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Chapter Six
6.4 Exercises for Moral Reasoning
to criticize and disagree with someone is not the same as to take away that person’s right to speak. But I digress.) Similarly, to listen to someone is to assume that the other person has a mind of her own, and that she has something to say, and deserves a hearing. Listening is not just the opposite of silencing, marginalizing, ignoring, or fighting the other person; listening is also a way of showing respect. While we are speaking to each other, we might also be confronting, competing, distrusting, manipulating, dominating, or even lying to each other. But we are not killing each other. And that, it seems to me, is no small thing. It introduces a moral dimension into the very structure of logic itself. While we are manipulating, dominating, or lying to each other, and so on, that moral dimension remains tiny and fragile, almost too small to notice. But it is not nothing. And it can grow. It appears on a scale of intensity: the less fear and hate there is in our dialogue with each other, the more humanity there is. There may be reasons to reject this rosy picture I’ve painted. Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed, correctly I think, that rationality has power enough to separate people as much as to unite them, and that one can use reason to care less about people rather than to care more.
former but not the latter, and thus his understanding is too narrow. Moreover, Rousseau portrays reasoning as an activity that takes place entirely within one’s own mind, and nowhere else; but this is not always true. Reasoning, especially in matters of ethics, is also a social event. It enters into dialogue with others; it speaks to people and it hears what they have to say; and it tests its arguments against the criticisms of others. And if talking to each other does not guarantee that we will get along with each other, at least it opens the possibility. And that is something that violence and the threat of violence cannot do. This textbook was written during the volunteer hours of its contributors, and financially supported by volunteering donors. I hope that all of them believe, as I do, that a world in which people can think and speak rationally is a better world. I’ve made this textbook available to the world for free, in the hope that it will help people understand each other, solve their problems, and get along with each other. 6.4 Exercises for Moral Reasoning
It is reason which turns man’s mind back upon itself, and divides him from everything that could disturb or afflict him. It is philosophy that isolates him, and bids him say, at the sight of the misfortune of others, ‘Perish if you will; I am secure’... A murder may with impunity be committed under his window; he has only to put his hands to his ears and argue a little with himself, to prevent nature, which is shocked within him, from
Examine the argument in the summary remarks given above. What are the moral propositions? What are the factual propositions? What patterns of argumentation (from chapter 3) are used here? Does the author commit any major logical fallacies (from chapter 4)? Which of the four main theories of ethics does it appear to presuppose? What does this essay say about the author’s world view? And finally, is the argument sound or unsound? (Notice that even if you decide that it is unsound, we will be speaking to each other, and not killing each other...)
identifying itself with the unfortunate sufferer. 21
But surely the problem here is not in rationality itself, but in a kind of reductionism that identifies reason with self-interest. For rationality is more than that. Reason can, indeed, find ways to reject the moral claims of others and secure itself in its own world, as Rousseau claims. But reason can also show us the moral worth of our neighbours, and create new ways for people to be friends. Rousseau correctly grasps the 21 Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, trans. G.D.H. Cole (Everyman’s Library)