One of the distinguishing features of conceptions of morality advanced by Hobbes, Kant, and Mill is often seen as a "strength" of moral theorising. The feature can be called impartiality, and it has become quite normal for us to assume it as a pre-condition of moral judgement. The moral systems devised by them necessarily treat all individuals as separate but equal. Of course, there are many ways in which people are not equal, but they are equal in all morally relevant ways. Each person has equal moral value, according to Kant. Each person’s rational interests count equally compared with each other’s, according to Hobbes. The freedom from pain is equally relevant to all pain-feeling creatures, be they persons or non-human animals, according to Bentham and Mill. The related and dependent requirements for equality and impartiality are assumed to be necessary constituents of any fair or just system of resolving disputes or adjudicating between conflicting courses of action.
Although the requirement of equality and impartiality seems to be taken for granted by most moral theorists, its acceptance by others is not at all so commonplace. Morality has often been seen as culturally located as well as culturally specific. That is, not only are the kinds of duties I owe determined by my culture, but also my duties are owed only to my people and not to those outside my culture.
For centuries in Japan, for example, a Samurai warrior could indulge in the accepted practice of "tsuji giri" (the crossroads cut) with impunity. The warrior would test his skill and the sharpness of his sword by waiting at the crossroads outside his village for the first stranger to come along. He would draw his sword and in the same movement slice the stranger in two with a single cut from the shoulder to the opposite hip. Strangers were of no moral consequence to the warrior.
In more modern times and closer to home, the Victorians were deeply suspicious of those claiming to care as much about all of humanity as they did for their own kin. Charles Dickens satirised the "humanitarian philosopher" in Martin Chuzzlewit. Mr Pecksniff intones the rhetoric of universal love but his hypocrisy is uncovered and he is revealed to be a scoundrel. For a while the term "pecksniffian" even entered into common usage to describe any person publicly lauding universal benevolence whilst privately seeking personal gain. Those who cared more for the well-being of others than they did for their own were not to be trusted.
Modern moral theory doesn’t actually require that we consider unrelated others before we give consideration to those closest to us. That is, it is not that we are more moral because we choose to advantage others before advantaging our family and friends. However, it does require that the proximity of the person to us should not be a consideration in our choice of action. More specifically, my sister’s plight has no more moral "weight" than that of a complete stranger. If the needs of a stranger are greater than the needs of my sister, then to prioritise my sister’s needs before those of the stranger is to act partially and, some would say, immorally.
In recent times, a number of moral philosophers have reconsidered the heavy demand for complete impartiality that certain moral theories require. In part, this is a revival of interest in the kinds of questions about morality that Hume and the moral sense theorists asked: questions about the relationship between reason and emotion; questions about the role of the self in moral decision-making; questions about the requirement for sympathy as a basic moral virtue. In short, if it not only seems natural, instinctive, psychologically stable, and completely rational to care about the well-being of one’s family more than the well-being of strangers, can it not also be moral to be so partial? The problem with such a question, as we have already seen in this series, is that it’s difficult not to beg the question in one’s definition or description of being moral. But we can make a start by considering a now famous example from Bernard Williams’ Moral Luck.
A man finds himself confronted by two people drowning. One of the two people happens to be his wife. He is only able to save one of the two people and must leave the other to drown. The ease or difficulties of saving either are equal. There is more or less certainty of success whichever drowning person is selected to be saved. We could speculate as to the public opinion of the man if he chose to leave his wife to drown and saved the stranger, especially if he declared that he made the choice deliberately because he felt that saving his wife and condemning the stranger would be unfairly partial. We might judge his actions to be noble. We would certainly understand that they were impartial. But would we praise him for it? Would we respect his strong moral principles? Would we accept that what he did was right?
These kinds of questions assume that if he had chosen to save his wife we would perfectly understand his motives; that we would not condemn his actions; that we cannot have expected or demanded him to do otherwise; and that we might even feel sympathy for him finding himself with such a terrible dilemma and faced with the almost inevitable solution that he must condemn the stranger to die because he cares more for his wife. What are we saying here? Are we suggesting that the partial action of choosing his wife to be saved is understandable and we cannot condemn him, but it is not a moral action? Are we, in fact, saying that he is exonerated of any requirement to act morally in this situation? But these responses seem to imply that an impartial decision would always require choosing to save the stranger – consciously and deliberately. Would not an impartial decision require the flip of a coin, perhaps?
Furthermore, we are making certain assumptions about the motives behind the man’s choice. He does not choose to save his wife because he has internalised a rational decision-making criterion that states, "always save one’s wife before saving a stranger." We naturally assume that he instinctively feels that he has to save his wife, "I realised Julie was drowning. I love my wife so much I couldn’t think of anything else but trying to save her. I’m so sorry for the other man, but what could I do? She’s my wife!"
The relevance of such moral "tests" is the strain it puts on the acceptance of a blind impartiality as a requirement of moral action. After all, the requirement to save the stranger rather than one’s wife seems to demand action beyond what morality can expect.
According to particularist critics of conventional ethical theory, the possibility of moral action is predicated upon the capacities for love and sympathy and caring that are manifested in the greater concern we show for our family and friends; not just because they are family and friends, but because we love them. The challenge for morality is to "expand the circle" of care and concern beyond family and friends as far as we can.
At this point it might be suggested that caring is particularist and that morality is universalistic; that caring is one thing and morality another; that we are confusing the two. However, advocates of an ethic of care, such as Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, would argue that this is missing the point. At its fundamental level, morality conceived by Hobbes, Kant, and Mill assumes no particular relationships between individual persons other than equal membership of a community of moral agents. Persons are atomistic billiard balls; all equal morally in size, weight, shape and potential action. But if we are all really like this, moral philosophers such as Mary Midgley argue, there would be no morality at all precisely because we wouldn’t care about any one person more than any other so we certainly wouldn’t care for all of them. Gilligan sees morality as "an activity of relationship" and the various forms of relationship determine what is morally proper. Midgley has argued this most vehemently in Animals and Why They Matter: it would be wholly wrong to grant an ant the same rights as a chimpanzee and yet that seems to be what a blind universalistic morality requires. Moreover, Cora Diamond has argued that this consideration is what’s at stake when determining the morality of meat-eating and cannibalism: do we eat animals because we care about them less than we care about people, or do we care about them less because we eat them?
Where does this leave morality? Is moral action just too much to expect? Are the demands of morality supererogoratory – above and beyond what is needed – and, thus, too idealistic and unreasonable? Must traditional moral theory be revised in the light of increased knowledge and understanding of human psychology, development, and evolution? What really is at issue here?
On the one hand there is the requirement of particularity versus universality. And it would be quite wrong to suggest no possible reconciliation of these two within a Kantian framework, for example. The consideration given to this here really is too brief.
On the other hand, the issue at stake is the whole perspective of ethical thought. I’d like to think that this issue has been an undercurrent flowing through most of this series. The final arbiters of the worth or worthiness of any moral theory might be judged to be its correspondence, its efficacy, and its utility, assessed in a number of ways. Does it fit with our conception and understanding of who and what we are as human beings – rational, emotional, particularist, self-reflexive creatures etc.? Does our intellectual understanding of moral obligation have any motivational effect on our desire to act in certain ways? Can moral theory help solve our moral problems; can it make the world a better, happier place? This series began with some examples of this kind of question. In the next issue, it will end with a consideration of the possibility of applying ethics. How can moral philosophy help us?
Suggested Reading
In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan (Harvard University Press)
Equality and Partiality, Thomas Nagel (Oxford University Press)
Caring, Nel Noddings (University of California Press)
Simon Eassom is principal lecturer in philosophy and a teacher fellow at De Montfort University, Bedford