Neera K. Badhwar

In this significant new addition to moral theory, George Harris challenges a view of the dignity and worth of persons that goes back through Kant and Christianity to the Stoics. He argues that we do not, in fact, believe this view, which traces any breakdowns of character to failures of strength. When it comes to what we actually value in ourselves and others, he says, we are far more Greek than Christian. At the most profound level, we value ourselves as natural organisms, as animals, rather than as godlike beings who transcend nature. The Kantian-Christian-Stoic tradition holds that if we were fully able to realize our dignity as Kantians, Christians, or Stoics, we would be better, stronger people, and therefore less vulnerable to character breakdown. _Dignity and Vulnerability_ offers an opposing view, that sometimes character breaks down not because of some shortcoming in it but because of what is good about it, because of the very virtues and features of character that give us our dignity. If dignity can make us fragile and vulnerable to breakdown, then breakdown can be benign as well as harmful, and thus the conceptions of human dignity embedded in the tradition leading up to Kant are deeply mistaken. Harris proposes a foundation for our belief in human dignity in what we can actually know about ourselves, rather than in metaphysical or theological fantasy. Having gained this knowledge, we can understand the source of real strength.

1.1 Are commercial societies unfriendly to friendship? Many critics of commercial societies, from both the left and the right, have thought so. They claim that the free-market system of property rights, freedom of contract, and other liberty rights – the “negative” right of individuals to peacefully pursue their own ends – is impersonal and dehumanizing, or even inherently divisive and adversarial. Yet (their complaint goes) the psychology and morality of markets and liberty rights pervade far too many relationships in a commercial society, eroding the bonds of personal and civic friendship. My main aim in this paper is to analyze and evaluate this claim. In this section I will give an overview of the critics’ complaints against various features of the free-market system, discuss the empirical data that might be thought to support their complaints, and show why they largely fail to do so. In Section II I will get to the heart of the matter: the nature of the market and of friendship. I will address the thesis that the modes of valuation proper to production are radically opposed to the modes of valuation proper to friendship, love, sexuality, and so on, arguing that the thesis rests on a misunderstanding of both markets and friendship. A proper understanding of the two reveals that, as voluntary, reciprocal relationships, market relationships and friendship share important moral and psychological properties, and are not the natural enemies, or even the odd bed-fellows, many critics take them to be. In Section III I will address the related thesis that market societies – societies based on the free-market system of property rights, freedom of contract, and other liberty rights - tend to commodify relationships and, thereby, weaken the bonds of personal and civic friendship. I will argue that free markets are the most powerful force for decommidifying or, more generally (since commodification is not the only way of objectifying people), deobjectifying people and relationships..

Peter Singer and Peter Unger argue that moral decency requires giving away all one's “surplus” for the relief or prevention of “absolute poverty,” because not doing so is analogous to refusing to save a drowning child to avoid making one's clothes muddy. I argue that there is a crucial disanalogy between the two cases and, moreover, that there are four independent moral objections to their thesis: it is monomaniacal in ignoring the variety of morally worthy ideals and elevating self-sacrificial aid to the global poor into the sole ideal; it is misanthropic in its indifference to the happiness of those it adjures to give; it is incompatible with integrity; it would have disastrous effects for the poor if it were generally adopted. I argue that genuine beneficence aims at creating or restoring the conditions that enable its beneficiaries to become self-sufficient creators themselves — creators of wealth and of meaningful and enjoyable lives. Small-scale beneficence is necessary for moral goodness, but large-scale beneficence is optional, so long as its absence is not due to a lack of regard for those in need. The uncharitable person violates the neo-Lockean non-waste proviso that we acquire or keep for ourselves and those we love as much, but only as much, as we can use or invest meaningfully or enjoyably, now or in the long run. But someone who invests all his resources in creating something of worth leads a morally worthy life even if he reserves nothing for large-scale charity. Both our capacity for beneficence, which bids us stretch out a hand to those in need, and our capacity for creation, which bids us reach for the stars, are important aspects of our humanity. The Singer-Unger ideal advocates not genuine beneficence but the profligate giving away of wealth to prolong lives, while failing to appreciate what makes life worth living. a Footnotesa I am grateful for helpful comments on this paper from Ellen Frankel Paul, Larry White (who commented on the paper at the 2005 conference of the Association for Private Enterprise Education), David Blumenfeld, and Garrett Cullity (whose comments from Australia were a wonderful example of voluntary international aid to a stranger). I would also like to thank Georgia State University, Bowling Green State University, and the Association for Private Enterprise Education for inviting me to present this paper, and the audiences at these presentations for their helpful discussion. Finally, I would like to thank Harry Dolan for his expert copyediting, which saved me from some embarrassing mistakes and infelicities.

Contra John Rawls, G. A. Cohen argues that the fundamental principles of justice are not constrained by the limits of our nature or the nature of society, even at its historical best. Justice is what it is, even if it will never be realized, fully or at all. Likewise, David Estlund argues that since our innate motivations can be justice-tainting, they cannot be a constraint on the right conception of justice. Cohen and Estlund agree that if the attempt to implement a certain conception of justice is likely to result in widespread harm or injustice, then it should not be implemented, but that this does not entail that the conception itself is false. I argue that (i) there is no way to judge the soundness of a principle of justice independently of all psychological facts, and the effects that the principle is likely to have if it is implemented; (ii) a principle of justice that, if implemented, makes it hard or impossible for individuals committed to justice to lead happy and worthwhile lives in a good society, even if the circumstances are favorable to living justly, cannot be sound; (iii) without the constraints noted in (i) and (ii), there can be no reason to reject racist, sexist, or other wrongheaded principles of justice that have been advanced as sound over the years, principles that even Cohen and Estlund would reject. In short, justice is justice only if kept within the limits of human nature.

The Milgram and other situationist experiments support the real-life evidence that most of us are highly akratic and heteronomous, and that Aristototelian virtue is not global. Indeed, like global theoretical knowledge, global virtue is psychologically impossible because it requires too much of finite human beings with finite powers in a finite life; virtue can only be domain-specific. But unlike local, situation-specific virtues, domain-specific virtues entail some general understanding of what matters in life, and are connected conceptually and causally to our traits in other domains. The experiments also make us aware of how easily unobtrusive situational factors can tap our susceptibilities to obedience, conformity, irresponsibility, cruelty, or indifference to others’ welfare, thereby empowering us to change ourselves for the better. Thus, they advance the Socratic project of living the examined life. I note a remarkable parallel between the results of the baseline Milgram experiments and the results of the learned helplessness experiments by Martin Seligman et al. This provides fresh insight into the psychology and character of the obedient Milgram subjects, and I use this insight to argue that pusillanimity, as Aristotle conceives of it, is part of a complete explanation of the behavior of the obedient Milgram subjects.

Communitarians reject the impartial and universal viewpoint of liberal morality in favor of the "situated" viewpoint of the agent's community, and elevate political community into the moral community. I show that the preeminence of political community in communitarian morality is incompatible with concern for people's lives in the partial communities of family, friends, or others. Ironically, it is also incompatible with the communitarian thesis about the situated nature of moral agency. Political community is preeminent in communitarianism because of its unargued-for assumption that a good society is a morally unified society. I further argue that the ability to take the impartial standpoint is essential to the ability to make particular commitments that have an intrinsic human importance.

Someone who is reality-oriented and in touch with important features of her life is realistic. Realism has long been regarded as a hallmark of mental health and well-being, understood as happiness in an objectively worthy life. This view has also long invited the objection that ignorance can be bliss. Another objection, of recent vintage, comes from social psychology. Taylor and Brown claim that mildly deluded people are healthier and happier than highly realistic people. I argue against both objections that, properly understood, realism really is good for us. Being realistic can sometimes be disastrous, but being unrealistic is usually worse. Taylor and Brown’s interpretations of the empirical data are often unjustified, and their arguments weak or invalid.

Philosophical interest in friendship has revived after a long eclipse. This is largely due to a renewed interest in ancient moral philosophy, in the role of emotion in morality, and in the ethical dimensions of personal relations in general. Some of the main questions raised by philosophers are the following: Is friendship only an instrumental value, i.e., only a means to other values, or also an intrinsic value - a value in its own right? Is friendship a mark of psychological and moral self-sufficiency, or of deficiency? How does friendship-love differ from the unconditional love of agape, and how - if at all - is it related to justice? Can the particularist, partialist perspective of friendship be reconciled with the universalist, impartialist perspective of morality? Is friendship morally neutral, or does friendship at its best require a good character? These questions are discussed here with reference to the following philosophical traditions.