William Sweet

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The Dialogue of Cultural Traditions a global
perspective Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and
Ethics

• William Sweet
• President, Canadian Philosophical Association
• Professor of Philosophy
• Director, Centre for Philosophy, Theology and
  Cultural Traditions
• St Francis Xavier University, Canada

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• 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

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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?

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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

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religious / tradition-basedJewish/Christian/Islam
ic

• 1. What are the key ethical principles?
• 10 commandments (Hebrew Scriptures)
• sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7), also Matthew
  22 The Greatest Commandment
• Quran / Sunna and Hadith also Sharia

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religious / tradition-basedJewish/Christian/Islam
ic

• 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

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religious / tradition-basedJewish/Christian/Islam
ic

• 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

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religious / tradition-basedJewish/Christian/Islam
ic

• 4. this ethics depends on God
• universal and particular
• Why does God command this? (any reason?)
• Are Gods reasons good reasons? (Euthyphro
  problem)
• OR are these beyond reason?

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religious / tradition-based Classical Asian
approaches

• A preliminary question. Is there Asian
  philosophy?
• Asian philosophy as a western invention
• distinguish original (and/or philosophical)
  Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism from Confucian,
  Buddhist and Taoist popular cultures or spiritual
  life.

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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 ones responsibilities
  to the community.

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religious / tradition-based Classical Asian
approaches

• Nature of ethics
• abstract principles AND concrete rules of conduct
• the aim is to do ones 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

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religious / tradition-based Classical Asian
approaches

• Source of ethics
• Sometimes theistic, sometimes not
• A principle of order (e.g., Heaven Tien)
• Natural law or nature
• e.g., karma in Indian philosophy
• BUT not obviously human nature
• rooted in texts / scriptures

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religious / tradition-based Classical Asian
approaches

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

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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

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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)

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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.

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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

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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

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religious / tradition-based Aristotelian / Stoic

• So, it depends on.

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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

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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

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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

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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."

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Enlightenment / reason-based

• principle based (deontological)
• universal and absolute a priori (without
  exception)
• recognized and enacted by reason alone
• doesnt matter if people agree to it or not
• does not cannot depend on external lawgiver
• does not depend on consequences or results

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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.

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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.

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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

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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".

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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)

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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
  the other).

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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

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Sentiment / pitié

• not something rational
• Not mutual
• does not imply a shared sentiment or interest or
  mutual recognition one simply has this
  reaction.
• Not clearly moral no sense to say that one
  (morally) ought to feel sympathy.
• pitié exists regardless of social life or
  socialization,
• Needs imagination (i.e., the capacity to imagine
  beyond our own interests)

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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.

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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