우리가 자신의 행위를 도덕적으로 정당화하고자 한다면, 그 행위가 도덕적 원칙과 병립할 수 있다는 것을 보여주어야 한다. 즉 도덕적 행위의 정당화는 보편적 관점에서 받아들여질 수 있어야 한다. 근대 이후 많은 철학자들과 여러 윤리이론들은 도덕적 추론은 공평성에 대한 요구를 받아들여야 한다고 주장했다. 이것을 우리는 ‘공평성 논제 impartiality thesis’라 부를 수 있다. 공평성 논제에 따르면 우리는 어떠한 도덕적 판단을 내리고자 할 때, 우리 자신이나 혹은 우리와 특별한 관계를 가진 사람들의 욕구나 이익에 특별한 비중을 두어서는 안 되며, 공평한 관망자로서 중립적 관점에서 판단하려 노력해야 한다. (...) 하지만 또 다른 철학자들은 도덕 판단에 있어서의 이러한 공평성 논제에 동의하지 않는다. 이들은 사적으로 특별한 인간관계에서 요구되는 의무와 편향성(partialism)을 공평성 논제는 설명할 수 없다고 주장한다. 본 논문에서 필자는 도덕 판단에서의 공평성에 대한 요구에 관해 브래드 후커(Brad Hooker)가 제시하고 있는 공평성에 대한 평가와 도덕 판단에서 그 적용 단계를 중심으로 살펴보았다. 이를 통해 필자는 결국 윤리적 판단의 정당화 근거를 위해서는 공평성에 대한 요구가 충족되어야 함을 논증하였다. 왜냐하면 도덕 규칙들에 대한 정당화 요구는 도덕 판단에 있어서의 비결정성과 불확실성을 최소화하여 도덕에 관한 공평한 권위를 부과하기 위한 도덕 체계 일반의 보편적 요구사항이기 때문이다. (shrink)

Confronted with Adolf Eichmann, evildoer par excellence, Hannah Arendt sought in vain for any 'depth' to the evil he had wrought. How is the philosopher to approach evil ? Is the celebrated criterion of impartiality ill-equipped to guide judgment when its object is evil - as exhibited, for instance, in the recent genocide in Bosnia? This essay questions the ability of the neutral 'third party' to respond adequately to evil from a standpoint of avowed impartiality. Discussing the different roles of (...) perpetrator and victim, I argue that in any knowledge about evil the victim is the supremely privileged source; this being so, the non-party to the occurrence of evil must privilege the testimony of the victimized - even at the cost of strict impartiality of moral judgment. Key Words: Arendt • evil • genocide • Goldhagen • impartiality • judgment • Kant • Levinas. (shrink)

To capture genuine utilitarian tendencies, (Kahane et al., Psychological Review 125:131, 2018) developed the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale (OUS) based on two subscales, which measure the commitment to impartial beneficence and the willingness to cause harm for the greater good. In this article, I argue that the impartial beneficence subscale, which breaks ground with previous research on utilitarian moral psychology, does not distinctively measure utilitarian moral judgment. I argue that Kantian ethics captures the all-encompassing impartial concern for the (...) well-being of all human beings. The Oxford Utilitarianism Scale draws, in fact, a point of division that places Kantian and utilitarian theories on the same track. I suggest that the impartial beneficence subscale needs to be significantly revised in order to capture distinctively utilitarian judgments. Additionally, I propose that psychological research should focus on exploring multiple sources of the phenomenon of impartial beneficence without categorizing it as exclusively utilitarian. (shrink)

The philosophical debate concerning political exchange has largely been confined to debating the desirability of vote trading; where individuals can sell their votes or buy votes from others. However, I show that the vote credit systems prevalent in public choice theory entirely avoid the common objections to political exchange that afflict vote trading proposals. Namely, vote credit systems avoid equality concerns and inalienability concerns. I offer an alternative critique to formal mechanisms that encourage political exchange by drawing on the role (...) that impartiality and impartial moral judgements play in democratic and electoral institutions. (shrink)

This paper discusses “impartiality thought experiments”, i.e., thought experiments that attempt to generate intuitions which are unaffected by personal characteristics such as age, gender or race. We focus on the most prominent impartiality thought experiment, the Veil of Ignorance (VOI), and show that both in its original Rawlsian version and in a more generic version, empirical investigations can be normatively relevant in two ways: First, on the assumption that the VOI is effective and robust, if subjects dominantly favor a certain (...) normative judgment behind the VOI this provides evidence in favor of that judgment; if, on the other hand, they do not dominantly favor a judgment this reduces our justification for it. Second, empirical investigations can also contribute to assessing the effectiveness and robustness of the VOI in the first place, thereby supporting or undermining its applications across the board. (shrink)

According to Adam Smith, we appeal to the imagined reactions of an ‘impartial spectator’ when justifying moral judgements of others and aspire to be impartial spectators when making judgements of ourselves. However, psychological research has shown that trying to be impartial will often have the paradoxical effect of reinforcing other-directed prejudice and self-serving bias. I argue that we can get around this problem by aspiring to be ‘partially impartial spectators’ instead.

What can one say to the self-deceived? And – perhaps more importantly – who can say it? The attribution of self-deception depends heavily on the criteria for what is thought to be beyond dispute. For Galeotti, misperception of reality is a product of psychological and emotional pressure resulting in ‘emotionally overloaded wishes’, and her solution thus involves the construction of what an ‘impartial’ and ‘dispassionate’ observer would conclude when presented with the same evidence. Drawing on her examples of foreign (...) policy decision-making, I discuss two objections. First, I ask whether being ‘dispassionate’ is enough get one off the hook from the sorts of value judgements that must be made in assessing evidence in complex situations. Second, I address the role of disagreement and dissent, and suggest that what is required are not actors with a lack of emotionally overloaded wishes, but actors with different goals and wishes. Thus, while Galeotti emphasizes solutions drawing on ideals of impartiality, we might more productively look for solutions that engage multiple forms of partiality. (shrink)

We read Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments as a critical response to David Hume's moral theory. While both share a commitment to moral sentimentalism, they propose different ways of meeting its main challenge, that is, explaining how judgments informed by (partial) sentiments can nevertheless have a justified claim to general authority. This difference is particularly manifest in their respective accounts of ‘moral optics’, or the way they rely on the analogy between perceptual and moral judgments. According to Hume, making (...) perceptual and moral judgments requires focusing on frequently co-occurring impressions (perceptions of objects or reactive sentiments) for tracking an existing object with its perceptual properties or an agent's character traits. Smith uses visual perception for the purpose of illustrating one source of the partiality of the sentiments people feel in response to actions. Before making a moral judgment, people have to disregard this partiality and accept that they are all equally important. Smith and Hume's different ways of relying on the same analogy reveals the still-overlooked and yet profound differences between their moral theories. (shrink)

Garrett Cullity contends that fairness is appropriate impartiality (See Cullity (2004) Chapters 8 and 10 and Cullity (2008)). Cullity deploys his account of fairness as a means of limiting the extreme moral demand to make sacrifices in order to aid others that was posed by Peter Singer in his seminal article ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’. My paper is founded upon the combination of (1) the observation that the idea that fairness consists in appropriate impartiality is very vague and (2) the (...) fact that psychological studies show the self-serving bias is especially likely to infect one’s judgements when the ideas involved are vague. I argue that Cullity’s solution to extreme moral demandingness is threatened by these findings. I then comment on whether some other theories of fairness are vulnerable to the same objection. (shrink)

This paper examines how the concepts of utility, impartiality, and universality worked together to form the foundation of Adam Smith's jurisprudence. It argues that the theory of utility consistent with contemporary rational choice theory is insufficient to account for Smith's use of utility. Smith's jurisprudence relies on the impartial spectator's sympathetic judgment over whether third parties are injured, and not individuals' expected utility associated with individuals' expected gains from rendering judgments over innocence or guilt.

Accused persons who are subjected to a saturation level of negative media coverage may be denied an impartial hearing, which is perhaps the most important aspect of the right to a fair hearing. Despite this, the courts have generally held that the social imperative of prosecuting accused trumps the interests of the accused. The justification for an impartial hearing stems from the repugnance of convicting the innocent. Viewed dispassionately, this imperative is not absolute, given that every legal system (...) condones procedures which result in the conviction of some innocent people. While the importance of guarding against wrongful convictions has been overstated, the imperative to bring to trial all accused has been even more exaggerated. The legal system has displayed a capacity to deal with cases where the guilty walk free. The institutional integrity of the criminal justice system would be significantly compromised by convictions that are tarnished by pre-judgment. Confidence in the criminal justice system is more important than individual criminal accountability. The inability to receive an impartial hearing should result in a permanent stay. The only exception is where the alleged crime has the capacity to cause widespread fear or social unrest. This only applies in relation to serious acts of terrorism. This article focuses on recent legal fair trial developments in Australia, however, the analysis, reasoning and conclusion applies in relation to all jurisdictions where juries determine guilt and innocence. (shrink)

By means of the Ten Modes, Pyrrhonian skeptics appeal to conflicting appearances to bring about suspension of judgment. However, precisely how the skeptic might do so in a nondogmatic manner is not entirely clear. In this paper, I argue that existing accounts of the Modes face significant objections, and I defend an alternative account that better explains the logical structure, rational nature, and effectiveness of the Modes. In particular, I clarify how the Modes appeal to concerns about epistemic impartiality and (...) circularity, the nature of the skeptic's nondoxastic attitude(s), and how the skeptic can employ the Modes nondogmatically. (shrink)

The question of possible moral conflict between commitment to family and to impartiality is particularly relevant to traditional Confucian thought, given the importance of familial bonds in that tradition. Classical Confucian ethics also appears to lack any developed theoretical commitment to impartiality as a regulative ideal and a standpoint for ethical judgment, or to universal equality. The Confucian prioritizing of family has prompted criticism of Confucian ethics, and doubts about its continuing relevance in China and beyond. This chapter assesses how (...) those sympathetic to the Confucian vision of the good life might respond. It first explores Confucian conceptions of love and the importance of familial love. Next, problems arising from this commitment to partiality are discussed, and how a modern Confucian ethics might respond. I explore what notions of impartiality—understood largely pragmatically, as a value that functions in everyday social life rather than as an explicit moral principle that guides deliberation or judgment—can be derived from an ethics that focuses on family commitments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith’s Moral PhilosophyJames R. OttesonD. D. Raphael. The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007. Pp. v + 143. Cloth, $35.00.This is a puzzling and ultimately frustrating book. It is puzzling because, while its author suggests he has made an extensive review of secondary literature (2–5, 43–7, 119), there are in fact many curious omissions, including recent important work (...) that bears directly on the book’s topic. Perhaps Raphael’s low opinion of some economists’ commentary on Smith (1) disinclines him to look at the work of more recent economic historians, some of which is excellent, and of philosophers whose commentary is influenced by that of good economic historians. The book is moreover frustrating because it is not clear what exactly it is supposed to do. Its brevity, its largely jargon-free writing style, and its relatively basic and introductory discussions all suggest that it is meant for lay audiences. Yet in several places it dwells at length on historical minutiae and textual exegeses that could interest only the scholar. For whom, then, is it written?The thesis of the book is that the central contribution of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) (TMS) is its presentation of a distinctive and still useful notion of an Impartial Spectator standard of moral judgment. A second theme is that TMS underwent substantial, not merely cosmetic, changes between its first publication when Smith was thirty-six and the final, sixth, revision during Smith’s life which appeared shortly before Smith’s death in 1790, when he was sixty-seven years old. Raphael argues that subsequent editions of TMS showed crucial development in particular of the Smithian Impartial Spectator—which, because it is, as Raphael claims, the most important philosophical contribution the book makes, means that this development in Smith’s thought is itself important (11). None of this is particularly new or controversial, although Raphael has a point that some scholars—including, perhaps, myself (though he does not cite me as an example)—have insufficiently appreciated the fact that Smith developed the idea over time. This is a claim that will matter more to scholars than to philosophers, however. Philosophers usually wish to reconstruct the most powerful or charitable version of a historical figure’s argument, and then assess [End Page 326] that for soundness, plausibility, and so on, content to leave it to scholars to worry over the exegetical matters. Raphael seems to want to be both a scholar and a philosopher in this book, but the two are uncomfortable partners here.For example, in chapter 2 Raphael argues that imagination plays at least as important a role in TMS as sympathy does. He writes that “on most occasions imagination is a prerequisite for sympathy” (13) and that “Smith thinks of imagination as more pervasive than feelings of sympathy” (15). This is an intriguing thesis. The ensuing discussion, however, leaves philosophers wondering why imagination is on some occasions but not others a prerequisite for sympathy, and whether a sympathetic approval or disapproval without the use of imagination still counts as a moral judgment at all. Raphael’s discussion provides no help. Moreover, his discussion is not particularly enlightening for the scholar, since the handful of examples he mentions from Smith’s text does not come close to a representative, let alone exhaustive, sampling.When Raphael discusses the Impartial Spectator proper, he says that having edited TMS, as he has, “gives one an eye for spotting earlier and later composition” (33). Much of his historical tracing of the development of Smith’s ideas displays this seasoned eye (esp. chs. 5–6). But Raphael’s treatment is blind to the interesting philosophical questions at stake. What, for example, is the mechanism by which the viewpoint of the Impartial Spectator is created? Raphael writes that “[e]ach of us judges others as a spectator. Each of us finds spectators judging him. We then come to judge our own conduct by imagining whether an impartial spectator would approve or disapprove of it” (35). But why do we do this? How? Is the creation of this perspective identical to adopting... (shrink)

Smithian (supposedly) irregular feelings reveal the internal structure of moral judgements by showing that they consist of two distinct elements. These elements belong to different dynamisms of human nature, are triggered by different causes, and produce different reactions in the agent. In the case of resentment, I call them animal resentment and moral resentment, respectively. Animal resentment closely resembles Hume's account of resentment and follows his theory of the passions. Moral resentment is different, for it is not caused directly by (...) pain, but by the recognition of the evil intention of the aggressor. Finally, plain moral resentment – or resentment caused by an unjust action and approved of by the impartial spectator – blends these elements into a unity articulated by Hume’s theory of the passions. (shrink)

I build on Adam Smith’s account of the impartial spectator in The Theory of Moral Sentiments in order to offer a modest ideal observer theory of moral judgment that is adequate in the following sense: the account specifies the hypothetical conditions that guarantee the authoritativeness of an agent’s (or agents’) responses in constituting the standard in question, and, if an actual agent or an actual community of agents are not under those conditions, their responses are not authoritative in setting (...) this standard. However, in the account that I provide, the hypothetical conditions can themselves be constructed from the psychology and interactions of actual human beings. In other words, facts about the morally appropriate and inappropriate are determined from hypothetical conditions that––while agents in a given society might have yet to attain them––can be constructed from those agents’ shared experiences. Thus, the account offers both an attainable standard of moral judgment and a standard that can transcend the biases of the society which gave rise to it. I also defend the account against three challenges: (a) ideal observer theories do not offer the right kind of motivation to act on the verdicts of the ideal observer; (b) ideal observer theories cannot explain why the idealization in question is well-motivated and not objectionably ad hoc; (c) the standard used in ideal observer theories cannot be defended upon further reflection, because we would need a non-arbitrary, second-order standard to govern our reflection on the first-order standard of moral judgment. (shrink)

At the heart of Peter Singer’s utilitarianism is the impartial weighing of the interests of those affected by our actions. Singer calls this the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests. This paper argues that Singer’s Principle does not accord with our moral intuitions and the logic of our moral thinking. It discusses the Principle in the context of the parable of the Prodigal Son and his Brother – a parable that raises the issue of impartiality in a particularly challenging (...) way. What the parable shows is, first, that our moral thinking often turns on judgements of fairness that are prior to any impartial weighing of interests; and, second, that impartial fairness itself is sometimes transcended by compassionate love. Both of these points have important implications for bioethics. (shrink)

Law's Judgement elucidates and defends a feature of contemporary law that is currently either overlooked or too glibly dismissed as morally troublesome or historically anachronistic. That feature is the abstract nature of law's judgement and its three components show that, when law judges us, it often does so in ignorance of our particular characters and abilities, on the one hand, and in ignorance of our context and circumstances, on the other. Law's judgement is thus insensitive to all or much that (...) makes us the particular people we are. The book explores various connections between this mode of judgement and some of our most important legal and political values. It shows that law's abstract judgement is closely related to important juristic conceptions of personhood, responsibility and impartiality, and that these notions are not without moral significance. The book also examines the connections between modern law's judgement and three of our most important political values, namely, dignity, equality and community. It argues that, if we value particular conceptions of dignity, equality and community, then we must also value law's judgement. Illuminating these connections therefore serves a double purpose: first, it makes a case against those who counsel liberation from law's abstract judgement and, second, it redirects attention to the task of morally evaluating law's abstract judgement in its own terms. (shrink)

One of the central problems of contemporary political and moral thought is how to reconcile the cultural and social roots of morality with its objectivity or rational warrant, whether in the personal or political sphere. David Golemboski's reconstruction of Adam Smith's impartial spectator provides a useful first approximation to this problem. What interests me is not whether Golemboski's critique of Smith's impartial spectator hits the mark, but rather, to what extent Golemboski's reconstruction of Smith's impartial spectator succeeds (...) at addressing the problem of moral parochialism, as Golemboski claims. I shall argue in what follows that upon examination, Golemboski's reconstructed impartial spectator, far from resolving the problem of moral parochialism, actually exposes the limits of the value of impartiality as a resource for overcoming parochial prejudice, and the necessity of framing the problem of parochialism less as a matter of social and cultural bias than as a matter of the conditions of possibility of sound moral judgment. (shrink)

This paper analyzes critically the appeal the unpolitical is enjoying among contemporary political philosophers who are democracy's friends. Unlike a radical critique of democracy, what I propose to call "criticism from within," takes the form of dissatisfaction with the erosion of an independent mind and impartial judgment per effect of the partisan character of democratic politics. This paper proposes three main criticisms of the actual trend toward unpolitical views of democracy: the first points to the strategic use of deliberation (...) as an antidote against democratic procedures themselves ; the second to the negative conception of democracy that the unpolitical aspiration makes visible; and the third to the dissolution of political judgment within a model of judgment that is tailored around justice. (shrink)

Here is an appealing position: one reason to pursue interaction with people from backgrounds that differ from our own is that doing so can improve our moral judgment. As some scholars have noticed, this position seems pedigreed by support from the famed philosophers of human sociability, David Hume and Adam Smith. But regardless of whether Hume or Smith personally held anything like the appealing position, neither might have had theoretically grounded reason to do so. In fact, both philosophers explain moral (...) judgment in ways that seem to present obstacles to the acceptance of the appealing position. This paper entertains the possibility that either of their moral theories contains resources to overcome these obstacles and implies the appealing position. I argue that Smith's theory does so more straightforwardly than Hume's does. This difference, I also argue, reveals something important about the Hume-Smith philosophical relationship. I close by sketching a way to fit the source of the appealing position in Smith's moral psychology with his focus on the desire for mutual sympathy. (shrink)

This chapter examines Dewey’s view of moral knowledge developed in Chapter 14 of the Ethics. I focus more specifically on the role played by sympathy in moral inquiry. While Dewey claims that sympathy is “the general principle of moral knowledge” as well as “the surest way to attain objectivity of moral knowledge,” it has not been the object of any extensive discussion by commentators on Dewey’s ethics. I emphasize the originality of Dewey’s position by contrasting it with that of David (...) Hume, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill, who all stressed the fundamental role of sympathy in making moral judgments. Accordingly, I examine their respective answers to the moral problem raised by natural sympathy: how can such a biased and partial psychological mechanism play a beneficial role in the formation of moral judgments, which specifically aim at impartiality and objectivity? I will argue that while Hume, Smith, and Mill choose to simply extend the scope of natural sympathy, Dewey argues in favor of a deeper transformation of natural sympathy: (1) the spontaneous emotional reaction becomes intentional perspective-taking; (2) it loses its function of direct approval or disapproval, and takes on an epistemic function of data-gathering subordinated to moral reasoning. (shrink)

In an age of postmodern suspicion of master narratives, the egalitarianism and universality inherent in a normative system of rights defended by liberalism is countered by disbelief in the idealized conceptions of a ‘public subject’, divorced from the particularity of both individual and historical communal narratives, as well as an impartial collective good. Simultaneously, the excessive fragmentation of opposed and contradictory aspirations of counterpublics, privileged by a communitarian approach, runs the risk of giving priority to individual rights over social (...) well-being. This article explores the liberal and communitarian approaches to rights, inquiring into whether freedom or equality offer the best criteria of judgement to preserve the space of cultural plurality within the public sphere. While Habermasian discourse ethics subordinates the particularistic to the general will, the communitarian perspective on justice, represented by Paul Piccone and Charles Taylor, argues that the law is not universal in scope and cannot be separated from particularistic conceptions of the ‘good life’. The article ultimately claims that freedom is the criterion that allows cultural pluralities to both stand on their own, resisting assimilation within any master discourse, and establish dialogue among themselves. In this perspective, the public sphere promotes complex modes of interaction, among modernity’s differentiated spheres. This view of the public sphere is in tune with Jencks’ description of postmodernism as preserving the ‘fragmental holism’ (1996: 478) of plural lifeworlds. (shrink)

I am the LawIt is hard to imagine two more disparate characters than Judge Joseph Dredd and Hercules J—the one an over-muscular, faceless and heavily armed street judge astride a Lawmaster motorcycle who overidentifies with his role ; the other devoid of any physical presence or image, and structurally decoupled from the execution of law by a fierce determination to maintain the separation of powers and accountability which Dredd so effortlessly ignores. Hercules J is the embodiment of an intellectualised, yet (...) creative, operationalisation of law. To the academic spirit, Hercules is infinitely preferable as a model of judicial activism: his world conjures a contemplative modality, ever alert to the requirements of rights and largely aligned with the temper of the post-Enlightenment. By contrast, Dredd is the personification of the worst aspects of law-and-order as the debased and politicised manifestation of the Rule of Law. His is an intensely visceral presence, the metonymic blindness of Themis replaced by the Dredd’s fractured eyeline: blindness as a signifier of impartiality yields to blindness as a symptom of institutional rage. This article interrogates the characters, actions and values of Hercules J and Dredd J, viewed primarily through the lens of Jacques Derrida’s Force of Law, focusing on the relationship between law and violence as it is exposed in Hercules’s and Dredd’s worlds, and then turning to judicial confrontation with the aporetic: the aporias, identified by Derrida and others, that law must confront. The interrogation continues, finally contemplating the current state of law in the common law world—the world of liberal democracies, suggesting that the high point of democracy may well have passed, and that we are on a Dredd-ward trajectory. (shrink)

Debates among contemporary philosophers and literary scholars on the moral value of representational art revolve around how art appreciation influences the audience—whether viewer or reader. Martha Nussbaum, a distinguished scholar in law and ethics who has initiated many lively dialogues on this subject, holds that we have a great deal to learn from literary works—in particular, realist novels—because they so concretely depict the ways in which personal and social circumstances shape human emotions, actions, and choices. While Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (...) can motivate impartial concern, she posits, Henry James’s The Golden Bowl demonstrates how we should conduct moral deliberation.1 Noël Carroll, a principal... (shrink)

Among those who know Yehuda's work, the term “two-tier thinking” is usually associated with a problematic relativist position. But “two-tier thinking” is not a name for a philosophical argument; it is best understood, I think, as a term designating certain conditions of knowledge: universal, or modern, or perhaps only postmodern conditions, but in any case, they are generalizations derived from anthropological and psychological observations on matters of facts. This is how things actually work in the sphere of knowledge: Western intellectuals (...) and scientists tend to acknowledge that their truth claims and certainly their normative claims are incompatible with other claims that stem from other belief systems, frameworks of thought or genres of discourses, and there is no final, impartial instance of judgment to adjudicate between the incompatible claims and the conflicting systems. Lack of “final,” impartial judgment does not hinder people from taking their truth claims seriously and acting as realists within the world constituted by their particular belief systems — tier 1. But when they come to reflect upon it, as some of them do, sometimes, they acknowledge the context-dependence of this realism and the fact that there is no way to make good on its claim to universality; theirs, they know, is but one particular “belief system,” or “genre of discourse,” among many. (shrink)

In my paper, I try to summarize Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the method of political thinking, following them through their genesis. My fundamental assumption is that although she had been preoccupied with the issue before (at least from 1957), she became more seriously interested in it after the controversy following the publication of the Eichmann volume. It is generally known that Arendt believed to have found the pattern for the method of political thinking in Kant’s third critique, the one about (...) judgment; more precisely in the Kantian description of the reflective judgment. This served as a pattern for Arendt for what she sometimes called representative thinking or opinion. If, on the other hand, we examine Arendt’s referring thoughts in their genesis we also come to realize why that was the case. In my opinion, Arendt looked in Kant’s work for a form of political thinking that remained impartial, in other words, it was not committed to one political cause or another, yet did not break its relations to politics, remaining entirely political. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mencius and Xunzi between Humaneness and JusticeSungmoon Kim (bio)In his now classic Disputers of the Tao (1989), A. C. Graham aptly captured the central feature of the ancient Chinese world of thought in terms of the dispute about the Way between competing philosophical schools. But it has since long remained an intellectual challenge how to understand and evaluate the unfolding of the philosophical schools in ancient China [End Page (...) 439] coherently from a philosophical standpoint. Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China attempts to meet this long overdue challenge, and it does so admirably with philological rigor and philosophical insight.What is central to Jiang's framework is the conceptual tripod of humaneness, justice, and personal freedom, which he generally understands as "the moral norm that is agent/recipient relative" (especially, natural inclinations toward one's family/kin members), "impartial judgment on the merits of persons and states of affairs," and "the appreciation and cultivation of personal space where one can be left alone … without [being] entangled in the sociopolitical world," respectively.1 Jiang begins with Confucius by presenting him as the first major thinker in Chinese history who wrestled with the tension between humaneness and justice. According to Jiang, Confucius' seminal idea of impartial justice was critically re-appropriated by the Mohists, who advocated "impartial care" (jian ai 兼愛), while his idea of partial humaneness was later developed by Mencius, who upheld "familial virtues" as the pivot of Confucian morality and politics—although, as will be discussed shortly, this represents only one dimension of Mencius' philosophical system. Jiang understands the later development of the Laoist, the fajia ist (commonly known as "Legalist"), and the Zhuangist thoughts, largely as critical responses to the Confucian (especially the Mencian) argument for partial humaneness and the congruity between the familial and the political by naturalizing Heaven (thereby decoupling the political from the familial), developing an objective political system independent of the ruler's moral virtue, and insulating private persons from human relationality and the intervention of the state. Finally, Jiang argues that while Han Feizi's political thought presents the culmination of the early Chinese concern with impartial justice, Xunzi reformulated Confucianism by synthesizing humaneness and justice.I find Tao Jiang's overall argument, buttressed by extensive philological examinations, well-structured and penetrating, and I have no doubt that this book will make an important contribution to Chinese moral and political philosophy. Like many great books, however, Jiang's book makes numerous novel yet controversial claims, and this review aims to engage with several key questions Jiang raises with regard to Mencius and Xunzi, the two giants of classical Confucianism.The Two Strands of Mencius?In interpreting Mencius, Tao Jiang's core argument is that there is "a deep tension at the heart of the Mencian system."2 This tension, according to Jiang, rises from the two incompatible strands in Mencian thought, the "extensionist" strand and the "sacrificialist" strand: [End Page 440][W]hile the extensionist Mencius operates on the assumption, normative within Confucianism, of congruity between the personal, the familial, and the political domains, the sacrificialist Mencius recognizes a tension between the familial and the political that can be hard to reconcile or even irreconcilable under certain circumstances. Furthermore, the sacrificialist Mencius radically separates the familial from the political and ultimately prioritizes the former over the latter, by embracing the necessity for sacrifice as a way that, at times, is required to save the familial.3The extensionist Mencius presents the normative (i.e., partial humane) strand of Confucianism, which stipulates the seamless continuity between the personal, the familial, and the political, as best demonstrated in Mencius' statement that "the root of the world lies in the state; the root of the state lies in the family; the root of the family lies in oneself."4 That is, the extensionist strand of Mencius highlights the transformative force of moral self-cultivation that achieves the unity between the inner self and the outer world through the Heaven-decreed human nature, thus denying the categorial separations between ethics and politics, between moral virtue and political virtue, and between private and public. In Jiang's view, the extensionist strand captures... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Humaneness and Justice in the Analects:On Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early ChinaHagop Sarkissian (bio)IntroductionOne of the central themes of Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China is the contestation of the values of partialist humaneness and impartialist justice across diverse thinkers and texts throughout the classical period. His departure point is the Analects, which displays a keen awareness of the difficulties in balancing these (...) opposing values. Jiang's analysis of this dynamic is skillful, filled with Sinological detail and philosophical analysis.Here, I hope to add to Jiang's discussion, focusing on two broad points. First, I suggest two different interpretations of Jiang's analysis of ren 仁 as preference for kin in the Analects, and argue that one of these interpretations is more successful than the other. Second, I argue that aligning humaneness with partiality on the one hand, and justice with impartiality on the other, may obscure some of the Analect's views on these topics, even while illuminating others. In particular, I try to argue that justice cannot be understood as consisting of impartiality alone.Humaneness and JusticeJiang provides "thin or baseline definitions" of the key values of humaneness and justice so as to "schematize … competing normative values operative in the moral-political project during the classical period while … leaving room for variations on these broad underlying values among different inherited texts and the thinkers they are attributed to" (p. 35). They are as follows:[H]umaneness is understood in this book as the … natural inclination to be partial toward those who are close to us, especially our family/kin members; justice is defined here as … our exercise of impartial judgment on the merits of persons and states of affairs, especially in lieu of articulated and publicized standards and codes, irrespective of their relations to us. In other words, humaneness is partialist in nature, whereas justice is impartialist. Humaneness is understood in relational terms, whereas justice is non-relational by contrast. More importantly, precisely because of the relational nature of humaneness, [End Page 429] agent and recipient cannot be switched or substituted, whereas in justice agent and recipient are switchable and substitutable.This framework is fruitful, allowing Jiang to draw connections across texts and thinkers, highlighting aspects of the debates that too often remain hidden from view. His detailed analyses of concepts such as xiao (filial piety), jianai (impartial care), fa (objective standards), tian (Heaven), and shu (conscientious perspective taking) show how they relate to these overarching values. The schematization works, and the book repays careful reading.There are also points, however, where the alignment of humaneness with partiality on the one hand, and justice with impartiality on the other, can lead those familiar with these texts to wonder whether the presentation has, as a result, oversimplified some complex issues. I discuss two of these in what follows.Ren and PartialityJiang claims that the concept of ren in the Analects has two components or elements to it. As he puts it,[T]he way ren is articulated by Confucius, it contains both a partialist element favoring one's family and an impartialist element when dealing with others. … To put it in terms of the central terminologies employed in this book, ren in the Analects is a comprehensive category that contains the elements of both humaneness and justice.Jiang 2021, p. 53)Jiang's analysis of ren in terms of impartiality is compelling, so I will focus on the other half of the analysis—specifically, the claim that the concept of ren itself is partialistic (or, more accurately, has a notable partialist element). This claim may surprise some readers. For example, ren has often been contrasted with the partialistic xiao (filial piety) as the more impartial, public-facing virtue in Confucianism. Indeed, this contrast has been the focus of a strenuous and strident debate in Confucian ethics in modern times (see, e.g., Guo 2007; Guo 2004; Liu 2003), and has a pedigree going at least as far back as the Hou Hanshu (Chan 2004). However, such debates span multiple texts and thinkers in the Confucian tradition. We can still ask the more pointed... (shrink)

“Virtue jurisprudence” is a normative and explanatory theory of law that utilises the resources of virtue ethics to answer the central questions of legal theory. The main focus of this essay is the development of a virtue–centred theory of judging. The exposition of the theory begins with exploration of defects in judicial character, such as corruption and incompetence. Next, an account of judicial virtue is introduced. This includes judicial wisdom, a form of phronesis, or sound practical judgement. A virtue–centred account (...) of justice is defended against the argument that theories of fairness are prior to theories of justice. The centrality of virtue as a character trait can be drawn out by analysing the virtue of justice into constituent elements. These include judicial impartiality (even–handed sympathy for those affected by adjudication) and judicial integrity (respect for the law and concern for its coherence). The essay argues that a virtue–centred theory accounts for the role that virtuous practical judgement plays in the application of rules to particular fact situations. Moreover, it contends that a virtue–centred theory of judging can best account for the phenomenon of lawful judicial disagreement. Finally, a virtue–centred approach best accounts for the practice of equity, departure from the rules based on the judge’s appreciation of the particular characteristics of individual fact situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

How impartial are managerial decisions? This question is particularly concerning when it comes to making green investment decisions in the face of stakeholder pressures. When managers respond to stakeholder pressures, their personal cognition, judgment, and past experiences play a role in determining their responses. The salience of particular stakeholder claims may be determined by deeply rooted individual preferences. This research investigates how a manager’s past experiences can influence green investments. Data are gathered from 247 managers about their past experience (...) and their employer’s performance data. These data are combined with managerial responses to a vignette-based experiment, which required managers to make green investments based on a decision scenario where they are exposed to different types and strength of stakeholder pressure. Results suggest that managers’ years of experience, their employers’ financial performance, and their employers’ market performance influence investment decisions even when making decisions under new and different set of circumstances. While the employers’ financial performance influences managers to invest more, the employers’ market performance only influences managers’ investment in the presence of either high consumer or high community pressure. Compared to less-experienced managers, experienced managers invest more in response to consumer pressure but less in response to community pressure. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings in green management are explored. (shrink)

Moral bioenhancement (MBE) is often associated with a consequentialist, especially utilitarian, framework, owing to its capacity to prevent great harm and motivate acts in accordance with basic moral principles such us universal impartial altruism or benevolence. However, it remains unclear whether we could de facto justify MBE on utilitarian grounds. This article examines whether there is a plausible utilitarian case for MBE and what the obstacles for justifying MBE on utilitarian grounds could be. More specifically, it explores the relationship (...) between MBE and basic utilitarian principles, as well as its effects on utilitarian moral judgment. It seems that MBE could modify moral agents in ways that would accord with the main utilitarian demands and facilitate the adoption and realization of utilitarian prescriptions. Although MBE would, in principle, create preconditions for achieving utilitarian ends, I argue that there are certain limits to this claim. I identify and elaborate several ways in which MBE could undermine utilitarian moral judgment. (shrink)

This paper argues that independent auditors have lost sight of their obligation to be truly impartial, and have increasingly adopted an attitude of client advocacy. We argue that auditors have a professional obligation to go beyond merely passing judgment on whether client accounting methods are acceptable under GAAP, and to judge whether the principles adopted are the most appropriate under the circumstances. We then review recent evidence which suggests that auditors have abandoned this objective in favor of advocating client-preferred (...) principles. The results of a survey of public accountants employed by small CPA firms indicates that, in a scenario in which an auditor did not feel that the client's accounting treatment was the most appropriate under the circumstances but it was recognized as an acceptable alternative under GAAP, advocacy of the client-preferred approach is considered appropriate and is very likely to occur in practice. In less subtle cases (e.g., when the auditor did not feel that the client's treatment provided the best reflection of the economic substance of the underlying transactions), survey participants as a group were ambivalent regarding the appropriateness of client advocacy, and felt that subordination of judgment was likely to occur in practice. The results also indicate that engagement risk, or the risk that the firm will be harmed by aggressive behavior, affects judgments of both the appropriateness and likelihood of subordination of judgment. These findings suggest that auditors have adopted an ideology of client advocacy, within the constraints of engagement risk. (shrink)

Can it be consistent to be interested, for moral reasons, in the fact that uninvolved spectators of a regime change are enthusiastic about that change, when the latter is carried out according to means considered immoral or unjust? Yes. In ‘An Old Question Raised Again’ ( The Conflict of the Faculties , 1798), Kant demonstrates a morally based interest in disinterested spectators’ expressions (aesthetic judgments) of enthusiasm for the idea of a republican form of government. This interest is puzzling. Kant's (...) universalizability test supposedly forbids the violent revolutionary means taken to establish the republican constitution. How can the Kantian, if consistent, take an interest in expressions of enthusiasm elicited by these immoral events? In addition to endorsing the familiar means/ends distinction, this article provides a new answer to this question by examining the enthusiasm in which Kant takes an interest: it is a pure aesthetic judgment of enthusiasm, made by a disinterested, impartial spectator. Key Words: aesthetic judgment • enthusiasm • idea • interest • Immanuel Kant • republic • spectator. (shrink)

Wrongdoing and the Moral Emotions provides an account of how we might effectively address wrongdoing given challenges to the legitimacy of anger and retribution that arise from ethical considerations and from concerns about free will. The issue is introduced in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 asks how we might conceive of blame without retribution, and proposes an account of blame as moral protest, whose function is to secure forward-looking goals such as the moral reform of the wrongdoer and reconciliation in relationships. (...) Chapter 3 considers whether it's possible to justify effectively dealing those who pose dangerous threats if they do not deserve to be harmed, and contends that wrongfully posing a threat is the core condition for the legitimacy of defensive harming. Chapter 4 provides an account of how to treat criminals without a retributive justification for punishment, and argues for an account in which the right of self-defense provides justification for measures such as preventative detention. Chapter 5 considers how we might forgive if wrongdoers don't basically deserve the pain of being resented, which forgiveness would then renounce, and proposes that forgiveness be conceived instead as renunciation of the stance of moral protest. Chapter 6 considers how personal relationships might function without retributive anger having a role in responding to wrongdoing, and contends that the stance of moral protest, supplemented with non-retributive emotions, is sufficient. Chapter 7 surveys the options for theistic and atheistic attitudes regarding the fate of humanity in a deterministic universe, and defends an impartial hope for humanity. (shrink)

The problem of the rightness of moral judgment is central for ethics. The main point of this article is Adam Smith´s answer to this problem. I am going to argue that Smith did not think that moral judgment depends on private sentiments, but on the judgment of the impartial spectator. I will defend that the smithian´s answer is beetwen the humean scepticism and the kantian criticism.

This work seeks to develop a Kantian ethical theory in terms of a general ontology of values and norms together with a metaphysics of the person that makes sense of this ontology. It takes as its starting point Kant’s assertion that a good will is the only thing that has an unconditioned value and his accompanying view that the highest good consists in virtue and happiness in proportion to virtue. The soundness of Kant’s position on the value of the good (...) will is defended against criticisms directed against it by G. E. Moore and it is argued that there is an ambiguity in Moore’s notion of ‘intrinsic value’ that makes him unable to fully understand and appreciate the Kantian view. It is also argued that the special value of moral goodness has been unduly neglected in modern moral philosophy, even by those working in the Kantian tradition, and it is suggested that the possibility of a Kantian ethical theory centred on the notion of the highest good remains to be explored. In order to lay the ground for such a theory a Kantian approach to reasons for action and the metaphysics of the person is developed and defended, albeit in a way that, in contrast to Kant himself, emphasizes the social dimension inherent in being a person and acting on reasons. It is also argued that there exists what Henry Sidgwick has called a dualism of practical reason, which means that there are two systematic modes, the self-interested and the moral, of approaching action. These two modes correspond to the two components of the highest good as understood by Kant and it is argued that the highest good represents a reasonable way of unifying them. These two parts of the highest good are then considered, each in turn, and Kantian models for understanding them are elaborated and defended against main rivals. On the matter of happiness, it is argued that standard philosophical theories fail to properly account for the way in which a subject’s own opinions about what constitutes her happiness are important in determining where her happiness actually lies. On the matter of morality, Kantianism is contrasted with consequentialism, the other leading theory that understands morality in terms of an ideal of impartiality and it is argued that the Kantian ideal, which can be called ‘impartiality as universalizability’ is superior to the consequentialist one, which can be called ‘impartiality as impersonality’. A version of Kantian ethics that places its emphasis on the Formula of Universal Law is then elaborated and it is argued that it is reasonable to understand maxims, or at least those maxims eligible for the universalizability test, as having to do with the basic general principles according to which we live. This kind of interpretation creates a large room for the exercise of judgment on the part of the agent and it is suggested that the standards according to which such judgment is exercised are largely determined through our actual moral practices and discourses. (shrink)

The main features of the just society, as they would be chosen by the unanimous, impartial, and fully informed judgment of its members, present a remarkable and simple meaningful structure. In this society, individuals' freedom is fully respected, and overall redistribution amounts to an equal sharing of individuals' different earnings obtained by the same limited 'equalization labour'. The concept of equalization labour is a measure of the degree of community, solidarity, reciprocity, redistribution, and equalization of the society under consideration. (...) It is determined by a number of methods presented in this study, which also emphasizes the rationality, meanings, properties, and ways of practical implementation of this optimum distribution. This result is compared with the various distributive principles found in practice and in political, philosophical, and economic thinking, with the conclusion that most have their proper specific scope of application. The analytical presentation of the social ethics of economics is particularly enlightening. (shrink)

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith recognizes that in certain occasions even the most impartial of all spectators experience an ‘irregularity of sentiment’ in judging the moral value of an action. An example of this irregularity can be found in cases where, under the influence of fortune, the consequence of the action does not follow directly from the design of the agent. Within this article, the problem presented will be addressed in order to seek the grounds for (...) the validity of the following thesis: the recognition of the natural equality of all moral agents is the objective basis in which all moral judgment must be grounded. Having indicated this, an important question arises: Why does the innocent, who is not unjust but who is the material cause of the factual injury of another, feels a kind of remorse facing the act and somehow feels “guilty”? (shrink)

Representing moral choice as a function of rational choice is carried out by formalizing moral evaluation into a functional mechanism called "Moral Choice Function" whose domain is information on a state of affairs and range is a moral judgment, and upon which formal and substantive requirements are imposed. The notions such as impartiality, universalizability, proportionality, and informational invariance are employed for the issue of how to solve conflict of values faced by an individual as well as collective moral agent. By (...) utilizing the structural affinity with post-Arrovian social choice theory, it is shown that inter-attribute commensurability is indispensable for any serious moral agent who wants to solve conflict of values through pluralistic maximizing. It is also shown that once the morally relevant attributes are identified, formal requirements are powerful enough to qualify the function to behave in a certain way such that the formulas for pluralistic maximizing vary with the modes of inter-attribute commensurability. It is also shown how it is still possible to manage conflict of values rationally without value commensurability by interpreting John Rawls's theory of justice as neo-Kantian in dealing with conflicting desiderata from Kantian deontology and utilitarian consequentialism. The metaethical tenets for the project are also argued for such that it is neutral about the ontological status of morality; but it is anti-Humean with its supervenience thesis, anti-Moorean with its reducibility thesis, and anti-naturalist with its syntheticity thesis. It is also argued that behind the project there lies a fundamental metaphysical conception of an entity as a bundle of properties conjoined with epistemic foundationalism, which is evidenced not only in moral evaluation but also in other kinds of cognitive activity. (shrink)

There are important reasons for states to recognize and enforce the judgments of other states’ courts. There are also reasons that may militate against recognition or enforcement of certain foreign judgments, making it appropriate to calibrate or “fine tune” the presumption favoring recognition and enforcement so it is not applied too broadly. Most calibration principles, such as the principle that a judgment from a court lacking jurisdiction should not be recognized, are case-specific. However, one calibration principle that is, to our (...) knowledge, unique to the law of the United States stands out: the principle of systemic calibration, according to which U.S. courts must not recognize or enforce foreign judgments “rendered under a system which does not provide impartial tribunals or procedures compatible with the requirements of due process of law.” In this Article, we aim to shed empirical light on how U.S.-style systemic calibration operates in practice. We find that state-of-origin indicator scores related to systemic adequacy are on average higher when U.S. courts recognize or enforce foreign judgments than when they refuse to do so. Moreover, the probability of recognition and enforcement increases as these indicator scores increase. However, in only six of the 587 opinions in our dataset did a court refuse recognition or enforcement based explicitly on the systemic inadequacy ground. Thus, while the level of systemic calibration in U.S. courts is high, it is mostly achieved implicitly. Finally, even judgments from states with low systemic adequacy scores are sometimes recognized or enforced by U.S. courts. (shrink)

This paper begins with Peter Singer’s argument from utilitarianism that we should sacrifice anything we don’t need to relatively cheaply save lives in the Third World. It responds by arguing that utilitarianism is an incomplete moral system, for it requires us to view the world impartially and see each being as equally important, when we are necessarily partial to certain others (family, for example) because, among other things, we learn how to care for a starving boy thousands of miles away (...) by first learning what caring means from those closer to us. It then concludes that a more complete way to describe our morality is to see it as a balance between our separate senses of partiality and impartiality, with Aristotle’s concept of moral judgment governing between the two. (shrink)

Most contemporary moral philosophy is concerned with issues of rationality, universality, impartiality, and principle. By contrast Laurence Blum is concerned with the psychology of moral agency. The essays in this collection examine the moral import of emotion, motivation, judgment, perception, and group identifications, and explore how all these psychic capacities contribute to a morally good life. Blum takes up the challenge of Iris Murdoch to articulate a vision of moral excellence that provides a worthy aspiration for human beings. Drawing on (...) accounts of non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust Blum argues that impartial principle can mislead us about the variety of forms of moral excellence. (shrink)

Many groups make decisions over multiple interconnected propositions. The “doctrinal paradox” or “discursive dilemma” shows that propositionwise majority voting can generate inconsistent collective sets of judgments, even when individual sets of judgments are all consistent. I develop a simple model for determining the probability of the paradox, given various assumptions about the probability distribution of individual sets of judgments, including impartial culture and impartial anonymous culture assumptions. I prove several convergence results, identifying when the probability of the paradox (...) converges to 1, and when it converges to 0, as the number of individuals increases. Drawing on the Condorcet jury theorem and work by Bovens and Rabinowicz , I use the model to assess the “truth-tracking” performance of two decision procedures, the premise- and conclusion-based procedures. I compare the present results with existing results on the probability of Condorcet’s paradox. I suggest that the doctrinal paradox is likely to occur under plausible conditions. (shrink)

In mainstream economics the principle of freedom from value judgment (Wertfreiheit) is enforced. This principle has different interpretations. The aim of this paper is to present author's interpretations of the principle of Wertfreiheit. The basic ideas of axiology have been analysed: values, valua- tions, and value judgments, including their application to economic activities and economic researches. Two models of valuations have been presented – the taste model and perception model – as well as points of view of economic researches on (...) those models. The conclusion comprises the author’s interpretation of the principle of Wertfreiheit as that of impartiality and integrity in research activities. (shrink)

Historical objectivity is a polysemic concept whose genesis and validity merit more non-polemical attention than it usually receives. As a notion that encapsulates the special applications of the language of objectivity to methodological and ethical issues faced by historical scholars all across the human sciences, it will be addressed here from a perspective that combines conceptual history, history of ideas, and theoretical reflection. A peculiar mode of claiming objectivity will be at focus, one that assumes that historians can bring together (...) two attitudes often regarded as mutually contradictory: objectivity and engagement. My main assertion is that from at least the mid 19th century a new avenue for historical thought was opened, as a few intellectuals challenged the traditional requirement that histories be written sine ira et studio; and especially as they did so while at the same time upholding a strong commitment to the value of research. I intend to show how in the mode of engaged objectivity, a disposition like anger, which was traditionally taken to be a historiographical vice, was turned into a potential virtue. This general point will be illustrated with a case study of the underlying motives and the structural configurations of Alexandre Herculano's History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, a confessedly committed, utterly critical, and sometimes furious research-based historical account. (shrink)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not stem (...) from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels--but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favored utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas—and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarization surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how hypothetical scenarios in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) should strive for more experiential and psychological realism, otherwise their results might not generalize to real-world moral dilemmas. (shrink)

비전문가로서 학생들이 어려워하는 윤리 문제는 도덕적 딜레마로서 도덕 원칙들 간의 충돌 문제이다. 필자는 도날드 데이비슨의 도덕 원칙의 논리적 구조 분석에 따라 바칼로우가 제시하고 있는 ‘전체를 고려한 단칭 도덕판단’이라는 윤리 문제 접근법이 비전문가로서 학생들에게 적절한 모형이 될 수 있음을 주장한다. 이 모형이 개별적인 구체적 사례 연구를 위한 접근법으로서 비전문가 수준에서 적절하다고 보는 이유는 레이첼즈가 제시한 ‘도덕성의 최소 개념’ 즉 ‘최선의 이유’와 ‘공평성’을 포함하고 있으며, 동시에 ‘최선의 이유’를 적용하게 될 도덕 원칙이라고 생각한다면, 도덕 원칙들 간의 충돌 문제를 좀 더 쉽게 다룰 수 (...) 있기 때문이다.BR 필자는 이러한 아이디어에서 바칼로우가 보여 주고 있는 ‘전체를 고려한 단칭 도덕 판단’이라는 도덕 판단의 모형은 기존의 하향식, 상향식, 그리고 절충적 접근법들이 지니는 성격을 공유하면서도, 도덕 원칙들의 충돌 문제를 비전문가 수준에서도 적절하게 다룰 수 있는 접근법이라고 주장한다. 나아가 학생들은 이 접근법을 기초로 ‘반성적 균형’의 과정을 거처가면서 점차 자연스럽게 비전문 수준에서 윤리 전문가 수준의 나아갈 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

A number of ethical frameworks have been proposed to support decision-making in public health and the evaluation of public health policy and practice. This is encouraging, since ethical considerations are of paramount importance in health policy. However, these frameworks have various deficiencies, in part because they incorporate substantial ethical positions. In this article, we discuss and criticise a framework developed by James Childress and Ruth Bernheim, which we consider to be the state of the art in the field. Their framework (...) distinguishes aims, such as the promotion of public health, from constraints on the pursuit of those aims, such as the requirement to avoid limitations to liberty, or the requirement to be impartial. We show how this structure creates both theoretical and practical problems. We then go on to present and defend a more practical framework, one that is neutral in avoiding precommitment to particular values and how they ought to be weighted. We believe ethics is at the very heart of such weightings and our framework is developed to reflect this belief. It is therefore both pluralist and value-based. We compare our new framework to Childress and Bernheim’s and outline its advantages. It is justified by its impetus to consider a wide range of alternatives and its tendency to direct decisions towards the best alternatives, as well as by the information provided by the ranking of alternatives and transparent explication of the judgements that motivate this ranking. The new framework presented should be useful to decision-makers in public health, as well as being a means to stimulate further reflection on the role of ethics in public health. (shrink)