Review:
According to Annette Baier, there are 2 perspectives on moral and social issues. First is the justice perspective and the second one is the care perspective. I research on the meaning of justice perspective and this is what I found out. Justice perspective concentrates on how fairly or unfairly our actions bring benefits and burdens among people. The principle states: “Treat people the same unless there are morally relevant differences between them.” For Annette Baier, care perspective is related to women because women are the primary caretakers of young children. For her, the natural care perspective comes for the parental and maternal role of the mother. She also stated 2 evils that any child may become aware of. First, the evil of detachment or isolation from others whose love one needs which aims to gain satisfying community with others and the second one is the evil of relative powerlessness and weakness which aims for equality of power. She also discussed the 3 reasons why women have not to be content to pursue their own values w/n the framework of liberal morality. The reasons are: liberal morality’s dubious record, inattention to relations of inequality or its pretense equality and lastly, exaggeration of the scope of choice or its inattention to unchosen relations. On the latter part, she mention the fourth feature which is typical rationalism or intellectualism and its assumption that we need not worry what passions person have as long as their rational wills can control them.
Chapter 12: The Need for More than Justice
February 21, 2010Chapter 11: A Theory of Justice
February 21, 2010Review:
First of all what is justice? According to Wikipedia, justice is the concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, fairness, or equity. According to John Rawls, there are 2 principles of justice and the first principle concerns with equal basic liberties and the second principle involves the arrangement of social and economic inequalities. For him, “These are the principles that free and rational persons would accept in a hypothetical original position where there is a veil of ignorance hiding from the contractors all the particular facts about themselves.” He stated that the original agreement is the basic structure of the theory of justice. “The original agreement is the principles that free and rational persons concerned to further their own interest would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their association.” According to a website, original agreement or position “is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice. In taking up this point of view, we are to imagine ourselves in the position of free and equal persons who jointly agree upon and commit themselves to principles of social and political justice.” For short, John Rawls calls justice as fairness. Lastly, according to Rawls, justice as fairness has 2 parts. First is an interpretation of the initial situation and the second is a set of principles which would be agreed to.
Chapter 10: Taking Rights Seriously
February 21, 2010Review:
First, we define what a right and legal rights are. Rights are entitlements (not) to perform certain actions or be in certain states, or entitlements that others (not) perform certain actions or be in certain states. Legal rights are, clearly, rights which exist under the rules of legal systems. According to Ronald Dworkin, “if a people have a right to do something, then it is wrong to interfere with them.” He also set an example of it which is regarding the freedom of speech of the people. He is trying to say that if people have the freedom of speech then the government has no right to stop the people in exercising their rights. I also agree with this but if we think of about it more deeply, isn’t the government the one who said that people have the right of free speech? So they also have the right to state when this right can be exercise and when this right can’t be exercise. They are the ruler of the country so they could interfere with people who are exercising their rights IF it is necessary to protect other rights. We, government and citizens, should all take rights seriously because this makes the country organize. If there are no rights, there will be inequalities in our country and there will be instances that people could take advantage over other people.
Chapter 9: The Nature and Value of Rights
February 21, 2010Review:
Joel Feinberg started the discussion by letting us imagine Nowheresville—a world very much like our own except that no one or hardly anyone has rights. At first I don’t know any country called Nowheresville or if it is a country or not. Second, I can’t imagine or I don’t know if there really is a place where there is no right. When I research the net, I found out 3 meanings. First, it is a remote or isolated town or village. Second, it is a job, position, rank, etc., completely lacking in status, recognition, or a chance for advancement. Third, it is anything unrealistic, impractical, or useless. Imagine a world where you can’t claim what’s rightfully yours. And you can’t do anything about it because there is no law that would help you claim it. He tries to make the human beings in Nowheresville as attractive and as virtuous as possible. He said that, “Fill this imagined world with as much benevolence, compassion, sympathy and pity as it conveniently hold w/o strain. Now we can imagine men helping one another from compassionate motives.” He also gives duties in Nowheresville. Joel Feinberg introduces 2 practices. First, personal desert, I think what Joel Fienberg mean by personal desert is that a person deserve a good thing if he does a good job or presents a good personality and a person deserves a punishment if he does a bad job or has a bad personality. Second, sovereign right monopoly, what Joel Feinberg means by this is that a person has a duty to do something to other people but this duty is not owed to other people but to the law.
Chapter 8: Happiness and Virtue
February 21, 2010Review:
According to Aristotle, “happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue; we must consider the nature of virtue; for perhaps we shall thus see better the nature of happiness.” “Aristotle argues that all human beings seek happiness and happiness is not pleasure, honor or wealth, but an activity of soul in accordance with virtue.” For me, happiness depends how people define it. If for them, to get pleasure, wealth and honor makes them happy then so be it. But happiness for me is something that could make me feel better. Example would be, my mother bought me a new cell phone because I graduated with honors. I would feel very happy because I got a new cell phone because of hard work.
According to Aristotle, there are 2 kinds of virtue, moral and intellectual. Moral virtue comes from training and habit and generally is a state of character that is a mean between the vices of excess and deficiency. It comes about as a result of habit. While intellectual virtue produces the most perfect happiness and is found in the activity of reason or contemplation. It owes both its birth and growth to teaching.” Virtue means goodness and righteousness. So how is this related to happiness? For me, to become happy should do something good or right. So in short to be happy, we should consider virtue.
Chapter 7: The Categorical Imperative
February 21, 2010Review:
According to Immanuel Kant, our moral duty can be formulated in one supreme rule, the categorical imperative, from which all our duties can be derived. He also mentioned hypothetical imperative. What is the difference between the two? For Kant, “when a person conceive a hypothetical imperative, he do not know beforehand what it will contain until its condition is given. While if a person conceive a categorical imperative, he know at once what it contains. According to Kant, “there is only a single categorical imperative and it is this: “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”” As for hypothetical imperative, it compels action in a given circumstance. Example would be if you want to pass the exam, you should study hard. At the last part of the article, Immanuel Kant mentioned something about practical imperative he said that “act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end. I think what it means that when we do something we should always think of that people that are involve in all our doings whether it is someone we know of or a stranger as long as they are involve in the act.
Chapter 6: The Debate over Utilitarianism
February 21, 2010Review:
For John Rachels, utilitarianism is correct telling us to consider the consequences of actions and ion advising us to be impartial, but incorrect in ignoring other important moral considerations such as merit. He was able to summarized classical utilitarianism in 3 propositions. “First, actions are to be judged right or wrong solely in virtue of their consequences. Second, in assessing consequences, the only thing that matters is the amount of happiness or unhappiness that is caused. Lastly, in calculating the happiness or unhappiness that will be caused, no one’s happiness is to be counted as more important than anyone else’s”
At some point in the article, it discussed the 3 antiutilitarian arguments. First is justice. It was stated that justice requires that people should treat other people fairly, according to their individual needs and merits. The second argument is rights. I think the rights that this argument is talking about are the rights that we have as a human being like right to freedom of religion, right to free speech and many others. The last argument is backward-looking reasons.
John Rachels also stated the 2 kinds of utilitarianism. First is rule-utilitarianism. Rule-utilitarianism means that an action is moral is it follows the rules that would lead to the greatest good. A rule- utilitarian person would ask first, “What general rules of conduct tend to promote the greatest happiness?” The second kind of utilitarianism is act-utilitarianism. Act-utilitarianism means that an action is good based on the amount of good consequences an action has. To make it short, rule-utilitarianism is based on rules it followed while act-utilitarianism is based on the end-result of the action.
Chapter 5: Utilitarianism
February 21, 2010Review:
When I research about the meaning of utilitarianism, I found out that utilitarianism means “a doctrine that the useful is the good and that the determining consideration of right conduct should be the usefulness of its consequences; specifically: a theory that the aim of action should be the largest possible balance of pleasure over pain or the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Utilitarianism)
For John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism means that a person should act to have a result of good consequence for the greatest number of people but within reason. There was one statement in the article that says, “If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount there is but one possible answer.” For me, what makes one pleasure more valuable than another can be determined whether you are contended with the pleasure or not. It’s like which of the 2 pleasures makes you contended more. Maybe for example, playing actual basketball or playing basketball in the computer. You both get the pleasure doing both acts but you could be more contended if you play actual basketball because you are the one actually playing, and you could feel the excitement when playing. Unlike playing basketball in the computer, yes you do feel pleasure but you can’t really feel the contentment because you are not really the one playing but you are just controlling the player.
Chapter 4: Trying Out One’s New Sword
February 21, 2010Review:
This article is about moral isolationism. According to the article, moral isolationism means that we cannot make any moral judgments about the practices of other cultures, because it is impossible to understand other cultures well enough, and because we owe respect to other cultures. For Mary Midgley, she argues that moral isolationism is essentially a doctrine of immoralism because it forbids moral reasoning. And also, according to her, moral isolationism falsely assumes that cultures are separate and unmixed, whereas most cultures are in fact formed out of many influences. I agree to what Mary Midgley said that most cultures are formed out of many influences because it’s true that all of the cultures are influence by other countries. Like the Filipino culture, there are times that some of the practices that the Filipinos do are also the practices that the Spanish people do because Spain conquered Philippines so it’s possible that the Spanish people teach the Filipino people about their culture. Well all of us have our own unique culture, but there are times that these cultures are mixed with other culture which is somewhat good because at least these gives people a chance to know more about the other cultures and not just their own culture. As a conclusion, we shouldn’t criticize or make any moral judgment about other cultures because we also don’t want other people to make judgment about our culture. We could just try to understand the culture of other people and appreciate it rather than criticizing it.
Chapter 3: Master- and Slave-morality
February 21, 2010Review:
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, there are 2 types of morality, one is master-morality and the other one is slave-morality. Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out that master-morality is the morality of the strong-willed. In the British ideology, what is helpful are the good and what is the harmful one are bad. And it said that strong-willed men are the good ones because they are noble, strong and powerful while the slave-morality is the bad ones because they are weak.
It was defined that slave-morality are essentially the morality of utility. I think what this means is that they were called the morality of utility because their master is treating them like they are just a bunch of things that they could use. They use these slaves to gain benefit from things. The slaves are the reason how the masters gain the master-morality. It was also said in the essay that according to the slave-morality, the “evil” man arouses fear; while according to the master-morality, it is precisely “good” man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad is regarded as the despicable being.
This essay just talks about the difference of master-morality and slave-morality. It’s like discrimination between the good and bad, rich and poor, strong and weak. And Friedrich wants to argue with the idea that superior people should be dominant and they could exploit the inferior.
