Table Of ContentEthics Matters
Ethical Issues in
Pragmatic Perspective
Nicholas Rescher
Ethics Matters
Nicholas Rescher
Ethics Matters
Ethical Issues in Pragmatic Perspective
Nicholas Rescher
Department of Philosophy
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-52035-9 ISBN 978-3-030-52036-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6
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For Susanne Meinl
Extraordinary Historian
P
reface
Problems of ethics and moral philosophy have preoccupied me for many
years, and I have on various occasions published studies dealing with these
issues in the professional literature of philosophy. A number of these stud-
ies are included here, along with a good deal of unpublished material.
(Details of prior publication are given in the relevant chapter’s notes.)
The book covers a varied spectrum of ethical topics, ranging from the
fundamental considerations regarding ethical values, to the rationale of
obligation, and the ethical management of societal and personal affairs. Its
coordinative aim throughout is to show how fundamental general princi-
ples underpin the stance we can appropriately take on questions of specific
ethical detail.
I am grateful to Estelle Burris for her painstaking efforts in preparing
this material for publication.
Pittsburgh, PA Nicholas Rescher
vii
c
ontents
1 Personhood 1
2 The Ethical Import of Value Attribution 41
3 The Rational Validation of Ethical Values 57
4 Rationality and Moral Obligation 73
5 On Compromise and Obligation 85
6 Moral Luck 97
7 Fairness Problems 123
8 On the Ethics of Inaction 127
9 Ancestor Worship? 137
10 Distant Posterity (A Philosophical Glance Along Time’s
Corridor) 143
ix
x CoNTENTS
11 Is There a Statute of Limitations in Ethics? 169
12 An Ethical Paradox 173
13 Collective Responsibility 177
14 Allocating Scientific Credit 193
15 Morality in Government and Politics 207
16 Problems of Betterment 215
17 Sovereign Immunity in Theological Ethics 233
18 Perfectibility Problems 237
Coda 245
References 247
Index 251
CHAPTER 1
Personhood
1 Part I: Humans as Persons
1.1 Human Beings and Being Human
Man is an animal and Homo sapiens a mammalian species. But man is not
just that, but is a person as well. And this means that we must be able to
do—at least sometimes—those sorts of things that mark a person as such
and differentiate them from the rest of creation.
There are various questions of transition which the Theory of Evolution
has made unavoidable. One is that of the point of development at which
the pre-human humanoids morphed into Homo sapiens: what does it
require for a humanoid mammal to be accounted human? And another is
that of the point at which humans qualify as rational agents: what does it
require for a member of Homo sapiens to qualify as a rational and morally
responsible person? Being human is a relatively straightforward matter.
The question just doesn’t arise save in the context of the beings we
encounter on the surface of our planet. But being a person is something a
great deal more difficult and problematic. Here we are dealing not with
biological taxonomy but with a complex manifold and convoluted theo-
retical matters. For here we are dealing not just with facets of what obser-
vationally is the case, but with a manifold of more problematic issues
regarding what can and might be.
In evolutionary biology, Homo sapiens is a developmental subgroup of
beings within the wider category of humanoids. Homo sapiens is a
© The Author(s) 2021 1
N. Rescher, Ethics Matters,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_1
2 N. RESCHER
classification subgroup of beings included within the potentially wider
groupings of persons.
Persons emerge late in the evolutionary time-table—and for under-
standable reason. For three stages of evaluative sophistication are involved:
1. The plus/minus, pleasure/pain, nice/nasty affective reactivity we
find throughout the organic realm.
2. The desirable/undesirable judgmental responses that provide evalu-
ation as we move it along the transit from higher primates to
proto-humans.
3. The right/wrong of ethical evaluation rooted in the developed sense
of community that comes on the scene with interactive among
Homo sapiens.
Stage 1 requires sensibility, stage 2 requires conscious reactivity, stage 31
requires rational evaluation by comparison with what would be and should
be different and calls for an awareness of contrast.
Persons alone have an inner thought-life. Reflectivity is present through-
out the range of significantly developed organisms: animals can feed them-
selves, wash themselves, protect themselves, move themselves, but only
persons have the cognitive reflexivity needed for forming a self-conception
that enables them to interest themselves, concern themselves, and appre-
hend and appreciate their own consideration. They alone have the self-
awareness needed for a self-image in comparative content with
feature-attribution to others. Only persons can be proud or ashamed of
themselves. Only they can appreciate that there are things they ought or
ought not to think or do. Only they can gain entry into the realm of nor-
mativity. Animals can form habits of action; persons alone can adopt prac-
tical norms and rules.
Personhood is a well-established category of human understanding.
The Greeks personalized the forces of nature in the Olympian gods. And
throughout human history—from before Aesop until after Brer Rabbit
and Winnie the Pooh—we humans make persons of the animals that sur-
vive us. The “pathetic fallacy”—the ascription of human characteristic to
the innovative creations of nature and artifice (the “cruel sea,” the “unsuit-
able” machine, the “unrelenting” rain, and the like)—is something so
natural and commonplace as to deserve a kinder name.
