THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY AND THE MAKING OF THE MORAL PREDICAMENT

The modern World is infested with multitude of problems – economic crisis, political turmoil, wars, poverty-inequality, unemployment, racialism, communal disharmony, terrorism, crime and corruption and various other socio-economic and political tensions. All these problems may be traced back into economic and political causes and they too are rooted in certain moral and psychological derangement and vices of human mind. This article emphasizes the moral-ethical root of all basic problems that have afflicted the modern human society. In this regard we highlight two almost similar views to basic human predicaments – the views of Adam Smith, the Moral Scientist and Father of Modern Economics and the views embedded in Ancient Indian Sankhya Philosophy. In this article we are going to take up and analyze these two views and in subsequent articles we would examine various specific human problems in the light of this analysis.

Moral Injustice. How an Unfair Distribution of Moral Burdens Harms the Individual and Our Society as a Whole, Biblioteca della libertà, LVIII, 2023, 2023

Moral agency cannot be understood if one makes abstraction from the social conditions of agency. If the latter are taken into account, it becomes clear that acting in accordance with one's values does not depend solely on the agent's own intentions. The ability to act morally depends on what kinds of responsibilities one bears and is co-determined by political and structural conditions. As a result of an unfair division of moral labor, some subjects are structurally overexposed to moral insecurity and failure. This can be defined as moral injustice. First, the paper explores the psychological dynamics of the experience of moral insecurity and failure, explaining the reasons why people feel guilt or shame despite the lack of control over the circumstances of the action and how they cope with these negative emotions, which can lead to aggressiveness and moral blindness. Second, it explores the social dynamics which lead to moral injustice, understood as an unfair distribution of moral burdens. Finally, it shows how moral injustice affects people's well-being and the quality of our democratic life and should therefore be considered a politically relevant issue.

Oxford University Press eBooks, 2017

I am very grateful to Cécile Laborde and Aurélia Bardon for inviting me to contribute to this collection and to the conference that preceded it, as well as for their editorial advice. I am also grateful to Melissa Williams, Chiara Cordelli and Astrid Busekist for their help in thinking through the themes in this paper, to Peter Jones for sending me his latest articles, and to Melis Pinar Akdag for help in preparing this piece for publication. Work on this article was financed in part by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation, as part of a larger project on democratic ethics.

2012

Modernity and the modernization process are generally accepted as favourable phenomena. While on one side of the coin we see how modernity has greatly benefited mankind in areas of science, technology and economics, the other side of the coin -the costs of modernization -has often been intentionally left unnoticed or put within footnotes as inconvenient afterthoughts. One such thorny issue that has been the source of debate between pro-modernists and anti-modernists is the effect modernization has on the values and social aspects of society. Modernity and morality are deemed to be separate concerns; one can exist without the other, or, as some believe, in place of the other. The dilemma -modernity without morality, or morality without modernity -is one that can be answered through a scrutiny of the values themselves that are held by modern societies. This research note is an attempt to compare and contrast the conventional Western approach to ethics, values and social concepts, to t...

Are democratic egalitarians bound to endorse statism? It seems so, given their insistence on relations of democratic reciprocity, and the lack of such relations in the global realm. If so, it would apparently be inconsistent to endorse both cosmopolitanism and democratic egalitarianism. Democratic egalitarians actually face an apparent dilemma: either they must accept statism, or they must provide further explanation regarding why they do not. Luck egalitarianism, by contrast, seemingly offers a more straightforward ground to the claim that the scope of justice is global. My thesis is twofold: first, I show that (a) democratic egalitarians can escape the dilemma, to the effect that, as such, they need be committed neither to statism nor to cosmopolitanism, and (b) that luck egalitarians are not, so to speak, as shielded from the dilemma as it might first appear. Second, I defend the plausibility of global social egalitarianism against both statist variants of democratic egalitarianism and luck egalitarianism, and suggest a form of division of labor between domestic and global justice.

Do All Persons Have Equal Moral Worth?, 2014

Open Journal of Philosophy Vol.14 No.4, 2024

There are three main moral theories: virtue ethics, the deontological approach and utilitarianism. The concern here is how they interrelate, why they come into focus at different times and places, and how they are configured in their application to a modern democratic society. Person-oriented virtue ethics was the dominant understanding in Ancient Greece but within the Western tradition this was later subordinated to the monotheism of Ancient Judaism as modified by Christianity. Of growing importance by the eighteenth century was rights theory which was often still situated religiously. Kant’s principle of the categorical imperative has been highly influential but was challenged by the emerging nature of industrial and capitalist society. Utilitarianism, within which the moral rightness of activity resides in its tendency to promote happiness or unhappiness, represented the decisive move from the transcendental to the immanent approach. Although all three approaches to moral theory continue to be relevant to identifiable situations and aspects of modern society, there has been a substantial turn towards a heavily modified utilitarianism associated with parliamentary democracy and market economies founded on property ownership. The root cause of this is the ability of utilitarianism, as opposed to the other approaches, to handle considerations of number and probability. The concept of utility is fundamental in economics but the idea has evolved away from its origins to mean “preference”. There is a sense in which the straightforward appeal of basic utilitarianism has been “leased out” in modified form to a set of institutional arrangements. Certain “pressure points” in a modern society are noted which pose particular problems pertinent to moral theory. Bernard Williams argues persuasively for an appropriately modified form of virtue ethics.

2015

Advances in Natural and Applied Sciences, 2012

Modernity and the modernization process are generally accepted as favourable phenomena. While on one side of the coin we see how modernity has greatly benefited mankind in areas of science, technology and economics, the other side of the coin – the costs of modernization – has often been intentionally left unnoticed or put within footnotes as inconvenient afterthoughts. One such thorny issue that has been the source of debate between pro-modernists and anti-modernists is the effect modernization has on the values and social aspects of society. Modernity and morality are deemed to be separate concerns; one can exist without the other, or, as some believe, in place of the other. The dilemma – modernity without morality, or morality without modernity – is one that can be answered through a scrutiny of the values themselves that are held by modern societies. This research note is an attempt to compare and contrast the conventional Western approach to ethics, values and social concepts, ...

Life and Death Decisions in the Clinical Setting, 2017

Certain actions and behaviours are recognised by individuals and society as 'Good', while others are recognised as 'Bad', and as such, they constitute the borders which delimit what are referred to as moral standards. These standards are described as normative when they are associated with a sense of oughtness or shouldness (notions which are further discussed below). Collectively, these standards comprise morality-the summation of the value systems that guide our actions and behaviours as human beings. That is to say, when we are faced with a decision, except in completely banal matters such as whether to have milk in coffee or not, each of us recognise at some level, that there is a better choice and a worse choice that we could make (Dworkin 2011). In a holistic sense, morality concerns all that is significant, or that matters to humans. The aim of moral philosophy is to find a way of thinking better about moral questions (Hare 1989), the study of how we ought to act (Singer 1994), the teaching of critical reasoning, and the enquiry into what is good (Moore 1903, Chap. 1, Sect. 2). This enquiry is informed by the question "how should I act?"; but should also look to our intentions and our motivations. Thus, we view, as a more apposite formulation, the question of Socrates "how should I live?" (Plato 1997, [352d]). There was a time when philosophers were the leaders in asking the big questions about life: What is a good life? How should we live? Where do we go after death? How do we make a society more just? Indeed, in Greco-Roman times, philosophers enjoyed greater prestige than physicians. As the United Nations Education and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO) notes, philosophy implies freedom, in and through reflection-'because it is a matter not just of knowing, but of understanding' (Matsuura 2007). As doctors, and as people, we (most of us anyway) want to do good, to be good, to seek wisdom. Wisdom, in the sense of understanding, rather than merely knowing, segues into values, and hence morality, and is integral to decision making in clinical contexts.

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2019

The principle of moral equality is one of the cornerstones of any liberal theory of justice. It is usually assumed that persons’ equal moral status should be grounded in the equal possession of a status-conferring property. Call this the property-first approach to the basis of moral equality. This approach, however, faces some well-known difficulties: in particular, it is difficult to see how the possession of a scalar property can account for persons’ equal moral status. A plausible way of circumventing such difficulties is to explore another avenue for the justification of persons’ equal moral status: moral equality should be grounded in the wrongness of treating others as inferiors. Call this the relation-first approach to the basis of moral equality. This paper aims at providing some reasons as to why this approach should be rejected and clarifying why the property-first approach still represents the most promising way of justifying the commitment to moral equality. Two objections will be pressed against the relation-first approach: first, grounding moral equality in the wrongness of treating others as inferiors gives rise to some disturbing normative implications; second, relation-first accounts cannot vindicate the idea that a range of beings has equal fundamental rights. This, however, is precisely what an account of moral equality is meant to justify. The paper, then, concludes that the relation-first approach fails to provide a plausible answer to the question of the basis of moral equality. Property-first accounts, whatever problems they encounter, are still more viable in principle.

Human Rights, 2013

2018

In this article we have projected three central objectives: first, to delimit the scope and limits of the recognition granted by the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition to the centrality of the common political good in life and in the fullness of the human being; Secondly, to specify the nature of the present difficulties that has the same possibility of the common reaches, by virtue of the valuation of the diversity projected by the liberal tradition inherited from Modernity; Thirdly, to analyze the impact that the dichotomy common good/diversity has had and continues to have on the way in which intra-organizational conflicts and relations between organizations and political institutions are dealt with, based on the plural and relativistic conceptions that in Around the idea of Justice make their way into the public debate

Analysis Review, 2022

In the last few decades, several philosophers have written on the topic of moral revolutions, distinguishing them from other kinds of society-level moral change. This article surveys recent accounts of moral revolutions in moral philosophy. Different authors use quite different criteria to pick out moral revolutions. Features treated as relevant include radicality, depth or fundamentality, pervasiveness, novelty and particular causes. We also characterize the factors that have been proposed to cause moral revolutions, including anomalies in existing moral codes, changing honour codes, art, economic conditions and individuals or groups. Finally, we discuss what accounts of moral revolutions have in common, how they differ and how moral revolutions are distinguished from other kinds of moral change, such as drift and reform.

2014

This dissertation is about economic inequality and why it thrives in a country with professedly egalitarian values. I propose that people's economic behavior and policy preferences are largely driven by their understanding of deservingness. So long as a person believes that their compatriots are generally served their economic due, economic outcomes require no tampering, at least on moral grounds. People may tolerate grave inequalities &mdash inequalities that trouble them, even &mdash if they think those inequalities are deserved. Indeed, if outcomes appear deserved, altering them constitutes an unjust act. Resources meted to the undeserving, conversely, require correction. To begin, I show how desert unifies behavioral research into the otherwise disparate notions of justice that social scientists usually cite. Desert I treat as a social institution, one that helps resolve a common multiple-equilibria problem: the allocation of wealth and socioeconomic station. As a natural ph...