The Dialogue of Cultural Traditions:
a global perspective
Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and Ethics
Lecture 5
The Possibility of Moral Knowledge
William Sweet
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Culture as ways of living, ways of
meaning, and ways of knowing
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Relation of culture and traditions and
practices
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Ethical traditions as cultural traditions
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How to respond to challenges?
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Criticism / response
Providing a positive view
Criteria:
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Meaning
Truth
Relevance
Sufficient evidence
Ethics of Modernity (a summary)
The tradition of reason and rationality
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a) foundationalism
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b) the turn to the subject
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Its criticisms of religious and ‘tradition-based’ ethics
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i) rationalist-based natural law
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ii) Enlightenment (and post-Enlightenment)
rationalism and scepticism
Postmodern criticisms (a summary)
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The ideal of rationality is problematic; there is no neutral,
formal method of arriving at objective truth
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There are no neutral, objective ‘subjects’ who can make
objective judgements, independent of their interests
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We cannot know nature or reality in itself
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There is no human nature
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Truth is not a correspondence of things to the world
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Foundationalism is inconsistent and arbitrary; there is no
‘ground’ for any of our beliefs
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There is no objectivity
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There are no impartial, objective absolute moral rules or
principles
Postmodern criticisms (a summary)
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a) versus rationalism
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b) versus anthropocentrism
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c) versus essentialism, natures and natural laws, universal
& objective character of morality (historicity)
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(see “Bases of Ethics and Ethical Foundationalism,” pp. 2-4)
d) proof is at least odd, if not relative, if not impossible
e) we end up in confusion & emotivism
The Dialogue of Cultural Traditions:
a global perspective
Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and Ethics
Lecture 6
Ethics After Modernity and the Role of Discourse and
Tradition
William Sweet
Some contemporary ‘after-’ or ‘post-modern’
approaches
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Richard Rorty (1931-2007)
Alasdair MacIntyre (1929Jurgen Habermas (1929John Rawls? (1921-2002)
Kai Nielsen (1926Jean Ladriere? (1921-
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“The Bases of Ethics and Ethical Foundationalism’ in The
Bases of Ethics, Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press,
2000.
“Can there be Moral Knowledge?” in Maritain Studies, Vol. XI
(1995): 159-190
“Solidarity and Human Rights," in Philosophical Theory and
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (ed. William
Sweet), Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2003.
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Richard Rorty, “Solidarity,” Contingency, Irony and Solidarity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Richard Rorty,“Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality,”
On Human Rights, The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993, eds.
S. Hurley and S. Shute (New York: Basic Books, 1993), pp.
111–134
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. 1989
Alasdair MacIntyre, “The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life,
and the Concept of a Tradition,” from After Virtue (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2nd ed., 1984)
Jurgen Habermas, “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Prgram of
Philosophical Justification” from The Communicative Ethics
Controversy, ed Selya Benhabib and Fred Dallmayr, MIT
Press
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Kai Nielsen, "In Defence of Wide Reflective Equilibrium" in
Ethics and Justification (ed. Douglas Odegard), (Edmonton,
AB: Academic Publishers, 1988), pp. 19-37,
Kai Nielsen, "Relativism and Wide Reflective Equilibrium,"
Monist 76 (1993): 316-332.
Richard Rorty
(1931 - 2007):
Richard Rorty
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‘objectivity' does not mean "corresponding to what there is"
(PMN 339), but = "a property of theories which, having
been thoroughly discussed, are chosen by a consensus of
rational discussants" (PMN 338).
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‘true’ = it is the product of the widest consensus or
agreement within our set of social practices
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We can provide only explanations and narratives
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We can provide sentimental education
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We can try to ‘awaken’ or ‘educate’ the sentiments
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The aim is ‘solidarity’ in ethics
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There is moral progress
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What is solidarity?
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An “ability to notice, and identify with” the pain of others
Something we make
Why should I be in solidarity?
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Because we are the way we are
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Solidarity is “one-dimensional”; no reciprocity
Not just a feeling; we must believe that we must do
something & this needs justification/argument/proof
Sentimental education consistent with giving reasons and
proof
Is sentimental education an education? (If yes, then there is a
‘better’ and a ‘worse’)
Aim of sentimental education is to make us more aware, not
just differently aware
Too broad
What follows from ‘feeling’? Compassion? Indifference?
How can we call on others to be in solidarity?
Kai Nielsen
 We can have rationality
without foundationalism
 Philosophy is critical theory
 Rationality without
foundationalism
 ‘objectivity' = informally
intersubjective; no
“Archimedean point”
 Wide reflective equilibrium
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Wide reflective equilibrium
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
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Start from our “deeply embedded norms” / framework
principles
We “winnow out” these culturally received notions
Filter out errors in judgement; get the best factual
knowledge
Seek a “fit” of our “considered convictions”
We “shuttle back and forth” between facts and
convictions
We arrive at a “consistent and coherent set of beliefs” …
for a time
No belief is immune to criticism
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Is this just another kind of rationalism?
Is it true that all my beliefs are open to criticism?
How do I know I have the best factual knowledge (circular?)?
When do I know that I have reached WRE?
Can I use WRE to evaluate other societies?
Can I use WRE to evaluate past societies?
Is society today better/worse than 100 years ago?
Alasdair MacIntyre
Challenges: IF moral
standards are contextually
determined and lack
foundations, THEN we can
never be certain our
standards are legitimate and
we can’t prefer one set of
standards to another
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A demand for proof in ethics is odd, if not impossible
Modern ethics combines many cultural traditions and norms –
and leads to relativism or emotivism or scepticism
We should focus on moral practices, the traditions in which
they appear, and on people of practical wisdom (see
Aristotle)
1. actions/practices are defined in contexts
 a practice is:
“any coherent and complex form of socially established
cooperative human activity through which goods internal to
that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to
achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate
to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the
result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human
conceptions of ends and goods involved, are systematically
extended.” (MacIntyre, After Virtue 187)
 There cannot be an external justification of one’s actions but
an internal justification (i.e., within the practice, in terms of its
goods, etc.)
2. We must revive the model of practical reason
 we cannot specify a complete set of moral rules
 We need room for insight
3. Morality occurs within / is constituted by a set of practices (a
tradition)
 a tradition is "an argument extended through time [an
ongoing discussion or dialogue] in which certain fundamental
agreements are defined and redefined" "about the goods the
pursuit of which gives to that tradition its particular point and
purpose" (MacIntyre, After Virtue 222).
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Traditions may experience epistemological crises when the
practices or traditions seem to run into a dead end
 Physics (Newtonian and Einsteinian)
 Cultures
 The phronimos ‘moves outside’ the tradition to find an
answer
 This is rational, but not rule following (e.g., how, when,
where, etc.) and there are no foundations
 There can be progress: “what results when a tradition
deals with its problems by looking to resources in other
traditions”
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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Diversity does not prove irresolvability
Moral theories historically influenced but not historically
restricted
If M is right, how can we look outside our
traditions/cultures?
If M is right, can we speak of progress?
Are all evaluations of practices/traditions internal?
Requires a prior standard to establish the phronimos
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Jürgen Habermas
Habermas: two stages to discourse
.
 First, each side of the debate should act according to four
ideal aspects of communication: that is,
sincerity, legitimacy, understandability and truth.
 Second, the debate should be a procedure of argumentation
in search of a rational founding (Begrundung) of
propositions.
 When discussants arrive at a ‘higher’ proposition, they have
an argumentative consensus. [1]
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[1] J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume One,
translated by T. McCarthy, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp.18-42
Responding to post modern approaches
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Still rationalist; still foundationalist (in critique)
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If on a par, sceptical
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We can know reality
footprints
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Standard of truth not just correspondence
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There is a purpose to sentimental education
We look for explanations of our feelings
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Quasi coherence and a ground
Why are babies worth more than bugs?
Solidarity must be ‘reasonable’
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Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain
 Natural Law: reflections on theory and practice (ed. with
Introductions and notes, by William Sweet), South Bend, IN:
St Augustine's Press [distributed by University of Chicago
Press], 2001; Second printing, corrected, 2003.
 Man and the State, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL,
1951.
 La loi naturelle ou loi non écrite: texte inédit, établi par
Georges Brazzola. Fribourg, Suisse: Éditions universitaires,
1986. [Lectures on Natural Law. Tr. William Sweet. In The
Collected Works of Jacques Maritain, Vol. VI, Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, (forthcoming).]