Ethics in Hard Times

306 Pages·1981·4.71 MB·English

by  James Rachels (auth.)

ETHICS IN
HARD TIMES
THE HASTINGS CENTER SERIES IN ETHICS
ETHICS TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Edited by Daniel Callahan and Sissela Bok
MENTAL RETARDATION AND STERILIZATION
A Problem of Competency and Paternalism
Edited by Ruth Macklin and Willard Gaylin
THE ROOTS OF ETHICS: Science, Religion, and Values
Edited by Daniel Callahan and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.
ETHICS IN HARD TIMES
Edited by Arthur L. Caplan and Daniel Callahan
VIOLENCE AND THE POLITICS OF RESEARCH
Edited by Willard Gaylin, Ruth Macklin, and Tabitha M. Powledge
WHO SPEAKS FOR THE CHILD: The Problems of Proxy Consent
Edited by Willard Gaylin and Ruth Macklin
A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will
bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are
billed only upon actual shipment. For further information please contact the
publisher.
ETHICS IN
HARD TIMES
Edited by
Arthur L. Caplan
and
Daniel Callahan
The Hll5lings Center, Ht/stings-on-Hudson, New York
PLENUM PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Ethics in hard times.
(The Hastings Center series in ethics)
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. Political ethics-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Social ethics-Addresses, essays,
lectures. 3. Social justice-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Caplan, Arthur L. II. Callahan,
Daniel. 1930 . III. Series.
JA79.E825 172 81-17728
ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-4024-9 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-4022-5 AACR2
DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4684-4022-5
© 198 I The Hastings Center
Softeover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1981
Institute of Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences
360 Broadway
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 10706
Plenum Press, New York
A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation
233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming.
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
CONTRIBUTORS
DANIEL CALLAHAN, Director, The Hastings Center, Insti
tute of Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences, 360 Broadway,
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York
ARTHUR L. CAPLAN, Associate for the Humanities, The
Hastings Center, Institute of Society, Ethics, and the Life
Sciences, 360 Broadway, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York
ROBERT A. GOLDWIN, American Enterprise Institute for
Public Policy Research, 1150 17th Street, Northwest, Wash
ington, D.C.
ROBERT LEKACHMAN, Department of Economics, Herbert
H. Lehman College, City University of New York, Bronx,
New York
JONATHAN LIEBERSON, Center for Policy Studies, The
Population Council, 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York,
New York
JAMES RACHELS, Office of the Dean, School of Humanities,
University of Alabama in Birmingham, Birmingham, Ala
bama
v
vi CONTRIBUTORS
THOMAS C. SCHELLING, John F. Kennedy School of Gov
ernment, 79 Boylston Street, Harvard University, Cam
bridge, Massachusetts
PETER SINGER, Department of Philosophy, Monash Uni
versity, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
SHELDON S. WOLIN, Department of Politics, 206 Corwin
Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
A.D. WOOZLEY, University Professor of Philosophy and
Law, 521 Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville,
Virginia
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ix
by Arthur L. Caplan and Daniel Callahan
Chapter 1 / CAN ETHICS PROVIDE ANSWERS? 1
by James Rachels
Chapter 2 / THE CONCEPT OF MORAL STANDING 31
by Peter Singer
Chapter 3 / WHY SHOULD WE BE MORAL? 47
by Jonathan Lieberson
Chapter 4 / ECONOMIC JUSTICE IN HARD TIMES 91
by Robert Lekachman
Chapter 5 / RIGHTS VERSUS DUTIES: No CONTEST 117
by Robert A. Goldwin
Chapter 6 / LAW AND THE LEGISLATION OF MORALITY 143
by A. D. Woozley
Chapter 7 / ANALYTIC METHODS AND THE ETHICS
OF POLICY 175
by Thomas C. Schelling
vii
vtii CONTENTS
Chapter 8 / THE AMERICAN PLURALIST CONCEPTION
OF POLITICS 217
by Sheldon S. Wolin
Chapter 9 / MINIMALIST ETHICS: ON THE PACIFICATION
OF MORALITY 261
by Daniel Callahan
INDEX 283
INTRODUCTION
There is widespread agreement among large segments of
western society that we are living in a period of hard times.
At first glance such a belief might seem exceedingly odd. After
all, persons in western society find themselves living in a time
of unprecedented material abundance. Hunger and disease,
evils all too familiar to the members of earlier generations,
although far from eradicated from modern life, are plainly on
the wane. Persons alive today can look forward to healthier,
longer, and more comfortable lives than those of their grand
parents. Nevertheless, the feeling that life today is especially
difficult is rampant in government, in the media, in popular
books, and in academic circles. Western society is perceived
in many quarters as wracked by crises of all sorts-of faith,
of power, of authority, of social turmoil, of declining quality
in workmanship and products, and of a general intellectual
malaise afflicting both those on the Left and the Right. A tone
of crisis permeates the language of public life. Editorials in
major newspapers are full of dire warnings about the dangers
of unbridled egoism, avarice and greed, and the risks and
horrors of pollution, overpopulation, the arms race, crime,
and indulgent lifestyles.
Many of the social institutions that have historically
served as the glue of modern social existence-the church,
the family, local government, the schools, the armed forces,
ix
x INTRODUCTION
the police-have been diagnosed as seriously ailing or certi
fied as dead by countless publications, studies, commissions,
and panels. Science, medicine, and technology, once the hope
of an entire generation of young idealists, are now viewed as
pernicious practices whose fruits are bitter and toxic. The
quality of life in large urban centers today has led many cul
tural commentators to recall Hobbesian descriptions of life
grown brutish, nasty, and short. The language of triage, of
lifeboat ethics, of belt tightening, of conservation, of battening
down the hatches is now the argot of policy makers, bureau
crats, and politicians. Quality not quantity has become the
criterion by which life in advanced modem society is mea
sured. Although no single indicator has gained universal as
sent as the appropriate index of the quality of personal life,
there seems to be a universal consensus that most of the
available signs and indices are pointing in a negative direc
tion.
Ironically, one symptom of the view that we are living
in a period of hard times is the frequency with which con
temporary debates about public and private matters are pep
pered with references to ethics and morality. Many of the
debates and disputes current in contemporary society are con
ducted in the language of ethics. Talk of rights, justice, virtue,
freedom, duties, and liberty is widespread. Indeed, it would
not be unfair to sum up the popular opinion about why these
are hard times with the phrase "moral crisis." We have an
abundance of knowledge and material goods, yet we seem
uncertain about how to use these goods, about who should
benefit from them, even about whether these goods are really
goods at all.
Talk of ethics is not a new phenomenon in periods of
hard times. In nineteenth-century England legislators and
academicians, appalled by the hard times brought on for