Author: Huenemann

I never really get the chance to teach Rawls in my classes, since I’m usually teaching either history or metaphysics and epistemology. But if I did, I think I would assign students to create Rawls’ version of the Monopoly board game.

I think you don’t have to change the game at all to get Nozick’s view of economic justice. Each player has the freedom to invest or not invest, and so individuals have maximal economic freedom. But Rawls suggests that, if everyone starts in an equal position, the outcomes will be just only if the players agree to a difference principle: there can be a change in the economic distribution only if the change makes the worst-off player better off (roughly). So how would the Monopoly game rules change? One idea would be to tax every transaction so that some amount goes to the poorest player. There probably are other more creative changes that could work too.

When I express this idea to folks, they complain, “But then no one would ever win!” Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Is an economic system just if it allows there to be losers? Especially: losers who lose due to the luck of the dice, and luck of the draw?

Peter Railton in the NYT:

So, are the optimistic Darwinians wrong, and impartial morality beyond the reach of those monkeys we call humans? Does thoroughly logical evolutionary thinking force us to the conclusion that our love, loyalty, commitment, empathy, and concern for justice and fairness are always at bottom a mixture of selfish opportunism and us-ish clannishness? Indeed, is it only a sign of the effectiveness of the moral camouflage that we ourselves are so often taken in by it?

In early November, Birkbeck College of the University of London hosted a conference called “Why Humanities?”, in response to the government’s onslaught against higher education taking place in the UK (and taking place here, with slightly less severity). One of the speakers was philosopher Raimond Gaita, in a short address entitled “Callicles’ Challenge.” At the heart of his talk is whether Philosophy should try to promote its worth by listing the extrinsic benefits of studying and teaching it. It’s an interesting and intelligent talk; here’s the link.

ADDENDUM: Towards the end, Gaita offers this quote from Hannah Arendt:

“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable.

“And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.”

I love language used well. Stephen Fry, in this little video, provides a reminder not to make a fetish of its myriad rules. (Yes, I promise to grade with this in mind henceforth.)

MacIntyre begins his Cambridge talk by asserting that the 2008 economic crisis was not due to a failure of business ethics. The opener is not a red herring. Ever since he published his key text After Virtue in 1981, he has argued that moral behaviour begins with the good practice of a profession, trade, or art: playing the violin, cutting hair, brick-laying, teaching philosophy. Through these everyday social practices, he maintains, people develop the appropriate virtues. In other words, the virtues necessary for human flourishing are not a result of the top-down application of abstract ethical principles, but the development of good character in everyday life. After Virtue, which is in essence an attack on the failings of the Enlightenment, has in its sights a catalogue of modern assumptions of beneficence: liberalism, humanism, individualism, capitalism. MacIntyre yearns for a single, shared view of the good life as opposed to modern pluralism’s assumption that there can be many competing views of how to live well.[…]

When it comes to the money-men, MacIntyre applies his metaphysical approach with unrelenting rigour. There are skills, he argues, like being a good burglar, that are inimical to the virtues. Those engaged in finance—particularly money trading—are, in MacIntyre’s view, like good burglars. Teaching ethics to traders is as pointless as reading Aristotle to your dog. The better the trader, the more morally despicable.

At this point, MacIntyre appeals to the classical golden mean: “The courageous human being,” he cites Aristotle as saying, “strikes a mean between rashness and cowardice… and if things go wrong she or he will be among those who lose out.” But skilful money-men, MacIntyre argues, want to transfer as much risk as possible to others without informing them of its nature. This leads to a failure to “distinguish adequately between rashness, cowardice and courage.” Successful money-men do not—and cannot—take into account the human victims of the collateral damage resulting from market crises. Hence the financial sector is in essence an environment of “bad character” despite the fact that it appears to many a benevolent engine of growth.

Read the whole story here.