PROFESSOR: So what I want to
do in today's lecture is to shift gears somewhat from what
we've been talking about in the first unit of the course. As you know, the first unit of
the course was focused on a set of texts that we're
concerned with what is involved in human flourishing. And though our opening text,
Glaucon's challenge from Plato's Republic concerned
itself with morality and the way in which morality
contributes to human flourishing, we haven't, up
until this point, given much attention to what philosophers
have had to say about the nature of morality. And so goal in this unit is, in
an incredibly accelerated fashion, to introduce you today
and next Tuesday to two of the most prominent moral
theories in the Western tradition and then it then the
remaining sessions before March break to talk to you about
some of the empirical research about these
questions. And I know we have
a wide range of backgrounds in this class. Some of you are now taking your
first philosophy course. Some of you have taken an
entire course on ethics. And so I've tried to pitch the
lecture in such a way that it brings everybody up to speed,
but that it does so in a way that I hope won't bore those
of you who have encountered this before. In particular, to make up for
the fact that there's very little empirical psychology
in this lecture I have six polling slides. So those will come in in the
middle of the lecture right when all of you are zoning out
because you got two hours of sleep last night. So even if you don't pay
attention for the first part, you'll get to vote
in the middle. All right, so what
is it that moral philosophy sets out to do? What is it to provide a philosophical account of morality? What moral philosophy is the
systematic endeavor to understand moral concepts and
to justify moral principles and theories. That is: moral philosophy, even
if it ends up giving a non-systematic answer to how it
is that morality works and what it is that morality does,
does so within the endeavor of thinking systematically about
the nature of morality. What do I mean by morality? I mean that moral theories aim
to provide accounts of terms like "right" and "wrong,"
"permissible" and "impermissible," "ought" and
"ought not," "forbidden," "good," "bad," and the like--and
to provide an account of the behaviors to
which those terms apply. It is fundamentally, to remind
you of a terminological distinction that we've made
before, a normative as opposed to a descriptive enterprise. Philosophical moral theory
doesn't aim to tell us how people act. It aims to tell us how people
ought to act if they wish to conform to the constraints that
morality places on them. In particular, moral philosophy
is concerned with providing a principled answer
to three kind of questions. The first kind of question we
encountered already in the context of Glaucon's
Challenge. It's the question of
moral motivation. "Why should we want to act in
keeping which what morality demands of us? And a minute I'll give you a
sense of the range of answers that have been provided
to that question. So the first question that moral
philosophy asks is why would we even want
to be moral. It then asks the particular
question, "what should we do insofar as we seek
to act morally?". And about that we've had very
little to say so far. We know that according to
Aristotle, to be brave, one acts as the brave one does. But Aristotle just put forth
bravery as a virtue without any explanation of what it was
that made bravery fall into the category of virtues and
cowardice fall into that category of vices other
than the very general analysis of the mean. And we haven't looked at any
specific claims about particular actions being morally
acceptable or not. So the second sort of thing that
a moral theory tries to do-- and, again, I'll give some
examples in a minute-- is give us specific answers to
the question "is this act morally OK?". In addition, what a moral theory
aims to do is to tell us why we gave the answers that
we did in question two. "In virtue of what common
feature are the acts that fall into the category of moral to be
distinguished from the acts that fall into the category of
immoral?" So what do answers to these three questions
look like? Let's start since we've
encountered it already with the question of moral
motivation. So one category of answers that
one might give to why it is that we would be moral,
act in keeping with the constraints of morality, is
a self-interest account. So one might give an account
which says when you behave morally, things run smoothly. As Socrates argues in response
to Glaucon, when you behave in keeping with the constraints of
morality, there is harmony in your soul. And that provides you with the
possibility of a certain kind of flourishing. Or you might have what's
implicit in the very first argument that Glaucon gives, a
view that morality provides a certain kind of stability
in society. Each of us behaving in
pro-social ways increases the likelihood of others around us
behaving in pro-social ways. And so we reach a kind of
equilibrium state whereby things run smoothly if
everybody behaves pro-socially. And we'll talk about that again
at the beginning of the political philosophy section. So one kind of self-interest
theory is a theory that appeals to a certain kind of
coordination, either a coordination among the parts of
the soul, or coordination across individuals
in a society. A second kind of self-interest
theory is what we might call a get good stuff theory. So this lies at the heart on
some religious traditions. Here's what you get if you
act in keeping with the constraints of morality: you get
eternal life in a really nice place. Here's what you get if you don't
act in keeping with the constraints of morality: you get
eternal continuation in a really unpleasant place. So the notion that there is some
reward beyond earth for behaving in moral ways is an
example of a self-interested justification of morality. Or one might give the sort of
justification that Adeimantus gives in response to Glaucon's
challenge. Adeimantus point out that one
of the things morality provides you with is enhanced
reputation. So as a result of behaving in
keeping with the standards of morality, you come to be
perceived as having behaved in that way, and that reputation
brings to you some value. Or it might be, as Aristotle
discusses at the end of Book 10, that society is structured
in some way that motivates people to act in keeping with
the constraints of morality because doing so is a way
of avoiding punishment. Many of us obey speeding laws
for precisely that reason. We obey them most especially
when there are flashing lights in our vicinity. But we can have an internalized
version of the reduction of punishment
as well. Part of the Freudian picture
that we heard about in the Divided Soul lecture discussed
the development of conscience as an internalization of
external rules, whereby the super ego gets upset when the id
behaves in ways that aren't in keeping with the constraints
of morality. And one can have a non-Freudian
version of that as well that appeals to the
notion of conscience. So the idea that what morality
brings you is either the possibility of salvation or
enhanced reputation or the possibility of not being
punished by external laws or the possibility of not being
punished by one's conscience is another version a
self-interest theory. So that's one kind of
justification one might provide for behaving
in moral ways. A second very different kind
of justification says the reason we act morally is because
normative features are fundamental features
of the world. There's a brute "ought"
out there. It's a fact about reality that
what we are morally obliged to do is to act in whatever ways
it is that morality demands and not out of self-interest,
but simply because we are responsive to that feature of
the world, we are motivated to act morally. A third kind of justification,
third kind of explanation of more motivation, is what we
might call a factive theory that says roughly this is
just the way people are. So evolutionary accounts that
say pro-social behaviors have been selected for, perhaps
because they enable the resolution of coordination
problems. But whatever the explanation, pro-social behavior
says this theory had been selected for. So it's a brute fact about the
world that we behave in pro-social ways--not a brute
normative fact about the world, just a brute descriptive
fact about the world that we behave
in that way. Or you might have, not an
evolutionary based version of this, but a version that says
look, this is just the way the human soul expresses itself
when it conforms to its natural state. So you might have a theory of
morality that says the reason to behave morally is out of
self-interest. You might have a theory of morality that says
the reason to behave morally is because of altruism. You might have a theory of
morality that says the reason to behave morally is just that's
the way we do behave. Or you might have some sort
of combination theory. And we've talked already about
the first of these, the self-interest theory. And as this section of the
course goes on, we'll talk more about some of the other
sorts of explanation. So those are some examples of
the kinds of answers that are given to the first question,
the question of moral motivation. What kinds of issues arise
when we think about the question of moral behavior? Well you saw a number of
examples of this in the reading that we did for today. One kind question that moral
theories set out to provide answers to is the question of
whether it's either morally required or morally permitted to
harm one person in order to help many others. So Bernard Williams' story of
Jim and the Indians, where Jim is presented with a case where
if he's willing to shoot one of 20 prisoners, the other 19
will be set free, whereas if he's unwilling to shoot
that one, all 20 of them will be shot. Or the Omelas story, where
we're told the story of a society whose flourishing
depends upon the suffering of a single child. Or the trolley cases that I
presented you with in the very first lecture, where a trolley
is headed down a track towards five people, and we're in a
position to deflect the trolley in some way so
that one ends up being killed instead. Those are examples of schematic
representations of the kinds of questions
that moral theories confront all the time. Whenever we think about
deferrals of threat -- is it right to quarantine a
population suffering from a particular illness in a way that
will cause harm to them but benefit the rest
of society? -- we are thinking about these
sorts of questions. So one sort of question that
moral philosophy aims to answer is the question of
whether this sort of trade off is morally required or
morally permitted. A particularly profound version
of that question comes out when we think about what our
moral duties are to those who are less fortunate. So the philosopher Peter Singer
has famously argued that the entire structure of the
first world and the third world is a morally illegitimate
one because it involves an unwillingness on the
part of those in the first world to do what is morally
demanded of them, namely to take a large proportion
of their resources and redistribute those to people
who are suffering from extraordinarily easily
curable illnesses. People who don't have mosquito
nets, people who don't have vaccinations, people who don't
have clean water, people who don't have access to basic
medical care in the first five years that would, for example,
prevent lifelong blindness. So another question that moral
theory asks--in some ways of version of the earlier
question--is in general what our duties are to those who
are less fortunate. It also asks questions like
this: Are these sorts of behaviors morally mandatory? Is it morally mandatory for us
to behave in ways that help the environment, say
by recycling? Is it morally mandatory for us
to act in certain ways towards non-human animals, perhaps
by being vegetarian? Is it morally required
of us to worship a deity in some way? Is religious worship something
that's morally mandatory? Is something like respect for
elders, a fundamental part of traditional moral frameworks,
morally mandatory? And moral theories also ask
questions like: Are these kinds of things morally
permissible. Is abortion morally
permissible? Is euthanasia morally
permissible? Is capital punishment
morally permissible? How about sex before marriage? How about lying for one
or another motivation? How about, as Kant's going to
argue in our next reading, failing to cultivate one's
talents, which Kant thinks is a violation of moral mandate? So these are the kinds of
questions that moral theories aim to provide answers to. And it might seem like a
heterogeneous bunch. But it gives you a sense of the
generality of explanation that moral theories
seek to provide. So let's turn to four major
moral theories in the western tradition and think about how
it is that they could simply categorically provide
answers to this wide range of questions. So the kind of moral theory that
we're going to discuss in today's lecture primarily is
a moral theory known as utilitarianism. It tells us an act is moral
insofar as it produces the greatest good for the
greatest number. It takes as its fundamental
notion the notion of good. And it gives us answers to
the questions that we've previously asked ourselves as
long as we know how goods are distributed in response
to them. So if we know what it is that
produces happiness in sentient beings, then utilitarianism will
give us an answer to the question of whether being vegetarian is morally mandated. It'll tell us to take the amount
of happiness that's distributed across sentient
beings, and look at which distribution is going
to maximize the amount of happiness. So utilitarianism gives us one
sort of systematic answer to this question. A second sort of answer to this
question, which we'll discuss in lecture on Tuesday,
is the answer given by Kant and the deontological
tradition. What Kant says is that an act
is moral insofar as it's performed as the result of
acting with the correct sort of motivation. It takes as its primary notion
not the notion of goodness, but rather the notion
of rightness. And on that basis, Kant is
going to give a bunch of answers to our specific
questions. In particular, he's going to
argue that it's not OK to sacrifice the good of the one
for the good of the many. And he's going to argue that
lying is morally unacceptable. And we'll talk next class about
how from a very abstract principle like this one one
can derive these sorts of particular answers. We've already looked at the
ancient traditional answer to this in Aristotle, that an act
is moral insofar as it's performed as the results of
having a virtuous character. And so what Aristotle says to
us is look and see how the well-raised one would behave.
And once you see what is that the virtuous one does, you can
learn through his or her example what it is that morality
demands of us. And a final tradition about
which we won't have much to say in this lecture is, of
course, a basis for morality which has stood at the center
of western culture for at least 2,000 years, which is the
idea that an act is moral insofar as it conforms to what
the divinity demands of us. So one can provide an
explanation, as the utilitarian does, that
makes appeal to the notion of goodness. One can provide a justification
that makes appeal, as deontology does, to
the notion of rightness. One can provide a justification
that makes appeal, as virtue ethics does,
to the notion of virtuousness. Or one can provide an account
that makes appeal, as religious ethics does, to the
notion of divine mandate. So let's think a little more
about the relation among these three particular theories, the
ones on which we're going to focus in the context of this
class, as a way of coming to understand the particular theory
that we're thinking about today, namely
utilitarianism. So virtue ethics focuses its
attention on the actor, not the person who stands up on the
stage and recites lines from Hamlet, but rather the
actor who performs an act that will be moral or not. Deontology focuses its
attention on the act. It looks not at who's doing it,
but rather at what act is done and under what
description. consequentialism, by contrast,
looks not at who does the act and looks not at the description
under which the act is done, but looks rather
at the consequences that the act brings about. And we've encountered virtue
theory in the voice-- see if you recognize
this gentleman-- in the voice of Aristotle. We will encounter deontology in
the voice of Immanuel Kant. And what we're going
to discuss today is consequentialism and, in
particular, utilitarianism in the voice of John Stuart Mill. So let's look now at what it is
that Mill has to say about the fundamental nature
of morality. So what Mill contends-- and let me say we're coming up
on the clicker slide, so if you're zoning out, it's time
to pull out your clicker. And in about four or
five minutes, we'll be doing some polls. So Mill contends that the right
kind of framework for thinking about moral theories
is a consequentialist framework, so not one that looks
at the actor as virtue theory does, not one that looks
at the act as deontology does, but rather one that looks
at the consequences in the way that consequentialism
does. The degree of moral rightness of
an act is determined by its consequences. And Mill provides a particular
version of this. He says the degree of moral
rightness of an act is determined by a particular kind
of consequence, namely the utility that the
act produces. So you might have a
consequentialist theory that says the degree of moral
rightness of an act is determined by its consequences,
namely, for example, the amount of bananas
that it produces. It would be an odd moral theory,
but it would be a consequentialist theory that
says the degree of moral rightness of an act is
determined by its consequences, in particular
by its degree of banana production. So that would be a very
general kind of consequentialist theory. Utilitarian theories are
a particular kind of consequentialist theory that
says the degree of moral rightness of an act is
determined by its consequences, in particular
by the amount of utility--usefulness, happiness
in Mill's account of what kind of utility we're concerned
with--by the amount of utility that it produces. That means, to remind you of the
handouts that you got in section this week, that to be
utilitarian is a sufficient condition to be
consequentialist, but not a necessary one. And to be a consequentialist
is a necessary condition on being a utilitarian, but
not a sufficient one. And if what I just said isn't
completely obvious to you, take a look at the second side
of the handout that you got in section this week. So Mill not only makes a
utilitarian commitment, he actually in the course of making
that commitment makes two very particular claims that
I now want ask you to think about in light of
some particular cases. The first is the famous
formulation of the greatest happiness principle, which in
your text appears right at the beginning on page 77
in the reprint. Mills says famously, "Actions
are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness,
wrong as they tend to promote the reverse of
happiness." And he continues a few pages later to clarify that
what he means is not the agent's own happiness, but
that of all concerned. In a minute we'll think through
what that implies. The second commitment of Mill's
that I want you to think about is one runs straight
on in opposition to what we talked about in
Aristotle last week. Mill says the motive has
nothing to do with the morality of the action. "He who saves another creature
from drowning does what is morally right whether his motive
be duty or the hope of being paid for his trouble." The
motivation with which an act is performed, says Mill,
tells us nothing about the morality of the act. He doesn't deny that it tells us
something about the actor. He's perfectly happy to say that
somebody who does the act out of the hope of being paid is
in some way different from the person who does act out of
a sense of duty or moral obligation. But as far as the moral value
of the act itself is concerned, Mill thinks there
is no difference. So that's the first question
that I wanted to ask you. Take the case that
Mill's described. You see somebody drowning
in a lake. And the question is this, is
your act of saving that person morally right, morally virtuous,
moral only if it's done out of duty? I want to save that person
because it's the right thing to do or some other sort
of pro-social motive. If you think that, push one. Or is the act morally right
regardless of its motive even if you do it because there's a
big sign up on the trees that say save a drowning person:
$10,000 reward. And so you think: "$10,000,
that's good money." And in you jump into the water. All right, I'll push the
ten second timer. We have roughly 50 of
you, 70 of you. Good, numbers are jumping up. Let's just see whether
instinctively this room is filled with Kantians or filled
with consequentialists. So, interestingly, there's a
pretty close to even split. Most of you seem to side with
Mill on the question that an act is morally right regardless
of the motive. But a sizable portion of you are
going to be pleased when we read Kant, who gives the
answer that you offer. And one of the things that we
want to do in section next week is to have those of you who
fall on one or the other side of this question talk
through with others around you why it is that you either fell
into this group or you felt into this one. So, so far Mill's doing
pretty well. He has a slight majority
of you on his side. I now want to present you with
a series of cases to ask what you think about the greatest
happiness principle. Remember, Mill says that an
act is moral insofar as it produces the greatest happiness
for the greatest number, where we're not
concerned with how that happiness is distributed
across individuals. So let's start with
a following case. There's an act which you can
perform which will give you 100 units of happiness. Each of those colorful
smiley faces-- aren't you all feeling
pro-social in their light? Each of those smiley faces represents 10 units of happiness. So suppose you have a fan. It's a very hot day,
and you have a fan that blows upon you. And the coolness of that fan
just provides you with 100 units of happiness. Or suppose you have some
delicious cookies, and eating those cookies provides you with
100 units of happiness. In addition, performing that act
provides 100 other people with one unit of
happiness each. Suppose your fan blows a little
bit outside of your room so that in addition to
cooling you off 100 units, it cools the people in the next
room off one unit apiece. Or supposed that when you
finish eating your 100 cookies, there are 100 cookies
left over, and each of 100 people get to have one
cookie, and it brings them one unit of happiness. OK. So that's act one. It has a total of two hundred
units of happiness. You get 100 units, and each of
100 other people get one unit. So your choice is between
performing that act and performing an act which I'm
going to call act two, which has exactly the same effect
for you, right? It brings you 100 units
of happiness. So here you are with your
100 units of happiness. But in this case, if you made
a slight change in the angle of your fan, for example, you
would be just as cool as you were in the first case. But it would double the amount
of happiness of the people on the outside, right? You angle this fan slightly
differently. And instead of being cooled
one unit, the people are cooled two units. Or instead of throwing out
your trash at the end of eating your cookies so that
people only get one unit of happiness, you leave the other
cookies around so that everybody else gets two
units of happiness. In this case, by performing an
act which has no different consequences for you as far as
happiness is concerned, you double the happiness of a
hundred other people with respect to the act. So the question is
simply this. Given the choice between act
one, which brings a total of 200 units of happiness, 100
units for you and one unit for each of 100 other people, or act
two, which brings the same amount of happiness to you, but
200 units of happiness to others and hence a total of
three hundred, do you think-- push one if you think only
act one is moral. That is only the one where you
get 100 units, and everybody else gets one. Push two if you think only act
two is moral, the one where you redirect your fan slightly
or whatever it is that you do to double the happiness of those
around you, or three, that either one of those
is a moral act. OK. And I'm going the turn our timer
on so that we have 10 seconds to see how it is that
your first take on Mill's greatest happiness
principle goes. And let's see how the
numbers come out. OK. So very few of you think that
the moral act as the one whereby you get 100 units of
happiness, and the 100 others get one unit. But you're roughly equally
divided on the question of whether morality mandates that
you redistribute your resources in such a way that
they go also to others. So most of our discussion in the
remaining slides will be concerned with when this
44 percent moves over to another place. But I'll be interested to see
how all of this plays out. OK. So that was our first case, the
case where at no cost to yourself you can bring
happiness to others. Let's now contrast exactly
the same first case. You get 100 units of happiness;
100 others get one unit each. So there's a total of 200 units,
with the second case, we'll call this act three, where
in order to redirect the goods, you bring your own
happiness down to 50 units. So in order to redirect your
fan in such a way that the other people get two units
each, you have a slight reduction in the amount
of utility for you. But it's still the
case that this is more beneficial overall. So act one you get 100
unit of happiness, other people get one. Act two, you've reduced your
happiness, you've redirected the fan, you're eating fewer
of the cookies, but you've distributed it in such
a way that others get their two units. OK. So the question is only act one,
where you get 100 units, and everybody else gets one,
only act two, where you get 50 units, and everybody else gets
two, but the total is higher, or either one? And, again, we'll open polling
with the ten second timer. And let's see how
the numbers go. All right. So little bit of change over
to either act being moral. More of you think that it is
morally required to increase the happiness of those around
you when there's no harm to yourself than if you think is
required when there is some cost to yourself. Notice that Mill is very clear
that what is morally required is number two here, that only
the act which brings the greater amount of utility to
the community as a whole is morally required. Turn to a third case. The first version is
the same as before. You get 100 units. Everybody else gets one. Now, in order to do the good
for others you have to experience some kind
of disutility. You turn your fan totally
away from yourself. But the result of that
is that 100 others get three units each. So now the question is this. Is the act that is morally
permitted of you, or is the act, that is a moral act, the
one that we've initially presented, the one where you
have some disutility, but other people get utility? Or are these of equal value? Notice the total of 200
units, 250 units. So the first case, our classic
case, the second case one where you experience
some discomfort. But in exchange for that
discomfort, other people, not you, experience some good. OK. Let's turn on the 10 second
timer and see how this comes out. OK. So in this case, it appears
that very few of you are siding with Mill. A certain number of you are
here, saying that what we need to do is to provide the
greatest good for the greatest number. And a sizable percentage of you
is growing to think that perhaps morality doesn't demand
any sacrifices of you. Let's go on. Next case exactly like the last
one, except it's somebody else who has 50 units of
disutility in order to distribute three units
of utility to others. So here's the case. Either you get 100 units of
happiness, and others get one unit each for a total
of 200 units. Or let's assume you preserve
your 100 units of happiness here. We're leaving you out
of the equation. And the question is this. Suppose you are distributing
resources for society as a whole. There's a case where actually,
this act one ought to also be someone else, so the case where
someone else gets 100 units of happiness, and 100
others get one unit each, or a case where somebody else loses
50 units of happiness, but 100 others get three units each. OK, so let's replace this you
in act one with someone else and as the question of whether
a distribution of resources across society, which produces
200 units of good in this form or a distribution of resources
across society, which produces 250 units of good in this form,
a minor 50 units of suffering by one for
three hundred units of benefits by another. Which one of those do you take
to be what morality demands? And five, four, three,
two, one. And let's see if there's any
change from the previous case. OK. All of a sudden, here
we get a radical shifting of the graphs. Almost 50 percent of you are
clear that the act that requires bringing suffering to
one person, a reduction of utility is not morally
mandated. Later in the section that we are
encountering in the class right now, we will consider
the question of whether there's actually a fixed matter
of where the baseline is and whether in fact this
radical shift that we get when we moved from increasing utility
to decreasing utility in people's psychology about
what morality demands is in fact picking up on an artificial
difference. Let's move to our final case. So our final case is one where
either someone gets 100 units of happiness, and 100 others
get one unit each. So there's 200 units of
happiness, or a case-- hmm-- where someone gets 5,000 units
of happiness taken away, but 100 other people get five
hundred units each so that there are 45,000 units of
happiness produced by the performance of act six. So the case here is either
a place where nobody has anything bad going on, but the
total units of happiness are only 200, or one person has a
lot of suffering going on, but the total units of happiness
are 45,000. OK. And let's put the poll on with
our 10, nine, eight, seven, six seconds and see
how it is that you come out on this question. All right. On this question, which I know
already for many of your reading responses to the Omelas
case, on which this is model, it seems clear to a lot
of you that suffering of one is not something that morality
demands of us even if the result is an increase
in general utility. Now, as you know, the Omelas
story tells the story of a society where there is a
community of people, each of whom has thousands and thousands
of units of utility. They're incredibly happy
in how they live. But that society exists as it
does only because there is a child locked away whose
suffering permits the society's joy. And as you know in the story,
when children reach adulthood, they are brought to see
the suffering child. And most of them return to the
community of which they were a part aware of this, shaped
by this, but willing to tolerate it. A smaller number of them, upon
seeing this, leave the society altogether. Now, the question that I want
you to think about in light of your answer a few minutes ago
about what is demanded by morality is some things that
seem to have the structure of the Omelas story. I take it that at some point
in the last 18 years or so, someone has let you in on the
secret that the pleasure that comes from eating meat depends,
as does the joy of Omelas, upon the suffering
of a large number of non-human animals. I take it that you noticed last
week and the week before, when the snow was falling long
Yale's campus, and the routes were made clear for you to
get to classes, that the possibility of you walking
across campus depended upon a large number of people whose
lives are already difficult getting up very early in
the morning and doing back-breaking shoveling
work in the ice cold. I trust that somebody has let
you in on the secret that the clothes that you wear and from
which you take a certain amount of pleasure are in a
great number of cases produced as a result of something quite
close to the Omelas story, namely child labor. Indeed I take it that most
of you are aware that the structure of the modern world
bears a rather shocking similarity to the
Omelas story. The possibility of flourishing
in the first world is in many ways a consequence of an
inequitable structure with regard to the third world. Now, almost all of you gave an
answer that said this sort of structure is at least
schematically morally acceptable. And the question is what
is going on there. Le Guin in her story suggested
you as college students are at exactly the age where the
salience of this may affect you most profoundly. So she writes -- after being exposed to these
sorts of facts -- she says "often the young people go home
in tears or in a tearless rage when they've seen the child
on whose suffering the fate of their society
depends and face this terrible paradox. They may brood over it
for weeks or years. But as time goes by," she says,
"they begin to realize that even if the child could be
released it would not that much good if its freedom, a
little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt,
but little more." Now one of the interesting
things about literature in contrast to philosophy is that
it leaves it to you to interpret what's going on. And the fundamental question,
I think, of the Omelas story is whether this sentence, "They
begin to realize that even if the child could be
released, it would not get much good if its freedom, a
little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but
little more," is in fact true--or whether it is the sort
of rationalization that recognition of one's comfort
brings with it. She goes on perhaps explaining,
perhaps protesting too much, to say the following,
"It's too degraded and imbeciled to know
any real joy. It has been afraid for too long
ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for
it to respond to humane treatment." Indeed think about
arguments about bringing democracies to countries with
no tradition of democracy. "After so long, it would
probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it and
darkness for its eyes, its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter
justice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of
reality and to accept it." Now, I don't have an answer to
which of the two readings that I proposed is the right one to
make of the Le Guin case. Is she contending there or
helping you to recognize there that early feeling of rage at
the fact that your well-being depends upon the suffering of
others is, in fact, and immature response to an
inevitable structure of inequity in the world? Or is she suggesting that in
coming to think that way you are letting go of your only
chance for moral behavior, that it's at the moment when you
are profoundly exposed to injustice, and it hits you in
the form of tears or rage that you are in a position to bring
that into your life? She suggests regardless that
living your life with your eyes open to the fact that your
well-being depends upon the suffering of others
is morally mandatory. "It is their tears and anger,"
she continues, "the trying of their generosity and the
acceptance of their helplessness, which is perhaps
the true source of the splendor of their lives. They know that they, like the
child, are not free, that they live in a world of mutual
interdependence. "They know compassion. It is because of their awareness
of suffering in the world," she writes, "It is
because of that child that they are so gentle with
their children. They know that if the wretched
one were not there sniveling in the dark," if we were not
provided with the resources that let the first world thrive
as it does, "the other one, the flute player would make
no joyful music." All of the things that we benefit from,
the greatness up this university, wouldn't be here. "No joyful music as a young
writers line up for their beauty of the race in the
sunlight on the first morning of summer." So I want to leave you with that
as one of the many things which we can take from the
Omelas story and as an introduction to what really goes
into making a claim like the one Mill does. And what we'll talk about next
class in the context of Kant are some systematic critiques
which are offered of the utilitarian framework from the
writings of Bernard Williams and our alternate which is
offered in the writings of Immanuel Kant. So I'll see you on Tuesday.
