying my freedom an act of freedom too? Suicide 

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche 

Nihilism: pushing the limits of reason results in the realization that no value as an inherent value in-itself (cf. Weber). Values are therefore human constructs.

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Kierkegaard: everything we choose to do and believe in is probably wrong. But we must still do so, and stick to it. Faith is the only solution to the nihilism that comes from reasoning

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Nietzsche: to craft oneself through oneself, without relying on anything that transcends one’s life such as God or the soul.

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The Ubermensch: one who creatively destroys and creatively creates. Values are one’s own constructs, not from external transcendental sources.

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Eternal return as illustration of inherent meaninglessness of existence: that there is no purpose for everything repeats itself. Purpose only exists within a single life-time; no purpose transcends a life-time.

Miscellaneous notes 

On fear, angst, and world-openness

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Consciousness is the cause of all sufferings

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Religion is the consequence of the alienating effect of consciousness

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Monotheistic religion: construct another ‘subject’ to deal with existential loneliness – God or gods

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Buddhism and Daoism: get rid of consciousness