Contextual Ethics I:
Developing Frameworks for Contextual Approaches to Ethics
14-15 November 2019, University of Southern Denmark
CALL FOR PAPERS
Context has become central in contemporary moral philosophy in two distinct ways. Firstly, in the popularity of ’bottom-up’ approaches to a large range of topics such as hope, human nature and moral change. Philosophers engage history, anthropology, literature and empirical research in order to investigate and answer their questions (e.g. Nussbaum 1990; Lear 2006; Appiah 2008, 2010). Secondly, ‘context’ becomes central in the developing meta-ethical stance, we have coined ‘contextual ethics’, found in the work of moral philosophers such as Cora Diamond, Alice Crary and Margaret Urban Walker. A recurring theme in their work is that ‘the ethical’ cannot be exhaustively captured theoretically but is inherently open and interwoven with numerous aspects of human life. This gives context ethical prominence. We can formulate moral rules of thumb such as ‘Do not lie’ and develop general moral frameworks, and these principles and frameworks can be better or worse guides in moral life. But we can never deduce from the rule, what we ought to do in any given situation. This will always depend on the particular case and context. This insight has important consequences for work in moral philosophy.
The aim of this workshop is to discuss how to integrate contextual concerns into moral philosophy and develop adequate theoretical frameworks for research on contextualized ethics.
Please send proposals of no more than 250 words to: ce@cas.au.dk. Proposals should include: title, author name and title, affiliation, email address. Deadline for receipt of proposals: 15.8.2019. Notification of acceptance will be by 1.9.2019.
I like the bottom-up approach, but it's hard to do. And I've never really tried to teach ethics that way to students, although I also try to avoid the kind of approach that presents a small menu of theories and then invites students to apply them. I have a draft of a post somewhere on teaching ethics, so maybe I'll dig that up and finish it one of these days.
In the meantime, I'm interested in the relation between rules and contexts. A rule won't tell us exactly what to do or how to do it, but it seems that it can tell us something. If I try to live by the rule "Help those in need" and I meet someone clearly in need, the rule tells me to help them. Perhaps there are complicating factors (someone else is already helping them, I am not qualified to give the kind of help they seem to need, helping them will mean not helping someone else nearby who seems even more in need, and so on) but perhaps there aren't. It might be perfectly obvious what my rule requires of me in this situation.
Rules can also tell us what not to do. Rosalind Hursthouse tells the story of Anscombe telling the story of a woman who was hiding Jewish people from the Nazis when the Gestapo knocked on her door. She could not lie, Anscombe says, and so instead she embarrassed the young officer by acting as if she had mistaken him for some beloved relative. He got out of there as quickly as he could, no lies were told, and no one was taken away to be murdered. The story is important because it shows that the standard idea of a moral dilemma (e.g., you must either lie or give someone up to be murdered) is artificial. In real life, it is sometimes possible to find a third, better alternative. Another reason why the story matters is that the appearance of facing a moral dilemma is a big part of what the context was in this case. That is, the woman's absolute rule against lying played a big role in making the situation what it was. It wouldn't have been a dilemma if she had no problem with lying to Nazis. And it wouldn't have been a problem at all (from her perspective) if she had been an obedient Nazi. So rules, I think, (can, sometimes) help make contexts what they are.
It's also worth bearing in mind that contexts are not simply given. They can be imaginatively reconceived, as Cora Diamond points out that Socrates does when faced with the dilemma of staying in prison and being executed or letting his guard be bribed so that he can escape. Socrates does not find a third, better alternative, but he does re-describe his situation in a way that helps him decide what to do.
None of this is to deny that what we do will always depend on the particular case and context. But it does, I think, bring out how that idea is not as simple as it might sound (not that this will be news to the conference organizers, but it might be to others). The context will affect/determine which rules or virtues, if any, are relevant, and in what ways they might be relevant. And the rules or virtues in place (by which, in the case of virtues, I mean the character of the moral agent) will affect/determine the context. So it's complicated.
Which means that it would be a bad idea to adopt a slogan like "not rules but context," but something (if we need to think in terms of slogans) like "not just rules but contexts too" would be very good. And sometimes you don't really need any rules at all, or the relevant rules are so obvious that they don't need to be brought up. Someone who read it more carefully than I did told me that Ta-Nehisi Coates' case for reparations didn't actually make a case as such but simply set out a factual history. Nevertheless, something of this kind (whether or not it's true in this particular case) could constitute a powerful case. It can be very clear from a purely factual description that something ought to be stopped, for instance. (Or that something is owed to someone--Anscombe famously discusses cases of this kind.) This could be in cases where what is described is just so awful that nothing could justify it or, also, in cases where the description of the thing itself needs to be supplemented by descriptions of consequences, alternatives, or other facts. Sometimes, that is to say, facts are all you need. (Or facts plus a certain kind of character to react to those facts, if you like, but sometimes the character in question will be that of any normal human being.)
In the meantime, I'm interested in the relation between rules and contexts. A rule won't tell us exactly what to do or how to do it, but it seems that it can tell us something. If I try to live by the rule "Help those in need" and I meet someone clearly in need, the rule tells me to help them. Perhaps there are complicating factors (someone else is already helping them, I am not qualified to give the kind of help they seem to need, helping them will mean not helping someone else nearby who seems even more in need, and so on) but perhaps there aren't. It might be perfectly obvious what my rule requires of me in this situation.
Rules can also tell us what not to do. Rosalind Hursthouse tells the story of Anscombe telling the story of a woman who was hiding Jewish people from the Nazis when the Gestapo knocked on her door. She could not lie, Anscombe says, and so instead she embarrassed the young officer by acting as if she had mistaken him for some beloved relative. He got out of there as quickly as he could, no lies were told, and no one was taken away to be murdered. The story is important because it shows that the standard idea of a moral dilemma (e.g., you must either lie or give someone up to be murdered) is artificial. In real life, it is sometimes possible to find a third, better alternative. Another reason why the story matters is that the appearance of facing a moral dilemma is a big part of what the context was in this case. That is, the woman's absolute rule against lying played a big role in making the situation what it was. It wouldn't have been a dilemma if she had no problem with lying to Nazis. And it wouldn't have been a problem at all (from her perspective) if she had been an obedient Nazi. So rules, I think, (can, sometimes) help make contexts what they are.
It's also worth bearing in mind that contexts are not simply given. They can be imaginatively reconceived, as Cora Diamond points out that Socrates does when faced with the dilemma of staying in prison and being executed or letting his guard be bribed so that he can escape. Socrates does not find a third, better alternative, but he does re-describe his situation in a way that helps him decide what to do.
None of this is to deny that what we do will always depend on the particular case and context. But it does, I think, bring out how that idea is not as simple as it might sound (not that this will be news to the conference organizers, but it might be to others). The context will affect/determine which rules or virtues, if any, are relevant, and in what ways they might be relevant. And the rules or virtues in place (by which, in the case of virtues, I mean the character of the moral agent) will affect/determine the context. So it's complicated.
Which means that it would be a bad idea to adopt a slogan like "not rules but context," but something (if we need to think in terms of slogans) like "not just rules but contexts too" would be very good. And sometimes you don't really need any rules at all, or the relevant rules are so obvious that they don't need to be brought up. Someone who read it more carefully than I did told me that Ta-Nehisi Coates' case for reparations didn't actually make a case as such but simply set out a factual history. Nevertheless, something of this kind (whether or not it's true in this particular case) could constitute a powerful case. It can be very clear from a purely factual description that something ought to be stopped, for instance. (Or that something is owed to someone--Anscombe famously discusses cases of this kind.) This could be in cases where what is described is just so awful that nothing could justify it or, also, in cases where the description of the thing itself needs to be supplemented by descriptions of consequences, alternatives, or other facts. Sometimes, that is to say, facts are all you need. (Or facts plus a certain kind of character to react to those facts, if you like, but sometimes the character in question will be that of any normal human being.)
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