Benjamin Geer on Wed, 9 Mar 2005 05:07:57 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Ethics and Social Transformation (part 1) |
After I said I thought this was probably off-topic for nettime, ed phillips encouraged me to post it. Please keep in mind what it says on the tin: it's a work in progress. Since it's too long for one post, I'm posting it in two pieces. The latest version (and the Creative Commons licence) can be found here: http://www.open-organizations.org/view/Main/EthicsAndSocialTransformation Ben Ethics and Social Transformation =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D by Benjamin Geer This is a work in progress. The Priority of the Social -------------------------- Ethical philosophy has tended to deal with choices made by individuals. For example, philosophers have asked whether it is wrong to lie, or whether someone with excess wealth has a responsibility to give money to charity. Few have asked how to choose between different possible political or economic systems on ethical grounds. One might be tempted to respond that individual evaluations and decisions are more basic and should therefore be considered before social ones. But this view is misguided; all individual choice presumes an already existing society. In 'Freedom and Resentment', P. F. Strawson writes: The existence of the general framework of [moral] attitudes itself is something we are given with the fact of human society. As a whole, it neither calls for, nor permits, an external _rational_ justification.[1] But it is not only our ethical attitudes that are constrained by society; our ethical choices are constrained, too, because the structure of each society creates particular kinds of moral problems and opportunities to act. For example, charities exist because capitalism perpetuates huge inequalities. In a society where economic arrangements did not create poverty, the question of whether to give money to charity would not exist. Moreover, as Antonio Gramsci argued: ...we have to dispense with the idea of abstract or speculative 'absolute philosophy', i.e. philosophy that arises from the preceding philosophy and inherits its so-called 'supreme problems', and even with the idea of the 'philosophical problem'.... Practice, the real history of changing social relations, takes precedence; the problems that philosophers deal with arise from these changes, and hence ultimately from the economy.... if philosophy develops because world history develops (i.e. the social relations in which people live) rather than because a great philosopher is followed by an even greater one and so on, it is clear that by doing work that makes history in a practical sense, one is also creating an 'implicit' philosophy, which will become 'explicit' to the extent that philosophers elaborate it coherently....[2] It does not make sense to consider the moral choices of individuals before considering the moral effects of society itself. The question of what kind of society we should have in order to prevent poverty is in fact more basic than the question of whether a well-off individual should give money to an impoverished one. The answer to the individual question cannot help us at all in answering the social one. The answer to the social question can either vastly simplify or vastly complicate the task of answering the individual one. Another reason for this approach is that human beings are generally unwilling to follow moral principles that (at least in their view) threaten their interests. For example, anyone who has worked in an office will be aware that most employees carefully avoid telling their bosses what they really think about all sorts of things, for fear of losing their jobs. Because of this tremendous pressure, insincerity permeates relations between bosses and employees everywhere. In this context, it is pointless to ask whether it is right or wrong to lie to one's boss. In a society where work relationships were structured in such a way that people could tell the truth without fear, the question might not be pointless. Moral standards that attempt to pit individuals against the prevailing social order stand little chance of being widely implemented. In order to become a social norm, a moral standard must on the contrary be implemented by the normal operation of that social order. Poverty is a systemic problem, caused by characteristics of the global economic system, and only a systemic change can solve a systemic problem. There are many such problems; not a few of them pose, like poverty, ethical dilemmas regarding individual action. Solutions to these problems would eliminate the associated ethical dilemmas as well; speculation about these dilemmas would thereby become entirely academic. It may be objected that this approach simply moves the problem from the domain of philosophy into that of politics. But this is an improvement, because it is only in the realm of politics that systemic problems can be solved; that is the only sort of solution that can end the suffering caused by those problems. Ethics must take this step if it is to have any practical value. Since one cannot do everything, it is sensible to concentrate one's efforts where they can have the greatest effect. Moral problems are numerous and hard, and it seems unlikely that anyone will devise a satisfactory universal decision procedure for solving all of them.[3] In such situations, it makes sense to apply heuristics, i.e. approaches that can solve a large number of particularly important problems, or at least make them easier to solve. Social transformation is such a heuristic. Therefore, the first responsibility of ethics is describe principles to guide social transformation. Well-Being ---------- I would like to discuss a particular ethical feeling I have, and explore its potential consequences for social transformation. In _Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life_, Theodor Adorno writes: There is tenderness only in the coarsest demand: that no-one shall go hungry any more. Every other seeks to apply to a condition that ought to be determined by human needs, a mode of human conduct adapted to production as an end in itself.[4] This much of Adorno's argument is sound: from the standpoint of 'damaged life', we cannot clearly envisage what life would be like in an emancipated society, because everything we currently experience (even those aspects of life that we consider positive) is to an extent 'damaged'. Even our desires are damaged, and are therefore not reliable guides for imagining an emancipated existence. But there are two serious problems with his negative proposal. First, hunger is only one cause of widespread suffering that social change can eliminate. One could add torture, preventable disease, slavery and war; the list is in fact very long. Second, having compiled such a list, we are no closer to knowing what sort of social change is required. We know that systemic change will be needed in order to solve these problems: different political and economic structures will surely be necessary. But a purely negative goal does not help us imagine what those structures might be, still less how to create them. We need a goal that can serve as a guide to strategy, as a bridge between our current situation and a better one. I would like to propose a positive goal, one that I believe avoids the trap Adorno warns of, as well as the problems I have just mentioned. This goal can be summed up as follows: that everyone shall have a good life. What do people need in order to have a good life? All answers are, to an extent, culture-specific. Words such as English 'well-being', Arabic _rafaah_ and Japanese _yutori_[5] are partial expressions of such culture-specific conceptions. For the sake of convenience, in this essay I will use the terms 'well-being' and 'quality of life' to refer to 'a good life' by any standards (not necessarily the standards implied by those two English terms). Phrases such as 'culture-specific standards of well-being' would otherwise be nonsense; with this caveat, I hope my meaning will be clear. These conceptions can change over time; as Adorno points out, they are likely to change as a result of social transformation. There is no reason to suppose that any particular set of standards could ever satisfy everyone. Therefore, ethical philosophy should not propose standards of well-being; instead, it should identify social and political processes that can enable people to implement whatever standards they have in a given time and place. Thus we can have a positive goal, while still heeding Adorno's warning. The ethical feeling I wish to explore is one that is not content merely to hope for everyone's well-being; rather, it sees this goal as an immediate, urgent requirement that must guide action in all situations and at all times. For simplicity's sake, I will refer to this feeling as the 'urgency of well-being'. I will not attempt to justify it, nor do I think it can be justified. An account of its relationship to the 'general framework of attitudes... given with the fact of human society' that Strawson appeals to may be possible, but that would be a psychosocial explanation and would not count as justification. As Wittgenstein said, 'Explanations come to an end somewhere,'[6] and in ethics it seems to me that they come to an end with feelings such as this. The urgency of well-being is not the same as Kant's idea that people are ends in themselves;[7] the latter would mean that it is an end in itself for people to be _as they are_, i.e. shaped by 'damaged life'. Moreover, I can acknowledge that some things are ends in themselves (like pure mathematics) without feeling any moral obligation to preserve them. Nor can I agree with Kant that human life matters because of human beings' capacity to reason;[8] it seems to me that this is entirely the wrong category of judgement. Compassion is not a reward for sophistication. I would be tempted to say that human life is precious because people can suffer and hope, but such talk would be absurd. To quote Wittgenstein again: 'Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts; as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water [even] if I were to pour out a gallon over it.'[9] Instead, let us ask: if we accept the urgency of well-being, what sort of social transformation should we envisage? Social transformation cannot aim to fulfil all aspects of well-being. In English, love is considered to be a basic need. Social processes can increase people's chances of finding love (e.g. by making sure they have enough free time), but love still depends on individual and imponderable factors. Social transformation can only aim to bring about _socially producible_ aspects of good lives. We can call for a society in which everyone will have the time to look for love, but we cannot call for a society in which everyone will be loved. Even socially producible protections cannot always be made wholly reliable; no society could guarantee that illness and natural disasters would never strike. However, it is now widely accepted that the main reason for poor quality of life is poor distribution of resources and opportunities, rather than bad luck, individual failings or the inherent limitations of human existence. In this essay I will take it for granted that, within the limits just mentioned, the goal of well-being for all is achievable. On that view, if an ethics of well-being were successfully implemented worldwide, everyone would, by definition, be content with the result. That, I think, is a strong test of the worth of any ethical principle. I now intend to give the reader some reasons to believe that it is also a useful tool for crafting practical objectives and strategies for social transformation. Moral Dialogue and Moral Language --------------------------------- It is easier to determine whether one's own quality of life is adequate than to determine whether someone else's is. Faced with a possible change in my way of life, I may consult the opinion of others, but ultimately I will trust myself more than anyone else to determine whether the proposed change would be beneficial or harmful to me. But there are limits to individual moral insight. Let us consider them in the following way. There are three steps to solving a problem: 1. Recognising that there is a problem. In many cases, an individual can do this alone. 2. Correctly identifying the problem. This is more difficult to do alone. It may be that the problem is to be found solely in your own perceptions of the situation; it can be difficult to find out without a dialogue. 3. Finding the best solution for everyone concerned. The more people are affected by the problem, the more difficult it is to find the best solution alone, because this requires being aware of interdependencies that are likely to be known only to the other individuals affected. In Kantian ethics, each individual is expected to imagine whether a particular moral rule could be made into a universal law that would be acceptable in all situations. Such a cognitive act would require the individual to be a sort of universal subject, capable of imagining all possible situations in human life, from the point of view of every possible human being. Since this is beyond the abilities of any real individual, we are obliged to consult other people to find out the effect that any given policy would have on them. In other words, we are obliged to have a dialogue. J=FCrgen Habermas argues, erroneously I think, that dialogue can produce universal moral laws: From this viewpoint, the categorical imperative needs to be reformulated as follows: "Rather than ascribing as valid to all others any maxim that I can will to be a universal law, I must submit my maxim to all others for purposes of discursively testing its claim to universality. The emphasis shifts from what each can will without contradiction to be a universal law, to what all can will in agreement to be a universal norm." This version of the universality principle does in fact entail the idea of a cooperative process of argumentation. For one thing, nothing better prevents others from perspectivally distorting one's own interests than actual participation.[10] There are several reasons why this does not make sense. First, it is not possible to consult 'all others' who might be concerned by a putative universal law, i.e. everyone who exists and will ever exist. Even if we limit ourselves to attempting a dialogue with everyone now living who might be affected, it is easy to see that this might include every living human being. For every individual on Earth to have even a brief dialogue with every other individual would take until the end of time. Second, different societies have different conceptions of well-being. Anna Wierzbicka points out the fallacy of ethnocentric accounts of ethical concepts: In particular, what most Anglo-Saxon ethical works tend to do is discuss ethical concepts embodied in English words as if they were language-independent moral ideas, culture-free and fully transferable from one language to another. For example, concepts such as 'justice', 'honesty', 'hypocrisy', or 'greed' are discussed as if they stood for some universally valid categories, rooted in human nature and human reason rather than in the English language and in the broad cultural tradition which has given the English lexicon its present shape.[11] Wierzbicka's argument is not that moral concepts are untranslatable, but rather that to translate them accurately requires a "culture-independent semantic metalanguage... a non-arbitrary system of universal semantic primitives"[12], whose development is the focus of her work. However, this is no help for those who wish for universal moral laws, because translatability does not equal universality. Wierzbicka shows that there are stark differences between the vocabulary available in different languages for talking about personal characteristics seen as morally good or bad. In her view, historical processes account for these differences. In medieval Europe, including England, the sin called "superbia" (that is, 'bad pride') was regarded as the "king of all vices", as the "eldest daughter of hell", and as the "leader of Sins". Yet in modern English there is not even a word to refer to this concept. Is this an accident of language or a meaningful expression of culture and society? I believe it is the latter. The idea that it is good to view oneself as 'small' and that it is bad to view oneself as 'great' lay at the heart of the medieval European world view and was expressed in the contrast between the virtue of 'humilitas' and the vice of 'superbia'. The spread of the ideology of humanism was of course hard to reconcile with that idea, and from the time of the Renaissance both 'humility' and 'superbia' lost their central place in the European moral outlook. It appears, however, that in the Anglo-Saxon culture this process of decline of both 'humilitas' and 'superbia' went further than in other European countries. Presumably, the relevant factor was religion, and it appears that in Catholic countries the concepts in question maintained their position better than they did in Protestant countries. Weber's speculations about the link between the Protestant ethic and the development of capitalism may apply to the concepts of 'humility' and 'bad pride'.... If an ethical ideology places a great emphasis on individual success and competition, then it is hard for it to continue to regard 'pride' as the "king of all vices". The thought 'I am better than other people' can no longer be regarded as the root of all evil; on the contrary, it must come to be seen as linked with 'cardinal virtues' rather than with cardinal sins.[13] This is not to say that no moral norm can possibly apply to all human beings; only that any such cases would be the result of similarities between the ways in which all human beings live, rather than of the inherent universality of sound moral judgements. However, if norms A and B are similar in some ways, that doesn't justify replacing both of them with another norm, C, containing only the similar parts, on the grounds that it can be considered universal. For in order to have any idea how to implement A and B, it may be necessary to follow them in precisely those respects where they differ. I will return to this point at the end of this essay, in a consideration of the discourse of human rights. For these reasons, moral dialogue should aim to produce agreement on norms that apply to the particular social situation that prompted the debate, among the particular group of people affected by that situation at that time. Impediments to Dialogue ----------------------- Once we have acknowledged the need for dialogue, it is apparent that some dialogues are better than others. Dialogue can be constructive or destructive. Let us assert that a constructive dialogue is one that leads to solutions that promote everyone's well-being. What is it that makes dialogue constructive or destructive? In _The Ticklish Subject_, Slavoj Zizek writes: Ranci=E8re proves, against Habermas, that the political struggle proper is therefore not a rational debate between multiple interests, but the struggle for one's voice to be heard and recognized as the voice of a legitimate partner.[14] But surely the goal of being recognised as the voice of a legitimate partner is to then be able to participate in a rational debate. Zizek seems to be describing the struggle to _create_ a political process in which everyone will be recognised as a legitimate partner. This gives us one prerequisite for constructive dialogue. A thorough study of the latter's characteristics would involve negotiation and mediation strategies, and the relative merits of different forms of discussion and different types of delegation. For now I want to focus on psychosocial impairments that hinder people's ability to participate in constructive political dialogue. An extreme case is when the individual in question is mad. In a conflict between an individual and a group, it is also possible that the individual is sane and the group is mad. (Everything I say here about individuals and groups should be taken to apply equally to minorities and majorities.) It is not necessarily always possible to know who is mad and who is sane, because madness can be diagnosed only with the help of someone else, who might themselves be mad. Lesser impairments are widespread. As I observed at the beginning of this essay, individual choice presumes social processes; these processes shape people's knowledge of their options and their judgement about what is best for them. This line of argument leads to what is usually called the 'problem of expensive tastes'. As Elizabeth Anderson puts it: Some people--spoiled brats, snobs, sybarites--have preferences that are expensive to satisfy. It takes a lot more resources to satisfy them to the same degree that a modest, self-controlled person can be satisfied. If equalizing welfare or opportunities for welfare were the object of equality, then the satisfaction of self-controlled people would be held hostage to the self-indulgent. This seems unfair. Resource egalitarians argue, therefore, that people should be entitled to equal resources, but be held responsible for developing their tastes so that they can live satisfactorily within their means.[15] This problem is similar to the one Adorno warns about: it is likely that some people, whose present way of life is unsustainable and incompatible with the well-being of others, would be equally content with a different way of life, but cannot know this, because the pleasures of that other way of life are unfamiliar to them, and must be experienced to be appreciated. I will suggest one possible solution to this problem in the next section, but first I want to examine its causes. Tastes do not appear out of nowhere. Building on Marx's account of commodity fetishism,[16] Gramsci and Althusser have argued that institutions such as education and the media function as ideological apparatuses[17]; these institutions make people believe that, by pursuing lives in which acquisition is the main source of satisfaction, they are freely expressing an autonomous subjectivity. This is necessary in order to offset the cold, alienating character of 'damaged life' that Adorno eloquently describes, in which enforced competition makes solidarity a rare luxury. It also serves to mask the awareness that, in a capitalist society, the safety net that protects individuals from misfortune is often precariously thin, and is at best constantly under threat of being dismantled. In order to loosen the grip of such ideologies, and to enable those who are attached to them to imagine another way of life, we can envisage transitional forms of society, in which people can participate on a small scale in some of the processes that will characterise the transformed society, and experience the benefits of those processes. Arguably, in a society based on the sort of cooperative production that I will sketch out below, we could expect the satisfactions of cooperative work and solidarity to reappear, compensating for the loss of other pleasures. Taking the Trobriand Islanders of Western Melanesia as an example, Karl Polanyi argued: The outstanding discovery of recent historical and anthropological research is that man's economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He does not act so as to safeguard his individual interest in the possession of material goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social claims, his social assets. He values material goods only so far as they serve this end. Neither the process of production nor that of distribution is linked to specific economic interests attached to the possession of goods; but every single step in that process is geared to a number of social interests which eventually ensure that the required step be taken. These interests will be very different in a small hunting or fishing community from those in a vast despotic society, but in either case the economic system will be run on noneconomic motives.... In this sketch of the general traits characteristic of a Western Melanesian community.... it is on this one negative point that modern ethnographers agree: the absence of the motive of gain; the absence of the principle of laboring for remuneration; the absence of the principle of least effort; and, especially, the absence of any separate and distinct institution based on economic motives. The answer is provided in the main by two principles of behavior not primarily associated with economics: _reciprocity_ and _redistribution_.[18] Reciprocity means that one's social standing and reputation depend on one's 'good behaviour', specifically on specific obligatory acts of generosity. The giver is indirectly compensated for these acts because others fulfil their obligations for the same reasons. Redistribution means that, similarly, a substantial portion of everything produced is given to the village chief, who redistributes it as gifts, according to the rules of etiquette, on ceremonial occasions which are the focus of communal life. Reciprocity is enormously facilitated by the institutional pattern of symmetry, a frequent feature of social organization among nonliterate peoples.... each coastal village on the Trobriand Islands appears to have its counterpart in an inland village, so that the important exchange of breadfruits and fish, though disguised as a reciprocal distribution of gifts, and actually disjoint in time, can be organized smoothly. In the Kula trade, too, each individual has his partner on another isle, thus personalizing to a remarkable extent the relationship of reciprocity.[19] If Polanyi is right, one goal of social transformation ought to be to embed economic processes in social relationships based on reciprocity and redistribution, whose satisfactions could replace those of competitive acquisition. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net