Plural and Conflicting Values

Abstract

The central concern of this book is whether plural and incommensurable values necessarily result in unsolvable conflict and whether this conflict poses special problems for ethical theories. The view defended here is that plurality is no impediment to sound choice, and that a practicable ethics accounts for the fact that plurality and choice are ordinary and pervasive phenomena of moral life. Ethical theories, broadly divided into monistic and pluralistic, are pitted against each other in an attempt to show that the traditional understanding of the connection between value and conflict is flawed––a rationally grounded ethics does not require an evaluative monism purged of conflict, nor an algorithm to compare and choose between plural values. The book combines criticism of contemporary ethical theories with specific chapters on Aristotle's ethics. The first part focuses on the nature of moral conflict. Drawing on Aristotle's moral psychology, the author looks at dirty hands, moral immorality, and the nature of moral conflict in general. The second part focuses on whether plural values preclude sound moral judgement. The third part discusses whether conflict requires plural values, looking first at irrational conflict (akrasia or weakness of will) and next at rational conflict. The last part discusses maximization and plurality, and argues that maximization is mistaken, irrelevant, and parasitic. A central theme of the book is that ethics extends far beyond the guiding of action––‘our moral concern with acts goes beyond, primarily, what is to be done, and secondarily, what is better or best’.

Moral Failure — Response to Critics

“…In other words, I object to what I take to be the false sense that if we make the right actionguiding decision-which just means that we choose the best of the available alternatives, all of which might be awful-then we have not failed. 1 I want actionguidance and action-assessment (Stocker 1990), so that we recognize the awfulness of what we do even when we do the best that we can, and I would like for this recognition to replace the righteousness we might otherwise have about what we do.…”

“…What I find to be a dogma of moral theory is the notion that moral theory begins and ends with action-guidance; under the influence of this dogma, moral theorists conflate "what is to be done" with "what it is right to do." What I and others, such as Michael Stocker (1990) and Christopher Gowans (1994), have emphasized against this dogma is that even after the action-guidance and the action have taken place, there is more for the moral theorist to say. For instance, following Stocker, I believe that we can still assess the action that we have decided is the action to be done: we can still judge that performing this action constitutes a failure.…”

After the Standard Dirty Hands Thesis: Towards a Dynamic Account of Dirty Hands in Politics

“…Several DH theorists criticize Walzer's account for its 'narrowness': DH, they suggest, might be confronted by non-professional politicians; it might involve a dilemma in ordinary life 1 (Stocker, 1990;Gowans, 2001 2). MacIntyre's account, I illustrate, offers a richer understanding of tragedy and DH -in its traditional conception as a stark conflict involving inescapable wrongdoing.…”

“…Whilst the politician should satisfy the requirements of politics, her choice carries a remainder. This insight challenges the Kantian and Utilitarian value-monist vision of innocence and harmony as unsatisfactorily idealistic and insensitive to our fragmented morality and messiness of politics.Several DH theorists criticize Walzer's account for its 'narrowness': DH, they suggest, might be confronted by non-professional politicians; it might involve a dilemma in ordinary life 1 (Stocker, 1990;Gowans, 2001 2). MacIntyre's account, I illustrate, offers a richer understanding of tragedy and DH -in its traditional conception as a stark conflict involving inescapable wrongdoing.…”

Dialectical Obligations in Political Debate

“…Several contemporary moral philosophers have argued that value pluralism, in this sense, is a condition of our everyday existence (cf., e.g., Sinnott-Armstrong 1988, Stocker 1990, Lukes 1991, Larmore 1996, Finnis 1998, Raz 1998. This is why arguments that we recognize as real and relevant about a policy may still be contradictory: argument A 1 for the policy is warranted by a certain value to which we are committed, but argument A 2 against the policy is warranted by another value to which we are also committed.…”