Current Moral and Social Issues

What Does it All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy

Thomas Nagel 1982, Oxford University Press; selected chapters; selections made and produced in this format, by Trip McCrossin, solely for pedagogical purposes.

Ch. 7 — Right and Wrong Ch. 8 — Justice

Chapter 7 — Right and Wrong Suppose you work in a library, checking people’s books as they leave, and a friend asks you to let him smuggle out a hard-to-find reference work that he wants to own.

You might hesitate to agree for various reasons. You might be afraid that he’ll be caught, and that both you and he will then get into trouble. You might want the book to stay in the library so that you can consult it yourself.

But you may also think that what he proposes is wrong — that he shouldn’t do it and you shouldn’t help him. If you think that, what does it mean, and what, if anything, makes it true?

To say it’s wrong is not just to say it’s against the rules. There can be bad rules which prohibit what isn’t wrong — like laws against criticizing the government. A rule can also be bad because it requires something that is wrong — like a law that requires racial segregation in hotels and restaurants. The ideas of wrong and right are different from the ideas of what is and is not against he rules. Otherwise they couldn’t be used in the evaluation of rules as well as of actions.

If you think it would be wrong to help your friend steal the book, then you will feel uncomfortable about doing it: in some way you won’t want to do it, even if you are also reluctant to refuse help to a friend. Where does the desire not to do it come from; what is its motive, the reason behind it?

There are various ways in which something can be wrong, but in this case, if you had to explain it, you’d probably say that it would be unfair to other users of the library who may be just as interested in the book as your

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friend is, but who consult it in the reference room, where anyone who needs it can find it. You may also feel that to let him take it would betray your employers, who are paying you precisely to keep this sort of thing from happening.

These thoughts have to do with effects on others — not necessarily effects on their feelings, since they may never find out about it, but some kind of damage nevertheless. In general, the thought that something is wrong depends on its impact not just on the person who does it but on other people. They wouldn’t like it, and they’d object if they found out.

But suppose you try to explain all this to your friend, and he says, “I know the head librarian wouldn’t like it if he found out, and probably some of the other users of the library would be unhappy to find the book gone, but who cares? I want the book; why should I care about them?”

The argument that it would be wrong is supposed to give him a reason not to do it. But if someone just doesn’t care about other people, what reason does he have to refrain from doing any of the things usually thought to be wrong, if he can get away with it: what reason does he have not to kill, steal, lie, or hurt others? If he can get what he wants by doing such things, why shouldn’t he? And if there’s no reason why he shouldn’t, in what sense is it wrong?

Of course most people do care about others to some extent. But if someone doesn’t care, most of us wouldn’t conclude that he’s exempt from morality. A person who kills someone just to steal his wallet, without caring about the victim, is not automatically excused. The fact that he doesn’t care doesn’t make it all right: He should care. But why should he care?

There have been many attempts to answer this question. One type of answer tries to identify something else that the person already cares about, and then connect morality to it.

For example, some people believe that even if you can get away with awful crimes on this earth, and are not punished by the law of your fellow [humans], such acts are forbidden by God, who will punish you after death (and reward you if you didn’t do wrong when you were tempted to). So even when it seems to be in your interest to do such a thing, it really isn’t. Some people have even believed that if there is no God to back up moral

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requirements with the threat of punishment and the promise of reward, morality is an illusion: “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”

This is a rather crude version of the religious foundation for morality. A more appealing version might be that the motive for obeying God’s commands is not fear but love. [God] loves you, and you should love [God’s] commands in order not to offend [God].

But however we interpret the religious motivation, there are three objections to this type of answer. First, plenty of people who don’t believe in God still make judgments of right and wrong, and think no one should kill another for his wallet even if he can be sure to get away with it. Second, if God exists, and forbids what’s wrong, that still isn’t what makes it wrong. Murder is wrong in itself, and that’s why God forbid it (if [God] does.” God couldn’t make just any old thing wrong — like putting on your left sock before your right — simply by prohibiting it. If God would punish you for doing that it would be inadvisable to do it, but it wouldn’t be wrong. Third, fear of punishment and hope of reward, and even love of God, seem not to be the right motives for morality. If you think it’s wrong to kill, cheat, or steal, you should want to avoid doing such things because they are bad things to do to the victims, not just because you fear the consequences for yourself, or because you don’t want to offend your Creator.

This third objection also applies to other explanations of the force of morality which appeal to the interests of the person who must act. For example, it may be said that you should treat others with consideration so that they’ll do the same for you. This may be sound advice, but it is valid only so far as you think what you do will affect how others treat you. It’s not a reason for doing the right thing if others won’t find out about it, or against doing the wrong things if you can get away with it (like being a hit and run driver).

There is no substitute for a direct concern for other people as the basis of morality. But morality is supposed to apply to everyone: and can we assume that everyone has such a concern for others? Obviously not: some people are very selfish, and even those who are not selfish may care only about the people they know, and not about everyone. So where will we find a reason that everyone has not to hurt other people, even those they don’t know?

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Well, there’s one general argument against hurting other people which can be given to anybody who understands English (or any other language), and which seems to show that he has some reason to care about others, even if in the end his selfish motives are so strong that he persists in treating other people badly anyway. It’s an argument that I’m sure you’ve heard, and it goes like this: “How would you like it if someone did that to you?”

It’s not easy to explain how his argument is supposed to work. Suppose you’re about to steal someone else’s umbrella as you leave a restaurant in a rainstorm, and a bystander says, “How would you like it if someone did that to you?” Why is it supposed to make you hesitate, or feel guilty?

Obviously the direct answer to the question is supposed to be, “I wouldn’t like it at all!” But what’s the next step? Suppose you were to say, “I wouldn’t like it if someone did that to me. But luckily no one is doing it to me. I’m doing it to someone else, and I don’t mind that at all!”

This answer misses the point of the question. When you are asked how you would like it if someone did that to you, you are supposed to think about all the feelings you would have if someone stole your umbrella. And that includes more than just “not liking it” — as you wouldn’t “like it” if you stubbed your toe on a rock. If someone stole your umbrella you’d resent it. You’d have feeling about the umbrella thief, not just about the loss of the umbrella. You’d think, “Where does he get off, taking my umbrella that I bought with my hard-earned money and that I had the foresight to bring after reading the weather report? Why didn’t he bring his own umbrella?” and so forth.

When our own interests are threatened by the inconsiderate behavior of others, most of us find it easy to appreciate that those others have a reason to be more considerate. When you are hurt, you probably feel that other people should care about it: you don’t thing it’s no concern of theirs, and that they have no reason to avoid hurting you. That is the feeling that the “How would you like it?” argument is supposed to arouse.

Because if you admit that you would resent it if someone else did to you what you are now doing to him, you are admitting that you think he would have a reason not to do it to you. And if you admit that, you have to consider what that reason is. It couldn’t be just that it’s you that he’s hurting, of all the people in the world. There’s no special reason for him not

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to steal your umbrella, as opposed to anyone else’s. There’s nothing so special about you. Whatever the reason is, it’s a reason he would have against hurting anyone else in the same way. And it’s a reason anyone else would have too, in a similar situation, against hurting you or anyone else.

But if it’s a reason anyone would have not to hurt anyone else in this way, then it’s a reason you have not to hurt someone else in this way (since anyone means everyone). Therefore it’s a reason not to steal the other person’s umbrella now.

This is a matter of simple consistency. Once you admit that another person would have a reason not to harm you in similar circumstances, and once you admit that the reason he would have is very general and doesn’t apply only to you, of to him, then to be consistent you have to admit that the same reason applies to you now. You shouldn’t steal the umbrella, and you ought to feel guilty if you do.

Someone could escape from this argument if, when he was asked, “How would you like it if someone did that to you?” he answered, “I wouldn’t resent it at all. I wouldn’t like it if someone stole my umbrella in a rainstorm, but I wouldn’t think there was any reason for him to consider my feelings about it.” But how many people could honestly give that answer? I think most people, unless they’re crazy, would think that their own interests and harms matter, not only to themselves, but in a way that gives other people a reason to care about them too. We all think that when we suffer it is not just bad for us, but bad, period.

The basis of morality is a belief that good and harm to particular people (or animals) is good or bad not just from their point of view, but from a more general point of view, which every thinking person can understand. That means that each person has a reason to consider not only his own interests but the interests of others in deciding what to do. And it isn’t enough if he is considerate only of some others — his family and friends, those he specially cares about. Of course he will care more about certain people, and also about himself. Bt he has some reason to consider the effect of what he does on the good or harm of everyone. If he’s like most of us, that is what he thinks others should do with regard to him, even if they aren’t friends of his.

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Even if this is right, it is only a bare outline of the source of morality. It doesn’t tell us in detail how we should consider the interests of others, or how we should weigh them against the special interest we all have in ourselves and the particular people close to us. It doesn’t even tell us how much we should care about people in other countries in comparison with out fellow citizens. There are many disagreements among those who accept morality in general, about what in particular is right and what is wrong.

For instance: should you care about every other person as much as you care about yourself? [emphasis added] Should you in other words love your neighbor as yourself (even if he isn’t your neighbor)? Should you ask yourself, every time you go to a movie, whether the cost of the ticket could provide more happiness if you gave it to someone else, or donated the money to famine relief?

Very few people are so unselfish. And if someone were that impartial between himself and others, he would probably also feel that he should be just as impartial among other people. That would rule out caring more about this friends and relatives than he does about strangers. He might have special feelings about certain people who are close to him, but complete impartiality would mean that he won’t favor them — if for example he has to choose between helping a friend or a stranger to avoid suffering, or between taking his children to a movie and donating the money to famine relief.

This degree of impartiality seems too much to ask of most people: someone who had it would be a kind of terrifying saint. But it’s an important question in moral thought, how much impartiality we should try for. You are a particular person, but you are also able to recognize that you’re just one person among many others, and no more important than they are, when looked at from outside. How much should that point of view influence you? You do matter somewhat from outside — otherwise you wouldn’t think other people had any reason to care about what they did to you. But you don’t matter as much from the outside as you matter to yourself, from the inside — since from the outside you don’t matter any more than anybody else.

Not only is it unclear how impartial we should be; it’s unclear what would make an answer to this question the right one. Is there a single

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correct way for everyone to strike the balance between what he cares about personally and what matters impartially? Or will the answer vary from person to person depending on the strength of their different motives?

This brings us to another big issue: Are right and wrong the same for everyone? [Are moral requirements universal, that is, when we compare the motives of different individuals?]

Morality is often thought to be universal. If something is wrong, it’s supposed to be wrong for everybody; for instance if it’s wrong to kill someone because you want to steal his wallet, then it’s wrong whether you care about him or not. But if something’s being wrong is supposed to be a reason against doing it, and if your reasons for doing things depend on your motives and people’s motives can vary greatly, then it looks as though there won’t be a single right and wrong for everybody. There won’t be a single right and wrong, because if people’s basic motives differ, there won’t be one basic standard of behavior that everyone has a reason to follow.

There are three ways of dealing with this problem, none of them very satisfactory.

First, we could say that the same things are right and wrong for everybody, but that not everyone has a reason to do what’s right and avoid what’s wrong: only people with the right sort of “moral” motives — particularly a concern for others — have any reason to do what’s right, for its own sake. This makes morality universal, but at the cost of draining it of its force. It’s not clear what it amounts to to say that it would be wrong for someone to commit murder, but he has no reason not to do it.

Second, we could say that everyone has a reason to do what’s right and avoid what’s wrong, but that these reasons don’t depend on people’s actual motives. Rather they are reasons to change our motives if they aren’t the right ones. This connects morality with reasons for action, but leaves it unclear what these universal reasons are which do not depend on motives that everyone actually has. What does it mean to say that a murderer had a reason not to do it, even though none of his actual motives or desires gave him such a reason?

Third, we could say that morality is not universal, and that what a person is morally required to do goes only as far as what he has a certain kind of reason to do, where the reason depends on how much he actually cares

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about other people in general. If he has strong moral motives, they will yield strong reasons and strong moral requirements. If this moral motives are weak or nonexistent, the moral requirements on him will likewise be weak or nonexistent. This may seem psychologically realistic, but it goes against the idea that the same moral rules apply to all of us, and not only to good people.

The question whether moral requirements are universal comes up not only when we compare the motives of different individuals, but also when we compare the moral standards that are accepted in different societies and at different times. [emphasis added] Many things that you probably think are wrong have been accepted as morally correct by large groups of people in the past; slavery, serfdom, human sacrifice, racial segregation, denial of religious and political freedom, hereditary caste systems. And probably some things you now think are right will be thought wrong by future societies. Is it reasonable to believe that there is some single truth about all this, even though we can’t be sure what it is? Or is it more reasonable to believe that right and wrong are relative to a particular time and place and social background?

There is one way in which right and wrong are obviously relative to circumstances. It is usually right to return a knife you have borrowed to its owner if he asks for it back. But if he has gone crazy in the meantime, and wants the knife to murder someone with, then you shouldn’t return it. This isn’t the kind of relativity I am talking about, because it doesn’t mean morality is relative at the basic level. It means only that the same basic moral principles will require different actions in different circumstances.

The deeper kind of relativity, which some people believe in, would mean that the most basic standards of right and wrong — like when it is and is not all right to kill, or what sacrifices you’re required to make for others — depend entirely on what standards are generally accepted in the society in which you live.

This I find very hard to believe, mainly because it always seems possible to criticize the accepted standards of your own society and say that they are morally mistaken. But if you do that, you must be appealing to some more objective standard, an idea of what is really right and wrong, as opposed to what most people think. It is hard to say what this is, but it is an idea most

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of us understand, unless we are slavish followers of what the community says.

There are many philosophical problem about the content of morality — how a moral concern or respect for others should express itself; whether we should help them get what they want or mainly refrain from harming and hindering them; how impartial we should be, and in what ways. I have left most of these questions aside because my concern here is with the foundation of morality in general — how universal and objective it is.

I should answer one possible objection to the whole idea of morality. You’ve probably heard it said that the only reason anybody ever does anything is that it makes [them] feel good, or that not doing it will make [them] feel bad. If we are really motivated only by our own comfort, it is hopeless for morality to try to appeal to a concern for others. On this view, even apparently moral conduct in which one person seems to sacrifice his own interests for the sake of others is really motivated by his concern for himself: he wants to avoid the guilt he’ll feel if he doesn’t do the “right” thing, or to experience the warm glow of self-congratulation he’ll get if he does. But those who don’t have these feelings have no motive to be “moral.”

Now it’s true that when people do what they think they ought to do, they often feel good about it: similarly if they do what they think is wrong, they often feel bad. But that doesn’t mean that these feelings are their motives for acting. In many cases the feelings result from motives which also produce the action. You wouldn’t feel good about doing the right thing unless you thought there was some other reason to do it, besides the fact that it would make you feel good. And you wouldn’t feel guilty about doing the wrong thing unless you thought that there was some other reason not to do it, besides the fact that it made you feel guilty: something which made it right to feel guilty. At least that’s how things should be. It’s true that some people feel irrational guilt about things they don’t have any independent reason to think are wrong — but that’s not the way morality is supposed to work.

In a sense, people do what they want to do. But their reasons and motives for wanting to do things vary enormously. I may “want” to give someone my wallet only because he has a gun pointed at my head and threatens to kill me if I don’t. And I may want to jump into an icy river to save a

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drowning stranger not because it will make me feel good, but because I recognize that his life is important, just as mine is, and I recognize that I have a reason to save his life just as he would have a reason to save mine if our positions were reversed.

Moral argument tries to appeal to a capacity for impartial motivation which is supposed to be present in all of us. Unfortunately it may be deeply buried, and in some cases it may not be present at all. In any case it has to compete with powerful selfish motives, and other personal motives that may not be so selfish, in its bid for control of our behavior. The difficulty of justifying morality is not that there is only one human motive, but that there are so many.

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Chapter 8 — Justice Is it unfair that some people are born rich and some are born poor? If it’s unfair, should anything be done about it?

The world is full of inequalities — within countries, and from one country to another. Some children are born into comfortable, prosperous homes, and grow up well fed and well educated. Others are born poor, don’t get enough to eat, and never have access to much education or medical care. Clearly, this is a matter of luck: we are not responsible for the social or economic class or country into which we are born. The question is, how bad are inequalities which are not the fault of the people who suffer from them? Should governments use their power to try to reduce inequalities of this kind, for which the victims are not responsible?

Some inequalities are deliberately imposed. Racial discrimination, for example, deliberately excludes people of one race from jobs, housing, and education which are available to people of another race. Or women may be kept out of jobs or denied privileges available only to men. This is not merely a matter of bad luck. Racial and sexual discrimination are clearly unfair: they are forms of inequality caused by factors that should not be allowed to influence people’s basic welfare. Fairness requires that opportunities should be open to those who are qualified, and it is clearly a good thing when governments try to enforce such equality of opportunity.

But it is harder to know what to say about inequalities that arise in the ordinary course of events, without deliberate racial or sexual discrimination. Because even if there is equality of opportunity, and any qualified person can go to a university or get a job or buy a house or run for office — regardless of race, religion, sex, or national origin — there will still be plenty of inequalities left. People from wealthier backgrounds will usually have better training and more resources, and they will tend to be better able to compete for good jobs. Even in a system of equality of opportunity, some people will have a head start and will end up with greater benefits than others whose native talents are the same.

Not only that, but differences in native talent will produce big differences in the resulting benefits, in a competitive system. Those who have abilities that are in high demand will be able to earn much more than those without any special skills or talents. These differences too are partly a matter of

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luck. Though people have to develop and use their abilities, no amount of effort would enable most people to act like Meryl Streep, paint like Picasso, or manufacture automobiles like Henry Ford. Something similar is true of lesser accomplishments. The luck of both natural talent and family and class background are important factors in determining one’s income and position in a competitive society. Equal opportunity produces unequal results.

These inequalities, unlike the results of racial and sexual discrimination, are produced by choices and actions that don’t seem wrong in themselves. People try to provide for their children and give them a good education, and some have more money to use for this purpose than others. People pay for the products, services, and performances they want, and some performers or manufacturers get richer than others because what they have to offer is wanted by more people. Businesses and organizations of all kinds try to hire employees who will do the job well, and pay higher salaries for those with unusual skills. If one restaurant is full of people and another next door is empty because the first has a talented chef and the second doesn’t, the customers who choose the first restaurant and avoid the second haven’t done anything wrong, even though their choices have an unhappy effect on the owner and employees of the second restaurant, and on their families.

Such effects are most disturbing when they leave some people in a very bad way. In some countries large segments of the population live in poverty from generation to generation. But even in a wealthy country like the United States, lots of people start life with two strikes against them, from economic and educational disadvantages. Some can overcome those disadvantages. but it’s much harder than making good from a higher starting point.

Most disturbing of all are the enormous inequalities in wealth, health, education, and development between rich and poor countries. Most people in the world have no chance of ever being as well off economically as the poorest people in Europe, Japan, or the United States. These large differences in good and bad luck certainly seem unfair; but what, if anything, should be done about them?

We have to think about both the inequality itself, and the remedy that would be needed to reduce or get rid of it. The main question about the inequalities themselves is: What kinds of causes of inequality are wrong?

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The main question about remedies is: What methods of interfering with the inequality are right?

In the case of deliberate racial or sexual discrimination, the answers are easy. The cause of the inequality is wrong because the discriminator is doing something wrong. And the remedy is simply to prevent him from doing it. If a land- lord refuses to rent to blacks, he should be prosecuted

But the questions are more difficult in other cases. The problem is that inequalities which seem wrong can arise from causes which don’t involve people doing anything wrong. It seems unfair that people born much poorer than others should suffer disadvantages through no fault of their own. But such inequalities exist because some people have been more successful than others at earning money and have tried to help their children as much as possible; and because people tend to marry members of their own economic and social class, wealth and position accumulate and are passed on from generation to generation. The actions which combine to form these causes — employment decisions, purchases, marriages, bequests, and efforts to provide for and educate children, don’t seem wrong in themselves. What’s wrong, if anything, is the result: that some people start life with undeserved disadvantages.

If we object to this kind of bad luck as unfair, it must be because we object to people’s suffering disadvantages through no fault of their own, merely as a result of the ordinary operation of the socioeconomic system into which they are born. Some of us may also believe that all bad luck that is not a person’s fault, such as that of being born with a physical handicap, should be compensated if possible. But let us leave those cases aside in this discussion. I want to concentrate on the undeserved inequalities that arise through the working of society and the economy, particularly a competitive economy.

The two main sources of these undeserved inequalities, a

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