Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Democracy
FROM PRIMORDIAL PRINCIPLES TO
PROSPECTIVE PRACTICES
EDITED BY
JOSE V. CIPRUT
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Josie,
with whom I share the intimate sentiment that some rights
are not just; and that dutiesnot obligationscan encourage being into becoming, from which a state of mind may
blossom, with a fragrance known as freedom to some.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good [wo]men do nothing.
Edmund Burke (17291797)
Dalgac Mahmut
.
I sim gcm budur benim,
Gkyzn boyarm her sabah,
Hepiniz uykudayken.
Uyanr bakarsnz ki mavi.
Daydreamer Mahmoud,
interpreted by Jose V. Ciprut
Contents
xiii
1
Jose V. Ciprut
2.
33
Barry L. Eichler
3.
59
Paul Guyer
4.
83
Adrian R. Morrison
5.
103
Reed E. Pyeritz
6.
135
David R. Williams
7.
159
Paul R. Kleindorfer
8.
181
xii
9.
Contents
201
Don Baker
10. Exclusion, Fear, and Identity in Emerging Democracies
227
Jeff Spinner-Halev
11. Politics of Ethics: Toward an Ethic of Egalitarian
Democracy?
251
Kevin Cameron
12. The Problem of a Democratic Ethic
273
Richard Schuldenfrei
13. On the Need and Requirements for a Global Ethic of
Communication
293
319
Jose V. Ciprut
About the Authors
Name Index
Subject Index
327
331
339
Preface and
Acknowledgments
xiv
xv
xvi
xvii
I wasnt One . . .
Als sie
mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr,
der protestieren
konnte.
Then thcame
me to seize;
With no one else left,
whos to speak up
for me please.
Interpreted
by
Jose V. Ciprut
The poem reproaches the indifferent silence by German intellectuals when, upon
rising to power, the Nazis began purging targeted groups one after the other,
supposedly in that order: none of those not (yet) harassed would stand to
speak up for those purged, until there was allegedly no one left who could speak
for the self-engrossed whose turn had come. Unwittingly, the poem gives equal
pride of place to political incarceration and systematic murder. Its as if it saw no
moral difference between group imprisonment and system-wide genocide.Ed.
Prisoners of Our
Dilemmas
Jose V. Ciprut
Jose V. Ciprut
With that framework in mind, we reserve our first set of four chapters to law and morality in ancient Near Eastern social thought and
societal practice; to an ethic of peace grounded on justice in Europe
during the Age of Enlightenment; to ethics, modernity, and humananimal relations in twentieth-century U.S. society; and to genetics in
medicine, with particular attention to its current practice and special
focus on its attending prospects and perils in humanitys faster- and
faster-paced rush to unstoppable modernization.
We then move to a second group of four chapters, now dwelling on
levels of analysis that are just as intimately cross-linkedstarting with
the individuals ego and ethos; continuing with issues of risk, trust, and
markets; and proceeding with matters of ethics, morals, and the state;
before closing with discerning comparisons between creed, religion,
and morality from pertinent East-West ethical perspectives.
To conclude, we confront complex issues of ethics at theoretical
and practical levels of both domestic and international democratic
governance, in globalizing contexts. Our last four chapters therefore
offer an interlinked array of insights and appreciations with special
attention to exclusion, fear, and identity in emerging democracies;
to the politics of ethics and the prospects for egalitarian democracy
in a shrinking world; to the problem with a democratic ethic; and
to the need and requirements for a global ethic of communication
capable of transforming the world into a hospitable habitat for those
still barely alive and for those yet to be born. Our chapters address
their given topics head-on, also by latching on to each other across
history and geography through their sequentially developed thematic
cohesion.
Law and Morality in Ancient Near Eastern Thought
Many of the deeply held cultural values of Western Civilization are
steeped in biblical tradition, which itself partakes of a human heritage
shared with other ancient Near Eastern cultures that as such hold the
cradle of civilization. Mesopotamian and Ancient Egyptian literatures
reflect central moral concerns for, and ideal standards of, propriety in
human conduct. When comparatively reviewed, they also reveal many
similarities between ancient Near Eastern and biblical thought in the
realm of social, sexual, religious, and personal ethics. Nevertheless,
significant differences, which stem from their deeply idiosyncratic
worldviews, are also apparent.
Jose V. Ciprut
The literature on ancient Near Eastern and biblical ethics and morals
covers many specific aspects with modern implications:4 proper
upbringing (Kieweler 2001), social and philanthropic ethics (Frisch
1930, Meyerowitz 1935), the genesis of moral imagination in the Bible
(Brown 1999), corporate responsibility (Kaminsky 1995), love and sex
(Biale 1992), murder (Friedmann 2002), land tenure (Fager 1993), and of
course, issues of good and evil (Reventlow and Hoffman 2004), among
them. Instead, as an Assyriologist specializing in the law of Akkad and
Sumer, the literature of Mesopotamia, and the ethics of Jewish law from
its earliest origins onward, Barry Eichler addresses his assigned title
by comparing the ethical and moral codes of three civilizations, the
Mesopotamian, ancient Egyptian, and biblical, from several angles.
Both ancient Near Eastern and biblical worldviews experienced and
viewed human society in cosmological terms. Hence ancient Near
Eastern conceptions of law and morality were intimately tied to
the cosmic order of the universe and to the realm of the divine. In
Mesopotamian and Egyptian thought, law and morality were regarded
as intricately interwoven concepts to be identified with the cosmic
principles that ordered the universe. The cosmic force is referred to as
kittum in Mesopotamia and as maat in Egypt, both terms connoting
that which is correct and true. Mesopotamian and Egyptian kings
were divinely mandated to maintain the cosmic order and to establish
a harmonious socioeconomic reality on earth. Hence they were inspired
with the perception of this cosmic force of Truth, which enabled the
kings to serve as its earthly agent by issuing edicts and rendering judgments that reflected the moral cosmic standard. In Mesopotamia and
Egypt the ultimate source of law and morality was thus rooted in the
cosmic forces of the universe to which both the gods and humankind
were subject.
Because of the radically different biblical conception of Deity as transcendent and sovereign over the totality of the natural and supernatural cosmic forces of the universe, biblical thought could not accept the
ultimate sanction of law and morality as being rooted in the cosmic
principle of kittum or maat. To the biblical mind, the Deity is the ultimate sanction of law and morality, both of which are conceived as
expressions of the divine will. Law is viewed as a set of revealed
instructions to serve as a divine blueprint for the conduct of human
society. Hence biblical law is conceived as a positive prescriptive code
4. See, for instance, Schnabel (1985), Mouton (2002), and F. Watson (2000).
Jose V. Ciprut
thoughts at home (MacCormick and Bankowski 1989), and reconsiderations of criminal law and justice (Porret 1997), with attending social
aspirations (Lehmann et al. 2000) and legal limits (Bernard 1979). It was
also a century of constant warfare. It produced a number of ambitious
proposals for the establishment of peace among nations. The best
remembered was produced, late in his life (1795), by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (17241804), whoby synthesizing German,
British, and French sourcesmanaged to produce one of the definitive
philosophies of the Enlightenment and indeed of the whole modern
era. Yet while Kants little book Zum ewigen Frieden (Perpetual Peace)
is nowadays more widely read than ever, it continues to be enigmatic
in its content: itself written in the form of a peace treaty, it veers
between dead seriousness and irony, and seems to contain a fundamental tension. For example:
1. Kant holds personal freedom and the right to acquire property to be
the most fundamental among human rights; but freedom and property
can be enjoyed only with the consent of others, and indeed, on a globe
any point of which can be reached from any other, in principle with
the consent of all other human beings. Thus a condition of global peace
in which the rights of all are secure is understandably the ultimate
necessary condition of justice.
2. Kant describes natural mechanisms by which warring people will
be led to form republican governmentswhat we now call democracies with constitutional protections for the rights of those not currently
in the majorityand holds that as this form of government spreads
across the earth, the temptation for war will diminish, and that correspondingly (and hence, apparently inexorably) peace will emerge.
3. Yet Kants theory of human freedom insists that we always have the
liberty to choose between the better and the worse course of action. No
matter how strongly naturethat is, our natureitself inclines us in
the direction of the just and the good, we always have the power to
subvert it.
How then could progress toward peace be guaranteed by any natural
mechanism?
Historian of philosophy Guyers chapter argues that Kant did not
really contradict himself: his theory is that nature can guarantee the
availability of means that can be used toward peace as an end and, in
this sense, guarantee the possibility of peace, but that only the free
Jose V. Ciprut
10
Jose V. Ciprut
11
12
Jose V. Ciprut
13
14
Jose V. Ciprut
language of ethics and morals has long lost the precision it enjoyed in
its original classical descriptive form. Some moderns have spoken as if
there might be politics without ethics or morals, and ethics or morals
without politics. The rediscovery of character leads back to a tradition
in which ethics and politics are continuous because, as a matter of fact,
actions produce habits, habits are integrated into character, character is
reflected in customs or laws, and customs are embodied in institutions,
including political institutions or what is spoken of in modern times as
the state, and in which, likewise, these institutions reinforce customs,
customs mold character, character strengthens habits, and habits make
actions easier and more pleasant to perform. This tradition, though
neglected for many centuries, is helpful to the political actor, since it
provides an explicit way of thinking about the political actors work.
Both individuals and institutions, including the state as embodied in
the political actor, have an interest in promoting in people the kind of
character that disposes them to avoid criminal acts, dependency, and
intemperance. Might there be differences in ethics and morality and
their respective connection with religion, so different in East and West
as to have an impact on customs, manners, and approaches to politics,
governance, and attitudes to democracy?
Ethics, Morality, and Religion: Directional Transitions and Trends,
East and West
The literature on the connections among religion, morality, and ethics
is far-reaching. In the domain of applications, its reach extends from
considerations of war and peace (Dallmayr 2004) to biotechnological
concerns with decisions that may conflict with Christianity (Smith
2005). In the domains of philosophy, it encompasses such topics as reconsiderations (Dole and Chignell 2005), theological reevaluations (Lewis
2005), and newer reviews of Christian ethics, a Protestant ethic of work,
capitalist values, and Weberian revisitings of material success and religious temperament (Swatos and Kaelber 2005); novel observations on
the radical protestantism in Spinosas thought (Hunter 2005), on Maimonidean ethics (Cohen 2004), or yet again on ancient Egyptian maat
as a moral ideal (Karenga 2004); and even contemplations of value and
virtue in a godless universe (Wielenberg 2005). In a comparative mode,
alongside closer studies of discursive formations and of ethical emotions in Buddhist thinking (Griffiths 2004), one finds also lectures on
free thought (Wright 2004) and on theories of ethics (Graham 2004).
15
And hundreds of additional items fall under a myriad other themespecific rubrics, from mysticism (Jones 2004) to just sex (Farley 2006).
It has been a common assumption in Europe and North America that
morality and ethics require a theistic religious foundation. But East
Asia has not shared that assumption. Instead, China, Japan, Korea, and
also Taiwan have given morality and ethics autonomy from religion
and have instead made religion subordinate to morality and ethics.
Instead of letting religion dictate the hegemonic moral principles and
ethical codes, the governments and peoples of those societies traditionally required religious organizations to accept and to enforce the secular
moral principles and ethical codes promoted by the secular state. That
stance has been slightly modified in the modern world, under the fresh
influence of the notion of religious freedom. Religious organizations
now are allowed to supplement and sometimes even to modify the
secular ethical injunctions promoted by their secular governments. The
peoples of East Asia, nevertheless, remain much more comfortable with
moral principles and ethical codes with no theistic religious connotations or foundation, more so than the peoples of Europe and North
America are. With such fundamental differences in the worldviews and
everyday ethics of peoples, North and South, and East and West, can
there ever be a worldwide ethics of communication conducive to the
globalization of a democratic mindset, of a mentality of social-cultural
inclusion, of a more balanced, more just political-economic interdependence, while fear and exclusion persist deep inside individual societies,
and among them too?
Having connected the various levels of analysis in a sequence of augmenting synthetic aggregation and, via cross-sectional means, thus
complemented the longitudinal overview preceding it, we next take a
detailed look at each of four multilateral concerns, each of which is
laden with values specific to issues of great pertinence to the just
conduct of democracy in ways indispensable to good relational ethics.
Exclusion, Fear, and Identity in Emerging Democracies
To the classic (traditional) issues of inclusion, exclusion, belongingness,
and marginality, the factor of fear6 has been able to impart qualities that
6. See, e.g., Ciprut, Editor (2000, 2001), Of Fears and Foes: Security and Insecurity in a
Globalizing International Economy, penned shortly before 9-11-01.
16
Jose V. Ciprut
17
18
Jose V. Ciprut
19
for democratic rule (1987) and his essays on state, power, and democracy (1989). The main concern now is over the modalities and,
moreover, externalities of democratic governance in a globalizing international political economy. This newer focus is amply reflected by the
topics addressed in the latest literatureincluding the state of democratic theory (Shapiro 2003), of capitalism (Schweickart 2002), of the
challenges ahead (Carter and Stokes 2002), and of the prospects for
reflective democracy (Goodin 2003); issues of democracy and the rule
of law (Maravall and Przeworski 2003), of education for democratic
citizenship (Lockyer, Crick, and Annette 2003), and of ethics and politics in post-Marxist critical theory (Devenney 2004); regional concerns
with the quality of democracy (ODonnell, Vargas Cullell, and Iazzetta
2004); and questions of representationagain!(Ankersmit 2002;
Laycock 2004), as well as of democratic social choice and institutional
planning theory (Sager 2002), naturally not without a scholars guide
to pertinent research (Keman 2002).
More than 2,000 years ago, Plato developed a critique of democracy.
He suggested, first, that democracy would not be simply a political
arrangement, neutral, as between cultures, but that it would be a culture
as well, a least-common-denominator culture. He believed that a
democracy would be a culture characterized by people who sought
shallow pleasures, rejecting every form of nobility. Knowledge in such
a culture would take the form of mere means to the acquisition of
pleasure. In his chapter, philosopher Richard Schuldenfrei suggests
that those predictions have been borne out and that the evolution of
rights serves to inoculate democratic society against every attempt to
elevate its aspirations with any higher democratic ethic. Plato not only
believed that democratic aspirations were too low, but also believed
that they were unstable, and unprotected against degradation to the
point where they could no longer support democracy itself. He believed
that the pursuit of pleasure would lead democrats to choose tyranny
over freedom, if the former could better fulfill their desires. The author
argues in his chapter that none of the prominent contemporary philosophical/ethical theories contain the resources to provide enough security against such a possibility, and that hence Platos critique presents
an important relevant contemporary challenge to democracy. So what
do we need and when do we need it as demonstrators in the habit of
demanding everything, right here, right now usually chant, without
thereby always succeeding in communicating their frustration in convincingly constructive, palpably practical, response-eliciting ways?
20
Jose V. Ciprut
21
22
Jose V. Ciprut
23
24
Jose V. Ciprut
nonsimplistic code of societal behavior that, through a practice of sagacious politics, may come closest in its wider effects to the uncommon
achievement of actually straddling religious charity and secular humanistic generosity, and therefore becoming conducive to liberty, peace,
and the pursuit of happinessalbeit in the company of ones others.
Buttressed with a robust dose of political free will, this code also should
help to dissipate any lingering languor, much residual reticence, and
many hampering hesitations to embark in ones humane duties to
buildhand in hand with ones othersa more humane world for one
and all, starting not a year from next epiphany, but right here and now.
References
Akhtar, Salman, and Vamik D. Volkan, Editors (2005) Cultural Zoo: Animals in the Human
Mind and Its Sublimations, Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
Andrew, Barbara S., Jean Keller, and Lisa H. Schwartzman, Editors (2005) Feminist Interventions in Ethics and Politics: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield.
Ankersmit, F. R. (2002) Political Representation, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Arcenas, Elvira (2008) Boxed In, Boxed Out: Whither Freedom? in Jose V. Ciprut,
Editor, Freedom: Reassessments and Rephrasings, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Badiou, Alain (1982) Thorie du Sujet, Paris: Seuil.
(1988) Ltre et Lvnement, Paris: Seuil.
(2003) Lthique: Essai sur la conscience du Mal, Caen, France: NOUS [original
edition (1993) Paris: Hatier].
Baker, John, et al. (2004) Equality: From Theory to Action, Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hamps.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Balls, M., A.-M. van Zeller, and M. E. Halder, Editors (2000) Progress in the Reduction,
Refinement and Replacement of Animal Experimentation: Proceedings of the Third World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences, held in Bologna, Italy, from 29
August to 2 September 1999, Bologna: World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use
in the Life Sciences; Amsterdam, New York: Oxford, Elsevier.
Barnett, S. Anthony (2001) The Story of Rats: Their Impact on Us, and Our Impact on Them,
Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Bernard, Paul P. (1979) The Limits of Enlightenment: Joseph II and the Law, Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Biale, David (1992) Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America, New
York: Basic Books.
Bigo, Didier, and Elspeth Guild, Editors (2005) Controlling Frontiers: Free Movement into
and within Europe, Aldershot, England: Ashgate.
25
Birke, Lynda, and Ruth Hubbard, Editors (1995) Reinventing Biology: Respect for Life and
the Creation of Knowledge, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Blakemore, Colin (2005) Animal Experimentation, Ethics and Medical Research, in
Jeremy Stangroom, Editor, What Scientists Think, London: Routledge.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1991) On the Possibility of a Field of World Sociology, L. J. D. Wacquant, Translator, in J. S. Coleman and P. Bourdieu, Editors, Social Theory for a Changing
Society, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Bronfman, Alejandra Marina (2004) Measures of Equality: Social Science, Citizenship, and
Race in Cuba, 19021940, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Brown, William P. (1999) The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the
Bible, Grand Rapids, MI: W. Eerdmans.
Calavita, Kitty (2005) Immigrants at the Margins: Law, Race, and Exclusion in Southern
Europe, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Carlisle, Clare (2005) Kierkegaards Philosophy of Becoming: Movements and Positions, Albany:
State University of New York Press.
Carter, April, and Geoffrey Stokes, Editors (2002) Democratic Theory Today: Challenges for
the 21st Century, Cambridge, UK: Polity; Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Cashin, Sheryll (2004) The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the
American Dream, New York: Public Affairs.
Centrie, Craig (2004) Identity Formation of Vietnamese Immigrant Youth in an American High
School, New York: LFB Scholarly Publications.
Chowers, Eyal (2004) The Modern Self in the Labyrinth: Politics and the Entrapment Imagination, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ciprut, Jose V., Editor (2000, 2001) Of Fears and Foes: Security and Insecurity in a Globalizing
International Economy, Westport, CT: Praeger.
Clark, Robin (2008) Reliable Cribs: Decipherment, Learnability, and Indeterminacy,
in Jose V. Ciprut, Editor, Indeterminacy: The Mapped, the Navigable, and the Uncharted,
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Cohen, Hermann [18421918] (2004) Ethics of Maimonides, Almut Sh. Bruckstein, Translator and Commentator [from the original in German: Charakteristik der ethik Maimunis],
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Cooper, Thomas W., et al., General Editor (1989) Communication Ethics and Global Change,
White Plains, NY: Longman.
Corona-M., Eduardo, and Joaquin Arroyo-Cabrales, Coordinadores (2002) Relaciones
hombre-fauna: una zona interdisciplinaria de studio, Mexico, D.F.: Plaza y Valdes:
CONACULTA, INAH; Plaza y Valdes.
Coviello, Peter (2005) Intimacy in America: Dreams of Affiliation in Antebellum Literature,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Crabtree, Pam J., and Kathleen Ryan, Editors (1991) Animal Use and Culture Change,
Philadelphia: MASCA, The University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,
University of Pennsylvania.
26
Jose V. Ciprut
Dahl, Robert Alan (1961) Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City, New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Dallmayr, Fred R. (2004) Peace Talks: Who Will Listen? Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press.
Davies, Andrew (2000) Double Standards in Isaiah: Reevaluating Prophetic Ethics and Divine
Justice, Leiden: Brill.
Denton, Robert E., Jr., Editor (1991) Ethical Dimensions of Political Communication, New
York: Praeger.
Devenney, Mark (2004) Ethics and Politics in Contemporary Theory: Between Critical Theory
and Post-Marxism, London and New York: Routledge.
.
Dilman, I lham (2005) The Self, the Soul and the Psychology of Good and Evil, London:
Routledge.
Dole, Andrew, and Andrew Chignell, Editors (2005) God and the Ethics of Belief: New Essays
in Philosophy of Religion, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Englehardt, Elaine E., and Ralph D. Barney (2002) Media and Ethics: Principles for Moral
Decisions, The Wadsworth Communication Series, Robert C. Solomon, General Editor,
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Thomson Learning.
Fager, Jeffrey A. (1993) Land Tenure and the Biblical Jubilee: Uncovering Hebrew Ethics through
the Sociology of Knowledge, Sheffield, England: JSOT.
Farley, Margaret A. (2006) Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, New York:
Continuum International.
Friedmann, Daniel (2002) To Kill and Take Possession: Law, Morality, and Society in Biblical
Stories, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.
Frisch, Ephraim (1930) Jewish Philanthropy in the Biblical Era, Cincinnati, OH: The Tract
Commission.
Fryer, David Ross (2004) The Intervention of the Other: Ethical Subjectivity in Levinas and
Lacan, New York: Other Press.
Gardiner, Stephen M., Editor (2005) Virtue Ethics, Old and New, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Garone, Stephen J., Editor (1994) Business Ethics: Generating Trust in the 1990s and Beyond,
New York: Conference Board.
Garver, Eugene (2004) For the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Character, and the Ethics
of Belief, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goldstein, Jan (2005) The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 17501850,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Goodin, Robert E. (2003) Reflective Democracy, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Graham, Gordon (2004) Eight Theories of Ethics, London: Routledge.
Griffiths, David B. (2004) Buddhist Discursive Formations: Keywords, Emotions, Ethics,
Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.
27
Hackett, Robert A., and Yuezhi Zhao, Editors (2005) Democratizing Global Media: One
World, Many Struggles, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Haraway, Donna Jeanne (2003) The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm.
Hassan, Sana S. (2003) Christians versus Muslims in Modern Egypt: The Century-Long
Struggle for Coptic Equality, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Held, David (1980) Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas, Berkeley:
University of California Press.
(1987) Models of Democracy, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
(1989) Political Theory and the Modern State: Essays on State, Power, and Democracy,
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Hunter, Graeme (2005) Radical Protestantism in Spinozas Thought, Aldershot, Hampshire,
England: Ashgate.
Ireland, C. (2004) The Subaltern Appeal to Experience: Self-Identity, Late Modernity, and the
Politics of Immediacy, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.
Ivie, Robert L. (2005) Democracy and Americas War on Terror, Tuscaloosa: University of
Alabama Press.
Johannesen, Richard L. (2002) Ethics in Human Communication, 5th ed., Prospect Heights,
IL: Waveland Press.
Johns, Christopher, and Dawn Freshwater, Editors (2005) Transforming Nursing through
Reflective Practice, 2nd ed., Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Jonas, Gilbert (2005) Freedoms Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle against Racism in
America, 19091969, New York: Routledge.
Jones, Richard H. (2004) Mysticism and Morality: A New Look at Old Questions, Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books.
Kaminsky, Joel S. (1995) Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible, Sheffield, England:
Sheffield Academic Press.
Kant, Immanuel ([1795] 1957) Perpetual Peace, Lewis White Beck, Editor, Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill.
Karenga, Maulana (2004) Maat: The Moral Ideal in Ancient EgyptA Study in Classical
African Ethics, New York: Routledge.
Kassirer, Jerome P. (2005) On the Take: How Americas Complicity with Big Business Can
Endanger Your Health, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Kaster, Robert A. (2005) Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome, London:
Oxford University Press.
Kazepov, Yuri, Editor (2005) Cities of Europe: Changing Contexts, Local Arrangements, and
the Challenge to Urban Cohesion, Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Keman, Hans, Editor (2002) Comparative Democratic Politics: A Guide to Contemporary
Theory and Research, London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
28
Jose V. Ciprut
Kieweler, Hans Volker (2001) Erziehung zum guten Verhalten und zur rechten Frmmigkeit:
die Hiskianische Sammlung, ein hebrischer und ein griechischer Schultext, Frankfurt am Main:
P. Lang.
Knight, John, Editor (2000) Natural Enemies: People-Wildlife Conflicts in Anthropological
Perspective, London: Routledge.
(2003) Waiting for Wolves in Japan: An Anthropological Study of People-Wildlife Relations, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Kramer, Roderick M., and Karen S. Cook, Editors (2004) Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Dilemmas and Approaches, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Krippendorff, Klaus (2000) On the Otherness That Theory Creates, in Jose V. Ciprut,
Editor, Of Fears and FoesSecurity and Insecurity in an Evolving Global Political Economy,
Westport, CT: Praeger.
(2001) Ecological Narratives: Reclaiming the Voice of Theorized Others, in Jose
V. Ciprut, Editor, The Art of the FeudReconceptualizing International Relations, Westport,
CT: Praeger.
Krumbein, Elyakim (2005) Musar for Moderns, Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Publishing House.
Kchler, Susanne, and Daniel Miller, Editors (2005) Clothing as Material Culture, Oxford,
UK: Berg.
Laycock, David, Editor (2004) Representation and Democratic Theory, Vancouver: UBC
Press.
Lectures (1930) delivered in 1929, as The Ethical Problems of Modern Finance, the
William A. Vawter Foundation on Business Ethics, Northwestern University, School of
Commerce, New York: Ronald Press.
Lehmann, Hartmut, Hermann Wellenreuther, Renate Wilson, et al., Editors (2000) In
Search of Peace and Prosperity: New German Settlements in Eighteenth-Century Europe and
America, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Lewis, John G. (2005) Looking for Life: The Role of Theo-Ethical Reasoning in Pauls Religion,
London: T. & T. Clark International.
Lockyer, Andrew, Bernard Crick, and John Annette, Editors (2003) Education for Democratic Citizenship: Issues of Theory and Practice, Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate.
Lorenz, Gnther (2000) Tiere im Leben der alten Kulturen: schriftlose Kulturen, Alter Orient,
Aegypten, Griechenland und Rom, Wien: Bhlau.
Lukacs, John (2005) Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
MacCormick, Neil, and Zenon Bankowski, Editors (1989) Enlightenment, Rights and Revolution: Essays in Legal and Social Philosophy, Aberdeen, Scotland: Aberdeen University
Press.
Maravall, Jos Maria, and Adam Przeworski, Editors (2003) Democracy and the Rule of
Law, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Markell, Patchen (2003) Bound by Recognition, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
29
.
Markham, Ian, and I brahim zdemir, Editors (2005) Globalization, Ethics and Islam: The
Case of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Aldershot, England: Ashgate.
Matignon, Karine Lou (2000) Sans les Animaux, le Monde ne Serait pas Humain, Paris: Albin
Michel.
McCain, John, and Mark Salter (2005) Character Is DestinyInspiring Stories Every Young
Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember, New York: Random House.
McKenna, Erin, and Andrew Light, Editors (2004) Animal Pragmatism: Rethinking HumanNonhuman Relationships, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
McPhail, Thomas L. (2006) Global Communication: Theories, Stakeholders and Trends, 2nd
ed., Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Mensch, James R. (2003) Ethics and Selfhood: Alterity and the Phenomenology of Obligation,
Albany: State University of New York Press.
(2005) Hiddenness and Alterity: Philosophical and Literary Sightings of the Unseen,
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Meyerowitz, Arthur (1935) Social Ethics of the Jews, with Selected Texts from Biblical and
Talmudic Literature, New York: Bloch.
Mouton, Elna (2002) Reading a New Testament Document Ethically, Leiden, Brill.
Munck, Ronaldo (2005) Globalization and Social Exclusion: A Transformationalist Perspective,
Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
ODonnell, Guillermo, Jorge Vargas Cullell, and Osvaldo M. Iazzetta, Editors (2004) The
Quality of Democracy: Theory and Applications, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press.
OTA (1986) Alternatives to Animal Use in Research, Testing, and Education, Washington, DC:
Congress of the United States, Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Government
Printing Office.
Parker, Glenn R. (2004) Self-Policing in Politics: The Political Economy of Reputational
Controls on Politicians, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Pelly, David Fraser (2001) Sacred Hunt: A Portrait of the Relationship between Seals and Inuit,
Vancouver: Greystone Books; Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Porret, Michel, Editeur (1997) Beccaria et la culture juridique des Lumires: (actes du colloque
europen de Genve, 2526 novembre 1995)/tudes historiques dites et prsentes par
M. Porret, Genve: Droz.
Preece, Rod (2005) Brute Souls, Happy Beasts, and Evolution: The Historical Status of Animals,
Vancouver: UBC Press.
Quammen, David (2003) Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History
and the Mind, New York: W. W. Norton.
Rampton, Sheldon, and John Stauber (2001) Trust Us, Were Experts! How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.
Reichmann, James B. (2000) Evolution, Animal Rights, and the Environment, Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press.
30
Jose V. Ciprut
Reventlow, Henning Graf, and Yair Hoffman, Editors (2004) The Problem of Evil and Its
Symbols in Jewish and Christian Tradition, London: T. & T. Clark.
Rimoin, David L., J. Michael OConnor, Reed E. Pyeritz, and Bruce R. Korf (2002) Emery
and Rimoins Principles and Practice of Medical Genetics, 4th ed., London: Churchill
Livingstone.
Sager, Tore (2002) Democratic Planning and Social Choice Dilemmas: Prelude to Institutional
Planning Theory, Aldershot, England: Ashgate.
Schiffman, Harold F. (2008) Language, Language Policy, and Citizenship, in Jose V.
Ciprut, Editor, The Future of Citizenship. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Schnabel, Eckhard J. (1985) Law and Wisdom from Ben Sira to Paul: A Tradition Historical
Enquiry into the Relation of Law, Wisdom, and Ethics, Series: Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2te Reihe-16, Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr (P. Siebeck).
Schweickart, David (2002) After Capitalism, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Shapiro, Ian (2003) The State of Democratic Theory, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Shepherd, Gregory J., Jeffrey St. John, and Ted Striphas, Editors (2006) Communication
as . . . : Perspectives on Theory, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Shields, Carolyn M., and Mark M. Edwards (2005) Dialogue Is Not Just Talk: A New Ground
for Educational Leadership, New York: P. Lang.
Shionoya, Yuichi, and Kiichiro Yagi, Editors (2001) Competition, Trust, and Cooperation:
A Comparative Study, Proceedings of the Fifth SEEP Conference on Economic Ethics and
Philosophy, held on March 1012, 1999 at the Kansai Seminar House of the Nippon Christian Academy, Kyoto, Japan, Berlin: Springer.
Shun, Kwong-loi, and David B. Wong, Editors (2004) Confucian Ethics: A Comparative
Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Siegel, Marc (2005) False Alarm: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear, Hoboken, NJ: John
Wiley & Sons.
Smith, George P., II (2005) The Christian Religion and Biotechnology: A Search for Principled
Decision-Making, Dordrecht: Springer.
Solomon, Norman (1999) The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media: Decoding Spin and Lies in
Mainstream Media, Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.
Spina, Frank A. (2005) The Faith of the Outsider: Exclusion and Inclusion in the Biblical Story,
Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.
Stangroom, Jeremy, Editor (2005) What Scientists Think, London: Routledge.
Sussman, Gerald (2005) Global Electioneering: Campaign Consulting, Communications, and
Corporate Financing, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Swatos, William H., Jr., and Lutz Kaelber, Editors (2005) The Protestant Ethic Turns 100:
Essays on the Centenary of the Weber Thesis, Boulder, CO: Paradigm.
Thiroux, Jacques (1998) EthicsTheory and Practice, 6th ed., Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
31
Tulchin, Joseph S., and Gary Bland, Editors (2005) Getting Globalization Right: The Dilemmas of Inequality, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
van Zutphen, L. F. M., and M. Balls, Editors (1997) Animal Alternatives, Welfare, and Ethics:
Proceedings of the Second World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences,
held in Utrecht, Oct. 2024, 1996, Utrecht, the Netherlands: World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences.
Wall, John (2005) Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility, Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press.
Watson, Francis (2000) Agape, Eros, Gender: Towards a Pauline Sexual Ethic, Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Watson, Jean (2005) Caring Science as Sacred Science, Philadelphia: F. A. Davis.
Weber, David J. (2005) Brbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment,
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Wenham, Gordon J. (2000) Story as Torah: Reading the Old Testament Ethically, Edinburgh:
T. & T. Clark.
Whybrow, Peter C. (2005) American Mania: When More Is Not Enough, New York: W. W.
Norton.
Wielenberg, Erik J. (2005) Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Wilkinson, Richard G. (2005) The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier,
New York: New Press/W. W. Norton.
Wilson, James Q. (1995) On Character: Essays, expanded edition, Washington, DC: AEI
Press.
Woodroffe, Rosie, Simon Thirgood, and Alan Rabinowitz, Editors (2005) People and Wildlife: Conflict or Co-existence? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Wright, Frances [17951852] (2004) Reason, Religion, and Morals, Course of Popular Lectures,
Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.
Yu, Tianlong (2004) In the Name of Morality: Character Education and Political Control, New
York: P. Lang.
The beginning of modern times is marked by the emergence of humanism and the European Enlightenment. These movements gave rise to
a strong belief in natural law and universal order, and in the ability of
human reason to discover universal principles governing humanity,
nature, and society. The traditional bonds linking religion, human
behavior, and governance began to tear asunder. The grounding of
morality on religious absolutes was called into question in ways that
mattered. Intuitionists and empiricists reflected on the nature of human
conscience. Questions of absolute good and relative good came to be
entertained. And, until this day, various attempts to establish an ethical
criterion evidently independent of theological considerations have continued to be debated. With the advent of modernity, old notions of the
interrelatedness of law and morality were no longer accepted on face
value. Law came to be deemed a social creation, enforced by judicial
authority, while morality came to be understood as an individual
concern based on a personal sense of obligation.1
More recently, the modern world has begun to question once again
the relationship between religion, law, and morality. As a result of
technoscientific advancements, along with sociopolitical emancipation
and cultural-economic development, modern societies are now grappling with the exigencies and attending dilemmas of giving legal
1. Throughout this chapter, I use law to refer to social norms that have been escalated
into legal norms because they are enforced by legal sanctions. I use the term morality
to imply personal norms that are based on a sense of individual obligation to do that
which is right and proper. And I use ethics to mean a system of priorities and values
that provide the theoretical framework within which an individual can exercise moral
judgment and make moral decisions. These words are foreign to ancient Near Eastern
thought, as these cultures had no special terms for morality or ethics. Therefore, I do not
distinguish between ethics and morals in a modern sense, or even along the GrecoRoman perspectives intimated by J. J. Mulhern in this book.
34
Barry L. Eichler
35
Mesopotamian Ethics
Most of the literary sources bearing on Mesopotamian ethics were part
of the Mesopotamian stream of tradition, representing a corpus of
texts transmitted by Sumerian and Akkadian scribes for more than two
millennia (from c. 2300 to 500 B.C.E.). These literary sources may be
grouped into law collections, wisdom compositions, religious texts,
and omen literature:
Mesopotamian law collections4 do not constitute royally prescribed
legislation but are more closely linked to royal inscriptions. The law
collections attest to the kings fulfillment of his divine charge to establish justice and equity in his realm. Hence some of the law cases within
the collections may represent specific royal ordinances and economic
reforms. Other cases, however, may reflect nonbinding Mesopotamian
principles of equity transmitted over the millennia by its scholarly tradition. Such cases would represent statements of ideals that do not
reflect the actual practice of law. Nevertheless, the law collections reflect
the kings moral sense of right and wrong and, as such, provide valuable insight into the Mesopotamian conception of justice and its taxonomy of social values.
36
Barry L. Eichler
texts bring into focus what was deemed to be proper human behavior,
meritorious of the blessings of the gods, as well as improper human
behavior, doomed to incur divine wrath.
Within the corpus of Mesopotamian omen literature, human behavioral omens and dream omens are most relevant to the study of Mesopotamian ethics. In these omens, some human actions, committed
while awake or in a dream, bear a favorable or unfavorable divine
message. It has been assumed that these omens reflect speculations on
proper and improper human behavior. This assumption, however, is
complicated by the fact that although many of the socially accepted
behaviors are taken to be good omens, there exist behaviors deemed
clearly unacceptable in the law collections that, nevertheless, are interpreted also to be good omens.
Social Ethics
Since the preceding literary sources derive from the royal and the
scholarly elite in the employ of the palace and temple, the behavior
that they foster is geared to the preservation of the existing social order.
Hence one of the central moral concerns here is that of social ethics,
pertaining to the maintenance of the social hierarchy and the promotion of harmony inside the family and the community. The sources
stress filial obedience to parental authority. As is amply evident
from Mesopotamian adoption tablets, filial love and respect entail
both an economic responsibility and a social duty to care for ones
elderly and indigent parents. Filial obligation continues even after
death, with responsibility for ensuring proper burial and mourning
rites, and for maintaining offerings so that the ghosts of the deceased
will be at peace, and hence not endanger the realm of the living by ever
restlessly wreaking havoc within the society of the living. In turn, the
hierarchy among siblings is based on age and gender. Respect is
expected toward ones elder brother and sister. The filial respect
and loyalty owed to ones parents was a value that extended also to
ones superiors, including a master, public officials, the king, and ones
personal god.
Included within social ethics are the moral concerns that are essential
for a cohesive community. Human life is safeguarded by the prohibition of homicide, which, under certain circumstances, may be a capital
crime. Often the decision is left to the victims kin, who may demand
37
38
Barry L. Eichler
demanded equal treatment for his subject on par with the treatment of
the aggrieved husbands wife. In the law collections available to date,
abortion and male homosexuality are mentioned only in the Middle
Assyrian Laws (c. 1076 B.C.E.). The law case dealing with abortion
states that a woman who aborts her fetus shall be impaled and remain
unburied. The severity of the crime seems to be based upon her act of
insurrection, that is, by way of deliberately destroying her husbands
potential progeny. Otherwise, one who strikes a mans pregnant wife,
causing her to abort her fetus, usually pays monetary compensation to
the husband. The assailant is held capitally liable only if the womans
husband had no son. As to homosexuality, one who fornicates with his
comrade is to be sodomized and turned into a eunuch. It is unclear
whether the act is criminal for its homosexual nature or for being committed against someone of the same social standing. In the sexual
human behavioral omens, homosexual acts are deemed to be good
omens; and hence seem to be viewed and received in a more positive
light in the omen series than in the legal sources.
Religious Ethics
Mesopotamian religious ethics reflect principles that are similar to
those found in its social ethics. Although little is known about the role
of the common people in the practice of religion, it is clear that their
personal gods served as their intercessors before the great gods. Wisdom
literature and penitential prayers focus on duties toward ones personal
gods, who are viewed and treated as the divine parents of the worshipper. The gods are to be honored materially, with sacrifices; and verbally,
with prayers. Blasphemy by swearing false oaths is a serious act of
disrespect, since they swear by the lives of the gods. Other offenses
include the seizure of temple property and the wronging of temple
personnel, both estimated to be divine property. More is known of the
roles of the king and the cults functionaries in the state religion. The
major royal cultic duties were the maintenance of the temples of
the great gods, the support of their cults, and the observance of their
festivals. The performance of these duties was vital for the prosperity
and security of the land. The cultic functionaries had to follow a cultic
etiquette, requiring of them to be physically sound and otherwise
unblemished, and ritually pure. Physical cleanliness was demanded,
as was also the wearing of clean clothing. Washing of hands was
required before prayer, sacrifice, and the sacred meal. During certain
39
40
Barry L. Eichler
41
42
Barry L. Eichler
43
indeed, the very conception of law, are rooted in the cosmic principle
of maat. Thus both the Mesopotamian and Egyptian polytheistic worldviews conceive of law and morality not only as complementary but
also as symbiotic aspects of a primordial cosmic principle that harmoniously orders both divine and human societies.16
Biblical Ethics
The biblical perception of ethics is distinct from that found in Mesopotamian and Egyptian thought, owing to the Bibles fundamental,
radically different perception of the divine. The biblical worldview,
usually termed monotheistic, is not mere belief in the existence of one
God. Rather, it is the idea that the Deity is transcendent and sovereign
over all. It differs fundamentally from polytheism in the absolute
freedom of the Godhead. Unlike ancient Near Eastern gods, who are
born into a primordial realm of natural and supernatural forces, which
precede them in time and transcend them in power, the biblical God is
there from the very beginning, and the forces of the cosmos are
all-inherent inside him. Thus the biblical Deity acts in total freedom,
unrivaled either by the will of other gods or by the cosmic forces of the
universe.
For this reason, biblical thought cannot accept the ancient Near
Eastern conception of the ultimate sanction of law and morality as
being rooted in the primordial cosmic principle of either kittum or maat,
both of which transcend all of the gods and all of humankind. Such a
conception is inconsonant with the biblical definition of the Godhead,
as the sole and unique source for all cosmic forces, and to whom
moral perfection is attributed. To the biblical mind, God is the ultimate
319321). Moreover, maat is both cosmic principle and mode of behavior: doing maat
(being moral, behaving ethically, promulgating and obeying laws and principled rules
imbibed by maat) sustains maat (the principle itself).
Both Mesopotamians and Egyptians believed that, also present in the universe, there
were negative cosmic forces that could interfere with the proper functioning of the positive cosmic forces. John Baines (1991, 125) states: Ordered creation has constantly to be
affirmed against the forces of disorder. Not only the king and humanity but also the gods
were involved in this enterprise. Mans moral actions played an important role in the
continuance of the natural order of creation, and his immoral behavior could weaken
and thwart the effectiveness of cosmic order in the created world.
16. Kittum was never personified like maat and therefore remained a more abstract
concept. Kittum seems to be more of a defining force, representing the ways in which the
gods and humankind were to create social order and stability.
44
Barry L. Eichler
45
Social Ethics
As in Mesopotamian thought, one of the central moral concerns of the
Bible is social ethics, especially the maintenance of harmony within the
family and the community. Biblical law insists on filial respect and
obedience, emphasizing the affirmative obligation of honoring ones
parentsthe duty of supporting and providing for them in needand
raising the culpability for striking and cursing ones parents to the
status of a capital crime against society. This value of filial subservience
was extended to ones duties to ones leaders, and especially to ones
God, the cursing of whom is a capital crime (Exodus 22:27).19
As one moves from family concerns to those of society at large, one
must note thatunlike Mesopotamian societybiblical society envisions no legally defined social classes among free Israelites, except, that
is, in cultic matters. True, there exist clear economic asymmetries
between rich and poor and differences between natives and resident
aliens, as there also are legal distinctions between free Israelites and
slaves, men and women, adults and minors. But there is no evidence
of a developed class structure. Caring for the weak and the powerless
is an important element in Mesopotamian royal ideology, but only
biblical law attempts to ameliorate the conditions of the poor by prohibiting interest-bearing loans (Exodus 22:24; Leviticus 25:3537; Deuteronomy 23:20) and by imposing the charitable duty of offering a part
of ones agricultural harvest to the needy (Leviticus 19:910). As for the
resident alien, he is treated the same way as the native Levite, who also
does not own tribal territory in the land. Resident alien and Levite fall
in the category of the poor, qualified to receive charitable gifts from the
harvest. Generally, resident aliens are included in the purview of the
biblical law applicable to the Israelites and, as such, may partake of
religious and cultic observances. The admonition not to mistreat them
is motivated by the Israelite experience of being resident aliens in
Egypt (Exodus 22:20; Leviticus 19:3334). No such concern for the
welfare of strangers is to be found in Mesopotamian law collections.
Notwithstanding its general recognition and its quite ordinary institutionalization, slavery is deemed undesirable as a status for Israelites.
The kidnapping of Israelites for use or sale is a capital crime. Israelites
found to be enslaved to non-Israelites have to be redeemed. But unlike
Mesopotamian law, which considers the nonreturn of fugitive slaves to
19. Cf. 1 Kings 21:10.
46
Barry L. Eichler
47
48
Barry L. Eichler
49
Religious Ethics
In the realm of religious ethics, biblical law emphasizes the responsibility of the persons in divine service. Little attention is given to the role
of the king, whose religious responsibilities are so very central to the
Mesopotamian cult. The people are enjoined to observe the Sabbath, to
celebrate the festivals, and to honor God by providing, materially, for
the maintenance of cultic activities. The Mesopotamian cult centers on
king and priests in providing for the physical needs of the gods in
accordance with the reigning worldview. The biblical cult focuses on
the individual and the collective needs of the people to interact with
the divine, by requiring the people to present free will or sin and guilt
offerings, also by commemorating creation and celebrating discrete
national-historical events through cultic worship. As representatives of
the people, and not of God, and in divine service, priests in their capacity as cultic functionaries must adhere to a cultic etiquette that requires
of them to be morally unblemished, physically sound, and ritually
pure. As a result of the direct communication that exists between God
and the people, and the divine covenant between them, the biblical
worldview understands that every single worshipper is endowed with
some cultic status (Exodus 19:6).25 This raising of laity to some degree
of priesthood is evident in certain cultic etiquette incumbent also upon
the people, and most explicitly so in certain food taboos.26 But a biblical
worship of God demands more than a modicum of cultic service and
piety. For in the biblical worldview, it is not merely Gods omnipotence
(authority) but his moral perfection (legitimacy) as well that render him
worthy of the peoples worship. And hence, the people discover a religious obligation to abide by his will and to commit to his ethical
norms.
Personal Ethics
Underlying the first psalm in the Book of Psalms, whose message has
a wider application to the entire collection of psalms, is the basic biblical worldview that an individuals life is governed by a divinely
ordained universal moral order (Sarna 1995, 29). Thus fear of God
is a cardinal virtue, for it acknowledges a Supreme Being, who makes
25. Cf. Numbers 16:3.
26. Cf. Leviticus 22:8 in the context of v.2 with Leviticus 17:15 and Exodus 22:30.
50
Barry L. Eichler
51
52
Barry L. Eichler
the essence of the cosmic forces. The penitential psalms and the wisdom
literature stress the limited capacity of humankind to grasp what
pleases the gods or to distinguish between good and evil, hence to
comprehend clearly the cosmic moral standard. Mesopotamians
believed, however, that this lack of knowledge did not exonerate
humankind from blame or punishment for its misdeeds, since such
ignorance was viewed as mere insufficiency inherent to the imperfect
human condition.27 Nevertheless, this lack of certainty could severely
undermine the individuals resolve to live by predefined moral order.
In effect, however, individual moral responsibility does not seem to
have emerged as a significant, let alone dominant, factor within the
perimeter of Mesopotamian societyespecially when compared with
the overwhelmingly duty-laden central role of the Mesopotamian
king.
In Egypt, too, it was the king who bore the primary burden and
central responsibility for maintaining the moral order by upholding the
cosmic force of maat. The ancient Egyptian king, by virtue of his divine
status, manifested maat, and the peoples responsibility was to follow
the kings law, which fully conformed to the ideals of maat. Lichtheim
(1997,11ff.) notes that Egyptian royal officials describe themselves in
their autobiographies as active knowers and doers of maat. It seems
therefore that royal officials, too, had a personal knowledge of maat,
possibly for having learned it from the royal community and from
schooling in wisdom literature. Their actions are said to be firmly
anchored in this personal sense of right and wrong. Many Egyptologists think that a shift must have occurred during the development of
Egyptian moral thinking, from the primary association of maat with the
king in the Old Kingdom, to the primary association of maat with the
gods in the Middle Kingdom (Ockinga 2001, 484485). It is thought that
an apparent failure on part of the kingship to uphold order and to
sustain stability at the close of the Old Kingdom may have given rise
to a new understanding that next reassigned primary responsibility for
maintaining cosmic and terrestrial order to the gods. Humankind was
now instructed to do maat for sake of the gods; and if disorder should
prevail, it would do so because the gods did not make their presence
felt. But in the period of the New Kingdom, Egyptologists sense the
occurrence of yet another shift, in which personal piety comes to the
27. For detailed discussion, see Buccellati (1995) and Toorn (1985). Both works have
extensive bibliographical references.
53
54
Barry L. Eichler
This biblical conception of law as the revealed will of God stands high
and clear, in stark contrast to the myriad uncertainties and innumerable
insecurities associated with Mesopotamian and Egyptian conceptions
of law and morality. In the biblical worldview, the divine moral standard is clearly articulated; individual responsibility for heeding a clear
standard is paramount. It is this appreciation of law, morality, and
human responsibility that permeates the biblical prophetic tradition,
characterized by its passionate demand for human equality and dignity,
its hatred of oppression, and its dream of universal peace, each
grounded on social justice. These ideals and the divine imperative for
humankind to try to actualize them have left an indelible imprint on
the consciousness of Western civilization.
But there is yet another important dimension to the biblical conception of law and morality. Biblical law, which God addressed directly to
the entire community of Israel,31 is conceived as the basis of a covenantal
relationship between God and Israel. Both the Sinaitic covenant and the
covenant of the Plains of Moab center on a book of law (Exodus 24:4,
24:7; Deuteronomy 29:11, 29:13, 29:20) containing divinely dictated
legislation. The book of law contains also elements of ancient Near
Eastern vassal-covenant stipulations that demand complete loyalty
and total allegiance to God. Unmistakably explicit is the affirmation
that God and Israel are bound in contract, whereby faithful observance
of the law guarantees divine prosperity and also protection, just as
violation of the law results in dire calamity and misfortune to the individual and to the nation (Leviticus 26:345; Deuteronomy 28).32 Of far
greater import and consequence here is the fact that now an entire
people becomes responsibleindividually and communallyfor the
observance of the law (Deuteronomy 11:1328), the maintenance of
justice (Deuteronomy 16:1820), and the punishment of offenders
(Deuteronomy 17:5 et passim). It is precisely this biblical covenantal
approach to law that underscores the uniquely heightened sense of
individual and communal responsibility for the observance of law and
offenses, social crimes, and civil torts are viewed as violations of Gods will, it would
not be meaningful for biblical law to draw distinctions between socioeconomic and
cultic-religious matters in the organization of its legal formulations.
31. Mosess intermediary role, as a messenger relaying Gods utterances to the people,
is viewed as a divine concession to the request of the people. See Exodus 20:1820 and
Deuteronomy 5:2331.
32. This conception of covenantal law remains a dominant theme throughout biblical
history, reaffirmed in the covenants of Joshua (Joshua 24), Josiah (2 Kings 23), Zedekiah
(Jeremiah 34), and Ezra (Nehemiah 910).
55
56
Barry L. Eichler
that greater moral clarity does enhance the sense of personal responsibility; and that greater societal appreciation of the role of the individual
in upholding the social contract of law, citizenship, and governance
intensifies both individual and communal commitments socially to act
responsibly. True, relativism, deconstructionism, and especially postmodernism have enriched modern thought in many ways, but they
have also led to considerable moral confusion. Therefore, it is imperative for modern democratic societies to identify the common ethical
values they hold to be true and to articulate clearly their moral standard that must serve as the cultural wellspring of their societal postulates. Needless to say, this is a long, arduous, and often wrenching
process that must bring together the most diverse moral conceptions
of many different peoples, a process that must find commonality
without thereby trampling the rights of local or global minorities. It is
equally imperative that modern democratic societies clearly articulate
and strongly inculcate these common values in their citizenry. This
statement is especially true at this time in human history when, once
again, basic moral issues can no longer remain in the private or personal domain, but must be translated into legally enforceable norms
that inform societys decision-making policies and define its actions.
The task at hand is formidable. May we have offered the reader a contextualized grasp of the existential complexities that underscore the
myriad societal issues remaining to be faced and the attending ethical
questions meriting to be answered.
References
Baines, John (1991) Society, Morality and Religious Practice, in Byron E. Shafer, Editor,
Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths and Personal Practice, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
Botwinick, Aryeh (2008) Liberal Democracy: Interrogating the Questions, in Jose V.
Ciprut, Editor, Democratizations: Comparisons, Confrontations, and Contrasts, Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press.
Buccellati, Giorgio (1981) Wisdom and Not: The Case of Mesopotamia, Journal of the
American Oriental Society, 101:3547.
(1995) Ethics and Piety in the Ancient Near East, in Jack M. Sasson, Editor,
Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, vol. 3, New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan.
Cahn, Edmond (1961) The Jewish Contribution to Law, Jewish Frontier, May issue,
1217.
Ciprut, Jose V., Editor (2008a) Dedication, in Freedom: Reassessments and Rephrasings,
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
57
58
Barry L. Eichler
Redford, Donald B. (2001) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, vols. 13, Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press.
Roth, Martha T. (1997) Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, Society of Biblical
Literature Writings from the Ancient World 6, Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Rubin, Edward L. (2008) Right to Be, Privilege to Become: The Dangers of Citizenship,
in Jose V. Ciprut, Editor, The Future of Citizenship, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Sarna, Nahum M. (1995) On the Book of Psalms: Exploring the Psalms of Ancient Israel, New
York: Schocken Books.
Silberg, Moshe (1961) Jewish Law and Morals, Harvard Law Review 75:306331.
Sonsino, Rifat (1980) Motive Clauses in Hebrew Law: Biblical Forms and Near Eastern Parallels
(Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 45), Chicago: Scholars Press.
Teeter, Emily (2001) Maat, in Donald B. Redford, Editor, The Oxford Encyclopedia of
Ancient Egypt, vol. 2, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Toorn, K. van der (1985) Sin and Sanction in Israel and Mesopotamia, Studia Semitica Neerlandica 22, Assen: Van Gorcum.
Weinfeld, Moshe (1972) Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, Oxford, UK: Clarendon
Press.
Westbrook, Raymond, Editor (2003) A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, 2 vols., Leiden:
Brill.
Wrzburger, Walter S. (1994) Ethics of Responsibility: Pluralistic Approaches to Covenantal
Ethics, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
On an Ethic of Peace
Grounded on Justice: An
Eighteenth-Century Voice
Paul Guyer
60
Paul Guyer
61
62
Paul Guyer
banning of Catholicism in France, the same year, during which a coalition against France began to take form, French troops were ousted from
Germany, the Holy Roman Empire declared war on France, the United
States proclaimed its neutrality, and Toulon was taken by Napoleon.
Next, the French Revolution would devour its children as the Whiskey
Insurrection roared in Pennsylvania (1794). And the Third Partition
of Poland would accompany the abdication of the Polish King
Stanislas II even as the Dutch surrendered Ceylon (todays Sri Lanka)
to the British in 1795; next, Agha Mohammed of Persia seized Khorasan
and proclaimed Tehran the capital (1796). The elevation as shah of
Persia of Fath Ali and the nomination of Marquis Wellesley governorgeneral of India (1797); the proclamation of the Helvetian Republic in
Bern; the conquest of Egypt (1798) and of Syria (1799) by Napoleon,
who appointed Talleyrand Foreign Minister of France (1799), as Britain
now found reason to join the Russo-Ottoman alliance against France
(1799); and the British capture of Malta and Napoleons undisputed (if
temporary) hold over most of Europe would finally usher in the calendrical close of the official Century of European Enlightenment.
In the year 1795, just another annus horribilis in Europe, during
which bread riots created havoc and White Terror raged in Paris, while
Luxemburg capitulated to France, the French forces occupied Mannheim
and Belgium, the British seized the Cape of Good Hope, the Dutch
had to cede Ceylon to the British, and Napoleon was appointed
commander-in-chief in Italy, even as the third partition of Poland beckoned, two private events occurred in Germany that would acquire
protracted historical significance:1 Frederick Wilhelm IV of Prussia was
born, and Immanuel Kant published his Zum ewigen Frieden. That essay
was anticipated by earlier efforts by the Abb Saint-Pierre and JeanJacques Rousseau, and prompted by ensuing political events; but it was
above all an enlightened philosophers response to the century of strife
just chronicled. Remarkably, however, it seems to argue not just that
peace among nations is possible, but even that it is inevitable. Could
such a critical philosopher as Kant have meant to assert something so
implausible, or is the innate message of the work something else? If so,
what; and does it have anything still to say to us now, two centuries
1. In enumerating the more salient events of contextual pertinence to this thematic essay,
I have cited generously from The Timetables of HistoryA Horizontal Linkage of People and
Events, new third revised edition, by Bernard Grun (1991), based on Werner Steins Kulturfahrplan. I thank our editor, Jose Ciprut, for his generous provision of the material for
this section and for his helpful comments throughout the paper.
63
later, and particularly after the recent end of a century in which warfare
was perhaps not as frequent but more intense and on a much vaster
scale than what it had been in the eighteenth century?
On the Probabilistic Merits of Rational Hope
for a Morality of Peace
In his famous essay Toward Perpetual Peace (1795), did Kant (17241804)
really mean to claim that a natural process of political development
within and among different states can ever provide a guarantee of perpetual peace among them? He certainly seems to be arguing that
natural mechanisms inexorably drive nations toward republican government, and that a world of republics would have no occasion for war
with one another, thereby guaranteeing perpetual peace:
What affords this guarantee (surety) is nothing less than the great artist
nature . . . from whose mechanical course purposiveness shines forth visibly,
letting concord arise by means of the discord between human beings even
against their will; and for this reason nature, regarded as necessitation by a
cause the laws of whose operation are unknown to us, is called fate, but if we
consider its purposiveness in the course of the world as the profound wisdom
of a higher cause directed to the objective final end of the human race and
predetermining the course of this world, it is called providence . . . 2 (TPP 8:360
362; Gregor 1996, 331332).
Kant then proposes to examine the condition that nature has prepared for the persons acting on its great stage, which finally makes its
assurance of peace necessary (TPP 8:362363; Gregor 1996, 332), and
to examine how nature affords the guarantee that what man ought to
do in accordance with laws of freedom but does not do, it is assured
he will do, without prejudice to [his] freedom, even by a constraint of
nature (TPP 8:465; Gregor 1996, 334). And in these proposals, too, it
certainly sounds as if Kant thinks that nature will guarantee perpetual
peace by means of the following scenario: war drives human beings to
all corners of the earth, seeking safety from one another; but no part of
the earth is completely inaccessible to any other, so even once people
2. Toward Perpetual Peace, henceforth TPP. Kants texts are here cited first by their locations in Kants gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Royal Prussian (next, and successively,
the German and the Berlin-Brandenburg) Academy of Sciences, Berlin: Georg Reimer,
and subsequently, Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1900; and then, from Immanuel Kant,
Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor (1996), from which all translations are drawn.
64
Paul Guyer
have been driven to all corners of the earth they will still be in fear of
one another, and thus make war upon one another; but the burdens of
war upon the populations that must carry them will be so great that
over time people will transform their governments into republics more
fully expressing their own interests than any other form of regime can,
and once people have transformed their own governments into republics they will not have any internal cause to make war on other nations;
so once all nations have become republics, thereby removing any external cause for one nation to make war upon another, all cause for war
will be removed and there will henceforth be no war. (This is a summary
of Kants account at TPP 8:363368, Gregor 1996, 332337.)
Political scientists have purported to refute this rosy scenario by
adducing historical cases in which republics have made war upon one
another.3 However, the empirical criteria for counting regimes as republics that some participants to this debate have usedfor example, that
30 percent of males have the franchise to vote4fall so far short of
Kants ideal conception of a republic,5 and it is so far from clear that
any actual regimes, let alone actual regimes that have made war upon
one another, have ever satisfied Kants ideal of republican government,
that it seems to me pointless even to discuss this objection. What I do
want to ask here is whether Kant himself could have thought that such
a guarantee of peace through natural mechanisms is consistent with
the basic principles of his own philosophy.
The answer to this question is clearly no. Indeed, Kants description
of the key mechanism by means of which nature is supposed to guarantee perpetual peace makes it clear both that it can do no such thing
and that Kant did not think that it can do any such thing. In expounding the First Definitive Article for Perpetual Peacenamely, that
The civil constitution of every state shall be republicanKant writes
the following:
3. This discussion began with Michael Doyle (1983), who defended Kants apparent
empirical argument for the inevitability of peace among republics. There have been
numerous critics as well as supporters of Doyles position; for a sample list, see Cavallar
(1999, 180181, notes 5 and 6).
4. See Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Kants Theorem und die aktuelle Diskussion ber die
Beziehung zwischen Demokratie und Freiheit, in Valerio Rhoden (1997, 99120), cited
in Cavallar (1999, 146147).
5. See TPP 8:349350, 352; Gregor 1996, 322, 324; Metaphysics of Morals (henceforth MM),
Doctrine of Right, sections 4548, 6:313316; Gregor 1996, 456460; and On the Common
Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory but It Is of No Use in Practice, 8:289296; Gregor 1996,
290296.
65
The republican constitution does offer the prospect of the result wished for,
namely perpetual peace; the ground of this is as follows. When the consent of
the citizens of a state is required in order to decide whether there shall be war
or not (and it cannot be otherwise in this constitution), nothing is more natural
than that they will be very hesitant to begin such a bad game, since they would
have to decide to take upon themselves all the hardships of war (such as themselves doing the fighting and paying the costs of the war from their own belongings . . . ); on the other hand, under a constitution in which subjects are not
citizens of the state, which is therefore not republican, [deciding upon war] is
the easiest thing in the world; because the head of state is not a member of the
state but its proprietor and gives up nothing at all of his feasts, hunts, pleasure
palaces, court festivals, and so forth, he can decide upon war, as upon a kind of
pleasure party, for insignificant cause. . . . (TPP 8:350; Gregor 1996, 323324)
66
Paul Guyer
67
68
Paul Guyer
the very outset of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals8 that the
only thing that is unconditionally good and truly estimable is good will
(see GMM, section 1, 4:393394; Gregor 1996, 4950). And he argued in
the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment that we can see
the whole of nature as a determinate system aimed at a unique end
only if we see it as aimed at a final end of unconditional moral value,
for only such an end would qualify as unique. Yet he also argued in
that work that we cannot see nature itself as producing anything more
than the culture of discipline over our inclinations, a discipline that
may be a necessary condition for the implementation of a moral disposition but that cannot be a sufficient condition for it (see section 83,
5:432 in Guyer 2000) for the simple reason that no operations of mere
mechanisms of nature, that is, of our own nature, can ever earn us true
moral worth or esteem. Further, Kant also makes it clear that although
the obligation to earn moral esteem is itself a human beings Tugendverpflichtung, or obligation of virtue as a motivation, that is, an internal
disposition, his Rechtspflichten, or duties of justice, by contrast, are
duties that we can satisfy entirely by outward compliance with the relevant moral laws, regardless of what sort of motivation we use in order
to get ourselves to do so, if only to avoid moral demerit. And that is
why juridical duties can admit of external legislation connecting them
to pathological determining grounds of choice, inclinations and aversions, but in fact, Kant continues, only by aversions. The mere conformity or nonconformity of an action with law, irrespective of the
incentive to it, is called its legality (Legalitt), its lawfulness (Gesetzmssigkeit); but that conformity, in which the idea of duty arising from the
law is also the incentive to the action, is called its morality (MM, Introduction, section 4, 6:219; Gregor 1996, 383). In Kants scheme, the duty
to seek perpetual peace is the ultimate juridical duty or duty of right
or justice (Rechtspflicht). The fundamental principle of right is the principle to perform only such actions as can coexist with everyones
freedom in accordance with a universal law (MM, Doctrine of
Right, Introduction, section C, 6:230; Gregor 1996, 387). In particular,
(3) the performance of peace as a duty; that nature, however, could supply items 1 and
2 but not 3. Laberge agrees with the view I take here; for, in his own words, The problem
treated in the essay on peace appears to be only juridical; its solution is not dependent
on the good will and the moral improvement of mankind (Hffe 1995, 164). But
Laberge seems to believe that Kant thinks nature could guarantee peace as an external
condition. Hence, he does not argue, as I will, that Kants commitment to the doctrine
of radical evil makes that outcome most unlikely.
8. Henceforth GMM.
69
70
Paul Guyer
this means that, while the radical freedom of human choice entails
that no natural mechanism possibly guarantees the just outcome of
perpetual peace, this very same freedom does entail that it is always
possible for us to use these natural mechanisms to progress toward that
peace.
Admittedly, this is hardly the place for a detailed exegesis of Religion
within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, but I will just briefly document
several key points: First, the work argues that although we have within
us an original predisposition to good, that is, natural predispositions
to humanity and personality (Williams, chap. 6 of this book) that can
lead to morally desirable outcomes (Religion, Part 1, 6:26; Wood and di
Giovanni 1996, 74), as well as a natural propensity to evil that manifests itself in superficially different yet perhaps morally not manifestly
distinguishable forms of frailty, impurity, and depravity (Religion, Part
1, 6:2930; Wood and di Giovanni 1996, 7678), whether any particular
human being is ultimately either good or evil cannot be explained by
either of these natural tendencies, but only by the free choice of a
human being to realize his predisposition toward the good or to pervert
that predisposition by giving in to the propensity toward evil. In Kants
words:
The human being must make or have made himself into whatever he is or
should become in a moral sense, good or evil. These two [characters] must be
an effect of his free choice, for otherwise they could not be imputed to him and,
consequently, he could be morally neither good nor evil. If it is said: The human
being is created good, this can only mean nothing more than: He has been
created for the good and the original predisposition in him is good; the human
being is not thereby good as such, but he brings it about that he becomes either
good or evil, according as he either incorporates or does not incorporate into
his maxims the incentives contained in that predisposition (and thus must be
left entirely to his free choice). (Religion, Part 1, 6:2930; Wood and di Giovanni
1996, 7678)
71
72
Paul Guyer
spare ourselves the formal proof that there must be . . . a corrupt propensity rooted in the human being, in view of the multitude of woeful
examples that the experience of human deeds parades before us, and
then goes on to allude briefly to scenes of unprovoked cruelty in the
ritual murders among various aboriginal populations but also the
long litany of charges against mankind even in its supposedly civilized state, such as secret falsity even in the most intimate friendship, a propensity to harm him to whom we are indebted, and not
least the state of constant war among civilized peoples (Religion,
Part 1, 6:3334; Wood and di Giovanni 1996, 8081). As a proof of a
universal and necessary proposition that human beings are always and
everywhere evil rather than good, such an empirical wave of the hand
may seem woefully inadequate. But clearly the point of Kants argument is not to demonstrate that human beings are generally evil rather
than good, for that he takes to be obvious. His philosophical point is rather
that the widespread evil of human beings is radicalfor being the
product of their own free choiceand therefore reversible. In Kants
words, This evil is radical, since it corrupts the ground of all
maxims. . . . Yet it must equally be possible to overcome this evil, for it
is found in the human being as acting freely (Religion, Part 1, 6:37;
Wood and di Giovanni 1996, 83).
Mssen ist Knnen: Toward a Concept of Right with Efficacy
Kant illustrates this point in the Religion with nothing short of an
explicit allusion to perpetual peace: Philosophical chiliasm, which
hopes for a state of perpetual peace based on a federation of nations
united in a world-republic, is universally derided as a sheer fantasy as
much as theological chiliasm,10 which awaits for the complete moral
10. It is useful to recall that Chiliasm is the belief that Christ will return to establish a
glorious kingdom of peace on this earth for one thousand years. The term comes from
a Greek word that means one thousand, and arises out of the reference in Revelation 20
to a thousand-year period in which Satan is bound and the souls of martyrs reign with
Christ. Chiliasm is distinct from the present day premillennialism in that chiliasm does
not teach a secret rapture or emphasize dispensations. Some of the early church fathers
held to a form of chiliasm. But it died out in the church after Augustine came to
understand that the millennium is not a literal one-thousand-year period, but is the era
from Christs ascension to His second coming. Chiliasm was resurrected by the radicals
of the Reformation. Willem Balke (Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals) asserts that in spite
of their differences, all of these Anabaptist groups [in Strasbourg] shared a common,
feverish longing for the advent of the kingdom of God. In his comprehensive study, The
Radical Reformation, George Williams concludes that the expectation of a golden age or
73
74
Paul Guyer
75
comforted with the thought that nothing is, for him, antecedent to the
determination of his will, but every actionand in general every determination of his existence changing conformably with inner sense, even
the whole sequence of his existence as a sensible beingis to be
regarded in the consciousness of his intelligible existence as nothing
but the consequence and never as the determining ground of his causality as a noumenon (Critique of Practical Reason, 5:9798; Gregor 1996,
218)? Once this has been said, what need is there to discuss specific
mechanisms in nature that might bring about perpetual peace?
The answer to this question is, I believe, of a complexity that ultimately reflects Kants own view of human beings as creatures who are
both rational and sensible. Even as purely rational creatures, we must
be assured that what we ought to do we also can do; and since the goal
of perpetual peace, though required by pure practical reason, is a goal
that must be achieved within nature, we must be assured that there are
means available within nature through which we could bring about this
goal. But as both sensible and rational creatures, we may need more
than an abstract argument to the effect that peace is indeed possible
within nature and that nature does afford us means by which we can
bring it about: our moral motivation to seek perpetual peace may also
need the concrete encouragement of a view of history that can make
the achievement of peace seem inevitable as long as we seek to cooperate with, rather than undermine, the natural forces that make it so.
The Free Use of Natural Means
Let me begin with the abstract point that even as purely rational creatures we must be assured that what we ought to do is also possible for
us to do. That Kant takes this point to be self-evident is clear, particularly in the Religion, where just in Part 1 he writes, for example, that
however evil a human being has been right up to the moment of an
impending free action (evil even habitually, as second nature), his duty
to better himself was not just in the past: it is still his duty now; he must
therefore be capable of it, that the command that we ought to become
better human beings still resounds unabated in our souls; consequently,
we must also be capable of it, and that duty commands nothing but
what we can do (Religion, Part 1, 6:41, 45, 47; Wood and di Giovanni
1996, 87, 90, 92).13 I will not worry whether this premise could actually
be demonstrated, but will instead consider what it implies for our
13. In Religion, Part 2; see also 6:62 and 66; Wood and di Giovanni 1996, 105, 108.
76
Paul Guyer
present concerns. One might well think that all that is necessary to
show that some state of affairs is possible is to demonstrate that it is
not self-contradictory. That indeed would be a natural way to read
Kants argument in the third Antinomy of Pure Reason in the first
Critique, where he contends that freedom of the will would be inconsistent with the thoroughgoing determinism of the phenomenal world
that has been demonstrated by the Transcendental Analytic, but that,
nevertheless, the distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal world also demonstrated in the earlier parts of the Critique
allows for freedom to be conceived as a property of our noumenal
rather than phenomenal selves (see especially The Critique of Pure
Reason, A 538558/B 566586, in Guyer and Wood 1998). But I would
suggest that we see Toward Perpetual Peace as aimed at demonstrating
what Kant generally calls real rather than merely logical possibility, or what he characterizes earlier in the first Critique as the objective
reality of the concept rather than merely the necessary logical condition of its possibility. To demonstrate the logical possibility of a concept
requires demonstrating only that in such a concept no contradiction
[is] contained; to demonstrate its real possibility or objective reality,
however, requires going beyond that exerciseto demonstrating that
the object of the concept can be also constructed within the form of our
personal experience. In the first Critique, Kant illustrates this distinction
with reference to the objects of geometry, arguing that in order to demonstrate their real possibility we must not only show that their concepts
are free from contradiction but also that these objects can be constructed within the a priori conditions of space and its determination
(Critique of Pure Reason, A 220221/B 267268, in Guyer and Wood
1998). I would submit that in the case of perpetual peace, demonstrating its real possibilitywhich is necessary, if only to make it rational
for us to seek to fulfill our duty to achieve itrequires not only showing
that its achievement is consistent with the forces working on human
populations in nature, but also and especially that nature itself affords
means that we can use, if we freely choose to do so, with the intent of
bringing about this conditionthe aim to construct it, as it were.14
Kant does not explicitly separate the two steps in principle necessary
to prove the real possibility of perpetual peace, perhaps because he
need not do so: demonstrating that nature affords means to achieve
14. This point does not conflict with my claim that the guarantee of Perpetual Peace is
intended practically rather than theoretically: the practical necessity of achieving perpetual peace requires nothing less than its real possibility.
77
78
Paul Guyer
79
Kant, although he does not really advance any argument that this must
be so. But a moral politician precisely is one who, however he might
have come to power, will take to heart the maxim that . . . an alteration
is necessary, in order to keep constantly approaching the end (of the
best constitution in accordance with laws of right) (TPP, 8:372; Gregor
1996, 340). This statement implies that however politicians may come
to power, it is only if they will freely choose to use the mechanisms
afforded them by nature for achieving the end of perpetual peace that
this goal can be achieved.
Through the image of the moral politician, Kant makes his point that
nature can at least but also at most provide us with the means to justice,
which can actually yield justice only if we freely choose to use them
toward that end, rather than to subvert them. The idea that nature
affords us means to a moral end, but that we alone can provide the will
to use these means to that end, of course, is not restricted to Kants
mature political theory. It is also adequately evident in his mature
theory of virtue, where he argues that natural feelings of sympathetic
joy and sadness are by no means feelings of which we should rid ourselves (as might have been suggested by his notorious examples and
even some statements in the Groundwork 4:398399, 428; Gregor 1996,
5354, 79); rather, he says, Nature has . . . implanted in human beings
receptivity to these feelings in order to use them as a means to promoting active and rational benevolence [as] a particular, though only
a conditional, duty, and we therefore have nothing less than an indirect duty to cultivate the compassionate natural (i.e., aesthetic) feelings
in us, and to make use of them as so many means to sympathy based
on moral principles and the feeling appropriate to them (MM, Doctrine of Virtue, section 34, 6:456; Gregor 1996, 574575). The duty to
cultivate and act upon sympathetic feelings is only conditional, of
course, because there are circumstances in which to act upon such feelings would actually violate the demands of morality.17 But it is still a
duty, because it is only by acting on such means when it is in fact right
for us to act upon them that we can achieve the end of beneficence
when we will to do so. Such feelings are the means that nature has
afforded us to achieve this virtuous end if we will to do, just as nature
17. Thus we have a duty not to act upon our sympathetic feeling when the person we
would help is himself attempting to violate the moral law. In Barbara Hermans famous
example, we have a duty not to act upon our natural inclination to help someone struggling with a heavy burden when that person is in fact an art thief struggling to carry his
booty away from the museum from which he has stolen it. See Herman (1993, 45).
80
Paul Guyer
has afforded us both war but also the possibility of political reform, to
achieve the ultimate end of justice in the form of perpetual peace if we
will to do so.
The Will to Approach the Ultimate End of Justice as
Perpetual Peace
But if Kants real point in Toward Perpetual Peace is simply that nature
has made peace a real possibility by affording us the means to achieve
it if we have the moral will to use these means to that end, why does
he start the essay not simply by stating that nature can guarantee the
possibility of peace but chooses to use language that could be taken to
mean that nature can guarantee peace itself, or even continuous progress toward it? The only answer I can offer to this question is the suggestion that in so doing, he means to appeal not solely to our purely
rational nature (which requires demonstrability that what we ought to
do we can do, if our motivation to attempt such is not to be undermined), but especially to our sensible nature (where our wavering
motivation to do what is right, perhaps for being tempted by deluded
conceptions of self-love, might need buttressing by a sense that what
we ought to do is in fact that at which nature itself aims). As rational
creatures, the thought that nature makes it possible for us to do what
we know we ought to do should suffice; but as sensible creatures, the
thought that nature will push us toward that which we ought to do,
even if we are tempted not to do that on our own, could be of help.18
In all of his final works, from the Critique of the Power of Judgment of
1790 to the unfinished Opus postumum, Kant is intensely concerned
with the relation between our rational principles and our sensible
natures. But there are really two separate questions with which he is
concerned. One question is in a general sense the problem of judgment:
what do our general rational principles entail and require when applied
to the particular conditions of our sensible existence? This is the issue
that comes to the fore in the Metaphysics of Morals, where Kant investigates the duties of justice and virtue that result when we apply the
general principles of morality to the particular circumstances of our
lives as embodied creatures with physical needs, living on the finite
surface of a sphere any region of which may be reached from any other.
Here Kant shows that it is only when the general principles of practical
18. See Eichler, chap. 2 of this book.
81
82
Paul Guyer
84
Adrian R. Morrison
85
with their sticks are being replaced with septuagenarians swinging along on
their plastic hips. And rare are these days, the patients that once were seen
dying from an infected mastoid, struggling for breath in the last stages of heart
failure, or dying from appendicitis, leukaemia, pneumonia, or bacterial endocarditis. (Paton 1993, 93)
We can thank the animals used in biomedical research for the scientific advances that abolished these horrific conditionsnot only
animals, of course, because a variety of methods have always been
needed and used. The suggestion that we are not justified in using
animals to alleviate our illsa pursuit promoted by a few philosophers, Singers (1975, 1994) and Tom Regans (1983) being the most
prominent among these claimsis nonsensical when viewed from the
perspective of a biologist like me. Conservation writer Richard Conniff,
writing on issues of wildlife management, offered this bold assessment:
Those espousing the view that humans have no right to interfere with
animal life have elevated ignorance of the natural world almost to the
level of a philosophical principle (Conniff 1990, 32). In other words,
there are times when philosophy just must confront biologic reality: all
organisms struggle to stay alive, and we humans will do so. To be sure,
one can joust intellectually with philosophers, but one must be careful
to keep in mind biologic reality, and to challenge all to do the same. I
will offer some answers to philosophical objections to the human use
of animals, but first I wish to say something about our relations with
them in the real world.
Humankind always has been intimately involved with animals, very
often in a nonbenign way. We have eaten them, and they have eaten
us. The latter is a rarity now, but the smallest of them (worms and
protozoa, and their primitive cousinsviruses and bacteria, often
carried to us by the larger animals around us) continue to sicken and
kill us. Think of rabid raccoons.
Animals, depending on the particular species, have, in turn, benefited from their association with us, beginning with the warmth of the
hearth and extending to the relief from disease provided by modern
veterinary medicine. Although we generally dominate the animals that
are of evident private and public ethical concernI speak of those we
regard as sentient and capable of suffering in some mannerwe are
not all-powerful after all: seemingly uncontrollable suburban deer
come readily to mind. And our ethical concern must ultimately extend
to all animals, for we hold in our hands the fate of countless species as
we advance our material interests.
86
Adrian R. Morrison
87
88
Adrian R. Morrison
89
is cruel and useless, even as they continue to benefit from that research,
puts them in an ethical bind.
A number of scholars have countered both Singer and Regan (Fox
1986; Leahy 1994; Petrinovich 1999; Scruton 2000; Cohen and Regan
2001; Parker 2003), and I too have discussed their ideas at length
(Morrison 2001b); hence I need to comment only briefly here. It troubles
me that Singer has so utterly misrepresented the contributions of
animal-based biomedical research in his demeaning chapter in Animal
Liberation (Russell and Nicoll 1996; Petrinovich 1999). From a utilitarian
perspective, this was a clever ploy, helping to tilt the balance when
weighing relative benefits for different parties. Singer seems disturbingly ready to dispense with inconvenient forms of human life. For
him, a baby becomes a person protected under the law only after reaching around a month of age. He reasons that parents with a deformed
or mentally defective infant, one with hemophilia or Down syndrome,
to use his examples, would be justified in rejecting this nonperson
and then seeking to have a normal infant (Singer 1994, 212214). Human
culture can barely accept the deliberate termination of human life in
the womb; many believe abortion to be unethical; and deliberate infanticide, criminal. I would rather argue that an ethical society should
reject such facile solutions, even though I do recognize that severely
impaired newborns, as well as patients in a terminal state, are allowed
to die when all hope is vanished. The ethical society, though, resists
callously convenient solutions. Human beings have evolved as social
beings that owe their greatest allegiance to fellow humans. That is why
most are repulsed by the idea of rejecting central human needs in
response to the extreme demands of the animal rights/liberation
movement.
Concern for animal welfare and for antivivisectionist sentiments is
not new, of course. England led the way in the nineteenth century, promulgating and implementing laws to protect animals from gratuitous
cruelty and to regulate vivisection on animals. Ultimately, the fervor
against research with animals waned as the benefits to humanity became
more evident. Renewed concern arose in the United States in the latter
part of the twentieth century: it began, in particular, with an expos in
a prominent magazine by a supplier of dogs for research. The story
galvanized society into action, leading to the passage of the Animal
Welfare Act in 1966 (Parker 2003). But Singers publication, in 1975, of
Animal Liberation stimulated activism and raised a wave of extreme
thought that seeks removal of all animals from human control.
90
Adrian R. Morrison
Modern Issues
Following the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center
in New York by Islamist terrorists on September 11, 2001, search dogs
performed heroically, finding living victims and human remains. Many
of these animals suffered medical problems as a result. The conjunction
of that terrible event and the efforts shown by the tireless dogs forced
a startling question into my mind: Is it ethical to continue to use a
species that has done so much in the service of mankind in ways that
inevitably harm themsay, as in biomedical research? Think of
unmatchable guide dogs and helper dogs for the disabled, comforters
of the lonely, childhood playmates, and faithful guardians. Should we
cease using some of their fellows in research? Should we exempt this
special species? This is a dangerous ideaone that is potentially devastating for some biomedical research and that admittedly would never
have entered my mind as an eager young scientist.
Unfortunately, we simply cannot abandon the use of dogs in research,
for they have a number of diseases that are useful replicas of human
disorders. Studying these dogs will bring great relief to suffering
humans. I could not deny these ailing people that reward, professionallyand, especially, ethically.
Cats are common pets and now outnumber dogs in the ordinary
household category, judging from the caseload at our veterinary hospital. As someone with two of them at home, I am well aware that cats
offer the closest thing there is to living with a wild animal. Not being
pack animals like dogs, they do not readily adhere to their owners
wishes. Community ordinances today have drastically reduced the
number of dogs running loose. Not so in the case of cats thatsolitary,
and with wandering habits and negligent ownerseventually may
become feral animals, that is, domesticated animals that have reverted
to wild habits. These animals are intruders into the environment (as
well-fed pampered cats also can be), exacting a heavy toll as predators
on other creatures. Well-meaning people argue that the colonies formed
by these cats should be allowed to exist but that their members should
be captured and neutered as a way to control the problem they raise
for local wildlife. Is this the ethical thing to do? Would it not be even
more responsible to euthanize them for the sake of those animals that
quite naturally belong to that environment?
To what uses that inevitably harm animals may we subject them,
then, as reflective, ethical beings ourselves? The answer is not easy
91
92
Adrian R. Morrison
93
94
Adrian R. Morrison
95
human injury and death as well. Yet they are beautiful creatures with
soulful eyes and graceful movements. Walt Disneys film Bambi greatly
reinforced their image as cute creatures. Consequently, they have passionate defenders who try to impede culling of deer in parks. These
true defenders of deer believe this activity to be unethical, although
their objections are never voiced in ethical terms. They are a bit more
strident. It is a simplistic view, for they would sacrifice other species
that depend on a healthy forest for one kind. I think we cannot, ethically, simply walk away from the situation created by the deer. Neither
can those who object to deer culling ignore the possibility that their
homes may have encroached on the deers habitat, contributing to
crowding and ultimately therefore to the very disruption of the ecological balance.
In another magnificent book, Dizard (1994) analyzed the ethical
complexities of this issue in a case involving the protection of forest
surrounding a reservoir that supplies the city of Boston. In danger was
the quality of water, should the forest surrounding the reservoir be
degraded by overpopulation of browsing deer. The deer were engaging
in what comes to them naturally: reproducing rapidly. The outcome
had been exacerbated by the absence of natural predators, driven away
much earlier by humans. In essence, there arose two competing views
of nature: whether to let it alone, free of human interference, or to
manage it for the benefit of humans. The latter view does not, of course,
imply rape of the landscape. It requires a sense of responsibility, an
interweaving of science and ethics: both wise management and
restrained consumption, a true bioethics in Potters sense.
A Career in Retrospect
I close by considering my career in biomedical research, which has
constantly presented ethical problems to me. First, I must answer the
question of whether using animals to understand human disease or
disability is valid and productive. Only then can I begin discussing
ethical issues. If other methods would suffice and/or the use of animals
would not help medical advances, as a few medical professionals have
falsely claimed (Morrison 2002), then the answer would be a very clear
no! The answer, however, is a resounding yesa response that has been
amply corroborated (Bliss 1982; Carroll and Overmier 2001; Paton
1993). Unfortunate as it is, those opposed to this reality are very active;
and some are physicians, who grossly distort medical history while
96
Adrian R. Morrison
97
I have controlled animals in the laboratory for more than forty years.
During that period, I have damaged parts of their brains, implanted
various recording devices, or infused drugs, ultimately killing these
animals in order to study their brains in various ways. How could I, a
veterinarian, do this when my very concern upon admission to veterinary school was the fear that, sooner or later, I would be called upon
to euthanize the very animals that as a child I had loved? As I approach
the end of my active career in the laboratory, I ponder this question
ever more profoundly. I think the ultimate reason is this: I had an
intense interest in scientific discovery. Although it would sound nicer,
a desire to cure human medical problems is not the driving force
behind much research. Such a pristine ideal would not keep one going
through long, often boring, hours in the laboratory and in the face of
discouraging failures after tedious weeks of hard work.
H. L. Mencken, an American social critic, understood this fact and
proceeded to describe a committed scientists motive in a very amusing
way. He saw the scientist as one driven by curiosity: a boundless,
almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown and not some
brummagem idea of Service. His metaphor was not the liberator
releasing slaves, the Good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog
sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes (Mencken 1982,
12). Mencken certainly describes quite accurately who I was during the
first half of my lengthy career as a neuroscientist. Although I still
possess that curiosity, my encounters with the animal rights movement
and the viciousness of the actions against scientists by some adherents
to the cause led me to reexamine what we scientists were doing. Looking
into medical history made me recognize how many good things scientists had accomplished. Then, as a spokesman for medical research, I
also encountered groups of patients, desperate for relief of their ills
and, as such, very supportive of biomedical research. Now, I am quite
focused on this charge: working against the medical ills of humanity.
Curiosity is truly in our nature, though. And we cannot be condemned for striving to unravel natures secrets. I believe that it would
be wrong, tantamount to an affront to the evolutionary process, to
waste our tediously developed, large human brains. But because our
brains allow us to be reflective, our curiosity must be accompanied
with concern for the consequences. In the case of animal-based research,
the primary consequence is harm inflicted on an animal.
Any caring scientist is ambivalent about what he does. In my case,
although I had a great desire to understand the workings of the nervous
98
Adrian R. Morrison
system, every now and then doubts would arise in my mind. Such
worry recurred every month or so for many years, and now with ever
greater frequency as the end of my scientific career nears. When using
cats in my research, the question that came to mind was Do I really
want to continue doing this [implanting electrodes in the brain,
for example] to cats? For we had cats as pets in our home as well. Yet
the answer to the question was always yes because joining my
unabashed curiosity was the idea (or hope?) that what I was doing
would provide a useful extra bit of information that might go toward
helping children, although I have yet to see that result. I am fortunate,
however, to have seen some of my basic research, indeed, lead to the
understanding of a sleep disorder, only recognized in 1986, which
occurs primarily in older men (Schenck 1993). Despite this comforting
result, I am living with the uncertainty of research: A particular experiment may rapidly prove very useful in an unforeseen way, just asand
more oftena very long and costly experiment may lead nowhere at
all.
When my curiosity begins to wane, assuming it ever could, then I
should sense I must stop. If not, I would probably be using animals for
not the best of reasons: whether to occupy my time, keep up my reputation as a scientist, or bring in grant moneya feat that my institution
would applaud. This would be unethical.
Who, then, is able to decide that it would be unethical to carry out
a particular experiment? Or, to put it another way, what evidence
should a scientist present to convince the skeptic that his experiment
should be performed? The law requires that such evidence be presented to an institutional committee before a scientist can perform any
experiment. This evidence must include demonstration that a method
not requiring the use of animals is not available. Of course, this procedure assumes that the scientist has the money needed to conduct the
experiment because, beforehand, he must have persuaded a group of
very skeptical scientists from other institutions, sitting on a review
board, that the project is worthy of grant funds (Morrison 1993). Trivial
proposals elicit no interest. Yet the burden rests primarily on the scientist, who must have personal integrity above all. The scientist is the one
who will be alone with the animal in the laboratory. Thus only ethical
behavior on his or her part can make sure that outside controls will
really work to an animals advantage. It is the individual scientist who
must decide what experiment to perform and on what species. Choices
may vary among scientists according to their individual sensibilities as
99
well as their knowledge (see Guyer, chap. 3 in this book), and the rightness of a choice may be also determined by the current level of technology. To judge all too quickly another scientists choice would bespeak
arrogance (Morrison 2001a).
Competence is the second quality a scientist must exhibit. Competence includes technical skills that will minimize pain in an animal, but
also thorough knowledge of the field of study, so that unnecessary
experiments will not be performed. Since replication of data produced
by other scientists in order to generalize the data is the essence of
scientific progress, an experiment need not necessarily lead to new
knowledge in order for it to constitute an ethical experiment.
Ending an animals life is not a problem for me anymore if the reason
is appropriate and waste is not involved. Of course, no mentally healthy
individual can actually enjoy killing an animal. I have always sensed
great regret when having to sacrifice one of my partners in the experiment. We have no evidence that animals contemplate their future
beyond short-term basic needs, however: say, looking for the next meal,
the next mate, and a way to escape evident harm. Animals can be clever
in various instances, and they can plan to a certain extent, as when a
wolf pack stations itself to force prey into the jaws of a pack mate. But
reflecting on the future of their band or plotting their own destiny is
beyond them as far as careful research to date has been able to discern
(Hauser 2000).
The ethical dilemma arises, rather, when we inflict carefully controlled pain as we do in biomedical research. Although 90 percent of
the experiments conducted do not involve pain that is beyond the level
caused by a needle during an injection or that cannot be alleviated by
anesthesia and analgesics when warranted, the neural systems that
involve the sensation of pain need to be studied as well. No other way
is available for developing painkilling drugs. Such studies are designed,
however, to permit the animal to escape pain beyond a level that is
tolerable.
Chronic pain studies, so important to people suffering from such,
present an even clearer and more intense ethical dilemma, with no easy
answer. The requirements are clear, however: to be certain the experiment is necessary, to use the minimal level of pain, to minimize the
number of animals to the lowest number consistent with scientific
validity, and to perform experiments with great skillabove all, to
remember that only the greater importance of human life can justify
these critical experiments.
100
Adrian R. Morrison
Conclusion
The interaction between animals and humans is complex and at times
terriblein both directions. On the one side, one thinks of the slaughter
of the bison on the Great Plains in the nineteenth century or, simply,
the mistreatment of a little puppy. On the other side, there are rampages of hungry elephants destroying the fields of poor African peasants and the horrible consequences of a dangerous bite inflicted by a
rabid dog. Nevertheless, with our great brains we are the ones charged
with caring for all. Animal welfare should be a priority of ours. Nevertheless, human welfare is a legitimate and very often paramount
concern. Certainly it is in the case of biomedical research. Society must
carefully consider the risks to future health should research with
animals be overly impeded by activists actions, or even by their
demands, and sometimes by the craven responses of bureaucracies to
these. We are enjoined by our intrinsic allegiance to humanity to use
animals in research while dealing with the natural empathy almost all
of us feel for them.
In considering interactions with animals in nature, we humans must
determine whether or when our actions are good, bad, or neutral.
Why, for example, is it intuitively ethical not to intervene in the death
of a gazelle caught by a cheetah on the Serengeti Plain yet unethical
not to help ducks dying because of an oil spill caused by us? How many
of those who rail against the culling of a deer herd that is overrunning
a park live in the suburban houses that have forced those deer out of
their habitat and into that park?
Nowhere is the complexity of human-animal relationships more
evident than in the definition of a species as a pet. Why do some societies keep dogs as pets while others eat them? Which society is right?
How far can we go in breeding domestic animals to suit our special
needs, let alone our whims?
Moving to the use of animals for food, we must ask ourselves how
far we can push animals to provide us with an economic source of food.
When are the benefits they derive from proper nutrition and veterinary
care overbalanced by some level of confinement? How much is society
willing, or even able, to pay for something approaching a bucolic
existence?
The simple solution of the animal rights movementseparating ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdomwill not do. Better as a
guide are the relevant thoughts of Potter (1970, 127): We are in great
101
102
Adrian R. Morrison
The Setting
In medical practice today, tests that probe the human genotype, from
germ cells to cells of the adult, living or dead, are being utilized with
rapidly increasing frequency.
The following are representative case examples of situations faced
by health professionals who utilize a genetic test:
104
Reed E. Pyeritz
105
Table 5.1
Examples of Macroethical and Microethical Issues in Genetic Testing
Macroethical Issues
Genetic determinism (Allen et al. 1978; Pyeritz et al. 1997; Pyeritz 1978)
The definition of genetic information
Ownership of genetic information (Marshal 1997)
Codes of professional ethics (Baumiller et al. 1996a, 1996b)
Directiveness of genetic counseling as a professional standard (Bernhardt 1997)
Geneticization of health care (Lippmann 1991)
Balancing research efforts and funds on determining individual genetic risks versus
reducing environmental risks for the entire population (Pollack 2002)
Choice of language and metaphors in considering and implementing policy (Searls
2002)
Maximizing cost of testing through patenting and restrictive licenses
Marketing predictive genomics panels of tests for generic conditions (e.g., heart
disease) when the actual risk associated with the genetic variation is not known
The use of population-based disease registries and DNA banks to validate genetic tests
(Ho et al. 2002; Mitka 2002)
Lack of consistency among specialty societies regarding standards of care or
approaches to specific testing situations
Determining when to begin a public health genetic screening program for a specific
disease (Petersen and Bunton 2002)
Determining the panel of mutations to be used in a screening program
Determining the populations to be offered screening
As policy, unfair discrimination in employment based on the results of genetic testing
As policy, unfair discrimination in insurance based on the results of genetic testing
(Zick et al. 2000)
Duty to recontact previous patients (Hirschhorn et al. 1999; Sharpe 2000)
Use of stored specimens for genetic research (Clayton, Steinberg, and Khoury 1995)
Microethical Issues
Dealing with nonpaternity detected serendipitously during genetic testing
Testing children for adult-onset genetic disorders for which no treatment exists
Protecting privacy and confidentiality of a patient and relatives
Preventing unfair discrimination against a patient and relatives
Informed consent for genetic testing
Directiveness of genetic counseling in an individual case:
Whether to undergo testing
How to respond to the results of the test
106
Reed E. Pyeritz
determinism?). These more global areas typically are not the provinces
of the practicing physician. Rather, the concern of the physician is, on
a daily basis, with the microethical issues that pertain to single patients
and families. This situation may change, however, as technology brings
screening to the primary care physicians office. For example, a recent
review of population screening predicts, Over the next decade or
two, it seems likely that we will screen entire populations or specific
subgroups for genetic information in order to target interventions to
individual patients that will improve their health and prevent disease
(Khoury, McCabe, and McCabe 2003).
Our discussion will focus on the microethical issues faced by the
diversity of health care practitioners today and for the near future. We
would emphasize that not even the so-called expertswhether genetic
counselors or medical geneticistsare always clear about which ethical
issues pertain in a given circumstance or how to deal with them appropriately. More importantly, as genetics enters mainstream medical practice, the levels of sensitivity to the ethical issues and sophistication
about the additional requirements imposed by these ethical issues
will diminish considerably. The potential impacts of a lack of attention
to these time-consuming and nuanced details will require formal
assessment.
Background
Among the dozen wishes for the new year identified by the editors of
the Philadelphia Inquirer four years ago was that the pell-mell pace of
advances in genetic science will slow long enough for societys ethical
and moral understanding to catch up (2003). These days, in large part
stimulated by the report of the births of human children produced by
reproductive cloning, similar sentiments can be found in a host of references in both the popular and the scientific media. Such calls for a
slowing of the pace of scientific progress, including outright moratoria, have occurred repeatedly during the past few decades, most memorably in response to fears over recombinant DNA technology (i.e.,
genetic engineering) in the early 1970s (Judson 1996), and more
recently over stem cell research. Indeed, concerns about the use and
misuse of genetics, in all of its guises, have been among the major
stimulants to the emergence and development of the entire field of bioethics (Murphy, Butzow, and Suarez-Murias 1997). For example, when
the Hastings Center, one of the preeminent bioethics think tanks in the
107
United States, was founded in 1969, its early work focused on four areas:
genetics, reproductive biology, death and dying, and consent.
A word much in the news today is genomics, a word coined in the
latter part of the twentieth century to mean the study of structure,
function, and interactions of all of the genes that constitute a species
genome. Genetics, however, is the study of inherited biologic variation,
and the term was coined by W. Bateson in the first decade of the
twentieth century. While genomics holds considerable promise for
applications to medicine, it is genetics that has both an instructive
legacy and direct relevance. We will examine the ethical issues raised
by one application of genetics in medicine, so-called genetic testing.
Even this seemingly narrow compass will emphasize a diversity of
ethical principles and practical dilemmas (Burke, Pinsky, and Press
2001; Burke 2002).
In the United States, formal applications of genetics to medical practice began in the 1950s at medical schools at Wake Forrest, Johns
Hopkins, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington. Only some three decades later would the American Board of
Medical Genetics establish accreditation standards for training programs and toward certifying examinations for health professionals
in a number of disciplines: clinical genetics (for those with medical
degrees); human genetics (for those with other doctoral degrees);
cytogenetics; biochemical genetics; immunogenetics; and genetic counseling. Within a few years, clinical molecular genetics was added. And
by 1991, the American Board of Medical Specialties recognized medical
genetics as a primary medical specialty, the final step in the long
process of full recognition by organized medicine. By 2005, forty-eight
American medical centers were accredited to train M.D. clinical geneticists, and twenty-seven programs were accredited to train genetic
counselors, who typically receive a masters of science as their terminal
degree.
Growth of these specialties has been more than matched by growth
in knowledge (Beaudet 1999). To an important degree, for instance, the
ability to understand hereditary disorders has been driven by laboratory technology (cytogenetics, enzymatic assays, analysis of nucleic
acids) (Lindee 2002). The first edition of what has become the standard
textbook in the profession, Principles and Practice of Medical Genetics,
was published in 1983 and surveyed the field in 105 chapters and 1,502
pages (Emery and Rimoin, 1983). The most recent edition, the fifth
edition, published in 2007, contains 170 chapters and 3,871 pages
108
Reed E. Pyeritz
109
certifying clinical laboratories and mandating quality control and maintenance of proficiency. Today, genetic tests for more than 700 different
conditions are commercially available (GeneClinics 2003). Hundreds of
other conditions have had their cause identified at a molecular level,
and testing is being performed in research laboratories that are not
subject to governmental regulation and should not be releasing the
results to patients, although they often do. As we will discuss, genetic
testinghowever defineddoes place special responsibilities on health
professionals, most of whom are unprepared either to recognize the
nuances of a genetic test versus any other medical test or to conduct the
requisite pretest and posttest counseling. Nonetheless, in the United
States, as of September 2002, the first direct-to-consumers marketing of
DNA-based testing for hereditary breast cancer began.
A Primer on Medical Genetics and Genetic Testing
The nongeneticist, and the nonscientist, can easily appreciate the fundamental ethical issues that we will be discussing. The context of these
issues, however, generates misery, in large part because of the nomenclature and jargon involved. Sadly, we can offer neither the fundamental scientific and medical background nor the elaborate vocabulary
here. A brief glossary can be found in table 5.2.
There has accrued an increasing realization that in all disease
there dwells some degree of genetic contribution to etiology1 and to
pathogenesis2 (Pyeritz 2003). This is most clear for those disorders
caused in large part, if not wholly, by mutations in single genes
(called Mendelian diseases) and aberrations of chromosome structure
or number. For this reason, most genetic tests have focused on these
sorts of disorders, especially in children. However, common disorders
(that typically do not become evident until adulthood) have important
genetic causes, and the actual pathogenesis of these disorders often
has its onset in childhood. Thus there is tremendous potential to
identify, at a young age, people who are likely to develop serious
disorders later in life and to begin any of a variety of approaches to
reduce or eliminate those risks. It is important at this time to emphasize
that, for most disorders, this ability represents a potential benefit of
genetic testing. There are relatively few common disorders for which
1. The study of cause.
2. The pathologic processes.
110
Reed E. Pyeritz
Table 5.2
Glossary of Genetic Terms
Allele an alternative form of a gene
Autosomes all the chromosomes except for the sex chromosomes and the
mitochondrial chromosome
Codon a three-base sequence of nucleotides that specifies an amino acid or
translational stop signal
Epigenetic nonmutational phenomena that modify gene expression, such as
methylation of a nucleotide
Exon a region of a gene that codes for protein
Genetics the study of biologic variation
Genomics the study of the functions and interactions of all the genes in the genome,
including their interactions with environmental factors
Genotype the genetic specification of an individual, reflected by the sequence of
nucleotides in DNA; can refer to all or part of the genetic information
Heterozygous having two distinct alleles at a specific locus
Homozygous having two identical alleles at a specific locus
Intron
a region of a gene that does not code for protein; usually between two exons
the percentage of those who are truly positive who test positive
Specificity the percentage of those who are truly negative who test negative
Validity with regard to a test, the conjunction of sensitivity, specificity, positive
predictive value, and negative predictive value
Source: Adapted from Guttmacher and Collins (2002).
111
Table 5.3
Indications for Genetic Testing, with Common Examples
Reproduction
Prenatal (maternal serum screening for neural tube defects and Down syndrome)
Preimplantation (chromosome aberrations in a woman of advanced maternal age;
or selecting an embryo lacking a specific mutant parental allele)
Prefertilization (enriching for sperm bearing a Y chromosome)
Carrier testing and screening (Tay-Sachs disease in Ashkenazic Jews; or cystic
fibrosis among all couples)
Newborn screening (phenylketonuria)
Diagnostic (hemochromatosis)
Presymptomatic
Predictive (Huntingtons disease)
Susceptibility (BRCA1 and the risk of breast and ovarian cancer)
112
Reed E. Pyeritz
(perpetuation of sexism and gender discrimination) as noted in the literature (Benagiano and Bianchi 1999).
Today, newer diagnostic techniques that take utmost advantage of
technology designed primarily to assist infertile couples (by way of in
vitro fertilization, for instance) enable these couples to obviate the
medical procedure of abortion by selecting embryos of a few dozen
cells (chosen for the lack of a particular defect) to be implanted.
However, such approaches do not assuage the ethical issues for those
who hold that human life begins with conception, whether in the
womb or in a petri dish.
Until recently, for all but the most common chromosome anomalies
and congenital malformations, it has not been (either technically or
economically) feasible to offer screenings to every pregnant woman or
couple interested in reproduction. In certain populations, generally
defined by ethnicity, it has been practical rather to offer screening for
carrier status (i.e., heterozygosity for a mutation that causes a recessive
disease) for specific disorders that occur at high relative incidence in
that population. For example, the standard of care today is to offer
testing to any Ashkenazic Jew interested in reproducing, to determine
his or her carrier status for Tay-Sachs disease and several other Jewish
genetic diseases (Massarik and Kaback 1981). If neither, or only one, of
the partners is a carrier, the couple is counseled that the risk of having
an affected child is quite low. For couples at a one-in-four risk of having
an affected child, many elect prenatal diagnosis and a consequent
termination of affected fetuses. The net result has been a marked
decrease in North American births of children with Tay-Sachs disease,
that is, children for whose health condition no treatment exists and who
die by the age of four years (Kaback 2000). The initial carrier screening
programs for Tay-Sachs disease were actively supported by many
Jewish congregations. The sociopolitical context and effectiveness of
carrier screening for a different ethnic disease, -thalassemia, has been
documented recently by a University of Pennsylvania faculty member
(Cowan 1993, 2008). A serious disorder of hemoglobin (anemia,
dependence on transfusions, resultant iron overload, reduced life
expectancy), -thalassemia is especially prevalent in the Mediterranean
basin. On the island of Cyprus, the costs of care of affected individuals
were staggering the economy and were projected to increase further
as newer treatments emerged. With the tacit approval of the Greek
Orthodox Church (for the southern half of the island) and the Islamic
clergy (for the Turkish northern half of the island), publicly funded
113
114
Reed E. Pyeritz
115
medical treatment for CF; that many patients lead active, productive
lives into the fourth decade or longer; that females with CF are fertile;
and that gene therapy holds the prospect for an outright cure. Still,
tensions over related issues persist to date.
Newborn Screening
Newborn screening was implemented in the 1960s, when it became
clear that early detection of the rare inborn error of metabolism known
as phenylketonuria (PKU) could be treated by instituting a diet low in
the amino acid phenylalanine. If the diet was begun in the first month
of life, the profound mental retardation characteristic of the disease
could be prevented. The screening involves obtaining a blood specimen
from an infant during the first days of life and testing for elevated
phenylalanine. The test is designed to be sensitive but not specific:
many false positives ensue and those patients identified on the initial
screening have to be examined more carefully in follow-up testing. A
successful program requires near-total ascertainment and rapid laboratory testing, as well as effective communication with the pediatrician,
accurate testing of babies who test positive, and not least, long-term
management in a metabolic clinic of truly (table 5.4) affected children
(Millington 2002). The program for PKU has been shown to be effective
Table 5.4
Requirements for a Genetic Screening Program
The disease is a burden (illness, disability, death) in the population(s) to be screened.
The prevalence and burden should be quantified.
The screening test is sufficiently sensitive to detect the vast majority of cases.
Follow-up testing is sufficiently valid to eliminate false positives.
The positive and negative predictive values of the entire testing process are favorable.
The testing is relatively safe.
A program is in place to confirm the diagnosis in cases detected in the first screen.
Treatment is available to affect the clinical outcome favorably.
Treatment is relatively safe and well tolerated.
The entire program is cost-effective.
The entire program is acceptable to the population(s) to be screened.
Appropriate safeguards for the following are in place in advance of initiating the
program:
Informed consent
Freedom from coercion
Confidentiality
Discrimination
Stigmatization
116
Reed E. Pyeritz
117
118
Reed E. Pyeritz
knows automatically that his father also carries the mutation. Now,
have the fathers privacy and/or the very confidentiality of the fact
been violated? Should the risk of such a violation have precluded the
testing of the son? Is the primary-care physician capable of dealing
with survivor guilt in those found not to be carrying the mutation for
which they were at 50 percent risk (Huggins et al. 1992)? In another
real-life example, a couple has a ten-year-old child, and the mother has
just been diagnosed with HD; the parents request to have their child
tested. Legally, the child cannot give consent and is probably too young
to give informed assent. Moreover, if the child carries the mothers
mutation, how will that knowledge affect the upbringing of the child?
Has the childs privacy been violated in the process (Wertz, Fanos, and
Reilly 1994; Nelson et al. 2001)?
Assessing Susceptibility to Disease
Assessing susceptibility to disease is the final indication for genetic
testing. In this case, the person being tested may be at increased
risk for a disease that occurs with some frequency in the general population. If the person is found to carry a particular mutation, the risk of
developing the disease increases, but it rarely reaches 100 percent. Most
of the diseases for which genetic susceptibility has been defined at the
molecular level are so common that by chance alone more than one
case will have occurred in a single family during the three or four
generations recollected in a typical family history. Thus familial occurrence alone, especially if the affected relatives are distantly related, is
no guarantee that strong genetic risk is at work. Nonetheless, when
several close relatives have developed the same disease, especially at
a relatively early age, strong suspicion for genetic susceptibility should
be entertained (Welch and Burke 1998). Over the past few years alone,
an increasing number of genetic susceptibilities to common diseases
have been described also at the molecular level.
One field in which molecular explanations have generated intense
research, and have retained considerable attention by the media, is
cancer. Here, breast cancer has been at the forefront. When either of
her two genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 is mutated, there is statistically significant risk for a woman to develop breast and ovarian cancer; and
mutations in the BRCA2 gene cause 10 percent of all breast cancers in
men. There are a few relatively common mutations in Ashkenazic Jews,
but other patients can have any among hundreds of mutations that
119
120
Reed E. Pyeritz
The broad scope of the indications for genetic testing suggests that
it is not just for the occasional patient. The very recognition of this fact
raises a dilemma. If all of those who would qualify for genetic testing
should require pre- and posttest counseling, who will provide such?
Genetic counselorsthat is, masters-level, board-certified health professionalsare the obvious choice, but they are relatively few in number
(around 2,000 in the United States, in 2005). Thus the obligation must
fall to a large extent on other health care providers, especially the physicians who order the genetic tests. This fact alone makes it clear that
medical genetics is truly the province of all health care professionals.
Unfortunately, few health care professionals have been trained about
or have experience with modern genetic concepts and technologies
(Greendale and Pyeritz 2001).
121
122
Reed E. Pyeritz
123
124
Reed E. Pyeritz
125
126
Reed E. Pyeritz
127
limit access to only the best insured or the wealthy. Thus those with
the disease, the very persons for whom the test was intended, often are
left unable to access it. This situation becomes particularly galling
to patients, to their families, and to volunteer support groups of
individuals who originally contributed samples to the faculty member
in whose expert laboratory requisite fundamental research was conducted and who, in great part thanks to them, sees a quarterly royalty
check. In an attempt to minimize the impact of such situations (which
are the rule rather than the exception), several professional societies
have begun educating their members as to their need to be proactive
when discussing access with their institutions offices of technology
transfer.
Effects of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising
Many surveys suggest that consumers (especially women) demand
access to advances in genetics directly advertised even if their personal
physicians are ambivalent, neutral, or even opposed (Benkendorf et al.
1997). Some have argued that such advertising is, in essence, a denial
of a patients right to adequate health carein particular, to pretest
counseling felt to be essential to proper utilization (Wertz 1999).
What Is the Endgame?
On the occasion of receiving the 2002 Harold Berger Award from the
school of engineering of the University of Pennsylvania, Craig Venter
stated, I predict that within a decade parents will have the option to
get the genetic code of their baby on a CD-ROM. A number of comments are pertinent. First, his company has a stated business plan of
being able to provide such a genetic blueprint for US$1,000presumably in nominal 2002 dollars. Second, Venters suggestions that parents
will have the option of obtaining this information for a price have
led some to counterargue that, in the very interests of public health, of
preventive medicine, and of reducing long-term medical costs, such
information should not be optional. Third, so far no one has a clue as
to whether a decade from now the pediatrician will be able to deal with
a printout of 6.4 billion nucleotides any better than today. Fourth, the
educational programs required to empower the physician, even if we
knew what the information meant, are not yet in place. And finally,
even if our familys health insurance plan agreed to pay the US$1,000
in inflation-adjusted currency, would we really want them to?
128
Reed E. Pyeritz
References
Allen, E., B. Beckwith, J. Beckwith, S. Chorover, D. Culber, M. Duncan, S. Gould,
R. Hubbard, H. Inouye, A. Leeds, R. Lewontin, C. Mandansky, L. Miller, R. E. Pyeritz,
M. Rosenthal, and H. Schreier (1978) Against Sociobiology, in A. L. Caplan, Editor,
The Sociobiology Debate, pp. 259264, New York: Harper & Row.
American Society of Human Genetics (1996) Statement on Informed Consent for Genetic
Research, American Journal of Human Genetics, 59:471474.
Annas, G. J., and S. Elias (1992) Gene Mapping: Using Law and Ethics as Guides, Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press.
Baumiller, R. C., S. Comley, G. Cunningham, et al. (1996a) Code of Ethical Principles
for Genetics Professionals, American Journal of Medical Genetics, 65:177178.
(1996b) Code of Ethical Principles for Genetics Professionals: An Explication,
American Journal of Medical Genetics, 65:179183.
Beaudet, A. L. (1999) Presidential Address: Making Genomic Medicine a Reality, American Journal of Human Genetics, 64:113.
Benagiano, G., and P. Bianchi (1999) Sex Preselection: An Aid to Couples or a Threat to
Humanity? Human Reproduction, 14:868870.
Benkendorf, J. L., J. E. Reutenauer, C. A. Hughes, N. Eads, J. Willison, M. Powers, and
C. Lerman (1997) Patients Attitudes about Autonomy and Confidentiality in Genetic
Testing for Breast-Ovarian Cancer Susceptibility, American Journal of Medical Genetics,
73:296303.
Bernhardt, B. A. (1997) Empirical Evidence That Genetic Counseling Is Directive: Where
Do We Go from Here? American Journal of Human Genetics, 60:1720.
Billings, P. R., M. A. Kohn, M. de Cuevas, J. Beckwith, J. S. Alper, and M. R. Natowicz
(1992) Discrimination as a Consequence of Genetic Testing, American Journal of Human
Genetics, 50:476482.
Boehm, C. D., and H. H. Kazazian, Jr. (1990) The Molecular Basis of Genetic Disease,
Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 1:180187.
British Medical Association (1998) Human Genetics: Choice and Responsibility, Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press.
Burke, W. (2002) Genetic Testing, New England Journal of Medicine, 347:18671875.
Burke, W., L. E. Pinsky, and N. A. Press (2001) Categorizing Genetic Tests to Identify
Their Ethical, Legal and Social Implications, American Journal of Medical Genetics,
106:233240.
Burley, J., Editor (1998) The Genetic Revolution and Human Rights, Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Campbell, E. G., B. R. Clarridge, M. Gokhale, L. Birenbaum, S. Hilgartner, N. A. Holtzman, and D. Blumenthal (2002) Data Withholding in Academic Genetics: Evidence from
a National Survey, Journal of the American Medical Association, 287:473480.
Caulfield, T. (1999) Gene Testing in the Biotech Century: Are Physicians Ready? Journal
de lAssociation Mdicale Canadienne, 161:11221123.
129
Clarke, A., Editor (1998) Genetic Testing of Children, Oxford, UK: Bios Scientific.
Clarke, A. (2002) Ethical and Social Issues in Clinical Genetics, in D. L. Rimoin, J. M.
Conner, R. E. Pyeritz, and B. Korf, Editors, Principles and Practice of Medical Genetics, 4th
ed., pp. 897928, Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.
Clayton, E. W., K. K. Steinberg, and M. J. Khoury (1995) Consensus Statement: Informed
Consent for Genetic Research on Stored Tissue Samples, Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA), 274:17861792.
Collins, F. S. (1999) Shattuck Lecture: Medical and Societal Consequences of the Human
Genome Project, New England Journal of Medicine, 341:2837.
Cowan, R. S. (1993) Aspects of the History of Prenatal Diagnosis, Fetal Diagnosis and
Therapy, 8 (Supplement 1):1017.
(2008) Heredity and Hope: The Case for Genetic Screening. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Cunningham, G. (2002) The Science and Politics of Screening Newborns, New England
Journal of Medicine, 346:10841085.
Diamond, Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks v. Chakrabarty (1980) 447 U.S. 303; 65 L.
Ed. 2d 144.
Emery A. E. H., and Rimoin D. L. Editors (1983) Principles and Practice of Medical Genetics,
Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.
Garver, K. L., and B. Garver (1991) Eugenics: Past, Present, and the Future, American
Journal of Human Genetics, 49:11091118.
(1994) The Human Genome Project and Eugenic Concerns, American Journal of
Human Genetics, 54:148158.
GeneClinics (2003) http://www.geneclinics.org/.
Giardiello, F. M., J. D. Brensinger, G. M. Peterson, et al. (1997) The Use and Interpretation of Commercial APC Gene Testing for Familial Adenomatous Polyposis, New
England Journal of Medicine, 336:823827.
Gillham, N. W. (2001) A Life of Sir Francis Galton, New York: Oxford University Press.
Greendale, K., and R. E. Pyeritz (2001) Empowering Primary Care Health Professionals
in Medical Genetics: How Soon? How Fast? How Far? American Journal of Medical
Genetics, 106:223232.
Grody, W. W., G. R. Cutting, K. W. Klinger, C. S. Richards, M. S. Watson, and R. J. Desnick
(2001) Laboratory Standards and Guidelines for Population-Based Cystic Fibrosis
Carrier Screening, Genetics in Medicine, 3:149154.
Grody, W. W., and R. E. Pyeritz (1999) Report Card on Molecular Testing: Room for
Improvement? Journal of the American Medical Association, 281:845847.
Guttmacher, A. E., and F. S. Collins (2002) Genomic MedicineA Primer, New England
Journal of Medicine, 347:15121520.
Guttmacher, A. E., F. S. Collins, and R. H. Carmona (2004) The Family HistoryMore
Important Than Ever, New England Journal of Medicine, 351:23332336.
130
Reed E. Pyeritz
131
132
Reed E. Pyeritz
Pollack, R. (2002) Gene Maps Lead Medicine down the Wrong Road, Perspectives in
Biology and Medicine, 45:4345.
Pyeritz, R. E. (1978) Is Study of the XYY Karyotype Possible? in J. Buckley, Editor,
Genetics Now? Ethical Issues in Genetic Research, pp. 199224, Washington, DC: University
of America.
(1992) A Revolution in Medicine Like No Other, FASEB Journal, 6:27612766.
[FASEB = Federation of American Scientists of Experimental Biology.]
(1997) Family History and Genetic Risk Factors: Forward to the Future (editorial), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 278:12841285.
(1998) Medical Genetics: End of the Beginning or Beginning of the End? Genetic
Medicine, 1:5660.
(2003) Medical Genetics, in L. M. Tierney, Jr., S. J. McPhee, and M. A. Papadakis,
Editors, Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment 2003, pp. 16431666, New York: Lange
Medical Books/McGraw Hill.
Pyeritz, R. E., H. Schreier, C. Madansky, L. Miller, and J. Beckwith (1997) The XYY Male:
The Making of a Myth, in Ann Arbor Science for the People Editorial Collective, Editor,
Biology as a Social Weapon, pp. 86100, Minneapolis: Burgess.
Rai, A. K., and R. S. Eisenberg (2003) Bayh-Dole Reform and the Progress of Biomedicine, American Scientist, 91:5259.
Rimoin, D. L., J. M. Conner, R. E. Pyeritz, and B. Korf, Editors (2007a) Principles and
Practice of Medical Genetics, 5th ed., Philadelphia: Elsevier.
(2007b) Nature and Frequency of Genetic Disease, in D. L. Rimoin, J. M. Conner,
R. E. Pyeritz, and B. Korf, Editors, Principles and Practice of Medical Genetics, 4th ed., pp.
5559, Philadelphia: Elsevier.
Rothenberg, K. H., and S. F. Terry (2002) Before Its Too LateAddressing Fear of
Genetic Information, Science, 297:196197.
Rothstein, M. A., and M. R. Anderlik (2001) What Is Genetic Discrimination and When
and How Can It Be Prevented? Genetic Medicine, 3:354358.
Royal College of Physicians Committees on Clinical Genetics and on Ethical Issues in
Medicine (1991) Ethical Issues in Clinical Genetics, London: Royal College of Physicians.
Searls, D. B. (2002) The Language of Genes, Nature, 420:211217.
Sharpe, N. F. (2000) The Duty to Recontact: Benefit and Harm, American Journal of
Human Genetics, 65:12011204.
Thompson, A. K., and R. F. Chadwick (1999) Genetic Information: Acquisition, Access and
Control, New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Venter, J. C., M. D. Adams, E. W. Myers, et al. (2001) The Sequence of the Human
Genome, Science, 291:13041351. [Erratum, Science, 292:1838.]
Watson, J. D., and F. H. C. Crick (1953) Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure
for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, Nature, 171:737738.
Watson, M. S., R. J. Desnick, W. W. Grody, M. T. Mennuti, B. W. Popovich, and C. S.
Richard (2002) Cystic Fibrosis Carrier Screening: Issues in Implementation, Genetic
Medicine, 4:407409.
133
Welch, H. G., and W. Burke (1998) Uncertainties in Genetic Testing for Chronic Disease,
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 280:15251527.
Wertz, D. C. (1998) Eugenics Is Alive and Well: A Survey of Genetic Professionals around
the World, Scientific Ethics, 11:493510.
(1999) Genetic Discrimination: Results of a Survey of Genetics Professionals,
Primary Care Physicians, Patients and Public, Health Law Review, 7:78.
(2001) Preconception Sex Selection: A Question of Consequences, American
Journal of Bioethics, 1:3637.
(2002a) Did Eugenics Ever Die? Nature Reviews Genetics, 3:408.
(2002b) Genetic DiscriminationAn Overblown Fear? Nature Review of
Genetics, 3:496.
Wertz, D. C., J. H. Fanos, and P. R. Reilly (1994) Genetic Testing for Children and Adolescents: Who Decides? Journal of the American Medical Association, 272:875881.
Wilkie, T. (1993) Perilous Knowledge: The Human Genome Project and Its Implications,
London: Faber & Faber.
Yuan, B., J. P. Thomas, Y. von Kodolitsch, and R. E. Pyeritz (1999) Comparison of Heteroduplex Analysis, Direct Sequencing and Enzyme Mismatch Cleavage for Detecting
Mutations in a Large Gene, FBN1, Human Mutation, 14:440446.
Zick, C. D., K. R. Smith, R. N. Mayer, and J. R. Bokin (2000) Genetic Testing, Adverse
Selection and the Demand for Life Insurance, American Journal of Medical Genetics,
93:2939.
136
David R. Williams
137
was the basis of Jungs (1921, 44) original distinction between introvert and extravert. Despite the mystery of its origins and significance, most people assign some degree of importance to their experience
of a private inner world.
The third world of sentience is the world of meaningful thingsa
world of physical objects invested with subjective value based on what
they mean. Because outer and inner worlds converge on the objects of
this world, outer and inner realities are brought into subjective alignment by them. The physical form of meaningful things can mingle
outer and inner worlds palpably as lovers do or symbolically as flags
and sacraments do. Meaningful things bring outer and inner worlds
into alignment, and actions taken toward them have consequences in
both. The world of meaningful things commonly attracts a great deal
of our attention, because its objects often present options for action
whose significances in outer and inner worlds are hard to reconcile.
Head and heart are often at odds when it comes to choosing a course
of action, and it is for this reason that romantic attachments are wisely
deplored in the workplace: the power of ones very own inner-world
representation of a particular coworker detracts from ones professional evaluation of that coworkers job-specific capacity to perform a
task.
The fourth essential aspect of sentience is the experience of volitionof being able to will, choose, or initiate action. Volition makes no
sense in outer-world terms, where cause and effect apparently reign
supreme. As a phenomenon of private experience, however, volition is
a strong, salient, even prized aspect of our awareness. We feel, we
sense, we commit ourselves to courses of action both behavioral and
cognitive. We experience having a say in what our bodies do and a
voice in the issues that occupy our thoughts. To feel unwillingly out of
control of mind or body is upsetting; to believe one is a robot, a causeand-effect machine1 devoid of autonomous capacity for personal
responsibility for what we think or do, is a high sign of mental
disorder.
Just what underlies the sense of volitionwhether our ability to will
and choose is an illusion or reflects the reality of our private existenceis as hidden from us as is the true reality underlying the other
three worlds of our experience. Volition is a compelling perception, and
without it, duty and responsibility are meaningless. Absent volition,
1. See Guyer (2008).
138
David R. Williams
139
Acting
Sovereign Self
Experiencing
Awareness
ss
ss
ne
are
Aw
tion
ne
Att
en
Enemy
Lover
en
Att
Friend
Partner
are
Flag
Self
Sacrament
Aw
tion
Attention
Perceived
inner world
Output to mind
Combiner module
Constructor module
Perceived
outer world
Mind
Brain
Spiritual
Body
Genomic
Physical
Figure 6.1
The Phenomenological Map and Ancillary Realms
140
David R. Williams
rectangle to reflect the fact that, while a variety of distinctions regarding these entities are made by several disciplines, the distinctions are
not salient at the phenomenological level of the sovereign self, and thus
do not require further specification on a phenomenological map.
A one-way arrow connects the oval of the sovereign self to the shaded
rectangle of the mind. Labeled Output to Mind, this arrow represents
the impact of volition, of acts of will, on cognitive and behavioral processes.
The feedback loop between the sovereign-self oval and the mind rectangle is completed by the three perceived worlds of experience.
The Ego and the Map
The phenomenological map is not a map of the Freudian ego because
it makes a sharp distinction between the rectangle labeled Mind and
the oval labeled Sovereign Self. The distinction between mind and
sovereign self is at the heart of EH psychologys focus on sentience
and volition. While EH psychology does agree with Freuds goal
of understanding the mind/brain system physically and computationally, it departs from that commitment where the sovereign self is
concerned: neither sentience nor volition fits comfortably within any
physicalist or cause-and-effect scheme, and neither, a fortiori, does
phenomenology.
Might the difference in kind between the phenomena of awareness
(sentience and volition) and the rule-governed cognitive processes of
the brain be a matter of wishful thinking, some soft-minded, muddleheaded, and slightly pathetic hope that there is more to being human
than there is to being a machine? Might the distinction be gratuitous?
Maybe not: the architecture of contemporary computerslaptops to
desktops to mainframesoffers reason to think otherwise.2
The term computer implies a computing engine (say, a Turing
machine) andin complex modern machinesincludes the necessary
presence of a supervisor system. A desktop computers supervisor
system automatically adjusts the allocation of computing elements to
the demands of the problems presented to it. Larger machines, in addition to an automatic supervisor module, likely are subordinate to a
human system administrator, who controls resource allocations
directly. Some of the system administrators adjustments to the computing network reflect considerations that have nothing to do with
2. See Krippendorff (2008).
141
efficient operation of the machine per se but reflect the politics of the
organization that owns the machine: the egos of management, the
perceived importance of problems, the expense of computer time, and
so on. Matters like these are outside of purely computational issues and
cannot be inferred from study of machine behavior alone.3 There is no
way to tell if adjustments to a computing network have been generated
wholly by modules within it or by a human systems administrator. And
there is no way of telling, behaviorally, whether the sovereign self is
just another mental module, as the materialistic Freudian view would
hold, or represents an entirely different type of administrator. Each
sovereign self is free to decide!
The important distinction between the computational engine and its
administrator is, surprisingly, captured in one of the working concepts
that have evolved from the practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy4the distinction between the observing ego and the participating
ego. Hopefully, the participating ego is the rational actor.5 The observing ego stands apart: it can report on what seems, consciously, to be
going on. In analytic sessions, both patient and analyst work primarily
with their respective observing egos. The patient uses the observing
ego to report the forces and feelings that lead to actions and decisionswhether perceived at the time as voluntary or habitualeven
as the analyst is using the observing ego to detect and manage the
countertransferences6 that are likely to arise in the course of the
analytic hour.
The concept of the participating ego extends to both mind and
sovereign self, because both play rolesalbeit rather significantly contrasting onesin behavior. Within the phenomenological system, the
3. The situation is exactly analogous to the glass part-full or part-empty conundrum
the question cannot be answered by physical measurement, but only according to the
interests of the perceiver. Whether emptiness versus fullness, pleasing versus poisonous, or tasty versus vile is at issue cannot be established by physically examining a
vessel and its contents. The framing of the question depends not on what is seen, but on
the mind of the beholder. The question begins in the mind of the observer, not the objective reality of whatever is observed.
4. A form of psychotherapy that embodies Freuds deterministic system and traces
current concerns to events that happened in the individuals past.
5. Specifically, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the part of the mind
which, acted upon by both the id and the superego (ego ideal), mediates with the
environment.
6. The term refers to the unresolved conflicts that the patient stirs up in the analyst.
When recognized, these provide the analyst with valuable clues about the forces at work
in the analysis.
142
David R. Williams
aspect of the participating ego included in the mind is, like all the other
functions of brain and computational mind, taken to be governed by
cause-and-effect rules and thus not truly voluntary. The aspect of participating ego included in the sovereign self involves true agency: the
capacity to initiate behavior for its own reasons. As the active agent
overseeing the minds operations, the sovereign self therefore is the
aspect of a person that can be held legally, morally, and ethically responsible for that persons actions. And like any other sovereign, of course,
the sovereign self has only limited power to govern events7 and has a
duty to take into account the expectable consequences of actions freely
chosen.
The division of the ego into observing and participating parts is a
functional distinction. Despite its origins in psychoanalytic practice,
this distinction is phenomenologically meaningful to most people
because it refers to familiar states of consciousness: self-reflection, on
the one hand, and active, truly voluntary engagement in the process of
living, on the other. Likewise, the incorporation of both ego functions
into a sovereign self that stands outside the mind, quite the way a
system administrator stands outside a computing engine, is also phenomenologically comfortable; it accords well with the everyday subjective experience that provides the perspective of this chapter. As
sovereign self is to mind, so is pilot to aircraft, rider to horse, driver to
car. And in each case, the functioning agentsovereign self, pilot, rider,
or driversometimes simply observes the goings on, intervening only
occasionally. From the phenomenological perspective, these experiencing and acting operations appear to be seamlessly coordinated.
There is no need to parse the territory of subjective experience further,
and indeed it may be impossible to do so.
Beyond Sovereign Self Experience
The three lowermost terms appearing in the box at the bottom of the
phenomenological map bear no specific relationship to each other or
to the contents of the mind region of the map. Hidden from phenomenological view, they impact the sovereign self only indirectly, through
7. As legend has it, King Canute, who commanded the tides to stand still, knowing all
too well that he would not be heeded, engaged in that act as a means of putting a halt
to the exaggerations of his sovereign powers by sycophantic subordinates. This myth
provides a suitable example, almost a graphic illustration, of my meaning in this
instance.
143
144
David R. Williams
145
take responsibility for the personal identity that has been forged
voluntarily in a partnership between mind and sovereign self and that
must continue to be expressed in a way that honors the still-active
actualizing process, so that it may produce an experience that conveys
13. A polite name for amateur golfers redoing, and not counting, an errant shot.
14. Unlike, for example, at the time of the midlife crisis, when a makeover still may
seem possible for some.
146
David R. Williams
some spiritual sense and world order, no matter how dearly paid
for.
find full and sufficient value in the ethos that played a role in the
individuals social identity: enough to acknowledge that the style of
integrity provided by it was adequate in guiding the individuals
moral paternity of the personal life voluntarily lived.
147
148
David R. Williams
149
The parts of a complex entity are all in the same boatthey share
a common fate in terms of life and death, and reproduction. Wright
casts this view in game-theoretical terms, pointing out that the parts of
a whole necessarily relate to each other in non-zero-sum, cooperative,
fashion, and not in a winner-takes-all type of contention that may have
existed before the parts joined into a new, more complex, more internally more interdependent, whole. He remarks that iterative games
favor non-zero-sum relationshipsif individual gains and losses across
single repetitions are kept within broad, reasonable, and not extravagant limits.19
150
David R. Williams
151
principles. What is the point of adding sovereign self concerns to discourse on ethics?
The answer lies in the functional relation of ethics to ethos, and thus
in ethics relevance to the sovereign selfs task of taking ethos as well
as the individual actualization process into account as it forms a full
ego identity. Through ethics as a body of abstract imperatives transmitted by an ethos, the sovereign self represents these imperatives in the
particulars of social identity. When ethical imperatives are integrated
with the equally necessary demands of the individuals actualizing
process, the sovereign self has opened the way to satisfying the remaining tasks of ego development, ultimately achieving ego integrity. The
sovereign selfs demand on ethics, then, is that its principles be formulated in a manner that provides the ethos with behaviorally prescriptive expectations on all who share it. This satisfies the egos need to
take the consequences of actions into account.
If social identity is inconsistent with personal identity, the sovereign
self has a hopeless task: now elements of the two forms of identity are
at war, and the sovereign self must hence prioritize and adjudicate,
rather than reconcile and integratein essence, thereby, recapitulating
the similarly hopeless task of the Freudian egos need to adjudicate
between the interests of the superego and the id. By contrast, and in
concert with Eriksons view of ego integrity as the final sequel to individual identity formation, the EH system can offer a possibility that is
not hopeless at all: an ethical principle that is compatible with ego
integrity and capable of representation in an ethos that moderates or
eliminates the destructive alternatives that appear to be bearing down
upon us.
Social identitydrawn from ethos, the basis on which culture is
perpetuatedplays a clear role in the viability of the human species
and its capacity to adapt, survive, and overcome. Likely, it will be
formed around an ethical principle that guides the voluntary conduct
of individuals toward a society worth living in.
A Concrete Example
From a phenomenological EH perspective, based on the foregoing,
a reexamination of ethics would therefore focus on the possibility
of developing a prescription for ethical practice that might serve as
a prime constituent of an evolving ethos. As an example of one
such constituent, I will propose a principle that satisfies the ethical
152
David R. Williams
153
154
David R. Williams
The rewards of a successful gamble are ample, and worth the effort,
while the penalty if the gamble is wrong is not likely to be worse than
the disaster that looms if there is no major effort to reformulate the
current ethos from which the destructive forces that confront us have
emerged.
Is This Example of an EH Ethic Realistic?
Little is gained by supposing that the EH ethic of ego integrity
embedded in an ethos and a supportive communityis less realistic
than the cataclysmic alternatives it rises to counter. This ethical principle provides a promising starting point from which a workable
ethic, of the kind that is needed now, can be developed: if anything
resembling the posited EH actualizing process can be identified and
supported in a substantial number of individual lives, the process
should prove capable of guiding individual growth from ego identity
to ego integrity, fulfilling the ethical principles positive promise of
contributing to an emergent and nonlethal social order. Whereas a
direct inquiry involving a multigenerational study in model cultures
would be repellant and grandiose, there fortunately do exist avenues
of research that could be pursued under much more modest requirements and circumstances.
Some examples of appropriate and potentially important areas of
inquiry could include the following interrogations:
Does the phenomenological map satisfy Sullivans one-genus postulate, and successfully describe some common features of the territory
of human awareness? Are these features recognizable in all stages of
adult life and in a wide variety of cultures? In other words, is the
phenomenological map generally descriptive of human experience?
Whatever implications might be drawn about the purpose of consciousness or human nature, if the mapping holds, is a separate questionthe implications of the phenomenological map could be developed
by investigation of further questions; some, like those that follow.
Is communication at the sovereign self level meaningful and engaging when it involves individuals situated very differently along the
spectrum of human talents and abilities? This question goes to the
feasibility of establishing a community of sovereign selves, each dedicated to empowering the others efforts to honor their individual
endeavors to self-actualize. One way to explore this would be to
155
compare the effectiveness of task-focused groups that honor the sovereign self perspective of each member with the effectiveness of taskoriented groups that do not. It would be instructive reliably to assess
bonding among diverse categories of individuals within particular
communities as a function of whether or not each takes the sovereign
self perspective of the others seriously, as EH theory requires.
156
David R. Williams
157
158
David R. Williams
The basic thought I would like to convey is this. In line with the work
of Francis Fukuyama (1995) and Adam Seligman (1997), it is precisely
at moments of uncertainty about the future and when extant norms
and existing obligations somehow appear to have lost traction in
predicting behavior that trust is essential. In the dynamic global
economy in which we live, new products and new services are emerging daily, driven by the great engine of innovation, modern capitalism.
Markets are the essential institution by which such products and services are financed, produced, and sold. To be sure, not every detail is
specified, let alone transparent, in a market transaction. A great deal
of what is necessary for markets to work efficiently arises from an
underlying trust on the part of market participants that the products
being produced and sold, as well as the methods of payment for
them, are governed by reasonably honest people who adhere to basic
principles of integrity. When the foundations of trust disappear,
markets themselves become unwieldy or cease to operate altogether.
The resulting erosion of the efficiency of markets and trade can significantly affect the global economy that produces the necessary output to
sustain the 6 billion souls on our planet, with huge consequences for
well-being.
These thoughts are not just abstract musings on my part. Many
researchers have pointed out the importance of trust and equity in
interpersonal relationships. Even economics, the dismal science,
has noted the import of trust as an essential element of social
capital, joining other elements of physical and human capital as the
building blocks of an economys ability to create and sustain value.
For example, Knack and Keefer (1997) use attitudinal surveys to
demonstrate empirically that certain measures of trust (derived from
their surveys) have surprisingly strong relationships with economic
160
Paul R. Kleindorfer
161
these to the highest bidder. The reader may argue that the reason for
such trust is the thought that if the storeowner did engage in such
tactics, law enforcement agencies would readily discover the misdeed
and exercise such severe sanctions on the owner that, in anticipation
of this result, no rational person (or owner) would undertake such
activities. This confidence (as Adam Seligman would define it) in the
institutions that govern the market is what allows us to go to stores
and supermarkets even when we do not know the owners or employees of these establishments. But note the key issue here. If we have to
rely on the credible threat of punishment for wrongdoing to assure
compliance with reasonable and fair business practices, and if this is
the only way to assure such practices, then the size of the regulatory
force assuring monitoring and compliance will have to be much larger
than it would under the rather more appealing scenario in which most
store owners can be trusted to do the right thing because of their sense
of moral obligation and the personal fulfillment they feel from acting
according to this sense.
Consider the issue of product quality and safety. We purchase canned
or packaged goods even though few of us, if any, think of the infrastructure that has been put in place under modern capitalism to assure
that the products we buy have met basic requirements regarding
health impacts in their manufacture and distribution. Of course, we are
aware that there are federal and state agencies that have this responsibility, but we operate under an assumption that somehow their reach
has been sufficient to assure the quality of each and every product we
buy. If trust in these institutions is eroded in the stores where produce
is sold, then only products with a well-known brand can be purchased,
with the general understanding that large brands have a huge stake
in maintaining their reputation and will therefore be forced by the
market to adhere to the strictest of standards in producing and selling
their produce. But that description does not come anywhere near the
nature of the economy in which we currently live, in which more than
half of the value added of the U.S. economy, and even greater percentages of the global economy, arises from goods and services sold by
small establishments with little or no brand image at stake. In this case,
too, we could rely on regulators to act on our behalf in attempting to
assure good behavior on the part of such establishments, but to do
so would set up a monitoring station for every transaction and every
establishment, effectively bringing the global economy to a standstill.
Instead, what we do is trust in our fellow citizens to exercise
162
Paul R. Kleindorfer
163
164
Paul R. Kleindorfer
165
166
Paul R. Kleindorfer
167
168
Paul R. Kleindorfer
169
170
Paul R. Kleindorfer
171
Table 7.1
Payoffs for Classic Prisoners Dilemma Game
Player 1s Strategies
Player 2s Strategies
C2
D2
C1
4, 4
2, 6
D1
6, 2
0, 0
172
Paul R. Kleindorfer
could have if only they chose to cooperate and, by keeping their mouth
shut, jointly attain (4, 4).
When might one expect a noncooperative solution to obtain (D1, D2)
rather than a cooperative solution (C1, C2)? This has been the subject
of continuing experimental work. The typical experiment proceeds as
follows. Subjects are paired but remain separated from one another
during the play of the game. They are presented with a series of
games of the general form of table 7.1 and asked to indicate their choice
of strategy for each. Their choices are then recorded, and they are
informed immediately of the choice of the other player and their resulting payoffs. In some experiments, subjects know they are playing
against the same player for the entire series of games; in others,
they know they are playing against different players each game;
and for some experiments, subjects do not know whether or not their
opponent is changing over the series of games. For each such fixed
constellation of knowledge, subjects are given a monetary reward
based on the payoffs they have accumulated at the end of a series of
games. The basic question of game-theoretical interest in these experiments is this: When subjects of a particular type (be it gender, age,
culture, etc.) play a series of PD games, what then determines how
frequently the cooperative solution (C1, C2) will be played relative to
the other three strategy combinations? Some of the major findings of
interest to our inquiry hereon trust, ethics, and marketsare the
following.
Communication and Reputation
The possibility to establish open communication between players,
even by insecure mail, leads to a significant increase in the frequency
of cooperative play. Face-to-face play leads to even greater cooperation.
The order of magnitude of likely increase even through simple communication is typically of the order of 30 percent cooperation for noncommunicating pairs, compared to more than 80 percent cooperation
for pairs that can communicate with one another, even when such communication is allowed for a limited period of time in the few initial
plays of the game and not thereafter. In the same spirit, if the identity
of a player is known and visible to all, then that player has further
incentive to engage in cooperative play in order to enhance his/her
reputation as a cooperative player (and thereby encourage others to
play cooperatively).
173
Table 7.2
Payoffs for Classic Prisoners Dilemma Game
Player 1s Strategies
Player 2s Strategies
C2
D2
C1
4 + x, 4 x
2, 6
D1
6, 2
0, 0
Equity
Consider the slightly altered PD game in table 7.2 from Marwell and
Schmitt (1973). This game still has the PD property that the D strategy
is a dominant strategy for both players, as long as x is between 0 and
2. The larger x is, the more inequitable will be the cooperative solution (C1, C2), although it remains clearly preferable to the noncooperative solution (D1, D2). What Marwell and Schmitt found was that the
more inequitable the game was (the larger x was), the lower the frequency of cooperative play. Thus a sense of equity or fairness appears
to be essential in promoting cooperation.
Interpersonal Risk
Consider the game in table 7.2 again, but now with the subjects in
separate rooms with no communication at all ever allowed. They play
the normal PD game given in table 7.1 first. If either player plays the
D strategy, both players receive the payoffs given in table 7.1. If (and
only if) both players somehow select the C strategy, then player 1 may
push a take button and receive extra x units of payoff from player 2.
And this action gives rise to the payoffs in table 7.2, assuming that
player 1 actually does push the take button whenever this is feasible
(as would be rational for player 1 to do). This is a situation that Marwell
and Schmitt characterize as one now exhibiting interpersonal risk. In
their experimental findings, the larger the degree of interpersonal risk
(the larger the x) is, the less likely it becomes that subjects will play
cooperatively. Beyond the Marwell and Schmitt experiments, we also
see the clear impact of interpersonal risk in practice. For example,
before firms exhibit a willingness to commit large funds to joint projects, they may insist on performance bonds or other assurances that
174
Paul R. Kleindorfer
their partners will not exploit them after they incur investment (or
sunk) costs. Williamson (1985) refers to these financial assurances as
(being tantamount to) hostages, a very old solution to assuring cooperation when palpable interpersonal risk may otherwise undermine
cooperation and thwart its benefits.
There are many other experimental approaches to the study of cooperation and trust, essentially modeled along the lines of the original
Marwell and Schmitt experiments. Glaeser and colleagues (2000), for
example, have used the following games as a measure of trusting
behavior: subjects are first paired and next meet their partner. They
are then separated and play the following game. Player 1 chooses an
amount (say, between $0 and $15) to send to player 2. This amount,
whatever it is, is matched by the experimenter, who then gives the total
to player 2. Player 2 then can return some portion of the money to
player 1. The amount of money player 1 sends to player 2 is a measure
of trust in that it puts player 1 at interpersonal risk for anticipating
that player 2 will return this money to player 1. Glaeser and colleagues
were interested in what the determinants of trust, so measured, would
be. They administered a survey instrument to the subjects in their
experiments three to four weeks in advance of the experiments. The
survey asked questions about the subjects attitudes toward trust and
their experience with past trusting behavior. Not surprisingly, a primary
determinant of trust, as measured in these experimental games, was
the degree of social connection (friends or acquaintances that played the
game exhibited higher levels of trust). A second determinant was that
subjects who were paired with a partner of different race or nationality
sent back less money to ones partner (this return behavior, denoted by
Glaeser and colleagues as trustworthiness, is the mirror image of player
1s forward trusting behavior). Glaeser and colleagues discovered also
that the education and the background of each player had strong associations with their propensity to trust.
A final set of experimental results that I wish to note bear on the
subject of fairness as an element of trust and markets. This is partly in
evidence in the foregoing discussion of Marwell and Schmitts findings
on equity, but also in the following experiments by Kahneman, Knetsch,
and Thaler (KKT 1986), which go beyond those in illustrating the
complexity of fairness judgments that affect market transactions.5
5. See also Kunow (2003) for a recent detailed discussion of various approaches to fairness and justice in market contexts.
175
Unfair (25%)
N = 131
2A: A house painter employs two assistants and pays them $9 per hour. The painter
decides to quit house painting and go into the business of providing landscape
services, where the going wage is lower. He reduces the workers wages to $7 per
hour for the landscaping work.
Fair (63%)
Unfair (37%)
N = 94
2B: . . . landscape services. With about the same time and effort, the former house
painters profits somehow fall significantly in his new business. In landscape services
the going wage is lower so he reduces.
Fair (67%)
Unfair (33%)
N = 220
2C: . . . landscape services. With about the same time and effort, the former house
painters profits somehow rise significantly in his new business. Nevertheless, in
landscape services the going wage is lower so he reduces.
Fair (34%)
Unfair (66%)
N = 213
176
Paul R. Kleindorfer
maintain the reference point payouts. The worse the disparity between
the outcomes and the reference point, and the larger the degree of
opportunism reflected in the advantaged partys payoffs, the more is
the outcome judged to have been unfair.
These experimental results point to some intuitive aspects of trust
and markets, especially concerning transactions that involve some
degree of risk by one or by the other of the parties engaged in the
transaction. For such transactions to proceed to completion, it is thus
clear not merely that trust and fairness are key ingredients, but indeed
that these two central themes are intimately linked. Trust can be influenced by communication and enhanced through assurance of equitableor fairoutcomes, as also through credible information that
supports the reputation of a company as being fair, open, and trustworthy. A large number of the institutions of modern capitalism have
been directed toward reinforcing these basic characteristics of transactions. Companies large and small have made great efforts to foster
communication with their customers, investors, and all other stakeholders. Equitable outcomes are underlined by stable pricing and by
marketing campaigns that highlight the quality of the product proposed and that offer unconditional returns should the customer be
dissatisfied. Not least, product testing and quality verification by independent third parties (e.g., in the United States by Consumer Reports)
are important drivers of market demand and company image. Finally,
brand equity is a key aspect of marketing, for reflecting the various
reputational assets of the company that are placed at risk in each and
every transaction. In the face of these acknowledged foundations of
good business, which attempt to support the image of the company
and its representatives as trustworthy, how could the excesses and
accounting scandals reported in the introduction to this chapter ever
have materialized? This question is the subject of my concluding
comments.
Conclusions
The case studies, together with the noted experimental results from the
decision sciences, seem to many as compelling and intuitive. It is therefore all the more surprising how egregious the departures of corporate
behavior have been from reasonable standards of fairness in some of
the recent outcomes in the U.S. corporate sector. As noted earlier, what
post-Enron surveys found most troubling about the Enron collapse was
177
neither the crooked dealings of the Enron executives nor the selfenriching tactics of their well-paid accountants and legal advisors, but
rather the damage done in destroying the pensions of employees. In
the language of Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler (1986), it has become
more or less expected that the reference point for senior executive
compensation is whatever these executives can convince their board of
directors to give them. Moreover, the reference point for corporate
accountants seems to have tolerated personal enrichment to become a
part of corporate accounting, possibly at the cost of cooking the books
from time to time. But the reference transaction for pension planning
most certainly does not allow for opportunistic behavior by executives
or accountants to lead to the destruction of employees life savings.
Based on Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler (1986), it is therefore not
surprising that it has been this aspect of the Enron affair that has given
rise to such great outrage, to new legislation, and to a view that wrongdoers in this affair should spend some time behind bars.
As a further compelling example of violations of the notions of trust
and fairness expected in market transactions, consider the matter of
CEO compensation. In the wake of Enron and WorldCom, this subject
has become something of a cause clbre. The reason can be summarized in one simple statistic arising from the study by the business think
tank, the Conference Board, which published a report in January of
2002 that surveyed the CEO salaries of Fortune 500 companies. Based
on options packages and other exotic so-called risk-based compensation instruments, CEO compensation grew from 51 times the average
Americans salary in 1980 to 542 times that same average Americans
salary in 2000. Coupled with well-publicized examples of some annual
salaries of top executives in excess of $100 million per year, the American in Main Street simply cannot believe the pious pronouncements of
corporate Americas think tanks about the road to reform. It all looks
like, smells like, and feels like pure greed to the proverbial average
American in the proverbial American street.
What is needed is a much more direct and a far more explicit
confrontation of the values held by corporate executives and by the
majority of ordinary citizens. If such values cannot pass the litmus
test of open discourse espoused by Jrgen Habermas (1973) in his
treatise on legitimation, they very likely will continue to evoke surprise, engender mistrust, and trigger a deep sense of illegitimacy when
occasional stories of the inner reality of corporations surface. Recent
commitments by companies and business schools to move toward
178
Paul R. Kleindorfer
179
Kleindorfer, Paul R., and Eric W. Orts (1998) Informational Regulation of Environmental
Risks, Risk Analysis, 18(2):155170.
Knack, Stephen, and Philip Keefer (1997) Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff?
A Cross-Country Investigation, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112:12511288.
Kunow, James (2003) Which Is the Fairest One of All? A Positive Analysis of Justice
Theories, Journal of Economic Literature, 41(4):11881239.
La Porta, Rafael, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert W. Vishny
(1997) Trust in Large Organizations, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings,
87:333338.
Marwell, Gerald, and David R. Schmitt (1973) Cooperation: An Experimental Analysis, New
York: Academic Press.
Mitchell, Jerry T., Deborah S. K. Thomas, and Susan L. Cutter (1999) Dumping in Dixie
Revisited: The Evolution of Environmental Injustices in South Carolina, Social Science
Quarterly, 80(2):229243.
Perlin, Susan H., David W. S. Wong, and Ken Sexton (2001) Residential Proximity to
Industrial Sources of Air Pollution: Interrelationships among Race, Poverty, and Age,
Journal of Air Waste Management Association, 51:406421.
Seligman, Adam B. (1997) The Problem of Trust, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Smith, Eric R., Juliet Carlisle, and Kristy Michaud (2003) Trust during an Energy Crisis,
Energy Policy and Economics Working Paper 006, University of California Energy
Institute.
Williamson, Oliver E. (1985) The Economic Institutions of Capitalism, New York: Free
Press.
In this essay, which is indebted to the work of James Q. Wilson, I consider the rediscovery of character and its importance for the way one
understands the relation of ethics and morals to politics. Character has
a long history in thinking about politics. For some Greeks, including
Aristotle, character, or ethos, was the central issue in the study of human
things. The Greeks were concerned not only with character itself,
however, but also with the things that were related to it, especially the
things that were caused by character and the things that caused character to develop, for better or for worse. These were their ethical things,
or ethics. Thus, for them, ethics was not an academic discipline, nor
was ethical (ethikos) an expression of general approval, as opposed to,
say, unethical.
For some Romans, including Cicero, the central issue appears rather
to have been custom, or mos. The Romans were concerned both with
custom and with the things related to it. These were their moral things,
or morals (moralia). Thus, at the outset, morals was not an academic
discipline, despite its apparent inclusion by Cicero as the subject matter
of one of the three parts of Stoic philosophy; nor was moral (moralis)
an expression of general approval, as opposed to, say, immoral. Character, as something belonging to individuals, was different from custom,
which was shared by many; but both Greek and Roman societies agreed
that custom could have an effect on character development and that
character could be embodied or reflected in custom.
In modern times, many thinkers have struggled with what they
describe as the relation of ethics or morals to the state, often in ways
that are not helpful to the political actor, especially where the language
of ethics and morals has lost its original classical descriptive use.
Some moderns have spoken as if there might be politics without ethics
or morals, and ethics or morals without politics. The rediscovery of
182
J. J. Mulhern
character leads back to a tradition in which ethics and politics are continuous because, as a matter of fact, actions produce habits, habits are
integrated into character, character is reflected in customs or laws, and
customs are embodied in institutions, including political institutions,
and even the institution that is spoken of in modern times as the state;
and in which, likewise, these institutions reinforce customs, customs
mold character, character strengthens habits, and habits make actions
easier and more pleasant to perform. This tradition, though neglected
for many centuries, is helpful to the political actor, since it provides
an explicit way of thinking about the political actors work. Both institutions and individuals, especially political actors, have an interest in
promoting in people the kinds of character and custom that dispose
them to avoid criminal acts, dependency, and intemperance, for
example.
To those who understand this history, it may be jarring to realize that
many recent academic discussions that include terms such as ethics,
morals, and the state actually are of little interest to todays political
actors, who may use the first two expressions regularly in their ceremonial speeches, perhaps, but rarely in their day-to-day work. This situation is at variance with practice over much of history as we know it,
back to classical times. Political actors of other times and places apparently were accustomed to addressing in their own languages the things
that are identified in the ancient languages, distinctly, as ethics and
as morals. This striking difference might be explained and has been
explained by a change in standards and interests over time; it has been
suggested, for example, that modern political actors are less virtuous
and more self-interested than their predecessors were. It might be
explained (but has not been), however, in a quite different way: it might
be that, although our ethics and morals are derived from classical
words that look and sound somewhat similar to them, these ancient
words were being used in quite different ways from the way we use
their descendants. If we knew how the classical authors used them, we
might find out that todays political actors actually are interested in the
substance of classical ethics and morals but are not aware of this fact,
since the traditional language of ethics and morals has been diverted
to other purposes in a way that masks a substantive continuity of
ancient with modern politics (Eichler, chap. 2 of this book).
While Wilsons work on character owes much to the Scottish Enlightenment, it is indebted as well to Aristotle, whom Wilson reads not only
from a scientific standpoint, where the individual conducting an inquiry
183
is primarily an observer of causes, but also somewhat from the standpoint of the political actor, where the individual conducting an inquiry
might be or become the cause.1 Wilsons position is that the traditional
understanding of politics was that its goal was to improve the character
of its citizens (Wilson 1995, 21). Wilson, however, did not go on to
explain that this traditional understanding is part of a more inclusive
classical conceptual system that links politics to human action. To my
knowledge, the more inclusive system never has been described in the
literature, not even in outline.
The present chapter attempts to describe this system. It thus addresses
the relations of the things that sometimes are named by ethics and
morals and the state by looking at the classical origins of our concepts of ethics, morals, and politics. After presenting an analysis of the
original concepts, it goes on to suggest that later views have been
faithful to the originals only intermittently at best, and it presents some
of the consequences of intermittent fidelity. It concludes that the state,
in the person of the political actor in Banfields sense (Banfield 1961,
5)the person who causes public events rather than merely observing
themtypically is concerned with ethics and morals in their classical
senses, even though the objects of this concern so often are misdescribed that todays political actor rarely if ever is able to recognize
them for what they are. They are important, as will be seen, because
the political actors ability to accomplish anything is limited at any time
by the character and customs of the constituents or subjects who may
be the intended objects of the actors influence.
Ethics and the Hellenic Tradition
Although we find ethical discourses in Greek writers earlier than Aristotle, it is Aristotle more than anyone else who gives us the language
and thus the concepts of ethics. The language is important because the
word is father, or mother, to the thought. The Greek for ethics occurs
prominently in three works that come down to us as Aristotelian
Nicomachean Ethics (EN), Eudemian Ethics (EE), and Great Ethics or Magna
Moralia (MM)as also in their traditional titles. A fourth workOn
Virtues and Vices (VV)while almost surely not by Aristotle, reflects the
position of his school.
1. For the ontological-epistemological implications of observer-observed relations, see
Krippendorff (2008).
184
J. J. Mulhern
There remain complicated questions about the authorship and composition of the three main works and of the relations among them, but
their status as conveying an Aristotelian view is not a matter of serious
doubt. With all that has been written using the expression ethics,
however, there is precious little that attempts to tell us precisely what
Aristotle meant by it. I shall try to tell precisely what Aristotle meant
by it and then go on to morals and the state.
Classically trained readers will wonder why I have used Great Ethics,
which reflects the Greek tradition, along with the more familiar Latin
title Magna Moralia. My reason is that the Latin title perpetuates what
I conceive to be a confusion about ethika (ethics), with a long e, or eta:
this expression is to be distinguished from the term ethikos, written
with a short e, or epsilon, which is not used by Aristotle, although he
does use the noun form ethos, which often is translated by custom.
The confusion to which I refer is that of ethika, or things related to
character, with moralia (morals), or things related to custom. This confusion is clear in Sidgwick (1931), in his Outlines of the History of Ethics for
English Readers, 11, for example, which first appeared in 1886 and
remains in print: he says, The term moral is commonly used as synonymous with ethical (moralis being the Latin translation of )
[ethikos], and I shall so use it in the following pages. (More on this
later.)
Aristotle frequently uses the expression ta ethika, or, as we should
say, the ethics. This expression has the same sense as the matters of
character, as Joachim translates it (Joachim 1951, 113). Thus the ethical
things, or ethics, are the things associated with ethos (character) and
viewed from the standpoint of their relation to character. It follows that
there are two parts to stating precisely what Aristotles language about
ethics meant: these are saying what character or ethos is and identifying
the things that are related to itthe ethical things, or ethics.
The view that ethos is an appropriate starting place is preserved
clearly in the opening sentence of the Great Ethics, where the author
says, Since we are decided to talk about ethics, first it should be looked
at of what [science or ability] ethos is a part (MM 1181a2425). After
noting that ethos is a part of the political, Aristotle goes on to say that
without being of a certain kind, that is, having a certain character, it is
not possible to accomplish anythingto actin civic affairs; and he
gives being earnest as an example of character (1181a2628).
At this point, Aristotle appears to be connecting character directly
with action. He is suggesting that action is produced by character, and
185
one might write this relation (with an eye to what follows) as Action
Character. Often, however, the connection of character with action
is not presented as direct; habit comes between character and action,
since actions are viewed as producing habits directly while habits
combine into character. In a passage referred to by Wilson, Aristotle
observes that we get the virtues [the aretai, which are habits or hexeis]
by being active beforehand. . . . And so we become just by doing just
acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, courageous by doing courageous acts (1103a31b2) (Wilson 1995, 23). This relation is immediate,
and it links actions and habits in a causal way. It may be represented
as Action Habit, and it is the best-known part of this analysis.
Actions produce habits. Further, Aristotle says that to be earnest, which
is to have a certain character, is to have the virtues (EN 1181a28b24).
Habits thus are the material (the stuff) of characterthis relation may
be represented as Habit Character. These passages give us enough
to begin to construct part of a system of causal relations, which will be
extended in describing the relation of ethics to the state. In sum, so far:
Action Habit Character. Here the causal relation is transitive,
in the same sense as that in which some relations are spoken of as
transitive in mathematics, where, for example, if a is larger than b, and
b is larger than c, then a is larger than c; the relation carries through.
Other passages make it clear that, for Aristotle, the influence not only
carries through, or is transitive, but also that it runs in both directions
or is symmetrical, as is the relation of equality in mathematics: if a is
equal to b, then b is equal to a (see, for example, EN 1104a331104b3 on
actions and habits, as also Poetics 1450a19). Of course, equality is transitive as well as symmetrical.
Note that although being earnest sometimes is spoken of as having
a virtue, it is spoken of also as having an ethos and thus as a way of
having multiple virtues (1181a28b24). This remarkabout having
virtuesis not a throwaway, since Aristotle says later that someone
who wants to be thought well of, with respect to character, would have
to pay attention to the mean of each of the passions (pathe, in MM
1186b3435)that is, approximately, to each of the ethical virtues
(ethikai aretai) or virtues of character. (Aristotle does not use ethical
virtue here, with ethical in the attributive position, but he does use
it elsewhere, for example in Politics 1260a15, 1718, and 20.) Further,
there is confirmation of this virtue-encompassing view of character in
the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle treats megalopsychia, which we
translate into modern English variously by magnanimity, greatness
186
J. J. Mulhern
187
188
J. J. Mulhern
189
190
J. J. Mulhern
the whole (utilitarianism, Sidgwick 1907, 411). To the extent that his
work circulated widely, which it did and continues to do, his fateful
failure to deal sympathetically with the classical writings arguably has
helped to transport ethical discussion away from being of much interest to the political actor by shifting the focus from character and custom,
which the political actor must understand and be able to assess, to
items which the same political actor may not have to understand and
assess.
Returning now to Aristotle on custom: although it is necessary to
distinguish ethos from ethos in Aristotles writings, one may grant that
ethos is not to be translated by custom in each and every occurrence
in his works (Bonitz 1961, 216217). In some cases, habit might be
more appropriate in places where it is concerned with individuals. The
natural language of the Greeks was not always more precise than our
own. In English, one can say, for example, that an individual becomes
accustomed or habituated to a certain practice, or even that ones
custom is to do such and such. This latitude certainly is reflected in the
uses of the verbs etho (be accustomed or habituated) and ethizo (accustom). Aristotle himself says that the noun ethos signifies that it extends
from ethos, and thatby being moved often in a given wayone
becomes accustomed (EE 1220a39b2).
At the same time, one can say that one group adopted another
groups customsafter being conquered, for instance; and one can say
that a certain practice became customary, meaning that it came to be
observed widely. In very many occurrences of ethos, custom rather
than habit clearly is called for, because Aristotle is referring to widely
observed behavior rather than to the psychic condition of a single
individual. At Politics 1287b6, for example, Aristotle goes on to contrast
the laws that are customary (kata ta ethe) with those that are written
down (kata grammata). And in Rhetorica ad Alexandrum 1423a34, he
refers to the ancestral customs (ta patria ethe). Thus, while ethos sometimes can be translated correctly by habit when it has to do with
individuals, in many cases custom clearly is more appropriate because
it represents something that is shared.
With the addition of custom, and with the proviso that all the relations of causality are to be considered both transitive and symmetrical,
the basic system of the ethics and the politics can be now represented
in outline as follows:
Action Habit Character Custom Institution
191
192
J. J. Mulhern
might be to work directly to form the habits of children through institutions other than the schools.
Aristotles discussion of this system is not normative; it is descriptive, presenting as a matter of fact that the institutions and their customs
can and do affect character and thus also behavior, whether one likes
it or not. The issue thus is not whether the state as embodied in the
political actor will or should affect character and the ethics, but rather
how the political actor chooses to affect character and the virtues and
so onnamely, the ethics.
Morals and Latinity
The classical view may have been made less accessible to us, rather
than more so, by the very way the Romans received it from the Greeks.
While there are earlier Latin writers who discuss what we might call
moral things, it is Cicero who gives us the Latin language of morals.
Moralis comes into Latin when, at the beginning of the fragmentary De
Fato (On Fate), Cicero, writing near the end of his life, connects mos,
which commonly has the sense of custom, with ethos, with an eta
again. The opening words of the sentence in which he does so, though,
are missing, and his precise meaning is obscured somewhat by this
lacuna in the text. What is left begins with a causal clause using quia
or because: . . . because it [something?] refers to mores, which [something?] those [Greeks] call [ethos], we are accustomed to call this
part of philosophy de moribus [about mores], but it is appropriate for
one adding to the Latin tongue to name it moralem (1.1).
Some readers (Marwede 2003, 1) take the view that Cicero is suggesting mores as a synonym for ethos here. Indeed, the De Fato may be the
source of the lexicographers view that the plural mores has the sense
of character instead of customs, where, as before, character is understood as something that belongs to an individual and custom as something that many individuals share. However that may be, Cicero, if not
always, still often uses mores for customs rather than for character. In
the De Officiis (On Duties), for example, in another occurrence of mores
after refers to, Cicero observes that his predecessors have overlooked
no argument which refers to the laws, to the customs, and to the ordering of the res publica [public business] [qui ad leges, qui ad mores, qui
ad disciplinam rei publicae pertineret, 1.156]. Also in the De Officiis,
while Cicero clearly uses mos (the singular form) in the sense of custom
in the phrase with respect to custom and civil institutions [more . . .
193
194
J. J. Mulhern
195
196
J. J. Mulhern
197
important to the political actor in any age. I conclude that they are. The
perennial tasks of the political actor are to protect citizens from external
threats and to restrain internal tendencies toward instability, all the
while maintaining ones own position; and the actors ability to do any
of these, not to mention the approach to be taken, depends heavily upon
the character and customs of the citizens themselves. Further, focusing
the study of human affairs on ethos or mos and the things that are related
to them makes it possible to conceptualize the relation of ethics or
morals to the state, in the person of the political actor, in useful ways.
What about the shift from ethos or character to mos or custom as the
focal point, if indeed such a shift occurred in Roman times as the
Romans struggled, as we know they did, to bring what they learned
from the Greeks together with their native tradition? While much more
work remains to be done on this question, it seems to me that the focus
on mos often tends to appear as part of an attempt at reform, as it certainly did in the time of the seditions and at the end of the republic
and in the time of Augustus.
Once the mores have slipped, it is doubtful that they can be reformed
by the political actors focusing directly on them. Instead, what may
be required is more comprehensive attention to their causes, and so to
ethics, in the classical sense directed toward more serious efforts to
develop good character in the young.
Bibliography
The references that follow include some classical authors for whom places and dates of
original publication are lacking. It is customary to cite these authors of enduring value
by referring to conventional books and chapters or to pages, sections, or columns, and
lines of critical editions that may have appeared many centuries after original composition and publication, whatever composition and publication may mean in dealing with
a classical author. Thus Aristotle often is cited by name of work and by page, column,
and line in column. Politics 1260a15, for example, is a citation of page 1260, column a,
line 15 of Aristotles Politics in the Prussian Academy edition Aristotelis Opera (1960). As
an alternative, when larger pieces of text are in question, his works are cited by work,
book, and chapter. Cicero, however, regularly is cited by work, book, and chapter, and
my references are to these as represented in the critical text of Mueller, listed as [Cicero] . . .
(18781905).
Modern lexicography is beginning to show that the conceptual frameworks of the
classical authors sometimes were quite different from our own and from those of our
more recent predecessors. Thus the most widely known translations may be unsuitable
for use in firsthand specialized investigations such as the present one, in which ethics
and morals are expressions whose sense is subjected to fairly radical testing rather than
being taken for granted in the usual nave way. It is not clear that discussions that use
the expression ethics, for example, can be of much value until they come to grips with
the history of this expression.
198
J. J. Mulhern
References
Annas, Julia (1992) Ethics and Morality, in Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker,
Editors, Encyclopedia of Ethics, New York: Garland.
[Aristotle] Aristotelis Opera (1960) Immanuel Bekker, Editor, 2nd ed., Olof Gigon, Editor,
Berlin: de Gruyter.
[Aristotle] Rackham, H. (1934), Translator, Nicomachean Ethics, London: William
Heinemann.
Banfield, Edward (1961) Political Influence, Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Bodin, Jean (1591) De Republica Libri Sex, Paris, Richard Knolles (1606) Translator, London
[no publisher given].
(1992) On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from the Six Books of the Commonwealth, Julian
H. Franklin, Editor, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Bonitz, H. (1961) Index Aristotelicus, Olof Gigon, Editor, Berlin: de Gruyter.
[Cicero] M. Tullii Ciceronis, Scripta quae manserunt omnia, C. W. F. Mueller (18781905)
Editor, Leipzig: Teubner.
Dunning, William Archibald (19021920) A History of Political Theories, 3 vols., New York:
Macmillan.
Foucault, Michel (2001) Fearless Speech, Joseph Pearson, Editor, Los Angeles:
Semiotext(e).
Franklin (1992), see Bodin (1992).
Gehrke, Hans-Joachim (1994) Rmischer mos und griechische Ethik, Historische
Zeitschrift 258(3):593622.
Joachim, H. H. (1951) Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics, D. A. Rees, Editor, Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press.
Knolles (1606), see Bodin (1591).
Krippendorff, Klaus (2008) Four (In)Determinabilities, Not One, in Jose V. Ciprut,
Editor, Indeterminacy: The Mapped, the Navigable, and the Uncharted, Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press.
Lecky, William Edward Hartpole (1910) History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, 3rd ed., rev., New York: D. Appleton.
Manville, P. B. (1990) The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Marwede, D. (2003) Mos, Moralis, and Ciceros De Fato, 28th International Conference
on Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies, Villanova University, September 6.
Merguet, H. (1892) Lexicon zu den Schriften Ciceros, Zweiter Teil, Zweiter Band, Jena: G.
Fischer.
Mulhern, J. J. (2003) Patristic Uses of Ethos, Mos, and Their Cognates: The Classical
Background, 28th International Conference on Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance
Studies, Villanova University, September 6.
199
The relationship between religion on the one hand and morality and
ethics on the other has been a thorny issue in philosophical debates
in the Western world for the last few centuries. Recently East Asians
have contributed to that debate over which comes first, the chicken
of religion or the eggs of morality and ethics, but from a different
angle.
Around one thousand years ago, Western Europe was divided into
a number of competing kingdoms. Above them all stood the papacy,
the one authority they all at least had to pretend to respect and obey.
On the other side of the Eurasian landmass, China, Korea, and Japan
were each united under centralized governments before whom religious leaders had to bow. Those contrasting political histories have had
long-lasting philosophical implications. Because in Western Europe a
religious institution claimed and often exercised supreme authority
over the secular realm for centuries, that same religious institution was
also granted the authority to define moral principles and to dictate
ethical commands. It was only when European states began to grow
large and strong enough to resist papal power, and when the unity that
had characterized Christianity in Western Europe began to fragment,
that a few people began to doubt the claim of religious authorities to
be the ultimate moral authorities as well.
East Asia has moved in the opposite direction. For most of recorded
history in East Asia, religious institutions were too weak to challenge
the moral hegemony of their powerful central governments. Instead,
they accepted the subordinate role of promoting adherence to norms
already proclaimed by their political leaders. However, over the last
century or so, as the notion of religious freedom penetrated East Asia
and forced governments there to acknowledge and allow more than
minimal autonomy for religious organizations, a number of religious
202
Don Baker
203
You would not get the same results in East Asia. In China, Japan,
Taiwan, and North Korea the vast majority of people would not call
themselves religious, yet they consider themselves to be at least as
moral as the people in more religious countries such as the United
States. Moreover, even in South Korea, the only country in all East Asia
in which even a slight majority is willing to proclaim a specific religious
orientation, around 70 percent say that people do not need to hold any
religious beliefs to go to heaven after they die. Moreover, almost half
the South Korean population feels that the ethical rules imposed by
religious organizations on their members are just too strict.3 Clearly,
most East Asians do not share the common Western assumption that
religion provides the essential foundation for moral principles and
ethical rules.
The different histories of the Western world and East Asia are but
one reason for that difference in attitudes toward the connection
between religion on the one hand and morality and ethics on the other.
Another reason can be found in the nature of religious traditions in the
Western world and in East Asia. In the Judaic and Christian traditions,
God handed down commandments for human beings to obey. In the
Buddhist and Confucian traditions, which dominated religious and
philosophical discourse in traditional East Asia, humans discovered
for themselves the proper way to behave. They did not believe they
needed a God to tell them what to do. Since they did not need a God
to define morality and ethics, nor did they need religion to achieve
the same feat.
Defining Religion
Another reason the Western and East Asiatic perspectives on religion,
morality, and ethics differ so greatly is that the two cultural traditions
define these key terms differently. Religion, for example, is an
imported term in Asia, though before the peoples of China, Japan, and
Korea began using that term at the end of the nineteenth century they
did regularly participate in activities we would not hesitate to label
religious. They prayed to gods. And they performed rituals they
believed would influence supernatural beings. They also engaged in
disciplinary practices they believed would make them good, and even
3. These figures are taken from Gallup Korea, Hangugin ui chonggyo wa chonggyo. uisik
[The religions and religious attitudes of the Korean people] Seoul, 2004.
204
Don Baker
better, human beings. However, three defining features of the traditional Western concept of religion were either absent or downplayed
in traditional East Asian religiosity.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, religion requires above all else a
belief in one Supreme Deity. That Supreme Deity is a Supreme Ruler
as well, one whose commands demand absolute obedience from His
human subjects. Moreover, those highest commands are found in
clearly identified sacred writings containing Gods explicit instructions
to humanity. Monotheism, sacred scriptures, and the notion of moral
commandments grounded in the will of the One True God have been
so important in the Western religious tradition that even today it is
difficult for many of those raised in the West to conceive of some religion worthy of respect that lacked any of those three essential characteristics. Rather, the indigenous traditional religions of Asia tended to
be polytheistic rather than monotheistic. They had pages and pages of
sacred writing, not one of which was ever awarded the unassailable
authority and infallibility the Bible has enjoyed. And they derived their
fundamental moral principles from nonreligious sources. In sum, they
did not have the theological concerns, the doctrinal focus, or the lawgiving authority so characteristic of traditional Western religions.
Folk Religions
The earliest religions of East Asia are so far from the Western definition
of religion that even today they are sometimes denied that label. One
reason for their exclusion from the category of religion is that Shinto
in Japan and the folk religions of China and Korea have little interest
in theological reflection. They assume the existence of supernatural
entities, some of whom are powerful gods, and others are merely troublesome spirits or the lingering presence of recently departed ancestors. However, practitioners, and even specialists in ritual, care more
for what those gods and spirits can do to and for them than they care
for what those gods look like or even who exactly they might be. They
believe those gods and spirits to have the power to interfere for good
or ill in human affairs: to bring rain to a parched field, or to deny it; to
cure a disease or to inflict one; to give us many healthy progeny or
deny us the children or grandchildren who comfort us in our old age.
However, those who look to those gods and spirits either for help or
in apprehension do not always agree on which gods or spirits exercise
what powers. Sometimes they do not even agree on which gods or
205
spirits are the objects of their rituals or the guests revered in their
shrines. It would not be unusual in East Asia to see worshippers bowing
before the same sculpted representation of a supernatural being and
calling out that gods name, and yet disagreeing on which god that
statue represents. I have witnessed worshippers bowing side by side
before a statue and addressing that statue with two totally different
names. Such a cavalier attitude toward the names, traits, and powers
of individual supernatural entities is a far cry from the exclusive intense
focus placed on the name and defining features of the Supreme Being
who has occupied theologians in the Western world for so long.
Though they are not always sure who exactly the gods and spirits
are that have the power to influence their lives for good or ill, participants in folk religious traditions nevertheless try to make sure they are,
and remain, on good terms with those supernatural entities. Occasional
ritual is one way to do so. To make sure that those invisible personalities make their lives better and not worse, they try to humor them,
providing them with ritual offerings and even entertainment when
they appear to need or desire such. Moreover, they try not to offend
those powerful gods and spirits. Therefore, they sometimes have to
behave in certain prescribed ways. However, such behavioral rules are
not the sorts of divine commandments seen in the Western concept of
religion. They are more like rules of etiquette, telling us how to behave
if we want to please rather than anger powerful invisible neighbors.
Hence, when such gods and spirits do become involved in promoting
morality, they do so as supporters of already existing moral codes
rather than generators of moral codes that are identifiable as their
very own.
Though they are based on belief in the existence of gods and spirits
and on the related belief that ritual and proper behavior are two good
ways of maintaining beneficial relationships with those gods and
spirits, folk religious traditions lack theological focus, do not have
clearly defined dogma, and do not entertain a notion that moral principles and ethical rules are grounded in the will of a god or a spirit.
Therefore, their content does not look like what Westerners have traditionally expected a religions to look like. The ill fit between the traditional indigenous religions of Asia and the Western concept of religion
(which has been adopted by some people in East Asia, particularly new
Christians) is behind the ongoing controversy in Japan over whether
or not a visit by the prime minister to the Yasukuni Shinto Shrine is,
indeed, a violation of the constitutional separation of religion and the
206
Don Baker
207
that is the root of human suffering. These guidelines vary from one
person to another, depending on a believers particular stage of spiritual advancement. For example, a monk is expected to follow a far
stricter set of rules than an average lay believer is. However, some of
the precepts apply to everyone. According to one sutra popular across
East Asia, The Awakening of Faith, anyone who wants to escape the cycle
of birth-death-rebirth that prolongs human suffering should take care
not to kill, to steal, to commit adultery, to be double-tongued, to
slander, to lie, or to utter exaggerated speech. He is to free himself from
greed, jealousy, cheating, deceit, flattery, crookedness, anger, hatred,
4
and perverse views.
Such actions are wrong, not because the Buddha has forbidden them,
but because to engage in such activities is to act in a selfish fashion,
putting your own wants and needs ahead of the wants and needs
of others. Why is it wrong to act selfishly? Because acting selfishly is
both based on and reinforces the illusion that you are a separate and
distinct individual. Such an illusion, the mistaken impression that
ultimate reality is composed of many such separate and distinct
individual beings, is dangerous. It is responsible for all human suffering, both because it is at odds with the true undifferentiated nature
of ultimate reality (or suchness, as Buddhist philosophers prefer to
call it) and because it blocks the harmonious cooperation with everyone and everything around us that is the only foundation for true
happiness.
Selfish action is wrong, not because it is against the will of a particular God but because it is ultimately self-destructive. Buddhist precepts
therefore are not commandments but suggestions for ways to behave
that will enhance the individuals ability to escape this realm of unavoidable suffering and to enjoy true happiness. We are free to ignore such
suggestions if we wish to do so. However, we will pay a price. In more
philosophical schools of Buddhism, that price is ones return after
death to live another life filled with suffering. In more popular forms
of Buddhism, various hells await those who violate the more important
precepts. No God condemns us to those hells, however. We place our
own selves there by our own selfish thoughts and actions.
In Buddhism, there is a close connection between religion on the one
hand and morality and ethics on the other, but it is not the same
sort of connection you find in theologically oriented religions such as
4. See Hakeda (1967).
208
Don Baker
Christianity. Buddhism does not give orders; it only gives advice. Good
and bad actions are determined by the nature of ultimate reality rather
than the will of a God. Moreover, morality is simply the set of guidelines average individuals should follow if they want to minimize how
much they will suffer in the long term. Ethics, here understood as voluntary behavioral codes, stricter than a communitys behavioral expectations, is for those who want to reach nirvana and escape the human
realm of suffering once and for all. Such strict ethical regulations are
not binding on the average Buddhist. Only those who already are at a
higher level of spiritual advancement, thanks to their successful dampening of selfish thoughts and actions in previous lives, should even
remotely attempt to conform to such rigorous restrictions on their
thoughts and deeds. Those not prepared to meet such high ethical
demands will only be frustrated, and that frustration can add to their
5
suffering.
Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism
More than Buddhism or folk religion, Confucianismespecially the
Neo-Confucianism that dominated elite discourse in China, Korea,
and Japan in the centuries preceding the encounter with the modern
worldis even farther from the model of religion embodied by Judaic
and Christian practices of faith, as regards what religion is and what
the relationship between religion and morality should look like. There
are no gods in Neo-Confucianism. The closest Neo-Confucianism
comes to belief in invisible personalities is the respect and the deep
regard that Neo-Confucians are expected to show toward ancestors and
to great scholars and models of virtue from the past. However, NeoConfucians do not make the same requests of their late, great grandparentsor even of Confucius, their most revered sage himselfthat
practitioners of folk religion and popular Buddhism ask of their gods.
Neo-Confucians do not ask of the dead to cure the living or to make
them wealthy. Proper Confucian ancestor worship involves ritual
displays of respect and reverence with no expectations of any reward
for such displays (except perhaps a reputation for proper behavior). To
perform a Confucian ritual, or to adhere rigidly to the strict demands
of the Confucian moral code, in hope of some reward is to violate the
5. For a succinct discussion of the role of ethics in Buddhist thought and practice, see
Harvey (1990).
209
Confucian moral code, simply for harboring the selfish motive of indi6
vidual gain.
According to the fundamental principles of Neo-Confucianism,
virtue (including the proper performance of prescribed ritual) is its
own reward. In the Neo-Confucian worldview, there is no room for a
supreme judge personally rewarding good behavior and punishing
evil.
In the formative stages of Confucianism, around 2,500 years ago,
there are hints of a belief in a supernatural personality overseeing the
human realm; but even that long a time ago the primary focus of Confucian discourse essentially was on morality. Neo-Confucianism, which
arose in China during the eleventh century, then spread to Korea in the
fourteenth and to Japan in the seventeenth century, wholly dismissed
any references to supernatural entities in revered texts as purely metaphorical. In place of theism, Neo-Confucianism constructed a comprehensive philosophy that can be best described as a nontheistic moral
metaphysics.
Neo-Confucianism can reasonably be called a moral metaphysics
because moral guidelines provide the basic building blocks of the universe. In the Neo-Confucian worldview, there are two formative forces
in the cosmos, li and qi (ki in Korean and Japanese). Like many key
terms in East Asian thought, li (pronounced as lee) is difficult to
translate into English, since there is no exact English-language equivalent for li. However, patterning principles comes close to describing
the role li plays in Neo-Confucian thinking. Li is written with a Chinese
character that originally meant the lines in a piece of jade an artist
should follow when shaping that piece of jade into a work of art.
However, li then expanded to mean the norms or guidelines human
beings should follow as they go about their daily lives, as well as the
patterns that define appropriate forms of interaction both in the natural
world and within the human community. Li is both singular and
plural. There is one all-encompassing li, the network-as-a-whole of
appropriate interactions that is the universe and everything in it. There
6. We can find some examples in Confucian and even Neo-Confucian texts of prayers
to heaven. However, Neo-Confucian philosophers make clear that the language in such
prayers should be understood metaphorically rather than literally. Heaven was to be
understood as the impersonal immanent governing force in the cosmos. Heaven was not
a supernatural personality like the gods of theism. Prayers could influence heaven only
to the extent that the supplicants sincerity and selflessness would resonate with broader
cosmic forces and restore harmony and proper functioning to the universe.
210
Don Baker
are also individual li for each actor, or node(s) of interaction within that
network. For example, it is the li of the sun that it does rise in the east,
crosses the sky overhead, and then sets in the west. It is the li of a
human male that he obeys his parents when young, takes care of his
parents when they grow old, and pays proper ritual respect to them
after they have died. Both the movement of the sun and the actions of
sons are governed by the li innate in both physical nature and human
nature. The main difference between inanimate natural objects and
human beings is that human beings can forget that they are supposed
to act as parts integral to the cosmic network of appropriate interrelationships and instead act contrary to their li, harming not only themselves and their society but also the natural world in which they live,
by acting in an unnatural (against-the-natural-order) way.
Why would human beings act in such a way? Like all comprehensive
worldviews, be they religious or philosophical, Neo-Confucianism had
to answer that question and to account for the existence of evil. Buddhism blamed human ignorance. According to Buddhist doctrine,
human beings behave inappropriately and therefore suffer because
they do not understand the true nature of the world in which they live.
They live in a world of constant change, yet they crave permanency;
and they act as though the world around them could provide that
much-craved permanency. They also believe that the world is composed of separate and distinct substances, and act as though they
themselves are one such substance. Yet everyone and everything ultimately was one. Differentiation was nothing more than an illusion
created by our belief in, and desire for a separate, distinct, and eternal
existence. According to Buddhism, it was the conflict between the
desire for, and the belief in, permanency and individuality, on the one
hand, and the reality of constant change that undermined permanent
individual existence, on the other, that doomed human beings to constant frustration. The philosophical Buddhist solution was to renounce
attachments to the things of this world so that we become immune to
such frustration and can escape the suffering that Buddhists believed
was an inescapable consequence of the normal human ignorance about
the true nature of reality.
Neo-Confucianism arose as a Confucian response to almost 1,000
years of Buddhists preaching that this world of ours was an illusory
world: nothing in it was safe from change. Confucianism first appeared
in East Asia, well over 2,000 years ago, as an indigenous product of
Chinese speculation about how human beings should behave. For
211
212
Don Baker
213
moral metaphysics of Neo-Confucianism, religionthat is, folk religious traditions and Buddhismwas supposed to kneel as a servant
before morality and ethics. Neo-Confucians held that the moral obligations incumbent on human beings were the same basic patterns that
directed patterns of interaction in the natural world. No God or gods
could override such essential human obligations as filial piety and
loyalty without threatening the normative patterns that constituted the
whole universe. Instead, the role of religions and the spirits they
believed in, if those spirits actually existed, was to enforce already
existing moral principles and ethical injunctions. Religions could confer
extra obligationssuch as the requirement for Buddhist monks to be
celibate vegetariansbut such rules were treated as subordinate to the
moral principles Confucians believed were embedded in the very fabric
of both the universe and of the human mind-qua-heart. Religions could
7
not contradict such essential components of reality.
There are some who will argue that Confucianism itself should be
treated as a religion.8 After all, Neo-Confucianism was just as important
in shaping the values and in guiding the behavior of devout NeoConfucians as Christianity is for devout Christians. At the very least,
Neo-Confucianism should be regarded as a functional equivalent
of religion. If that is the case, then what does the relationship of nontheistic Neo-Confucianism to morality and ethics tell us about the
possible forms that the relationship between religion, on the one hand,
and morality and ethics, on the other, can take?
Since no one could ever say that Neo-Confucianism did not have a
strong moral component, Neo-Confucianism poses a powerful challenge to those who believe that only a moral code, reinforced by a belief
in a God or at least in gods, can be strong enough to guide human
behavior. Though they did not need to fear a God who would condemn
them to eternal punishment if they misbehaved, nor worry about
pleasing a God who could reward them with eternal life in paradise if
they behaved properly, Neo-Confucians nevertheless took their moral
obligations seriously. Chinese and Korean history are filled with examples of Neo-Confucian scholars who died in defense of their ideals or
otherwise sustained fidelity to the Confucian moral code at great
personal cost.
7. For a concise analysis of what Zhu Xi (11301200), the man who shaped NeoConfucianism into its orthodox form, had to say about Buddhism, see Fu (1986).
8. See, for example, Taylor (1990).
214
Don Baker
215
216
Don Baker
217
218
Don Baker
for their civil service examinations to read those books; they became
convinced that Catholicismthe teachings of the Lord of Heaven as
it was called in those publicationsprovided some ideas that might
prove useful in moral cultivation. Even before there were any foreign
missionaries on Korean soil, those few young men began organizing a
Korean Catholic Church, convinced that the belief in God that those
books promoted would be able to provide the personal grounding for
the Confucian ethics of interpersonal interaction that impersonal li
could not provide. At first, they found no reason to think they were
abandoning their Confucian heritage. First, they accepted the Catholic
missionary argument that Confucianism originally had been based on
the belief in a Supreme Ruler Above but somehow had wandered away
from its theistic roots over the centuries. They hence sincerely believed
they were returning to original Confucianism. Second, they also held
as true that belief in God, and the supernatural assistance God would
provide for those who believed in Him, would make it easier for them
to conform to the strict moral code of Confucianism.13 However, most
Korean Confucians did not agree with that positive assessment of
Christian theism. One who disagreed was the Neo-Confucian historian
and philosopher An Jeongbok (17121791).
An was one of the leading Neo-Confucian scholars of his day, yet his
son-in-law became one of Koreas first Catholics. Concerned about this
deviation from tradition and how that might affect his familys reputation, An penned a trenchant attack on his son-in-laws novel views in
which An criticizes Catholic moral teaching as essentially self-centered.
He presented the standard Neo-Confucian line that human beings
should simply do what was right because the li within their hearts told
them that was the right thing to do (cf. Guyer, chap. 3 in this book).
Unfortunatelyhe pointed outCatholics teach that we should look
to an external source, God, not only for ethical guidance but also for
rewards for our good behavior. To An, goodness was its own reward.
Any calculation of how moral behavior would benefit us personally
gravely tainted that behavior. As he saw it, the Catholic pursuit of
the individual reward of eternal life in heaven was selfish. Since selfishness, the pursuit of individual benefit, was the defining feature
of immorality for mainstream Neo-Confucianism, Catholicism was
unquestionably immoral.
13. For more on the appeal of Catholicism to that small group of Korean Confucians, see
Baker (2003).
219
220
Don Baker
221
222
Don Baker
223
to calls for changes. In 2004 the government put an end to the exigencies for special ethics education requirements in public schools. And
that action has led to expressions of concern from the general public
still expecting society, not religious organizations, to provide the moral
and ethical rules and regulations societies need to function well. Since
the state is the representative of society in general, many people in
Taiwan still expect the states schools to provide moral education. The
primary debate in Taiwan is over what the content of that education
should be.18 Few voices have been raised against the states involvement in teaching morality and ethics in favor of its handing over that
essential responsibility to religious organizations.
Across the Taiwan Straits, China has been much less reluctant to
combine traditional virtues with political ideology in its ethics class for
its students. In fact, such classes are called ideology and morality
classes. Modifications have been made in their content to reflect the
fact that China is quickly adopting the characterizing features of a
market economy and is granting greater freedoms also in nonpolitical
arenas to its citizens.19 However, the idea that the stateand not
religious organizationsshould be solely responsible for defining
and teaching fundamental moral principles and ethical injunctions
remains strong.20
Though South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China may differ in the
specifics of how they conceive moral education in public schools, they
nevertheless still hold firm to the traditional view that morality and
ethics are independent of religion. The only significant modification to
that view has been a willingness in the countries that have meanwhile
become more democratized to allow religious organizations to add
their own ethical teachings to what the state has already provided. But
the secular state still is expected to provide the foundation. However,
since the majorities in all of those countries do not have any particular
religious orientation, we could hardly expect people in those countries
to draw the same close connection Westerners have tended to draw
between religion and morality and ethics. To link morality and ethics
too closely to religion in East Asia would leave most of the people there
with no moral compass.
Therefore, the great divide, the conceptual gap between the North
American and European assumption that morality and ethics without
18. See Lee (2004, 575595).
19. Cf. deLisle (2008).
20. See Zhan and Ning (2004, 511532).
224
Don Baker
225
Gallup Korea (2004) Hangugin ui chonggyo wa chonggyo uisik [The religions and religious
attitudes of the Korean people], Seoul.
Gernet, Jacques (1985) China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures, Janet Lloyd,
Translator, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hakeda, Yoshito S., Translator (1967) The Awakening of Faith, Attributed to Asvaghosha,
New York: Columbia University Press.
Harvey, Peter (1990) Buddhist Practice: Ethics, in Peter Harvey, An Introduction to
Buddhism: Teachings, History, and Practices, pp. 196216, Cambridge, UK: University of
Cambridge Press.
Hoffman, Stuart D. (1999) School Texts, the Written Word, and Political Indoctrination:
A Review of Moral Education Curricula in Modern Japan (18861997), History of Education, 28(1):8796.
Joh, Jong-ho (2002) A Dilemma in Moral Education in the Republic of Korea: The
Limitation of Individualistic Cognitive Approaches, Journal of Moral Education, 31(2):
393406.
Kalton, Michael C., Translator (1988) To Become a Sage: The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning
by Yi Toegye, New York: Columbia University Press.
Lee, Angela Chi-Ming (2004) Changes and Challenges for Moral Education in Taiwan,
Journal of Moral Education, 33(4):575595.
Stark, Rodney (2003) For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science,
Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Taylor, Rodney L. (1990) The Religious Dimensions of Confucianism, New York: State
University of New York Press.
Zhan, Wansheng, and Wujie Ning (2004) The Moral Education Curriculum for Junior
High Schools in 21st Century China, Journal of Moral Education, 33(4):511532.
10
228
Jeff Spinner-Halev
229
230
Jeff Spinner-Halev
231
232
Jeff Spinner-Halev
233
violence. It is for this reason that the identity of the state matters so
much: it is not just what symbols, history, and holidays the state will
have, but whose. And this question has ethical implications and
consequences.
At the time of the partition of India and Pakistan, many Hindus
felt threatened by Muslim political demands and wanted to have a
Hindu-dominated state. They were the majority after all, and a Hindudominated India would not only accord with democracy but also
restore the faded Hindu glory, so very undermined by Islamic invaders
long ago. Muslim fears of Hindus have not calmed down during the
last six decades of Indian independence. The recent rise of Hindutva,
Hindu nationalism, has put the Muslim community on the defensive.
Communal riots are all too commonplace, with Muslims usually having
the worst of it. In the late 1980s the Muslim personal law system (family
law in India is controlled by the different religions) came under attack,
and many Muslims saw this as an attack on the ethical foundations of
their community.9 A mosque, the Babri Masjid, which Hindu militants
declared sat on a site that contained an important Hindu temple, was
actually torn down by Hindu militants in 1992, while Indian police
passively watched, making the Muslim community feel even more
besieged. That Muslims tend to be poorer and less educated than Hindus
adds to the Muslim feeling of being dominated by the Hindus.
Yet just as many Muslims fear Hindus, many Hindus fear Muslims,
even though 83 percent of Indians are Hindu and only 11 percent
Muslim. Some Hindus regard their history to have had a glorious past,
many centuries ago, followed by centuries of Muslim and then British
rule. These Hindus contend that the reason for this domination was
that Hindus have been divided, particularly by caste, and thus are relatively weak, whereas their enemies are united and strong. Whereas
Hindus, by their number, do dominate India, they view Muslim support
for religious family law as being part of a militant religious international Islamic revival. The fact that many Muslims go to the Islamicdominated oil-rich Persian Gulf countries to work, along with the mass
conversions of lower-caste Hindus to Islam that take place, only adds
9. The matter of personal law in India is complicated by the fact that the state has intervened in Hindu but not in Muslim personal law, which has made the former much less
discriminatory against women than the latter. Nonetheless, the perception of the Muslim
community was that the Hindu-dominated state was intervening in their community in
a way that threatened the ethical foundations of their identity. See also my discussion of
the complexity of India personal law in Spinner-Halev (2001).
234
Jeff Spinner-Halev
to these fears. But Hindu anxieties have been fueled also by massacres
of Hindus by Sikhs in the Punjab and by an influx of Muslim Bangladeshi immigrants into the Indian state of Assam (Jaffrelot 1996, chaps.
1 and 10).
Relations between Hindus and Muslims in India reflect a pattern that
is repeated again and again in other countries. Both Turkey and Sri
Lanka moved haltingly toward democracy, with some reversals, in the
second half of the last century. As the Ottoman Empire broke up, part
of what is now Turkey was occupied by France and Britain, and then
invaded by Greece, which had designs on Istanbul and the area of
Anatolia. The humiliation felt by many Turks, rulers of the once great
Ottoman Empire now not only in pieces, but occupied in its heartland,
was deep. Many Greek Orthodox Christians in Turkey, however, supported this invasion, some very actively and some more passively. The
Greeks were defeated, and that defeat led many local Greek Christians
to become fearful of losing their homes, lives, and livelihood (Alexandris 1983, 8283). Even if most did not entertain thoughts of serving as
fifth column, this fact did little to calm Turkish fears of the defeated
Greek minority. Emerging from war, unsure how complete the Greeks
perceived their defeat to be, many Turks saw the coast as populated
with too many untrustworthy Greek Christians, and they thought it
now needed to be populated with more trustworthy Muslims (Ladas
1932, 20), leading to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Greek
Christians from the new Turkish state, and later to an exchange (Mbadele) of national minorities between Turkey and Greece by forced
reciprocal transfer.
Nonetheless, by the early 1950s the relationship between the Turkish
state and its Greek Christian citizens had improved, with the Greek
community enjoying something of a revival. But all this came to a
crashing halt with the emergence of the dispute between Turkey and
Greece over Cyprus. Once again, the local Greek community was
viewed as potential fifth column, a perception that led to anti-Greek
riots and further expulsions. By the early 1970s, the same Greek Christian community in Turkey that for several centuries had flourished
under the authoritarian but multinational Islamic Ottoman Empire
(which for many centuries ruled Greece itself) was down to a mere few
thousand souls, mostly elderly people, now living under the more
democratic, nationalist, and secular Turkish republic.
One might retort that this was not the consequence of religious
nationalism, but the Jewish (and Christian Armenian) communities
235
also suffered in Turkey. The Jews did not suffer as much as the Greeks
did, but they nonetheless faced considerable discrimination (though
much of this discrimination has since faded). The newly born Turkish
state was for the Turksand not just any Turks, but Islamic Turks.
Though Atatrk maintained that the Turks were a nation before they
became Muslim, being Turkish and Muslim wereand areintertwined. Turkish leaders insisted upon the unity of their young nation;
they were no minorities within their midst, they insisted. They pressured the Jewish community into forgoing its status as a minority
group, a status the community was entitled to under an international
treaty that Turkey signed in the 1920s10 (Liberles 1984, 133). Yet even
as it denied having minorities, Turkey routinely discriminated against
its non-Islamic minorities.11 Islam was simply a crucial, perhaps main,
component of identity in the emerging Turkish state (Poulton 1997,
98). In the 1930s the press led an anti-Jewish campaign that led to antiJewish riots and even to the removal of several historic Jewish communities. During World War II, well-to-do Greek Orthodox Christian,
Catholic and Gregorian Armenian Christian, and Jewish men were
rounded up and sent to special camps where they were forced to work
for the state under harsh conditions (Poulton 1997, 117). Perhaps more
ominous was the capital or wealth tax imposed on non-Muslims in the
very early 1940s. A severe economic crisis lasting from 1939 to 1942 was
blamed on non-Muslim businessmen. The capital tax was levied on all
10. It was sovereign Turkeys perfectly legal prerogative after the Lausanne Treaty to
abrogate all of the so-called capitulations that the now-defunct Ottoman Empire had
signed with practically every major power. These were supposedly mere trading agreements that would permit the establishment of foreigners and their civil and criminal
judgment by foreign envoys under foreign law. Until 1583, when England obtained its
first capitulation, France had been the official protector of all Europeans established
in Turkey. Later, England would gain claim to protect the subjects of other nations as
well. The practical result of the capitulations in Turkey was to form each separate foreign
colony into a sort of imperium in imperio, to assail the local jurisdiction, and to abate the
sovereignty of the capitulating party even as the latter endeavored to become a modern
independent nation. Even the Ottoman Empires erstwhile vassals in the Balkansin
principle bound to respect the capitulations for as long as they remained part of that
empireabrogated these in practice by virtue of the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, long before
securing their own full independence. What modern state or government would have
tolerated incursions into its sovereign jurisdiction after 1923? Surely none in Europe:
hence nor did Turkey. The move was not directed at any one community in particular,
though all had to be dealt with, one by one, by the newly sovereign state.Ed.
11. The Kurds are Muslim and face ill treatment as well. But Turkish leaders hoped that
the Kurds would accept being Turksan offer never really extended to the non-Islamic
minorities. The persistence of Kurdish nationalism and the ensuing terror convinced
successive Turkish governments to oppose these with counterviolence as a last resort.
236
Jeff Spinner-Halev
citizens, but the tax on Jews and Christians was ten times the tax
imposed on Muslims, while Jewish converts to Islam had to pay only
twice as much. The result is reported to have led to a great impoverishment of non-Muslim communities (Poulton 1997, 117119; Liberles
1984, 134135). Secular Turkeys membership in the Organization of
Islamic Conference today is evidently not accidental.
Group identity, fear, and religion play the familiar role also in Sri
Lanka, where a religiously mixed population lives and the Buddhist
population, like the religious majorities in Turkey and in India, is the
clear majority. Sri Lanka comprises 74 percent Sinhala (most of whom
are Buddhist) and 12 percent Tamil Hindu (the rest are Muslims, Christians, and Hindus from India). As in Turkey and India, the different
religious groups historically shared one anothers practices. Although
there have been contentions between the religious groups, historically
the disputes in Sri Lanka were rarely about religion. Yet once again the
emergence of democracy has meant a spiraling of religious resentment,
discrimination, and violence, with Tamil Hindus feeling the sting of
discrimination by Sinhala Buddhists. Sri Lankas constitution declares
Sri Lanka to be a Buddhist state and calls upon the state to support
Buddhism while respecting all other religions. In 1957, Sinhala was
proclaimed to be the official language, replacing English; this was
widely seen as a move to ensure Sinhala ascendancy and put the Tamils
at a disadvantage, and although Tamil was later made the administrative language in some Tamil-dominated provinces, some Tamils have
responded with violence, to the extent of fighting for a separate Tamil
state in the Tamil-dominated regions of the island.
What is rather striking about Hindu, Turkish Islamic, and Sinhala
Buddhist nationalism is the need felt by substantial parts of the majority, a majority that is comfortably large, to assert themselves over the
minority. Part of the urge to assert themselves is fueled by fear. Just
look at the map, one Buddhist nationalist explains, and see how tiny,
how fragile Sinhalese Buddhist society is. . . . our Sinhala society is only
a teardrop, a grain of sand, in an enormous sea (Juergensmeyer 1993,
100). There are large Muslim countries near Sri Lanka, and of course
there is Hindu-dominated India. Tamil Hindus may be a small minority
in Sri Lanka, butjust to the norththere are tens of millions of Tamil
Hindus in south India. Similarly, the Turks did not just fear the Greeks
inside their borders, but those on the outside as well, just as some
Hindus today worry about a Pan-Islamic movement, and many Jewish
Israelis worry about the Arab world and not merely the Muslim Arab
237
Palestinians. A majority that feels besieged and fearful will often view
the minority with suspicion and will rarely act tolerantly. Trust is not
the sole purview of the market;12 it is also a key factor in the making
of peoples and nation-states.
Believers and Heathens
My foregoing examples come mostly from democratizing states whose
identity is religious and nationalistic. Nationalism, of course, need not
be attached to religion, but religious nationalism is often more intractable than other kinds of nationalism. Religion often adds one more
layer, often a significant layer, of division between peoples, and so
makes the exclusion attached to religious nationalism harder to undermine. When religion is a point of division it prevents people on the
different sides from dealing with one another. Serbs, Croats and
Bosnians do not just have a different national identity; specifically,
they also have different religious identities (Orthodox, Catholic, and
Muslim). That Greek Christians are different from Turkish Muslims on
two important dimensions makes each side seem even more alien to
one another. Some religious nationalisms are simply based on religion,
as in Northern Ireland or India; here, religion does not add yet another
point of division between the peoples at conflict, on top of national
identity. Yet these religious nationalisms, too, are particularly hard to
tame, since people are more likely to think that their religion is sanctioned by God than, say, by their language or culture. Sometimes,
people may think that those who speak a different language are strange
but rarely will they think that speaking a different language implies
that someone is immoral or unethical.13
Giving up ones religion is often hard, since it is such a stark thing
to do. Religions are what Avishai Margalit calls an encompassing group:
if you are part of one, you cannot be part of another (Margalit 1996).
This generalization is not always true, as we will soon see, but it is
almost the case when religious identities become politicized and boundaries between them become too clear. It is hard, although possible, to
move between different religious communities. In contrast, one can
easily speak more than one language. One can speak Romanian in
public and Hungarian at home without betraying or changing ones
12. See Kleindorfer, chap. 7 in this book.
13. For a distinction between ethics and morals, see J. J. Mulhern, chap. 8 in this book.
238
Jeff Spinner-Halev
239
the right God and have a moral code of conduct. This dichotomy does
not mean that people must look down upon those with the wrong
beliefs as heathens, nor does it mean that they must adjudicate the lives
of the heathens as less important than their own, and surely not that
they must view the heathens as a threat to their moral or ethical code,
since members of their very own society might be tempted by the
heathens way of life. But a dichotomy that divides the world between
those who are moral and right as opposed to those who are immoral
and wrong certainly allows all of these things to happen far more
easily.
There is, however, an important paradox in religious nationalism:
many religious nationalist leaders and some of their followers are not
religious at all. The Indian Hindu right uses little Hindu ritual in its
organization (Jaffrelot 1996, 27; van der Veer 1994, 72; Juergensmeyer
1993, 8384). Many among the earliest Zionist leaders were not merely
nonreligious, but also implacable opponents of the Jewish religious
establishment, which, in part and to some extent, was itself staunchly
anti-Zionist. Under the Islamic Ottomans, more than a million Greek
Orthodox Christians flourished, mostly peacefully, in what is now
Turkey; Istanbul was more than 40 percent Christian when modern
Turkey was founded (Alexandris 1983, 50). Yet it was under the Turkish
Republic, which dismantled all state support for religion and outlawed
the fez and the arsaf (veil), that almost all Christians were either eased
or forced out of the country (Poulton 1997, 98).
When a democracy defines itself in religious terms, religion becomes
a societal identity, making the religious content of that religion less
important for some. When religion is an identity, it becomes a way of
marking one in the world and a way of contrasting one from others; it
becomes a source of pride, of self-respect, in the world. When these
things happen, one expects respect when ones own religion is respected;
one feels that ones fate is tied to ones religion. The advantage of
identity religious nationalists over devout religious nationalists
resides in that the former are often not as single-minded as the latter,
a point I shall return to. Although at times the two groups may assess
their interests differently, often enough their goals will converge and
may even coincide.
Turning religion into political identity can bolster political and social
boundaries. While the leaders of the monotheistic religions may look
askance upon others, followers do not always look upon nonbelievers
as immoral heathens. There is much religious sharing in the world:
240
Jeff Spinner-Halev
241
citizens of the world. Not everyone identifies very closely with a single
particular group; nor does every citizen in a democracy seek to carve
out an exclusive identity in the polity. Standing alongside many acts
of intolerance are acts of kindness and bravery. Hindu and Muslim
neighbors hide each other during riots; politicians and citizens speak
out against intolerance; Israeli Jews, Israeli Muslims, and Palestinian
Arabs hold joint programs together. When helping ones neighbors
is deemed kind and brave or where joint programs are viewed as
a reaching out, then people clearly are advancing against tides of
intolerance.
There are ways of decreasing exclusion.15 Fareed Zakaria, for one,
has argued that the key to protecting minorities is to be found in liberalism more than in democracy. His reminder that democracies are not
always liberal convincingly argues that it is constitutional liberalism
securing rights to all citizens regardless of identitythat protects
everyones rights. Zakaria maintains that without a background in
constitutional liberalism, the introduction of democracy in divided
societies has actually fomented nationalism, ethnic conflict and even
war (Zakaria 1997, 35). This pessimistic conclusion, dooming all new
democracies to endless conflict, is more pessimistic than Zakarias
argument warrants. Not all democracies, not even mature liberal
democracies, boasted at their inception the robust constitutional liberalism that they may display as a modern democracy. Such a backdrop
develops over time, often in the seedbed of illiberal democracy. Zakaria
says that mature liberal democracies can usually accommodate ethnic
divisions without violence or terror and live in peace (Zakaria 1997,
35). This statement begs a question, though: How does a democracy
become mature? Liberal democracies are not born mature; they too
must have their beginnings, and these beginnings are almost always
illiberal, at least in part.
It is all too facile to divide the democracies into good and bad, to
assert that we the lucky live in the good liberal democracies while
others live in the bad non-Western, nonliberal democracies, and then
to go on to criticize illiberal democracies. My argument over identity
and democratization here focuses on democratizing states in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but the same arguments about identity,
democracy, and exclusion apply equally to democratizing states in the
nineteenth century. Our good liberal Western democracies were once
15. See Kumar and Silver (2008).
242
Jeff Spinner-Halev
243
244
Jeff Spinner-Halev
245
little to dampen the zeal of devout religious nationalists. Here the distinction between the ethic of devout religious nationalists and the ethic
of identity religious nationalists is important. The latter may find the
boundaries marked by religious nationalism less important as their
physical security becomes more entrenched. If devout religious nationalists are a minority of religious nationalists, then reducing fear may
be enough to tilt the balance in the state to a more liberal attitudinal
ethic toward minorities.
Good Elites
Elite behavior sometimes can be crucial in helping determine the degree
of intolerance in a country. Elites can work to stir issues up or mute
them down. Bulgaria, a good example here, was one of the two European countries taken over by, or allied with, Nazi Germany, that nevertheless saved all of its Jewspartly because certain Bulgarian elites
sought to thwart the Nazi attempts to discriminate and kill Bulgarian
Jews (Todorov 2001). Fifty years later, many Bulgarian Turks became
victims of an intolerance campaign led by the Bulgarian leader, Todor
Zhivkov. Many were forced to change their names, and some were
expelled to Turkey. When Zhivkov was removed in a coup in 1989, the
new leaders reversed course: Bulgarian Turks were allowed to reclaim
their name; and those expelled, to return home.
Still, proper elite behavior cannot ensure a generalized ethic of tolerance. In neither of the Bulgarian cases was there much popular support
for the campaigns against Bulgarian Jews or Bulgarian Turks. Religious
nationalism often is fueled by an ethic of distrust or one of hatred of a
rival religion, making elite behavior less important:18 in India both
Nehru and Ghandi deplored the communal violence and intolerance
displayed around Indias independence. Ghandis death at the hands
of a Hindu nationalist, while fasting in protest of communal violence,
was deeply mourned by many Indians, although it did not stop the
violence. It is doubtful that a wholly different outlook on part of either
the Israeli or the Turkish leadership around the founding of their
respective countries would have ensured equality for their Arab or
Christian minorities, respectively, even though a more tolerant leadership then might have helped to dampen some of the intolerance subsequently exercised by their successors.
18. One of the problems with Snyders (2000) treatment of democratization and violence
is that it is perhaps overly elite focused.
246
Jeff Spinner-Halev
Electoral Arrangements
Sometimes the manner in which political institutions are formed can
help increase or decrease an ethic of cooperation among different
groups. Consociational arrangements may ease nationalist tensions by
giving two national groups an equal partnership in government. Such
arrangements, however, work only when the political community contains two groups of nearly equal size. If smaller minorities exist, then
the proportional representation (PR) system is preferred, as it encourages coalitions among a variety of groups and as it may give some
leverage to minority parties, some of which may be organized around
national or ethnic lines (Horowitz 1985, chap. 15). Alternatively, the
political parties in PR systems may directly appeal to minorities by
placing minority candidates directly on their electoral lists. Winnertake-all (or first-past-the-post) systems, like the one in the United States,
give the winning party little incentive to cooperate with minority
parties, since the winners are the majority and do not need anyone else
to form a coalition with. On balance, PR systems are usually more
favorable to national minorities, but PR systems do not necessarily
always lead to a thereby-increased ethic of tolerance. While the PR
system in India from time to time has given Muslims some measure of
influence on the government, that minority still faces considerable
discrimination. In Israel, Arab political parties officially never have
been part of a ruling coalition. While there have been occasions when
these parties unofficially have supported a government, they rarely
have been given much reward for their sporadic quiet support.
International Pressure and Economic Incentives
The international community can pressure a state to act with a more
pronounced ethic of tolerance. To take a nonreligious example, Estonia
passed laws that discriminated against its Russian citizens after it
became independent. But Estonia also coveted membership in the
European Union; and to become even an associate member, it had to
put a stop to these discriminatory laws, and it did so. Whether international pressure will succeed, either by way of subtle politics or coercion in the form of economic incentives and penalties, may depend on
how much the nation and its elites weigh their desire for economic
advancement against their reasons to want to maintain their discriminatory laws. Devout religious nationalists very well may prove to be
247
more resistant to international pressure than identity religious nationalists. Given a choice between God and wealth, the devout believer
more likely will choose the former. Identity religious nationalists,
however, may take a more balanced approach to wealth and nation.
Their code of ethic may permit them to give up certain kinds of national
power in exchange for wealth.
Any external pressure that does succeed will be aimed usually at
securing formal civil and political rights and ensuring the security of
minorities. Security and formal rights guarantees can coexist with discrimination, however, as they very often do in a mature democracy. State
symbols and holidays can easily favor some groups over others, in the
mature and the immature democracies. Still, securing the rights and
security of all citizens is important for its own sake. An ethic of equal
rights will help also where the influence of devout religious nationalists
is weaker than that of identity religious nationalists. When you have the
profound conviction that God still approves of your sovereignty over a
space that is not just any piece of real estate, neither economic sanctions,
nor diminished security threats, nor denial of diplomatic recognition
will do much to stop your attempts to cling to the Land.
Yet religious nationalists, too, are a group with mixed motives. The
more devout in that group will not be enticed lightly into making
compromises with their faith. The less devout, who see religion as a
marker of identity at least as much as a matter of faith, very likely will
be more pliable, usually more willing to balance interests and more
amenable to negotiation and compromise, than their strictly more
devout religious nationalist brethren. Hence, when identity religious
nationalists predominate, there may be reason to hope that, with the
right kinds of pressure at the right moment, democratizing states will
treat their religious minorities with respect and ensure equal rights.
It is therefore this sort of regime, one based on human rights, that
may be what at best can be hoped for in emerging democracies. As they
become more mature and more secure, some of their cultural biases
will tend to fade, if not completely disappear: to date, there exists no
democracy that has deployed either the disposition or the capacity to
achieve absolute cultural neutrality. Moreover, there are reasons to
conclude that in a globalizing world, a state that is culturally biased
toward one particular group, yet also inclined to ensure the rights of
all, may be worth defending (Taylor 1992). But democratic nationalism
can very easily go astray, and any factual explanation of it must be
accompanied by an unmitigated awareness of its dangers.
248
Jeff Spinner-Halev
References
Alexandris, Alexis (1983) The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-Turkish Relations,
19181974, Athens: Center for Asia Minor Studies.
Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism, 2nd ed., London: Verso.
Aronoff, Myron Joel (2008) Democratizations in Fissured Societies: Retrospectives and
Prospects, in Jose V. Ciprut, Editor, The Future of Citizenship, Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press.
Bayly, Susan (1989) Saints, Goddesses, and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian
Society, 17001900, Cambridge South Asian Studies 43, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Beard, Mary, John A. North, and S. R. F. Price (1998) Religions of Rome, Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Brass, Paul R. (1990) The Politics of India since Independence, vol. 4: The New Cambridge
History of India, p. 1, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Canovan, Margaret (1996) Nationhood and Political Theory, Cheltenham, UK: Edward
Elgar.
Colley, Linda (1992) The Britons: Forging the Nation, 17071837, New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Dalrymple, William (1998) From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the
Middle East, New York: Henry Holt.
Dowty, Alan (1998) The Jewish State: A Century Later, Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Gellner, Ernest (1983) Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Hont, Istvan (1994) The Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind: Contemporary Crisis
of the Nation State in Historical Perspective, Political Studies 42:166231.
Horowitz, Donald L. (1985) Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Jaffrelot, Christopher (1996) The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India, New York: Columbia University Press.
Juergensmeyer, Mark (1993) The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular
State, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kimmerling, Baruch, and Joel S. Migdal (1993) Palestinians: The Making of a People, New
York: Free Press.
Kumar, Rahul, and David Silver (2008) The Ethics of Civic Exclusion, in Jose V. Ciprut,
Editor, The Future of Citizenship, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Kymlicka, Will (2001) Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Ladas, Stephen P. (1932) The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, New York:
Macmillan.
249
Liberles, Adina Weiss (1984) The Jewish Community of Turkey, in Daniel Elazar et al.,
Editors, The Balkan Jewish Communities: Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, Lanham,
MD: University Press of America.
Margalit, Avishai (1996) The Decent Society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Mill, John Stuart (1991) Considerations on Representative Government, J. Gray, Editor,
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Poulton, Hugh (1997) Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism and the Turkish
Republic, New York: New York University Press.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1968) The Social Contract, M. Cranston, Translator, Harmondsworth, England: Penguin.
Schiffman, Harold F. (2008) Language, Policy, and Citizenship: Three Views Compared,
in Jose V. Ciprut, Editor, The Future of Citizenship, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Snyder, Jack L. (2000) From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict, New
York: Norton.
Spinner-Halev, Jeff (2001) Feminism, Multiculturalism, Oppression and the State,
Ethics 112(1):84113.
Taylor, Charles (1992) Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition: An Essay, A. Gutmann,
Editor, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
(1999) Democratic Exclusion (and Its Remedies?), in A. K. B. Rajeev Bhargava
and R. Sudarshan, Editors, Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
Thomas, Keith (1971) Religion and the Decline of Magic, New York: Charles Scribners
Sons.
Todorov, Tzvetan (2001) The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgarias Jews Survived the Holocaust, A. Denner, Translator, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
van der Veer, Peter (1994) Religious Nationalism, Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Weber, Eugene (1976) Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Williams, David R. (2008) Of Personhood, Peoplehood, and Polity, in Jose V. Ciprut,
Editor, The Future of Citizenship, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Yack, Bernard (2001) Popular Sovereignty and Nationalism, Political Theory
29(4):517536.
Zakaria, Fareed (1997) The Rise of Illiberal Democracy, Foreign Affairs, November/
December, 2243.
11
Politics of Ethics:
Toward an Ethic of
Egalitarian Democracy?
Kevin Cameron
252
Kevin Cameron
the rights and liberties of the individual against the coercive power of
the state as the normative benchmark for democracy and finds its chief
proponents in Anglo-American thought and practice. The second,
chiefly characteristic of French and continental European thought and
practice, advocates a democracy that promotes the equality of citizens
as a defense against the coercive practices of private individuals,
groups, and/or institutions. These two traditions owe their respective
points of origin to the two great European revolutions that helped to
inaugurate modern institutional democracy: the Puritan Revolution of
the seventeenth century and the French Revolution of the eighteenth
century (Sabine 1952, 453). In the generations that followed these revolutions, the libertarian torch was picked up by liberals, and the socialists became the most prominent spokespeople for the egalitarian
tradition. Although liberty and equality may be inextricably linked in
any practice of democracy, these two ideals at times have given birth
to incompatible aims and methods.
That the libertarian mode of democracy has its roots in the Anglo
tradition entails that it outlines democracy largely in terms of the
pursuit of liberty. From its early development as a project, starting from
the Magna Carta in 1215, to the Puritan (16421649) and Glorious (1688)
revolutions, the libertarian movement aimed at enlarging and protecting liberties, first of the nobility then of the merchant middle class
(Lindblom 1977, 163). The English revolutions of the seventeenth
century and to some extent the American Revolution of the eighteenth
(17751781) sought to restore an English birthright that was viewed
as having been usurped by the illegitimate expansion of government
power. Above all, each of these revolutions sought to create, if not
to restore, individual freedoms of association and the pursuit of individual self-interestby establishing a constitutional framework that
should protect individual rights. This tradition argued that the sphere
of government influence ought to be legally limited and that there
exists a wide range of social, religious, and economic practices that are
best left to the voluntary associations of individuals. Any political
system that does not respect, protect, and preserve these presuppositions cannot accurately be called democratic.
Philosophically, the libertarian tradition is built on a strict separation
between the state and civilian society.1 The function of the state is not
to make moral rules for society as a whole, but to enforce the rights of
1. Cf. the classical notion of the state cited by Mulhern, chap. 8 in this book.
253
254
Kevin Cameron
255
256
Kevin Cameron
257
258
Kevin Cameron
In the modern world, the line between the public and the private has
become increasingly blurred. The infringement of the private upon the
public, on a mass scale, results in what Arendt calls the social. The
social amounts to nothing less than the concerns of labor and the basic
necessities of life hijacking the realm of action and, not least, thereby
supplanting the preoccupations of politics by the daily concerns of the
household. In this sense, it represents the transformation of the entire
society into one immense household (Arendt 1958, 4445). The obliteration of the line between the public and the private marked by the
ascendancy of the social results in the further obliteration of both
spheres altogether. The problem with this kind of transformation is that
the household is ruled by patriarchal domination (the lucky patriarch
is presumably the only one free to enter the public sphere in the ancient
world) so that any elevation of the social to the level of politics can
only result in some form of domination over the public sphere. The
basis of Arendts criticism of Marx then, lies in what she sees as the
latters fallacious assumption that overcoming the need for politics by
means of the mere emancipation of labor would lead to the magnificent
realm of freedom. Is it not through this rise of the social that the modern
world has already transformed politics into administration? The public
realm is no longer a space for action, but has turned into a place
for the bureaucratic administration of biologic life. This is the signature phenomenon of the modern world. It highlights the threat generated by the egalitarian attempt to promote freedom from economic
necessity. What Marx failed to understand is that creatures relegated
entirely to the realm of necessity will not necessarily be capable of free
action when they are no longer bound to that necessity, especially since,
as Arendts verdict on the twentieth century suggests, any such
action would hinder, and therefore also create problems for, the very
administration of things that make emancipation possible in the first
place. The goals of freedom from necessity would easily subsume the
space for political freedom. The emancipation that Marx advocates is
one that, ironically, forces the emancipated into a state of oppression.
The all-encompassing reach of this management across society, to
the point where there is no longer a distinction between the public
and the private, is synonymous with Arendts very definition of
totalitarianism.
The typical erstwhile leftist criticism of Arendt pointed to her Hellenistic definition of freedom, not so much for its phenomenological as
259
for its structural formfor the fact that the realm of freedom was the
realm of the few.3 Echoing the libertarian critique of the egalitarian
tradition, Arendts criticism of Marxs notion of freedom is that it seeks
to extend the needs of the collective across the range of human relations. This obliteration of the distinction between public and private
creates the potential for equality on a mass scale. The radical criticism
of Arendt can travel in a number of directions at this point. Let us
investigate one in particular: It seems that, for Arendt, the social, like
any emancipatory project that accompanies it, seeks to overcome the
inequality between master and slave that makes possible her phenomenological understanding of politics, action, and freedom. In this sense,
the social is an egalitarian force. If one were to take seriously this notion
of the social and the dangers that it entails, it seems that one would
have to be led to the conclusion that the paramount political act left to
us moderns would be to dissolve the remaining boundaries between
masters and slaves, especially since today, according to Arendt, politics
works at the behest of economic performance rather than that of
freedom. This political act is especially necessary because todays
masters are not applying their status toward freedom as their ancient
predecessors once did (Arendt 1958, 6873). Absent a trespass of these
boundaries, there would be no chance ever of overcoming the grip of
the social. It appears therefore that Arendts notion of the social has
certain affinities with Marxs pointthat historically, freedom has been
sacrificed to economic power and to domination. The only way out of
this impasse for Marx was to overcome such domination. The libertarian tradition, in contrast, prefers to foreclose this act by way of marking
it as the midwife of totalitarianism. Yet if the ascendancy of the social
is as advanced as Arendt argues, then the radical project would seem
to be the only real political act left. The libertarian tradition cannot see
this point, if only because it presupposes economic domination to be
phenomenologically outside of politics proper. It seems that if the
modern world is indeed as the critics of egalitarianism describe it to
bea world where the social has come to dominate our livesthen
a politics of freedom that forecloses the radical act in advance, perhaps
by dismissing it as totalitarian in its intentions, is a political sphere
that seeks to limit its own content and, therefore, by definition, cannot
be free (Jay 1985; Zizek 2001, 3).
3. See McInerney (2008).
260
Kevin Cameron
261
262
Kevin Cameron
263
264
Kevin Cameron
concept of the good that can adequately predetermine the ethical consequences for all acts. If there were such a good, the human condition
would lack the space for ethics. The ethical dimension of her act lies in
the fact that, once the act occurs, the coordinates of the goodand the
reality principle with itmust be reconfigured on new grounds.
In these terms, then, what distinguishes an ethical act from a moral
act is that the former is not one that realizes an already existing ethical
norm, but an act that opens the space for the possibility of a new ethical
norm to emerge. This very condition should be transposed with how
we generally think of ethical norms in terms of the interplay between
such norms and the empirical content to which such norms apply.
Generally we understand a change in ethical norms to occur when the
empirical situation becomes too complex to meet adequately the
demands of the norms. We have to invent new norms in order to meet
these conditionsas we see today in the proliferation of new ethical
categories, designed to deal with dramatic changes in modern technologysuch as cloning, organ transplant, and the like. New norms need
to be invented or old norms reconfigured the more adequately to confront the exigencies of a changing environment. These innovations
miss, however, the ethical dimension proper. A changing of norms in
order to meet the new demands of reality transforms those norms into
instruments designed to accommodate our pathological interests (Zizek
2001). Elevating empirical reality to create a basis for changing ethical
norms cannot itself be ethical. In contrast, an ethical act is one that takes
the ethical demand of the Kantian law seriouslyfor its own saketo
the point of wholly disregarding moral constructions of the good and
their association with empirical reality. It is this disregard that ignites
an ethical change in what is. By contrast, merely abiding to an existing
norm or retailoring norms to fit our pathological needs would amount
to conformity to the reality principle and to all the limits that such a
principle places on what is possible for the subject.
The ethic in the ethical act lies in its questioning of the very contours
of the reality principle. Antigone not only questions the higher authority of the gods and of their laws, but, in so doing, she undermines the
concept of the good that props up the reality principle. It is the absurd
rationality of her position that reveals a gap in the reality principle.
Under the prevailing social good, the word brotheras it applies to
Polynicesmust be foreclosed by the reality principle that marks him
as a traitor. Yet, by clinging so steadfastly to this very worda drive
substantiated by the fact that the good prohibits its reference to
265
266
Kevin Cameron
267
hitherto existing conditions its interest has not yet been able to develop
as a particular interest of a particular class.
The revolutionary class is a very particular concrete element of
society. It raises itself to the level of a new universal by representing
the general interests of society against the old universal, which itself
represents only a particular interest. From the egalitarian perspective,
any abstract universal such as natural rights is only the ideological
embodiment of the dominant interest in society. The true universal
does not stand outside or above concrete social relations, but emerges
from inside of them. The basis for this emergence is inequality. Inequality reveals the gap between the abstract universal and the concrete
particular of any given society. As long as inequality exists, a true universal remains inside social relations as a latent representative of the
general interests of society. The universal is not abstract, something that
regulates social relations. Rather, it is concrete, something that transforms those relations.
Let us apply these two positions to the difference, as outlined earlier,
between morality and ethics. On the one hand, the libertarian ethos can
be equated with our definition of morality in that it functions under
the rubric of an abstract universal principle, which determines the
legitimate makeup of the concrete. In this way, it mimics the reality
principle. Just as moral acts are determined in terms of their conformity
to a presupposed universal good, freedom in the libertarian tradition
is determined by the organization of concrete social relations around
the imperatives of the abstract universal principle of natural rights. The
egalitarian ethos, on the other hand, is founded on a concrete entity
that embodies the universal (the general interest of society)5 when it
emerges to struggle against the abstract universal. This concrete entity
embodies the universal when it seeks to remedy the contradiction
between the abstract universal promise of equality and the concrete
particular delivery of inequality. In this way, it can be said to mimic the
Kantian ethical act: for representing equality, it adopts the form of the
universal interest of society in the very manner that the Kantian ethical
subjects motive espouses the form of universal legislation. In that way,
the egalitarian act deliberately disavows the good embodied in the
5. My use of general interest here coincides with nonpathological interests. The ethic
that I am outlining is a formal and, therefore, timeless duty. In a sense, the general interest
of society evoked by egalitarianism does not have to coincide with the fickle, empirical
interests of society any more than the moral law has to coincide with ones pathological
interests.
268
Kevin Cameron
269
270
Kevin Cameron
The basis for equality, or the universal, then, must be sought for in that
which is excluded. Since it is equality that serves as the basis for the
universal duty promoted by the egalitarian principle, the central political struggle is always the economic struggle. All other forms of inequalityracial, ethnic, religious, gender, . . . eventually can (as well they
should) be overcome under the principle of natural rights. Only economic inequality, the inequality of class relations, cannot be remedied
by natural rights because it, and only it, holds as its remedy the end to
the distinction between the state and civilian society, built as that distinction is into the very concept of natural rights and of the protection
of those natural rights by the rule of law.
In addressing the problem of a democratic ethic, raised in this book
by Schuldenfrei (chap. 12)that democracies cannot simultaneously
support a right and a unified goodI would argue that, with equality,
democracies contain a good in themselves that is not inconsistent
with freedom. The egalitarian tradition understands freedom not
exactly in terms of the individuals right against society, but rather as
something experienced and fulfilled in terms of the equality that one
shares with others. It is consistent with Kants imperative that we see
others as ends and not as means. The problem is not so much that a
society committed most deeply to rights and freedoms . . . is very
likely to be a divided society (see Schuldenfrei), but rather that a
divided society is very likely to be one that tends to be committed to
rights and individual freedoms. It is the division,10 and not democracy
as such, that makes freedom and the good incompatible. Schuldenfrei
is correct in arguing that democratic freedom will always be at odds
with the good, if by that he, indeed, refers to an abstract universal
good. The politics of the egalitarian democratic ethic, however, aims at
putting an end to the economic division in societythe very division
that prohibits the emergence of the latent democratic good in its
concrete form.
Embracing the economically excluded (whether the homeless, the
ghettoized, or the permanently unemployed), not just as yet another
interest group under the liberal paradigm, but as the concrete universal
within which to fashion a new society, is to embrace a new ethic beyond
the reality principle. Politically, this amounts to moving beyond the
possible as determined by the limits imposed by the liberal paradigm
and by its consequent fear of totalitarianism. As we learned from
10. For comparative exemplifications, see Aronoff (2008).
271
272
Kevin Cameron
12
The Problem of a
Democratic Ethic
Richard Schuldenfrei
274
Richard Schuldenfrei
275
equal and does not discipline the frivolous (unnecessary) to favor the
essential (necessary). He thinks impulsively, and he values the freedom
to indulge whatever he desires. The society governed by such values,
Plato calls a democratic society.
Finally, the fifth sort of person that Plato describes is the anarchotyrannical man. Such a man is such a lover of freedom that his life
is lawless, and he ends up being tyrannized over. He rejects any constraints whatsoever on his passions; as a result, he is dominated by the
strongest of them, say, sexual passion, drug abuse, or the like. A society
composed of such people inevitably comes to be dominated by a
tyrant.
The Problem of Democratic Aspiration
This taxonomy raises a problem. It is in the very nature of democracy,
according to Plato, that its collective aspirations do not include either
wisdom or honor. The logic of this point is clear enough. Both those
aspirations, if taken on collectively, require differentiating people in
terms of quality, and this is deeply at odds with equality, one of the
two basic values of democracy. People who regard all their desires as
equal, and have also no interest in controlling them, cannot be given
as much liberty as those who can control their passions, Plato believes;
hence, there would be unequal degrees of freedom.1 In this respect,
Plato would regard modern democracy as typical. It seems clear enough
that in the United States, for example, neither wisdom nor honor is as
highly regarded today as they have been either in other societies or,
earlier on, in the United States own history.
And this is the first of the problems of democratic ethics that I want
to discuss: Is a society that does not collectively admire wisdom or
honor a society with sufficiently high aspirations for human life? By
Platonic standards, democratic aspirations are not very high; and many
people who would not otherwise agree with Plato might agree on this
point.
Plato would probably not regard the United States as a paradigmatic
democracy, however. Democracy for him meant rule by those who did
not control their desires, which he assumed would be a large majority.
It was to be contrasted not just with rule by the wise and rule by the
1. Cf. Marxian and postmodern interpretations referred to in Cameron, chap. 11 in this
book.
276
Richard Schuldenfrei
277
belief, it seems clear that we need to ask, instead, whether and how
our collective aspirations can be raised.
But why is it the case that a society based on freedom and equality
turns out to be a society in which there is such a striking predominance
of concern with pleasure? Might the governments of such societies be
covertly violating their pledge to allow freedom and diversity? Platos
thought is, I believe, that a pleasure-oriented society need not be basically coerced in order to emerge. Pleasure is the default value of normal
human life. All that is necessary for pleasure to dominate (even if
incompletely and with only very small room for alternatives) is for the
culture not to aspire any higher than that. To take freedom and equality
for the good, according to Plato, will block the effects of the only antidotes to the human inclination to lead lives of pleasure or comfort:
people would follow their desires-qua-passions wherever those led.
Such people stood in contrast to oligarchic men, who would control
their desires for the sake of money; to men of honor, who would control
their desires (including the desire for money) for the sake of honor;
and to wise men, who would control all their desires for the sake of
wisdom.
The Obstacle to Raising Aspirations in a Free Society
To understand the difficulty of the problem, it will help to look back at
an aspect of the origin and basis of U.S. democracy. Apart from its
combination with oligarchy, U.S. democracy exhibits a number of quite
distinctive aspects relative to classical notions of democracy; these
aspects include the United States emphasis on individual and minority
liberties. Freedom of religion is a good example. What happened to
Socrates in democratic Athensnamely, being executed for impiety
would be quite out of keeping with the U.S. conception of democracy.
Some aspects of this particular conception of freedom find their origins,
to some extent, in the Reformation.
It is traditional to regard the people of the United States very much
as the direct descendents of participants in the religious wars of
seventeenth-century Europe, as does for instance John Rawls (1999) in
Justice as Fairness, Political not Metaphysical. Neither Catholics nor
Protestants had been able to establish the kind of consensus or hegemony that would have made religious freedom unnecessary; so the
alternatives were constant war or agreements to disagree. As the
diplomat-scholar Abba Eban has pointed out, the nations of the West
278
Richard Schuldenfrei
are used to coming to the right solution for such problems, but only
after they have tried everything else. In this case, after fighting to the
point where the destruction was unbearable any longer, they more or
less agreed to disagree. Eventually, a consensus could arise about the
sheer inappropriateness of attempting to enforce religious consensus;
and freedom of religion became the norm.
It is important to keep in mind that the wars of religion were wars
over the things most dear to people: their notions of which kind of a
life is worth dying for and what kind of life people should lead. To
Europeans who had been used to living in at least nominal agreement
about these things, agreeing to disagree was quite a sacrifice. To some
it may seem that people had simply come to their senses, and that
fighting over religious differences now seemed just silly. Such thinkers
should rethink how silly it might have seemed to people to have to
fight wars with other countries in order to force or compel the adversary to adopt ones own way of government and/or to submit to a
wholly alien conception of rights, or to have to fight and die rather than
simply to accept such. Agreeing to tolerate different religions3 at the
time must have seemed to those peoples not much different from what
agreeing to tolerate cannibalism or the burning of widows would seem
to us today. In sum, religious tolerance then must have been viewed
by them in the way that religious intolerance would be regarded by us
now; it must have been considered to be tantamount to tolerating the
intolerable.
Learning to tolerate religious diversity was part of learning to live
in a newly fragmented world, a world that came in parts, which did
not necessarily fit into a meaningful whole, a cosmos. In science, it
meant that the world came to appear more like a mechanism than a
morally coherent structure. And in social life, it meant the recognition
that not just barbarians but your nearest neighbors could legitimately
see the world in different ways, and thus also entertain different values.
Whereas previously people could have relied on a certain basic agreement on what was good to hold society together, that was no longer
sufficient.
How to treat others can no longer be just a matter of whether they
are good. When people have rights, and I have to respect their rights,
I have to divide my judgment of them. As a person, I may judge
3. Cf. the perspectives offered in this book by Baker (chap. 9) and Spinner-Halev (chap.
10), as well as Doran (2008) regarding modes of tolerance here and there and then
and now.
279
whether they are good. But, as a citizen and as the government, I judge
them also on the basis of whether or not they operate within their
rights. These judgments will not typically coincide. If they did, the
struggle that resulted in the institutionalization of rights would not
have taken place. That struggle came from disagreements over the
good. And so, freedom and goodness are in an important sense at odds.
There will be people who, by the standard of goodness, I will not find
reason to revere, but who, by the standard of political freedom, in our
shared capacity as citizens of the same polity, I must respect.
One way to talk about this change is to contrast the earlier society,
based on a shared conception of the good, with the society that ultimately emerges, based on a conception of freedom (or rights) but also
assuming a diversity of conceptions of the good (Rawls 1971, 446452;
see Sandel 1984, chap. 2). In such a society, rights and goods are to some
extent at odds, for it is always tempting to universalize ones conception of the good. But rights are obstacles to that intention. Hence, any
individuals conception of the good is in tension with his respect for
the rights of others. In this sense, even the individual himself is somewhat fragmented.
How much freedom? If freedom is a means to peace, then minimum
freedom is the amount that offers that peace. If the war is between
Catholics and Protestants, then peace necessarily will involve basic
freedom(s) for each. But the boundaries of freedom, somewhat like the
boundaries of a state, work best when they are drawn in defensible
places. Freedom for Catholics and Protestants might prove to be less
defensible a line than would be freedom of religion in general. Thus
more religions come to be tolerated on the very basis of the original
model of toleration.
And freedom expands also for other reasons. For one thing, the
model of removing divisive issues from the public domain, where such
is possible, can itself become a tradition, as also a vitally astute political
strategy. Moreover, freedom won at such a price, personal and/or
social, becomes valuable to people and to societies in and of itself, and
its exercise and extension are seen as valuable. Thus freedom goes
beyond religion and even conscience on to experiments in living, as
John S. Mill (1921) has called them, or lifestyles, as we would call
them today (Smart and Williams, 1973; Warnock 2003).
By the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, the
freedom of religion that was the outcome of the wars of religion and
the rights of Englishmen for which the American Revolution had been
280
Richard Schuldenfrei
fought had been generalized into becoming the rights of man. By the
middle of the nineteenth century, J. S. Mill, in one of the great documents of liberty, was arguing that liberty should extend to everything
that primarily concerned a particular person rather than ones neighbors. Mill clearly meant to defend life as most U.S. citizens would
today: according to different conceptions of the good. And much of
Mills sensibility on these issues, especially about the extent of liberty,
corresponds to our contemporary sensibility, even though there still is
great controversy about particular important cases.
The function of this historical-philosophical overview for our purposes here is to help show how difficult a solution to the problem of
democratic aspiration would be. In a classic liberal democratic society,
it is essential that freedom have precedence over particular conceptions
of the good. It should be clear that in such a regime, appeals for higher
aspirationwhich are tantamount to appeals for a sort of shared notion
of the goodare very likely to clash with this conception of freedom,
for this vision of freedom concretizes itself as a resistance to any shared
notion of the good; so any proposal for a shared higher aspiration that
is not so abstract as to allow for indefinitely great individuality is likely
to be regarded as a blatant infringement on freedom. This clash is part
of the significance of the fight over diversityoften in the form of
multiculturalismin the United States in recent times. To propose a
consensus over aspiration to a democratic populace such as we have
in the United States today is not just to do unpopular work, it is
perhaps factually to conflict with our notion of freedom.
What then can there be to say about the problem of democratic aspiration? Perhaps, just this: there is a large literature about the price of
modern democratic life, and it is possible that the lack of agreement on
elevated aspirations is simply part of that price. Some would say that
individual liberty and material progress more than make up for the
otherwise lowered aspirations. Less respect for wisdom, as opposed
perhaps to pragmatically oriented science; loyalty to family and/or
tribe, as opposed to universality; fortitude and military-type virtues,
as opposed to say, universal compassion . . . may or may not be losses,
but in any eventespecially, in the eyes of modernitys many defendersthey are more than made up for by what has been gained. Low
aspirations are not in themselves a menace to democracy, and hence
not a threat to what will have been gained in the transition to modern
democratic life. Might then the very search for a higher collective aspiration in reality not amount to more than nostalgia? Perhaps in a world
281
282
Richard Schuldenfrei
283
Kant we will rely on for our discussion here is based on his Foundations
of the Metaphysics of Morals (Kant 1964). This interpretation gives more
weight to Kants early, more rigorous, arguments and formulations
than to his subsequent, and more nuanced, speculations that recent
interpreters have preferred to emphasize.
This kind of theory emphasizes freedom as of morally direct importance. It claims that rights, as well as the concrete freedoms that they
provide for, are morally primary; in that sense, it imparts to rights and
freedom the essence of morality by seeing them as morally valuable in
and of themselves, not as a means to anything else. The political implication of such a theory is meant to be that we must have free institutions. Such theories are, of course, subject to criticism on serious
substantive counts, which we need not go into here (MacIntyre 1981,
chap. 4), since our task is not to engage in a general discussion of
various moral theories. But there is one problem with such theories,
which is specifically relevant to our problem of a democratic ethic.
As noted, our focus here is on the potential effective appeal of this
ethicas a solution to the threats to freedom and democracy. As also
noted, democratic culture is one of comfort and pleasure. And this is
exactly what constitutes the threat to freedom. The sort of thinking that
is done in a democratic culture is of a Humean sort. As opposed to
Platos wise person for whom reason determines the goals of life, for
Hume (1888, 415) reason as ideated in democratic society is and ought
to be the slave of the passions, because reason tells us the means to
acquire what we, independently of reason, want. So the appeal of rights
to a democratic society will have to be based either on an independent
desire for rights or on a claim that rights are a means to something else
that democratic (wo)man wants. Ironically, however, that something
else is just what this sort of theory is not prepared to provide. This
statement is equally true of Kants own theory, which addresses freedom
more generally rather than dwelling on rights more particularly. But in
whichever formulation of that theory, it is central that the nature of
freedom discussed not be viewed as a means to the fulfillment of some
desire. In Kants general formulation of the defense of freedom, it is
not a simple fact that freedom is not defended as a means to the satisfaction of desire; it is the very nature of freedom that it is not such a
means. If we ask what it is that is supposed, according to Kant, to bring
about moral action, if it is not that the action is the appropriate means
to an end, one illuminating answer is to compare it to Platonic courage/
fortitude, which specifically includes the ability to resist desire. In
284
Richard Schuldenfrei
Kant, this quality takes the form of respect for [moral] law or respect
for duty (Kant 1964, 6869). Yet, in its original Platonic form, the very
absence of that attribute is one of the most defining traits (indeed,
characteristics) of democratic culture.
Earlier I observed that, rather than being a pure Platonic democracy,
the United States seems something of a mixa combinationpart
Platonic oligarchy and part Platonic democracy. This observation,
however, does not give us any help here. For example, what if the oligarchs have resources for resisting pleasure or comfort that democrats do not have, especially if they are of the type imbued with what
Weber called the Protestant Ethic (Weber 1958). But there is nothing
intrinsically democratic about the oligarchic ethic. The oligarchic
ethic has little about it to support equality; it supports freedom largely
for the economically successful rather than for just anyone and
everyone.
Benthamite Utilitarianism and Democratic Stability
There are other categories of ethical theory, which defend rights in a
different wayas part of a more general theory of value, so-called
utilitarian or consequentialist theories. In one of its very prominent
forms, notably Benthams (1973, 257290), this approach actually contained a direct attack on rights. Benthams point was that freedom is
based not on rights, but on utility. Freedom is the means to the maximum
satisfaction of our desires; and where it is not, it is not worth having.
Here is an approach whichunlike the Kantianhas a purchase on
the democratic man, because it defends freedom in a way that uses
reason in the form that the democratic man understands it.
Benthamite utilitarianism is characterized by its aspiration to utter
rigor. Bentham (1996) proposes, strictly quantitatively, to calculate the
pleasure that a policy brings to each person, and then to compare policies in the same way: he advocates choosing the one that maximizes
the total amount of pleasure. As in the case of all moral theories, there
are many problems worthy of (re)consideration, but here we shall
discuss only the ones with special relevance to our specific interrogation of the palpable grounds and prospects for democratic ethics.
One such relevant problem, which has played a sizeable role in the
repudiation of utilitarianism in favor of more Kantian political thinking
by many political theorists in recent times and particularly in the transformation of that domain by John Rawls (1971), has to do with equality.
285
286
Richard Schuldenfrei
would undermine freedom. What if it were to turn out that what made
people happiest was, say, to watch television all day? Worse still, what
if it turned out to be drugs like crack that gave people the most
pleasure? Is the latter not a proposition that the people have come
perilously close to exploring in real terms, across the United States, at
certain periods, in recent times?
Millian Utilitarianism and Democratic Stability
There is another version of utilitarianism, which was proposed by John
Stuart Mill. In addition to defending individual rights in his On Liberty
(Mill 1921) on a utilitarian basis, the success of which is a matter of
controversy, Mill handled the pushpin-poetry dilemma in his Utilitarianism (Mill 1957). He proposed to distinguish between pleasures
not just quantitatively, but qualitatively as well. By way of a criterion
of qualitative difference between pleasures, Mill has claimed that
between certain pairs of pleasures, particular ones were preferred by
all of those who had experienced both. The preferred ones he believed
to be higher-quality pleasures, chosen even when they were not
superior quantitatively. On this basis then, poetry was to be preferred
to pushpin. And since the criterion of quality is based on experience,
Mill believed it to be objectively grounded, even if it was not wholly
so quantitatively.
I find here something that speaks both directly and quite relevantly
to our problem. Mill can be understood as attempting to convince those
who are tempted by a life of television watching that they are missing
out on something else, which they would appreciate much more if they
would only give the latter a chance. True enough, such disposition may
require considerable effort, but the argument is that it surely would be
worth their while in a way that is in some sense on their terms. If it is,
say, happiness that the democratic population seeks, then people will be
making a mistake if they were to indulge themselves in these passive
or, lowerpleasures. This is an argument that can be understood by,
and even appeal to, democratic populations in no uncertain terms.
There is a serious weakness in this argument as an answer to our
specific problem, however. But in order to articulate it we need to
make a more general point first. If nearly everyone who has tasted
both vanilla and chocolate ice cream claims that the former is better,
that fact does not make it such in and of itself. It only proves that the
majority prefers vanilla to chocolate. In order for Mill to claim that he
287
288
Richard Schuldenfrei
keys? This is a matter of judgment over which even the best of us can
be wrong on occasion; but there is, nevertheless, a correct answer.7
Perhaps this sort of judgment is the very virtue that we need to encourage, the better to protect our freedom.
This proposal raises the question Is there such wisdom, and what
does it say in any given case? Aristotle addresses this query head-on.
If you want to know what the wise judgment is in any given case, ask
the wise man. While this may seem to provide a trivial or circular
answer, it is actually illuminating in a most important way, for it reflects
Aristotles confidence in a consensus about who is a wise man. This
was a confidence based on the conviction that he lived in a society
where people agreed, not unanimously, but by and large, on what was
good and what was bad. And this belief was connected with other
convictions that supported it: for example, that man was a political
animal; that his society, namely the polis, was the natural unit of association; that human beings were so constructed as to be able to understand not just the natural but also the social world. We moderns do not
agree on such things. It is therefore not surprising that the notion of
practical wisdomembodied by phronesic mens worldviewcannot
play the same role in our society that in his time Aristotle envisioned
it to be playing in his.
To see how and why this statement is true, we can turn to the vexed
issue of abortion. The abortion issue does not lend itself to solution by
simple appeal to the enumerated rights of the constitution, because no
such rights are enumerated, and because both sides appeal to rights.
Nor does it yield to a broader appeal to freedom, since both sides
appeal to that as well. One emphasizes freedom in the form of the right
to life; the other places the accent on freedom in the form of the right
to the pursuit of happiness. The first sees in liberty the freedom to live
within traditional parameters, while the second interprets freedom as
the liberty to explore the limits of human individual life. Thus the abortion debate today (cf. Eichler, chap. 2 in this book) is but a concretization of two different conceptions of the good life, approached
differentlyalbeit right inside the one and same society: distinct democratizations within the very same polity.
In the United States this protracted controversy has plagued all the
branches of government, but most centrally the judiciary. In effect, the
7. Even though some things, degrees in qualities among them, do remain in the paradoxical domain to this day: see, for instance, Gross (2008).
289
290
Richard Schuldenfrei
Conclusion
The problem of aspiration that we thought useful to mention is not in
and of itself a mortal threat to democracy. It even might not amount to
much more than yet another simple fact about the modern world. In
contrast, the problem of democratic stability is just such a mortal threat.
We should note also that there remains considerable question as to
whether the problem of democratic aspiration should be looked at in
isolation. In the first place, all the approaches with which we hoped to
solve the problem of instability appealed in different forms to values
of wisdom and/or honor, the very absence of which in fact defined the
problem of democratic aspiration. Lest we forget, Plato himself had
argued that the decline he expected from democracy into anarchy/
tyranny was simply one stage of the decline that begins with the descent
from the regime of the wisdom lover to the regime of the honor lover,
continuing inexorably down to the money lover and on to the freedom/
equality lover. We may think that, if we do not aspire any higher, the
alternative would be to stay put where we are, but quite apart from
Platos philosophical argument on this score, there is the simpler point
that if a person circling a mountain halfway up does not concern
himself with going any higher, s/he eventually will yield to gravity
and end up even lower.
Men do not live by bread alone. Nor do they live by freedom and
democracy in a space devoid of everything else. Full-fledged human
beings, whose lives can sustain both democracy and freedom, entertain
a conception of what makes a life worthwhile. They may have fervent
faith in freedom and democracy, but, as mature human beings, they
will also have developed a conception of the good. The two major
problems of democratic ethics, discussed earlier, are in fact two aspects
of the separation of the right and the goodthe consequences of giving
social primacy to right over good. As noted, when we separate the
right and the good, we also disconnect the principles of political life
and the very precepts of individual life. A society committed most
deeply to rights and freedom, and not solely to the good, is very likely
to be a divided society, because its members must believe in something
else as wellthe nature of a good life. There is nothing in a free society
to assure that everyone will agree on such. Indeed, there is a strong
tendency to make the very absence of such an agreement (diversity)
a criterion of genuine freedom. History suggests that at least some such
disagreement is important for the idea of freedom to take hold. U.S.
291
society, for instance, has long assumed that, at least nominally, it could
reach no agreement, attain no consensus, on the good life; and it increasingly is able to celebrate the very fact.
Hence, we should not be surprised, under those circumstances, that
we moderns are unable collectively to raise our sights or even jointly
to protect our freedoms by appealing to a consensus around some
ethical theory. If we did have such a consensus, our freedom would not
be so important to us, and surely its pursuit would not be such a fragile
undertaking.
Though we cannot appeal to a consensus about a central ethic in
order to protect our democracy, it does not follow that there cannot
obtain one such central code, or that we cannot aspire to creating one.
Such a consensus, however, would have to be about a conception that
was at once seriously unified and richly diverse. For, if it were not
unified, it could not mobilize our notions of the good in defense of our
freedom; and if it were not diverse, it would be significantly at odds
with freedom itself.
And so we are forced to keep struggling on, toward finding the
appropriate relationship between the freedom we seek and the good
for which we search. The struggle to find the correct relationship
between the freedom and the good is similar in certain ways to the
struggle to ensure the optimal relationship between unity and diversity, a form of struggle for which Plato is our first and best guide. And
as Plato makes clear, it is essential for our success in such struggles that
we do not assume that we have found the answer already, be it in detail
or in a basic outline. Specifically, that requires of us not to assume that
freedom around the world will take the form that it has espoused in
Western Europe, in North America, or in some other exceptional spot.
Perhaps an honest struggle of this tenor and magnitude is the best
recommendation one can make, in closing, in regard to an ethic of
democracy, a democratic ethic, or democratic ethics, at this time.
References
Aristotle (1984) Nicomachean Ethics, in Jonathan Barnes, Editor, Complete Works of Aristotle,
vol. 2, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bentham, Jeremy (1973) Benthams Political Thought, Bhikhu Parekh, Editor, New York:
Barnes & Noble.
(1996) An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, James H. Burns
and Herbert L. A. Hart, Editors, Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
292
Richard Schuldenfrei
Cameron, Kevin (2008) Beyond Ideology, Toward a New Ethic of Freedom? in Jose V.
Ciprut, Editor, Freedom: Reassessments and Rephrasings, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Ciprut, Jose V. (2008) Pictures at an Exhibition in the Guise of an Epilogue, in Jose V.
Ciprut, Editor, Democratizations: Comparisons, Confrontations, and Contrasts. Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press.
Descartes, Ren (1993) A Discourse on Method, 3rd ed., Indianapolis: Hackett.
Doran, Charles F. (2008) From Rule of Law to Freedoms to Enlightened SelfGovernment: Emplacement of Value in Democratization in Jose V. Ciprut, Editor,
Democratizations: Comparisons, Confrontations, and Contrasts, Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press.
Gross, Steven (2008) Vagueness, Indeterminacy, and Uncertainty, in Jose V. Ciprut,
Editor, Indeterminacy: The Mapped, the Navigable, and the Uncharted, Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1952) Philosophy of Right, Thomas M. Knox, Translator,
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Hume, David (1888) A Treatise of Human Nature, Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
Kant, Immanuel (1964) Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Herbert J. Paton, Editor,
New York: Harper & Row.
MacIntyre, Alasdair (1981) After Virtue, Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press.
Mill, John Stuart (1921) On Liberty, London: Longmans, Green.
(1957) Utilitarianism, 1st ed., Oskar Piest, Editor, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Mulhern, J. J. (2008) The Political Economy of Citizenship, in Jose V. Ciprut, Editor,
The Future of Citizenship, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Plato (1974) Republic, Georges M. A. Grube, Editor, Indianapolis: Hackett.
Rawls, John (1971) A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
(1999) Collected Papers, Samuel Freeman, Editor, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sandel, Michael (1984) Liberalism and Its Critics, New York: New York University Press.
Smart, John J. C., and Bernard Williams (1973) Utilitarianism For and Against, London:
Cambridge University Press.
Tocqueville, Alexis de (1961) Democracy in America, New York: Shocken.
Weber, Max (1958) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York: Scribners.
13
294
295
evident that the media do not exist in a vacuum. Their welfare is determined by their context. In the absence of an explicit normative foundation, the media take on the identity of the national, religious, ideological,
and technological world in which they live. In Jacques Elluls (1964)
terms, the communications media are the meaning-edge of the technological order, the arena where the latters soul is most clearly exposed.
Without well-developed ethics, mass media and social order are characterized by identical assumptions. They become an integrated set of
concentric circles, as if they were parts of the same whole interwoven
through similar social, economic, political, and intellectual constraints
that cut through them both.
Communication systems become a microcosm of the very society
they supposedly serve. The online world largely represents the regimes
of power that dominate society and culture offline. And in bloodstained hands, technologies of destruction and of communication can
serve an identical purpose.
Ethical thinking in the Anglo-American tradition has generally failed
to intercept this accommodation. By design and execution, media ethics
on the whole have been limited to perfunctory description and individual decision making. There are only tentative appeals to norms, and
a general suspicion of their status reveals itself in value-free science
and reporting. In the absence of some basis, substantively and universally normative, all parochial ethics will be stagnant, that is, commensurate and inconsequential. Thus the challenge: that the ethical domain
revivify the normative dimension to keep media technologies on track.
Our case study of these two global technologies in opposition seeks to
illustrate the larger truth that a substantive ethic is needed to enable
public communication to secure the common good. Without a concrete
commitment to norms, emancipative intentions are jeopardized. Parochial ethics without ongoing attention to norms benefit only the established system. All the ethical theorizing we do worldwide will be
stultified increasingly by petty interests and particularistic settings in
a world of violence, terror, fundamentalist hate, and warunless
ethical theory is brought to reexamination under a transnational lens
of universal ideals. (On the search for universals in matters of ethics,
see Eichler, chap. 2; Guyer, chap. 3; Baker, chap. 9; and Cameron,
chap. 11 in this book.)
Our hope has been that communication among the worlds peoples
would help to keep at bay the destruction and conflict among nations.
Meanwhile, the urgent need for a global media ethic that matches the
296
297
social responsibility theory. Thinking along the lines of social responsibility has been going on in various parts of the world, from the work
of the Hutchins Commission in the United States to the endeavors of
the MacBride Commission, the European Union, and public journalism. Codes of ethics contribute also in bringing society to the forefront,
if reoriented from media-centered professionalism to social responsibility as a citizen-based paradigm (see Ciprut 2008).
Thomas Coopers Communication Ethics and Global Change (1989),
with contributions by Christians, White, and Plude, became the first
comprehensive survey of media ethics conducted across cultures by an
international network of media professionals and educators from thirteen countries. Coopers study of professional morality identified three
protonorms as candidates for universal status. He concluded that one
worldwide concern within the apparatus of professional standards and
codes is the quest for truth, though often limited to objectivity and
accuracy. A second concern, grounded on the research data available,
is defined by Cooper as a desire among public communicators to work
responsibly within the social mores and cultural features in which they
operate. He finds freedom of expression to be a third imperative across
professional media practice. Although stated in different languages
and to different degrees, free speech is an important component in
maintaining accurate human expression.
Claude-Jean Bertrand (2000) advocates media accountability
systems (MAS) for enforcing ethical practices in the democratic media
worldwide. Media accountability systems examine every option in the
private sector that fosters the medias responsibility by pressuring them
to serve the public better, and thereby depriving the government of a
pretext to interfere. All available strategies and means for media regulation are carefully includedcodes of ethics, ombudspersons, news
councils (local, regional, national), in-house critics, journalism reviews,
citizen groups for accuracy and fairness, reader and viewer panels, and
research institutes. Media accountability systems have become indispensable, given the unprecedented privatization and deregulation of
electronic media worldwide. Media accountability systems designed to
emphasize freedom and qualitative excellence already exist in many
different forms across the globe, particularly in such countries as
Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, Israel, Estonia,
Portugal, and the United States (Bertrand 2003, 293384).
There are also several universal frameworks that step outside of
professional ethics and of media institutions, concentrating on general
298
299
300
301
the rules and norms listed in this section describe the roots of communication ethics and media law as we know them now. In many ancient
societies our current cultural distinctions between law, ethics, policy,
dogma, and norms were minimal or nonexistent. A religious teaching,
for example, might have served simultaneously as dogma, law, and
ethics instruction for children. In many cases it is impossible to know
how, let alone if, communication rules were ever enforced. Nevertheless in some instances records exist stating the rule and even the prescribed punishment. From Pritchards (1958) rendering of Hammurabis
famous code (circa 1925 B.C.) we find, If a seignior accuses [another]
seignior and brings a charge of murder against him, but cannot prove
it, his accuser shall be put to death (1958, 139). Here are the ancient
roots of libel law and reputation ethics cast in one sentence (see Eichler,
chap. 2 in this book).
Virtually all religions had early dogma, or guidance, about common
communication practices. Consider the Jewish Torahs and the Christian Holy Bibles (Old Testament) origins of the Judeo-Christian
ethic, as in Deuteronomy 5:20, Neither shalt thou bear false witness
against thy neighbor, and as in Exodus 23:1, Thou shalt not raise a
false report. And three of the Ten Commandments delimit communication by forbidding (1) a graven image (Exodus 20:4), (2) blasphemytaking the name of the Lord in vain (Exodus 20:7), and (3)
unconfirmed accusationthou shalt not bear false witness (Exodus
20:16).
Within the Islamic Kuran was written woe unto every backbiter,
slanderer (349) and Those who blaspheme His name shall surely be
recompensed (193). Eastern philosophies, too, are rich in guidelines
for communication, as in the Buddhas teaching about Right Speech
in the Noble Eightfold Path, referred to by Bresnan (2003, 235):
unflagging honesty and goodwill are the defining characteristics of
Right Speech: Buddha specifically warned his followers to be on guard
against the temptation to lie, to speak ill of others, and to engage in
idle gossip (235).
Of course, a communication ethic is automatically housed within a
larger ethic. For example, the Daoism of Lao Ze (Lao Tzu) (1988)
instructs, If you want to be a great leader, stop trying to control. Let
go of fixed plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself (verse
30). Inherent to the teaching is a communication ethic that avoids proselytizing, hard-sell advertising, and other persuasive attempts to
change the way life already functions.
302
In the Hindu Bhagavad Gita (1985), Krisha, who is God and character,
proclaims that no one can obtain perfection by abstaining from work.
Indeed there is no one who rests for even an instant; every creature is
driven to action by his own nature (3:45). Implied is the sense that
an ethic of communication serves a larger ethic of action. In Confucianism, correct communication practices derive from the larger social
etiquette of li (respecting others dignity), the pursuit of personal jumzi
(living with integrity), and the expression of ren (compassion and
human-heartedness). And the communication of noble citizens must
reflect these attitudes.
Mowlana (1989) makes it clear that to understand Islams ethics of
communication, one must first understand four overarching Muslim
teachings (pp. 141145): tawhid (unification), amr bi al-maruf wa nahyan
al munkar (order beneficence and prohibit abomination), ummah (community of faith), and taqwa (fear from God). For mystics, human codes
of communication ethics have no meaning unless they derive from
Gods (Allahs) thinking. As Mowlanas explication of the doctrine of
tawhid, which implies unity, coherence, and harmony among all parts
of the universe, states: All human-made laws and ethical codes that
arrogate judgment to themselves, or to any authority or institution in
any way other than in obedience and enforcement of Allahs Own
Judgment, are void (p. 141).
Similarly, research about indigenous teachings the world over
(Cooper 1998b) suggests that communication ethics, albeit unique in
some ways to each tribe or nation, derive from a larger law or Way
of the Great Spirit(s), known by many names (Wonkantonka, Windwalker, among others). There are specific indigenous rules of communication (always be silent when elders enter the room; speak only of
what you have experienced, and so forth). In all of the known indigenous peoples there originally was an all-encompassing ethic of respectful communication. Depending upon the tribe, details in such practices
may have varied (the Shuswap asked permission of rocks and plants
before moving them; the Dine, of the Navaho, blessed each dwelling;
and so forth)but underlying all of them was the notion that life is
sacred and that therefore the entire earth and each species must be
addressed ceremonially.
Although ancient and indigenous practices inform modern-day
communication ethics, in some cases they seem in stark contrast.
For example, the research by Cooper and a team of scholars from fourteen countries (1989) determined that the order of values to which
303
304
Many cultures are not apt to accept what indigenous cultures believe,
namely, that myth is history and that the oral tradition is as accurate as
the written one. Yet, either way, the spirit if not the letter in paradigms
of communications ethic seems cross-cultural among the ancients. When
both oral and literate societies are taken into account, there is a shared
aspiration for honesty and respectful expression, with no room for
blasphemy and defamation, especially of elders, gods, and leaders.
It is commonplace for cultural differences to be emphasized; all cultures come from indigenous roots; and East and West often are portrayed as antithetical. This tendency did not prevent Christians and
colleagues (2001) from placing Aristotle and Confucius side by side as
equilibrium ethicists (pp. 1214). From Aristotle we hear, Moral virtue
is a fixed quality of the will, consisting essentially in a middle state, as
determined by the standard that a person of practical wisdom would
apply (book 2, chap. 6); and from Confucius (1991), that the superior
man embodies the course of the mean; the mean man acts contrary to
the course of the mean (vol. 1, 11.1; cf. Johnstone 2002; Byun and Lee
2002). The authors develop this correspondence between mean ethicists and between East and West, just as one could do it also between
or among thinkers, religions, and philosophies. The flip side of cultural
diversity is cultural parallelism. Cross-cultural parallels may be found
in both ethics and communication, as in this case with Aristotle and
Confucius, long before the twentieth century, when the United Nations
sought to forge common ground under the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
Not only do cultures, organically, share tributaries of ethical thought,
but they also participate in ethical systems which, whether by imposition or through inheritance, were infiltrated historically. For example,
a significant Japanese code of ethics called the Canons of Journalism
(1946), adopted by the Nihon Shinbun Kyokai, is essentially an adapted
American code of ethics implanted in Japan following U.S. victory in
World War II. Many ethics documents bear the mark of the conqueror
or of an influential, if not overpowering, neighbor.
In Empire and Communication, Harold Innis (1952) argued that the
communication technologies exported by imperialists have tended to
determine the character of knowledge and the ethical approaches of
the colonized peoples. Agents of changebe they missionaries, multinational corporations, generals, or immigrantsthus introduced the
ethics of dictators, popes, revolutionaries, and royalty, across numerous boundaries in an array of distant lands.
305
Yet for psychologist Carl Jung (1968) shared memories of race and
moralities go far deeper than any of the external layers that are superimposed upon humanity by invaders: The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankinds evolution born anew in
the brain structure of every individual (p. 152). Just as Freud (1978)
argued that there are globally universal taboos (parricide and incest,
for instance), Jung would conclude that there are also universal thought
forms deeply pocketed in all human consciousness, which he called
the collective unconscious. After all, humanity is not only connected
above, by common empires (and now by satellites that broadcast
uniform information), but also connected below, just as seemingly isolated islands are connected by hidden land mass deep beneath the
ocean. For Jung, people, just like islands, are actually peaks of submerged mountains that are all part of the same range.
In the aggregate, therefore, there are multiple modesorganic, imperial, mythic, theological, historical, and subconsciousin which the
constituent ingredients for a global communication ethic already are
present. Experience with the unlocking of anemnesis (or buried
memory) through archeology, anthropology, and oral history suggests
that multicultural boundaries connect as much as they divide but that
the world is covered by the branches of a single family tree. Across the
centuries and continents lie clues and cues for possible globewide
reunification.
Modern Multigroup Agreements
In addition to past wisdom and tradition, there are modern attempts
to create multinational and cross-cultural agreements and mandates
about ethical communication practices. These may take the form of (1)
democratic agreements, (2) representative agreements, and even (3)
imposed mandates. Democratic agreements come into existence when
every single member of a professional organization such as the European Association of Left-Handed Cinematographers (a fictitious group)
votes upon an ethics code or policy to be adopted by that association.
Representative agreements occur when elected or appointed representatives from particular countries or members of organizations such as
UNESCO adopt an ethics-related proposal intended to help govern,
guide, or inform their regional or global constituencies. Finally, imposed
mandates consist of dictatorial, religious, military, and other fiats.
Examples range from narrower (such as a papal instruction to all
306
307
308
309
media which, like the laws of nature, are all but indifferent to human
intention and action. Although Cooper (1997) found that there were
forty ethical issues associated with cybermedia by the end of the last
millennium, only three years later he claimed that there were already
fifty-two such issues (2000), and more recently he has identified twelve
more. Does speedup in the rate of implementing new technology imply
that there is also a speedup in the quantity and impact of ethical issues?
And if not, are such issues merely old wine in new bottles, if only
because there is nothing new under the sun?
With the advent of communication speedup, there are many invisible
technologies at work that the public cannot detect. The substance of
the research presented to the Foundation of Intelligent Physical Agents
at their annual conference in Dublin (1998) suggested that the creators
of new communication technology face the greatest ethical responsibilities (Cooper 1998a). Their hidden engineering systems may well be
tested in advance. But little attention is given to testing the possible
effects of these before, not after, the new technology has beenirreversiblyintroduced into society. Most of the public does not even remotely
know what intelligent agents are, let alone what their impact upon
individuals and groups can be. Now consider these technologies: It was
publicized that cellular phones may contribute to brain tumors only
after the phones were widespread. Companies did request that pregnant employees not use VDT screensbut only after computers became
ubiquitous. Most communication technologies are tested only for their
effectiveness and marketability, not for their possible psychological,
physiological, and social effects. The newer technologies risk introducing new ethical problems and amplifying existing ones before any
system of checks and balances is in place. For example, in the United
States, the Office of Technology Assessment, which was already too
tiny to monitor the rapid growth of new technologies, was dissolved
by Congress. There is no corresponding global office to pretest inventions and to evaluate the ensuing innovations in social and societal
context.
The Hall effect suggests that the interplay of technologies, software
upgrades, plug-ins, formats, and innumerable invisible devices is
most difficult to track. In his groundbreaking Food for Naught (1974),
the seminal Canadian biochemist Ross Hume Hall shows the hidden
effects of the interaction of food additives. Although tested in isolation,
the additives were left untested in combination by nutritionists and
government scientists. And so also with the new media ecologya
310
311
312
product before it is introduced into society in general, and into a community in particular.3
Truly global inclusiveness must inform varied communication ethics.
Peoples such as the Rapa Nui, Zulu, Old Order Brethren, Amish, Dani,
and a wide variety of other populations are not usually consulted about
world communication policy. Yet they often provide a valuable perspective precisely because of their media blackouts, limitation to a
single-source media, freedom from any advertising stance, and other
atypical approaches or anachronistic appreciations, which can force
modernity to rethink its newfound wisdom.
Ethical issues often appear after a new technology, a novel program,
a communication genre, or a software platform is introduced into
society. Nefarious impacts might have been understood and prevented
if presearch (precautious research) had been utilized. To wit, before avid
marketeers first beam, then export feminine hygiene commercials into
the cultures of Pacific Islanders, they would need to know that many
island women watching TV will leave the room to avoid public embarrassment. Cross-cultural precautious research simply is necessary.
And before Hollywood producers make a film with seemingly harmless initiation rites likely to be imitated by scores of teenagers (several
of whom risk being killed), it is wise to involve teens and parents in
the early test screenings. Need one add that before introducing communication infrastructures based on fiber optics into the mainstream
and thereby unleashing related hazardous waste by-products, multidisciplinary presearch would be required, the better to study probable
toxic side effectsbefore these start imposing themselves on an unsuspecting humanity?
Consequently, a global communication ethic needs to be balanced
also between safeguarding the future with presearch and learning from
our mistakes in the past and present through case studies. A multidisciplinary, multicultural approach must seek and employ the wisdom
of many thinkers, professions, schools, and peoples. It must take into
account not only the original issues of rhetoric, such as defamation and
deception, but should by now also account for the far-larger-growing
index of technological issues, from cyberspam (virtual garbage) and
3. The reader may rest assured that the driving motive here is first and foremost preliminary socioecological quality assurance, not preemptive power-political censorship.
It is clear to all, of course, that there is a very hazy dividing line between the two mindsets
and approaches in most instances: hence the need for a balanced ethic.Ed.
Precaution is not being advocated here as a practice of principled a priori denial.
313
314
basic values, there first must be the existence of life and an ethic committed to preserving it. The other values do not and cannot survive
without this foundational first principle.
Hence in a world increasingly filled with both instruments of destruction and tools of communication, for potentially constructive exchanges,
the latter must be committed to dissolving the former: to honoring and
preserving life. True, a communication ethic for the twenty-first century
must be rich in its ability to encompass complexity. Yet it must also
remain morally simple in its unequivocal purposethe nurturing and
the protection of the sacredness of life.
Behind this ethic stand the spirits of many peoples. From Martin
Buber (1965, 143) there is the commitment that when dialogue is
genuine, the speaker shall respectfully behold his partner as the very
one he is; from Mahatma Gandhi (1947) comes the teaching that you
must be the change you want to see in the world; from Chief Thomas
Littleben (1990) flows the advice to listen with all of yourself and only
speak what you know; and from Mother Teresa (1983) we received
the wisdom that among humans, there is no one who does not deserve
our caring communication.
A global communication ethic must be much more than a hollow
skeleton of worldwide codes and rhetorical declarations. It must add
up to more than naive notions astutely balanced over space and time;
it must be inclusive, preventive, and built upon a sixteen-layered foundation of values. To be effective, an ethics of communication of this
kind must be lived constantly, and breathed by people of every backgroundespecially by those who worry that, depending upon the
choices we humans make, our current modes of communication may
either guide destructive nuclear bombs or heal destroyed nuclear
familiesthose still unafraid to heed Horace Manns (1859) ultimate
challenge: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for
humanity.
References
Aristotle (1947) Nicomachean Ethics, in R. McKeon, Editor, Introduction to Aristotle,
New York: Modern Library.
Benhabib, Seyla (1992) Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Bertrand, Claude-Jean (2000) Media Ethics and Accountability Systems, Piscataway, NJ:
Transaction.
315
316
(1998b) A Time before Deception: Truth in Communication, Culture, and Ethics, Santa
Fe, NM: Clear Light.
(2000) Speed-up and New Technology Ethic, Pacific Telecommunication Review,
21(3):1128.
(2001) Plain Speaking in a World of Suspect Communication Technologies,
Media Development, (Winter):2629.
(2003) Pacific Broadband and the Ross Hume Hall Effect, in PTC Proceedings,
(C.D. edition), Honolulu, HI: Pacific Telecommunications Council.
Cooper, Thomas W., with Robert Sullivan, Peter Medaglia, and Christopher Weir (1988)
Television and Ethics: An Annotated Bibliography, Boston: G. K. Hall.
Dumoulin, Heinrich (1988) Zen Buddhism: A History, 2 vols., New York: Macmillan.
Eliade, Mircea (1967) Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, New York: Harper & Row.
Ellul, Jacques (1964) The Technological Society, New York: Vintage.
Freud, Sigmund (1978) Basic Works, James Strachey, Editor, vol. 3, Franklin Center, PA:
Franklin Library.
Gerbner, George, Hamid Mowlana, and Kaarle Nordenstreng, Editors (1993) The Global
Media Debate: Its Rise, Fall, and Renewal, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Giedion, Siegfried (1969) Mechanization Takes Command, New York: W. W. Norton.
Hall, Ross Hume (1974) Food for Naught: The Decline in Nutrition, Philadelphia:
Lippincott.
Hamelink, Cees (2000) The Ethics of Cyberspace, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Heinberg, Richard (1989) Visions and Memories of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of
a Lost Golden Age, Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher.
Holy Bible (1611, 1962) Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.
Hourani, George (1985) Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Innis, Harold (1951) The Bias of Communication, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
(1952) Empire and Communication, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
International Federation of Journalists (1954) Bordeaux Declaration of Journalists
Duties, Bordeaux: Bordeaux Congress.
Johnstone, Christopher (2002) Aristotles Ethical Theory in the Contemporary World:
Logos, Phronesis, and the Moral Life, in Moral Engagement in Public Life: Theorists for
Contemporary Ethics, New York: Peter Lang.
Jones, Clement (1980) Mass Media Codes of Ethics and Councils, Paris: UNESCO.
Jung, Karl (1934, 1969) The Archetypes of the Collective Subconscious, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
(1968) The Structure of the Psyche, in Collected Works, vol. 8, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
317
Krippendorff, Klaus (2000) On the Otherness That Theory Creates, in Jose V. Ciprut,
Editor, Of Fears and FoesSecurity and Insecurity in an Evolving Global Political Economy,
Westport, CT: Praeger.
(2001) Ecological Narratives: Reclaiming the Voice of Theorized Others, in Jose
V. Ciprut, Editor, The Art of the FeudReconceptualizing International Relations, Westport,
CT: Praeger.
(2008) Four (In)Determinabilities, Not One, in Jose V. Ciprut, Editor,
Indeterminacy: The Mapped, the Navigable, and the Uncharted, Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press.
Laitila, T. (1995) Journalistic Codes of Ethics in Europe, European Journal of Communication, 10:527544.
LaFleur, William R. (1988) Buddhism: A Cultural Perspective, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
Lao Ze/Lao Tzu (1988) Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell, Translator, New York: Harper
Collins.
Leppanen, Harry (1977) Journalistien Kanaslliset ja Konsainvaliset Saannostot, thesis,
Tampere, Finland.
Littleben, Chief Thomas (1990) Interview with Cooper, Rockpoint Dine (Navajo) Reservation, Rockpoint, AZ.
MacBride, S., E. Abel, H. Beuve-Mery, E. Ekonzo, G. Garcia Marquez, and S. Losev (1980)
Many Voices, One World, Paris: UNESCO.
Mann, Horace (1859) Commencement address, Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch College
Archives.
McLuhan, Eric (1983) Interview by telephone, Philadelphia to Toronto.
McLuhan, Marshall (1974) At the Moment of Sputnik, the Planet Became a Global
Theatre, Journal of Communication, 24(1):4858.
(1977) Interview with Cooper, Toronto: University of Toronto.
Merrill, John (1984) Global Journalism, New York: Longman.
Momaday, N. Scott (1976) A First American Views His Land, National Geographic, July
1976, 1318, 294, 297.
Mowlana, Hamid (1989) Communication, Ethics, and the Islamic Tradition, in Thomas
Cooper, Editor, Communication Ethics and Global Change, White Plains, NY: Longman.
Mumford, Lewis (1934) Technics and Civilization, New York: Harcourt & Brace.
Nevitt, Barrington (1985) Interview with Cooper, Toronto, Canada.
Nordenstreng, Kaarle (1984) The Mass Media Declaration of UNESCO, Norwood, NJ:
Ablex.
Nordenstreng, Kaarle, and Antti Alanen (1961) Journalism Ethics and International
Relations, Communication, 6:225254.
Pavlik, John V. (1996) New Media Technology, Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
318
Pritchard, James Bennett, Editor (1958) The Ancient Near East, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Rapu, Sergio (1991) Interview with Cooper, Polynesian Cultural Center, Oahu, Hawaii.
Rivers, William, Wilbur Schramm, and Clifford Christians (1980) Responsibility in Mass
Communication, 3rd ed., New York: Harper & Row.
Scott, Stephen (1988) The Amish Wedding and Other Special Occasions of the Old Order
Communities, Intercourse, PA: Good Books.
Teresa, Mother (1983) Letter to Cooper, Sri Lanka to Boston.
Torah (1966) Rabbi H. Mariner, Introduction, New York: Henry Holt and the Jewish
Publication Society of America.
UNESCO (1978) Mass Media Declaration of UNESCO, Paris: UNESCO.
Velikovsky, Immanuel (1982) Mankind in Amnesia, London: Sidgwick & Jackson.
White, Lynn (1962) Medieval Technology and Social Change, Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.
Wiredu, Kwasi (1996) Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Zimmer, Heinrich (1951) Philosophies of India, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
14
320
Jose V. Ciprut
321
suburbs, or even dormitory towns; proximate outskirts; and fartherflung peripherieseach and all of which are in need of discerning
attention, audacious care, and sagacious incorporation toward a safer
and more felicitous future in a shared inclusive (one-planet-for-all)
mindset. The world as a giga-city?
In his Aristotles Politics, C. D. C. Reeve (1998, lviilix) summarizes
that philosophers views on political community embodied in city-state
as follows:
In Politics I, Aristotle characterizes the city-state in rather abstract ways: the
city-state is the community with the most authority; it is the most self-sufficient
community; one that is ruled in its own characteristic way, different from that
in which a master rules his slaves or a head of household rules his wife or
children. When he puts meat on these abstract bones, however, we see that an
Aristotelian city-state is quite like a modern state in these important respects:
it establishes the constitution, designs and enacts the laws, sets foreign and
domestic policy, controls the armed forces and police, declares war, enforces
the law and punishes criminals. . . . [D]etails aside, has Aristotle really shown
that we are . . . political animals, that we . . . perfect our natures in a specifically
political community, in a city-state? . . . What experience has taught us is that
there are many different human goods, many different good lives, many different ways to perfect ourselves, and much need for further experimentation
and discovery in these areas. That is one reason we admire somewhat liberal
states which recognize this fact . . . give their citizens a lot of liberty to explore
various conceptions of the good and to live in the way that they find most
valuable and worthwhile.
In Alternatives to Athens: Varieties of Political Organizations and Community in Ancient Greece, Brock and Hodkinson (2000, 1) remind us,
however, that the ancient lists of the works of Aristotle mention a
collection of 158 constitutions of statesdemocratic, oligarchic, tyrannic, and aristocraticand express surprise that Diogenes list omits the
good forms of democracy and monarchy, namely, polity and kingship,
which complete the list of six types of constitution (in Aristotles Politics
3.7). Remarking that the term citizen-state lays greater emphasis on
community (Hansen 1993) than does the orthodox use of city-state for
polis, these coauthors point out that Greek mainland and island poleis
(such as Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Miletos, Samos, Naxos, and Aegina)
were not alone in having a constitution. In addition to the major
powers (Syracuse, Akragas, Taras, Croton, and others) and smaller
ones (such as Troizen, Cynthnos, Melos, and Tenedos) in Magna Graecia,
there were those in the Greek world at large, from Massalia (Marseille)
to Cyrene (in Libya) to Soli (in Cilicia), those at best marginally Greek
322
Jose V. Ciprut
(Adramyttion and Kios in Mysia), and those not Greek at all (say, Carthage) that had their own constitution as well, not to mention the
numerous ethne (Achaeans, Lycians, and Thessalians among them) and
the communities in Cyprus and Crete, each of which pursued its happiness after its very own ethic: the less said about there having existed
one (exclusively Athenian) classic model of democracy, the better.
Yet for C. Farrar, authoring The Origins of Democratic Thinking (1988,
12) was one way of rediscovering the invention of politics in classical
Athens: the appearance of political theory during the very period
when democracy was being cobbled together in fifth-century B.C.E.
Athens, she finds, ushered in the democratic politics that prompted
citizens to construe their aims politically, and to reflect on their actions
in terms of general, relatively abstract considerations. For, Political
theory was part of democratic politics, self-understanding was political. Farrar suggests the following:
This dynamic synthesis of the concrete and the reflective was a striking achievementso striking, indeed, as to be practically unintelligible from modern perspective. . . . On the assumption that political theory must be abstract, scholars
have [reserved] the title of first theorists to those undemocratic and politically
alienated thinkers, Plato and Aristotle. And in the belief that democracy is a
matter of rules and procedures designed to safeguard human rights and express
the will of the people through its elected representatives, theorists have characterized the triumphant practice of direct, participatory democracy in Athens
as mob rule, or as the hollow creation of a slave-owning elite . . . at best as
admirable but outmoded.
But, submits Farrar, for all their differences [which help to reveal the
difficulty of maintaining a stable and integrated understanding of
democratic man and avoiding extremes of order or freedom], it is to
the itinerant sophist-rhetorician Protagoras, the historian Thucydides,
and the cosmologist-atomist Democritus that we must turn if we wish
to discoverin their similaritiesa coherent analysis and critique of
democratic man, [that is,] the possibility of achieving order and freedom
when all citizens, rich and poor, exercise autonomy. Farrars transdisciplinary leanings for gleaning a novel understanding of the classical
origins of Athenian democracy would seem well founded: when placed
under retrospective analytical-synthetic scrutiny some twenty-five centuries later, how better to grasp the yesteryear dynamics of evolving
ideas and the altering practices in the political-economic and the socialcultural contexts of any given consociation across its long war-torn
history than by reenacting the polyvalent and polyphonic intellectual
323
324
Jose V. Ciprut
all too flagrant misogyny in lAmrique of the 1940s and 1950s might
have been framed quite differently; as no doubt would have been
rephrased also de Tocquevilles own memoirs, had the sociocultural
and political-economic results of the Civil War cast their light on perceptions, conversations, and notes from interviews held markedly
before 1865 with characters of great importance at the time.3 With
roots in the past and branches in the eternal present, ethics seem to
have ways of changing their continuity and continuing their change by
exhibiting almost imperceptible if always intriguing newer hues in
their perennial blossoms, whether nipped for decorative display in
public spaces or potted for breeding within the household.
The different modes of democratization, which took place in Germany
and Japan after World War II, the ones now being pursued in the formerly communist newer members of the European Union, and in a
very particular fashion even in born-again Russia itself, attest to the
existence of an array of democratic ethics throughout the world, a
variety that cunningly or simplistically is lumped together under a
one-size-fits-all label: Westernization, or ugly Americanization.
Yet each democracy, as well as every single mode of democratization,
pursues an ethic of its own, along contextualized processes, which
affect and are affected by functional structures that embody, reflect,
shape, and reshape myriad societal idiosyncrasies that endow it with
character even across changed time and space. Democracy seems perfectly capable of bringing into its fold the unfree of this world, in the
proverbial old-fashioned wayone culture at a timeby reconciling
the ethics inside with the ethics outside, however long it may take for
the two to take notice of each other and to begin to open up to one
another.
In this book, we examined the evolution of liberating ethics as they
traversed historical periods of societal transformation laden with political will for self-renewal. We saw how and to what extents, across time
and space, subjecthood can transmute into citizenship and many an erstwhile closed community will transform into a society open to the world
at large, although even in the long-transformed entities democratic
citizenship remains a project under construction. The interrogation as
3. See Pierson (1996). Alexis de Tocqueville lived from 1805 to 1859; Gustave de Beaumont, from 1802 to 1866; hence neither man could have written about, much less foreseen, the changes that the American Civil War (18611865) would unleash in the shorter
and longer runs. Indeed, the period covered by Pierson himself, tracing their connections
and their effects seventy-three years later, extends only from 1783 to 1865.
325
to whether democracies are, or for long can, remain of, by, and for the
peoples they embody, absent an individually felt associational sense of
citizenship buttressed by a sincere spirit of civic ethics, is not a trivial
asking-about: it is one that is finding newer justifications to culminate
into questionings grave and urgent enough to merit deeper scrutiny,
worldwide, top-down and bottom-up.
In an increasingly interdependent world, the stark effects of the
global forces of integration and diversification arepolitically and otherwiserendered ever more unforgiving and more intractably complex
by the unrelenting torrents of the internally and externally displaced
and the summarily dispossessed in search of a better future elsewhere.
Matters sometimes are exacerbated by the misplaced senses of revenge
and hate detectable in the acts and the declared intents of only a few
of the vicariously traumatized, empathically motivated, emotionally
propelled, or otherwise vengefully disposed new citizens and their
diasporaic subcliques-in-the-making, apparently inclined to exploit
their late-found privileges and freshly minted freedoms, the fiercer to
act out the ethnonational mindsets or normative cultural exactions
from which they fled, and that much more fearlessly to wage their
ideological combats, at home and abroad, as if the rest of the world did
not matter at all. While sometimes, in certain cases, such movements
can and do help to bring about or to restore freedom in the countries
of origin, rare if deadly predispositions for violenceno matter where
they occurseem to reserve little concern and even less inclination for
taking notice of the mores and manners or the usually hard-earned
peace and order held so dear by a vast majority of those whose fellow
citizens such autistic claimants become in the receiving countries. The
fact that many of the exogenous forces of terror rely on the complicity
of their meanwhile safely endogenized kin, in the particular spaces
targeted for one heinous reason or another, is not exactly fortuitous
no matter how seldom the hurtful manifestation of their explicit consequences may appear or how exceptional it may be. One ought not to
forget the unfortunate fact, however, that some of the worst acts of
terror are committed by self-righteous autochthons of the very countries in which they inflict harm in the name of some superlative cause.
The daily ethical manifestations of democratic citizenship in pluralistic
societies seem to continue to acquire ever newly minted reasons to be
that justify urgent attention to and understanding of their compound
complexities. Would that this book may have been able to generate
sufficient insights as to make it realistically manageable for most of us
326
Jose V. Ciprut
to contextualize, across time and space, the local, regional, and global
forces and counterforces at play, the more effectively to be able to confront the toughest of all challenges encountered yetthat of inspiring
an ethic of freedom in each individual, and in each and every people
yearning to partake in human dignity on this planet.
References
Beauvoir, Simone de (1948) LAmrique au jour le jour, Paris: P. Morihien.
Brock, Roger, and Stephen Hodkinson, Editors (2000) Alternatives to Athens: Varieties of
Political Organization and Community in Ancient Greece, Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.
Ciprut, Jose V., Editor (2008a) Democratizations: Comparisons, Confrontations, and Contrasts.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Ciprut, Jose V., Editor (2008b) The Future of Citizenship, Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press.
Farrar, Cynthia (1988) The Origins of Democratic Thinking: The Invention of Politics in Classical Athens, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Friedan, Betty (1963) The Feminine Mystique, New York: Norton.
Hansen, M. H. (1993) The Polis as a Citizen-State, in Acts of the Copenhagen Polis Centre,
1:729, Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Pierson, George Wilson (1996) Tocqueville in America, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press. (First published as Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, in 1938, by
Oxford University Press.)
Reeve, C. D. C., Translator (1998) AristotlePolitics, Indianapolis: Hackett.
Wilson, E. O. (1975) Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press.
328
Jose V. Ciprut (PhD, University of Pennsylvania), an industrial technologist and an army reserve officer, with undergraduate studies in the
humanities and postgraduate degrees in the social sciences; was in
industrial production, also international industrial marketing development, in the Near East, Europe, and the United States, before returning
to academe. As a specialist in strategic planning, regional development,
comparative international political economy, international relations,
and peace and war economics, he has written on these topics and
edited Of Fears and Foes, The Art of the Feud, Indeterminacy, Democratizations, The Future of Citizenship, and Freedom. He ideated, organized, and
directed Cross-Campus Conversations at Penn.
Thomas Cooper (PhD, Univeristy of Toronto), Professor of Visual
and Media Arts at Emerson College. As copublisher of Media Ethics
magazine and editor/author of many ethics- and media-related publications, he addresses ethical issues in a variety of modes of communication: new media, film, radio, television, photography, journalism,
advertising, and speech. A young assistant to Marshall McLuhan and
former assistant speechwriter in the White House, he was one of the
pioneering producers of audio spacebridges among Soviet-U.S. communication professionals. He is a recipient of many honors and was a
nominee for the Nobel Prize.
Barry L. Eichler (PhD, University of Pennsylvania), Associate Professor of Assyriology, Associate Curator at the U. of P. Museum of
Archeology and Anthropology, founder and former Chair (19821995)
of the Jewish Studies Program at Penn, where he currently teaches/
researches the cultural linkages between the biblical and the ancient
Near Eastern civilizations. He focuses on ancient lawthe law of
Akkad and Sumer, the literature of Mesopotamia, the ethics of Jewish
Lawand has taught at Penn School of Law. He holds visiting appointments at Yeshiva University, which he will be joining full time. As a
cuneiformist, he rereads clay tablets in a search for understanding.
Paul Guyer (PhD, Harvard University), Professor of Philosophy and
the Florence R. C. Murray Professor in the Humanities at the University
of Pennsylvania. Having specialized in Kants thought, he has
(co)authored and (co)edited many articles, chapters, and books; he referees and consults for university presses, and serves as General Coeditor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Kant. He is a member of
several learned societies and a recipient of many professional honors.
329
330
Name Index
Balke, William, 72
Balls, M., 7
Banfield, Edward, 183, 195
Bankowski, Zenon, 56
Barnard, Neal, 96
Barnett, S. Anthony, 7
Barney, Ralph D., 20, 307
Bateson, W., 107
Baumiller, R. C., 105
Bayly, Susan, 240
Beard, Mary, 238
Beaudet, A. L., 107
Beaumont, Gustave de, 324
Beauvoir, Simone de, 323324
Benagiano, G., 111112
Benhabib, Seyla, 298, 313
Benkendorf, J. L., 119, 127
Bentham, Jeremy, 284, 285
Berger, Harold, 127
Bernard, Paul P., 6
Bernhardt, B. A., 105
Bertrand, Claude-Jean, 297, 313
Biale, David, 4
Bianchi, P., 111112
Bigo, Didier, 16
Billings, P. R., 124125
Birke, Lynda, 7
Black, Jay, 307
Blakemore, Colin, 7
Bland, Gary, 17
Bliss, Michael, 95
Bodin, Jean, 194195
Boehm, C. D., 108
Bonitz, H., 190
332
Botwinick, Aryeh, 55
Bourdieu, Pierre, 23
Bracci, Sharon, 298, 313
Brass, Paul R., 231
Bresnan, Patrick, 301
Brock, Roger, 321
Bronfman, Alejandra Marina, 17
Brown, Phil, 169
Brown, William P., 4
Brundtland, Gro Harlem, 165
Buber, Martin, 314
Buccellati, Giorgio, 35, 52, 55
Buddha, 207
Budiansky, Steven, 87
Bunton, R., 105
Burke, W., 107, 118
Burley, J., 108
Butzow, J. J., 106
Byun, Dong-Hyun, 304
Cahn, Edmond, 55
Calavita, Kitty, 16
Cameron, Kevin, 1718, 21, 71, 152,
251272, 275, 281, 282, 289, 295,
300
Campbell, E. G., 126
Canovan, Margaret, 242
Canute, King, 142
Carlisle, Clare, 16
Carlisle, Juliet, 160, 164
Carmona, R. H., 120
Carroll, Marilyn, 95
Carter, April, 19
Cashin, Sheryll, 17
Caulfield, T., 121
Cavallar, Georg, 64
Centrie, Craig, 10
Chadwick, R. F., 108
Charles VI, Emperor, 60
Charles XII of Sweden, 60
Chen Chun, 215, 216
Chignell, Andrew, 14
Chowers, Eyal, 10
Christians, Clifford G., 22,
293318
Chuang Tzu, 303
Cicero, 13, 88, 181, 192194, 197
Name Index
Name Index
Douglas, Michael, 2
Dowty, Alan, 243
Doyle, Michael, 64
Dryzek, John S., 165
Dunning, William Archibald, 195
Dykstra, Russell J., 73
Eban, Abba, 277278
Edwards, Mark M., 20
Eichler, Barry L., 4, 3358, 80, 113,
182, 282, 288, 295, 301
Einstein, Albert, 2, 274
Eisenberg, R. S., 126
Eisenhower, Dwight, 323
Eliade, Mircea, 21, 303
Elias, S., 108
Elison, George, 217
Elliott, Michael R., 169
Ellul, Jacques, 295
Emery, A. E. H., 107
Engels, Friedrich, 254, 266268
Englehardt, Elaine E., 20
Ennius, 193
Erikson, Erik, 145147, 151, 156
Eugene, Prince of the House of
Savoy, 60
Fager, Jeffrey A., 4
Fanos, J. H., 118
Farley, Margaret A., 15
Farrar, Cynthia, 322323
Feldman, David M., 48
Foucault, Michel, 193194
Fox, Michael, 89
Franklin, Julian H., 195
Frederick I of Prussia, 60
Frederick III of Brandenburg, 60
Frederick Wilhelm IV of Prussia,
62
Freshwater, Dawn, 10
Freud, Anna, 147
Freud, Sigmund, 135136, 140, 141,
144, 147, 151, 261, 305
Friedan, Betty, 323
Friedmann, Daniel, 4
Frisch, Ephraim, 4
Fryer, David Ross, 10
333
334
Name Index
Name Index
335
336
Name Index
Name Index
337
338
Name Index
Subject Index
340
Subject Index
Subject Index
341
democratic, 325326
education in East Asia, 222
citizen-state, 321
civil disobedience, 262263
Civil Rights movement, 323
Civil War, 324
clinical utility, 122123
clinical validity, 122
cloning, 106, 264
cluster attributes, 1617
codes of ethics, 20, 296297, 304, 306,
307
cohesion, in democracy, 230
collective identity, 230232, 255
collective unconscious (Jung), 2123,
143, 305
command-and-control regulation,
167
communication
analysis of ethics already present
in, 306308
globalization of, 3, 2021, 293314
Hall effect, 309310, 312313
media blackouts and, 312
modern multigroup agreements,
305306
modern technology of, 2021,
308312
multiculturalism and, 300305
needs and requirements for,
310314
in prisoners dilemma games, 172,
192193
See also globalization; language;
media
Communication Ethics and Global
Change (Cooper), 297
Communism, 221222, 320, 323
Communist Manifesto, 320
communitarianism, 298
computer, as term, 140141
concrete universal, 268, 269, 271
Conference Board, 177
confidentiality, in genetic testing,
123124
conflicts of interest, in genetic
testing, 126
342
Confucianism and
Neo-Confucianism, 203,
208214, 216219, 221
ancestor worship in, 208
filial piety, 213, 219
multicultural heritage and, 302
consciousness, 139140, 150
Consensus Development Conference,
114
consequentialist perspective, 2123
consociational arrangements, 246
cooperation, in prisoners dilemma
games, 170176
corporate social responsibility
accounting scandals and, 177178
in global chemical industry, 12,
165170
corporations
accounting scandals, 12, 164165,
176178
brand image and, 161162
chemical industry, 12, 165170
energy markets, 12, 162165,
176177
pharmaceutical industry, 99, 127
trust in, 1213
See also advertising
cosmic principles, 4
cosmology, in the ancient Near East,
34
covenants, 5, 5455
credit cards, trust and use of,
160161
criminal acts, in ancient Egypt, 41
Critical Theory (Held), 1819
Critique of Practical Reason (Kant),
7475
Critique of the Power of Judgment
(Kant), 80, 81
Croats, religious nationalism and,
230, 237
cross-cultural issues, genetic testing
and, 124, 125
Cuba, 17
cultic crimes, in ancient Egypt, 41
cultural diversity, 296, 304
cultural pluralism, 17
Subject Index
culture
folk, 240
high, 240
curiosity, as basis of biomedical
research, 9799
custom
Aristotle on, 190191
institutions and, 14
mos in ancient Rome, 1314, 181,
183, 192194
cybermedia, 294, 309
Cyprus
-thalassemia in, 112113
fear and identity in, 234
cystic fibrosis, 9, 103, 111, 113115,
125
cytogenetics, 107
Daoists and Daoism, 215216, 301
death
in ancient Egypt, 39, 41
of animals in biomedical research,
97, 99
of animals in nature, 100
ego integrity and, 146147
necropolises in ancient Egypt, 39
as penalty, 94
deer hunting, 9495, 100
De Fato (On Fate) (Cicero), 192
deliberation, ethics and, 186
democracy
Anglo-American thought and,
252
birth of democracies, 229
constitutional protections in, 6
defined in religious terms, 239
democratic agreements, 305
democratic ethic and. See
democratic ethic
democratic identity and, 229237,
246
egalitarian tradition in, 1718,
251271
exclusion of minorities and, 1517,
227247
French and continental European
thought and, 252
Subject Index
343
discrimination
in democracy, 1517, 227247
in genetic testing, 103, 124125
diversity
cultural, 296, 304
emancipative benefits of, 319320
fight over, 280
religious freedom, 277279
universalism as threat to, 300
divine selection, 5
DNA, 9, 106, 119
dogs
in biomedical research, 89, 90
community ordinances concerning,
90
dogfighting, 91
as food, 100
as helpers to humans, 90
as pets, 88, 100
rabid, 100
selective breeding of, 87
domestication of animals, 87
Down syndrome, 111, 125
East Asia
anthropocentrism in, 215220
religion in, 1415, 201224
secular moral education in,
221224
See also China; Japan; Korea;
Taiwan
ecology of the species, 147148
economic issues
as dismal science, 159160
economic exclusion, 270271
economic power versus freedom,
259
ethic of tolerance and, 246247
in genetic testing, 123
See also corporations
ecumenical syncretism, 2324
education
public schools of East Asia,
221224
secular moral education in East
Asia, 221224
efficient markets, 13
344
Subject Index
Subject Index
ethos (character)
in ancient Greece, 1314, 181192,
193
habits and, 14, 185187, 198
Eudemian Ethics (Aristotle), 183
eugenics, 108, 125
Europe
anti-Islamic sentiment in, 16,
6061
Christians and Christianity in,
6162, 201, 202
Enlightenment philosophy in, 57,
5963
religious wars of, 277278
See also specific countries
European Union, 297
evil, 210212
choice between good and, 67,
6972, 73
Kant and, 260263
as product of free will, 73
exclusion
democracy and, 1517, 227247
of Israelites in ancient Egypt,
4546
in Turkey, 234236
executive compensation, 176177
existential-humanistic (EH)
personality theory, 135157
case example of, 151156
collective unconscious (Jung),
2123, 143, 304
ego in, 135136, 140150
human awareness and, 136138,
140
nature of, 135136
outside versus inner world,
136138
Phenomenological Map and, 11,
138142, 148150, 154,
156157
psychodynamic psychotherapy
and, 141
self-actualization, 143144, 147,
152157
Sovereign Self and, 138144, 145,
150151, 154155
345
346
freedom (cont.)
human rights as foundation for,
299
Kantian free will, 67, 196
lover of (Plato), 274275
as nonpathological motivation, 262
right to life, 288289
Freedom House, 228
free will
evil as product of, 73
Kant and, 67, 196
French Revolution, 6162, 252, 253
255, 279280
fur, 91
fur farming, 92
game theory
prisoners dilemma games, 170
176, 192193
winner-takes-all, 149
GeneClinics, 108109
General Social Survey, National
Opinion Research Center, 94
general theory of revolution (Marx
and Engels), 266268
genetic counseling, 103, 120, 121
genetic engineering, 106
Genetic Information
Nondiscrimination Act, 125
genetics in medicine, 810, 103127
assessing susceptibility to disease,
118119
background on, 106108
basic concepts in, 109119
case examples of, 103104
diagnostic genetic testing, 111,
116117
dilemmas of, 104106
ethical issues in, 104106, 123127
genetic counseling, 103, 120, 121
genetic information and, 119120
genetic testing, 810, 103104,
107127
glossary of terms, 110
newborn screening, 9, 111, 115116
predictive genetic testing, 111,
117118
Subject Index
Subject Index
347
348
Subject Index
international relations
choice of peace in, 74
See also warfare
interpersonal risk, in prisoners
dilemma games, 173176
intersubjectivity, 1011
introversion, extraversion versus,
136137
intuitionism, Sidgwick and, 189190
Inuit people, seal hunting and, 91
in vitro fertilization, 112
iron curtain, fall of, 16, 18
Islam. See Muslims and Islam
Israel and Israelites
biblical ethics and, 45
collective identity in, 231232
covenantal relationship with God,
5455
Egypt and, 4546
Post-Zionism in, 243244
religious nationalism in, 228229,
239, 241
See also Jews and Judaism
Japan
code of ethics, 304
democratization in, 324
nuclear technology and, 293, 320
religion in, 15, 201, 203206, 209,
222
secular moral education in, 221, 222
Jews and Judaism
anti-Semitism, 323324
commandments and, 203, 204, 301
covenantal relationship with God,
55
fear and identity in Armenia,
234235
genetic diseases, 105, 111, 112,
118119
Jewish law, 4
Judeo-Christian tradition, 203, 204,
214, 217, 222, 301
multicultural heritage and, 301
religious nationalism and, 228229
See also Bible, the; Israel and
Israelites
Subject Index
349
350
Subject Index
Subject Index
nonconsequentialist perspective,
2122
nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), 165
North Korea
relations with South Korea, 221
religion in, 203
noumenon, 7576
nuclear technology, 293, 320
objectivity, 285
observing ego, 141142
oligarchy, in the U.S., 276
omen literature, 36
On Liberty (Mill), 289
On Virtues and Vices (Aristotle), 183
operations risk, hazardous facilities
and, 169
Opus postmortem (Kant), 80
organismic valuing process (Rogers),
143
organ transplants, 264
Origins of Democratic Thinking, The
(Farrar), 322323
other, in democracies, 230
Ottoman Empire
anti-Islamic sentiment in, 6061
democratization and, 234, 235, 239
outcome studies, 122123
Outlines of the History of Ethics for
English Readers (Sidgwick), 184
ovarian cancer, 111, 118119
Pacific Gas and Electric, 163
pain studies, 99
Pakistan, relations with India, 244
participating ego, 141142
partisanship, in egalitarian
democracy, 266271
passions, virtue and, 185, 186
patriarchy, in biblical thought, 46
peace grounded on justice, 57,
5982, 299
choice between good or evil, 67,
6972, 73
concept of right and efficacy, 7275
free use of natural means, 7580
351
352
Subject Index
Subject Index
353
354
selective breeding, 87
self-actualization, 143144, 147,
152157
self-indulgence, 285286
self-interest, 261262
selfish action, 207
self-love, Kant on, 71, 7778, 80
sentience
components of, 136138
defined, 136
Sovereign Self and, 138144, 145,
150151, 154155
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
16, 90
Serbs, religious nationalism and, 230,
237
Seven Years War, 61
sexual ethics
in biblical ethics, 48
in Mesopotamia, 3738
Shinto, 204, 205206
sickle-cell anemia screening, 116117
Sinhala Buddhists, 236237, 240
Sittlichkeit (Hegel), 282
slavery
in ancient Egypt, 4546
in biblical thought, 4546
inequality between master and
slave, 259
labor of slaves in ancient societies,
257
in Mesopotamia, 37, 4546
in the U.S., 61
social capital, 159160
social classes
in ancient Egypt, 3940, 5253
biblical ethics and lack of, 45
economic division of labor and,
253
environmental justice and, 169170
in Mesopotamia, 36, 5152
social ethics
in biblical ethics, 4548
in Mesopotamia, 3637
social identity, 11, 145146, 151,
152153
social norms, markets and, 166
Subject Index
Subject Index
355
356
Subject Index
validity
analytic, 122
clinical, 122
virtue
character and, 185, 189
passions and, 185, 186
theory of, 7981
virtue ethics, 287
volition, 137138
Wall Street (motion picture), 2
warfare
American Revolution, 61, 252
banning, 6669
Civil War, 324
destruction and conflict among
nations, 295296
Enlightenment as background for
peace grounded on justice,
5963
French Revolution, 6162, 252,
253255, 279280
globalization of communication
and, 294
perpetual peace versus, 62, 6369,
8082
religious wars of Europe,
277278
World War II, 320, 324
weapons of mass destruction
(WMD), 147148, 149
Weimar Republic, 285
wickedness, religion and, 260
wildlife management, 85, 90, 9495,
100
winner-takes-all game theory, 149
wisdom
concept of, 35
in Egypt, 4041, 44
practical, and democratic stability,
287289
questioning, 307
wisdom lover (Plato), 274
women
in biblical law, 46
labor of, in ancient societies,
257
Subject Index
work
emancipation from labor and, 257
nature of, 257
WorldCom, 12, 177178
World Commission on Environment
and Development (WCED), 165
worldview
biblical thought, 34, 34, 41, 4350
Egyptian ethical thought, 34,
3941, 44, 4546, 5253, 55
legacy of ancient Near Eastern,
5056
Mesopotamian ethical thought,
34, 3539, 44, 47, 5152, 55
See also religion
worldview pluralism, 300
World War II, 320, 324
Xerox, 12
Yugoslavia, former, collective
identity in, 230
Zum ewigen Frieden (Toward Perpetual
Peace, Kant), 67, 59, 62, 6366,
6770, 73, 74, 76, 77, 8082
357