Virtues of Independence and Dependence on Virtues

Ludvig Beckman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351323864
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Debate about the concept of virtue is a persistent theme in academic discourse. One strand of thinking attempts to examine and reconstruct ethical theories with the aim of formulating a new morality or ethics. A second strand of thought, more strongly represented in this work, attempts to explore the social and political world deploying the concept of virtue. Thus, this volume crosses the established borders of academic disciplines in order to provide a richer and more comprehensive understanding of the place of virtues in contemporary western societies.The editors hold that the dominating virtue of our culture and society is the virtue of independence. Yet independence, or individual autonomy, is contingent upon a diverse, and so far ill-understood, set of cultural, biological, economic, ethical, and political practices. The idea of individuality is in other words supervening on a web of formal and informal relations. This volume therefore attempts to improve our understanding of the prevailing ethos of independence as well as of the mechanisms and practices sustaining it.Virtues are examined in specific contexts. Authors explore what we can learn about our dependence on virtues from the archaic Greek culture. They examine the relevance of virtue-ethics to the understanding of day-to-day practices. And they look at the place of virtues in understanding the norms of independence and liberty. Other contributions attend to the virtues of independence and its challenges, examining possible philosophical challenges, questioning whether independence is always a virtue, and how the virtues of justice fare given a commitment to the virtues of independence.The final portion of the book explore the empirical consequences of the virtues of independence. Among the questions addressed are how personal independence affects political and economic institutions, and the connections between norms of independence and the growth of modernity. This volume is an important contribution to contemporary understanding of what constitutes virtuous and ethical behavior.

1

Roots

Göran Lantz

“The Need for Roots” is the English title of an essay by the French philosopher Simone Weil.¹ It was written in France during the turbulent times of the Second World War. Weil is searching for roots in the history and faith of the French working class and of the French nation at large. “Roots” is, of course, meant in a metaphorical sense. And the use of metaphorical language in philosophy is both necessary and legitimate. Allow me to make use of the same metaphor, but partly for other purposes. I will use the metaphor “roots” in a sense related to that of Simone Weil when, at the beginning of her essay, she maintains that duties are primary to rights: being rooted is to have taken on duties and responsibilities, to be tied to other people by bonds of love, affection, common interests, and common projects of different kinds. These are bonds of duty and commitment. But my special concern is to demonstrate why man is necessarily rooted also in external objects and in places.

The Roots of Ethics

Ethics—moral philosophy—without roots, is abstract ethics; it is reductionist.² That is, it is not rooted in presuppositions about human nature and about man's place in the world. It considers moral problems as they occur, in abstraction from their human context. It focuses upon “thin” concepts such as right, wrong, duty, etc. Utilitarianism is the paradigm example of such abstract, reductionist ethics, but also Kantianism comes close to it.

What then is an ethics with roots? It is the exact opposite of reductionist ethics. This type of ethics is situated in a kind of anthropology and in a broad historical and social context. It is situated in the “landscape of ethics,” to allude to the Swedish title of a work by Göran Moller.³ It considers moral problems in their broader social setting and in their longer time-perspective. It is concerned with moral institutions (e.g. forgiveness, tolerance, promise, property) and with “thick” concepts such as family, nation, home, care, health, illness, and so on. Whereas utilitarianism and Kantianism and other kinds of principle ethics can be described as merely criteria of right and wrong or as decision-methods (or both), a “rooted ethics” takes an interest in the human conditions for acting morally. The former kinds of ethics suggest necessary and sufficient conditions for moral lightness, but the latter also has something to say about how to bring about moral conduct. In this respect virtue ethics comes nearer to the ideal of a “rooted ethics.”

Consider the complicated web of human life, the vast fabric of manifold relations between individuals and associations of people. Further consider the pretensions to formulate in one sentence, in one criterion, an all-covering guide to moral human behavior. This undertaking must appear horrendously bizarre.

Compare this web of human life with an ideal piece of art. It depicts life as manifold, complicated, even full of contradictions—as real life is. Why then should an individual life project be simple and possible to capture in one ideal principle? And ways of life are what morality is about: excellence of one's personal life project.

Non-rooted ethics is searching for an Archimedian point from which to build morality. It aspires to build an ethical system from scratch. To my mind this is futile. We always have to start with an existing moral tradition and with existing moral institutions. Here the philosophical parable of the broken ship seems appropriate. The ship cannot be brought to a dock to be rebuilt. It must be repaired at sea by exchanging plank after plank. Take, for instance, medical ethics. Utilitarian ethics may start afresh by suggesting conditions for killing or rescuing patients (and it certainly does). In my argument, it ought rather to start out from the existing (and very strong and vital) traditional professional ethics of doctors and nurses and then in a critical way scrutinize and improve them. Let us call this strategy “critical traditionalism.” Critical traditionalism is about mapping out the moral landscape, investigating the intricate web of relations and bonds between individuals and groups of individuals, and improving existing moral institutions.

If Hegel's concept of “Sittlichkeit” represents morality as lived and incorporated into social institutions, then critical traditionalism should focus upon precisely Sittlichkeit.

Anthropology and the Need for Roots

There is a link between a view of ethics as built upon abstract principles and a view of man as an atomistic, rational, and egoistic being. It is most obvious in utilitarian ethics. Both its strength and its weakness are precisely that it has to make only these few presuppositions about human nature.

This view is foreign to the Jewish and Christian understanding of man as it can be found in their holy texts. Jewish thinking, especially, was originally far more holistic or collectivist. This could be exemplified from my own study of the justification for private property from classical antiquity to modern times.⁴ In Christian ethics, the obvious point of departure was the conviction that the earth belonged to mankind collectively, whereas private property needed justification. The Fathers of the Church found such justification in different ways.

The natural rights theorists of the seventeenth century (Catholic and Protestant) found a sophisticated justification of private property, which took its point of departure in the doctrine of the “suum.” In the view of Hugo Grotius, man had a personal sphere, his “suum,” which was immune to infringement and violations by other human beings. The natural right to his “suum” could, however, be extended to external things.⁵ This was to become the core of John Locke's justification of private property. By working on raw material, man impressed the material with his labor, skill, and creative imagination. So he extended his personal sphere to the object and made it his own.

I am well aware that the standard view is that, to Locke, the surplus value of man's work on an object is seen as his justification for the property right. But I am prepared to defend my own interpretation presented in my doctoral dissertation from 1977 (an interpretation inspired by the Swedish jurist Karl Olivecrona).

This view of man's relationship to external things has interesting implications. It is a cornerstone of liberal philosophy by virtue of its justification of private property. But, if I am right in my interpretation of Locke, this justification presupposes a more personal relationship to the work and its object than the interpretation according to which the justification is due to the abstract surplus value that is created by the work. Certainly there has been a shift from the ideal of the classical industrialist to the admired modern stockbroker. The relation of the latter to the means of production can hardly be said to be a direct, personal one.

It is interesting to note that the idea from Grotius and other natural rights theorists is reflected in the ideas of the young Karl Marx. In his view, labor should ideally be an interaction between man and nature. By his labor, man is naturalized and nature is cultivated, and by this interaction man would grow. He would develop higher needs and also the means to meet them. But, according to Marx, in capitalist society the fruits of his labor are instead taken from the worker, and his salary is a meager compensation, just enough to keep the worker alive and working. In this idea of an ideal interaction between man and the external world, which has elements both from natural rights theory and romanticism, man is seen not as an isolated, atomistic being, but as a person in interaction with, and with a diffuse demarcation towards, the external world. Man has, so to speak, a sensual, interdependent, and open relation to nature.

The Norwegian social philosopher Dag Österberg has invented the term “sociomateria” for all the material things that carry meaning and that are impressed by human intentions.⁶

The deep human aspiration to leave one's mark on the external world might have a biological origin. Torsten Malmberg has pointed to the phenomenon of human territoriality. Man, as well as other animals, has territories. The original purpose in seeking to establish a territory is to have a secure place for nourishment and reproduction. Animals may have individual territories or—if they live in groups—common group-territories.⁷ It is obvious that much human behavior has its origin in the striving for a territory. Just one example: In the new office building of Novartis in Taby, the architect has created a very flexible working-place. People move around and just plug in their computers where they find an empty desk. But very soon employees began to mark their favorite places. Soon photographs of family members and other small things appeared on the boards. It is tempting to interpret this as a kind of territorial behavior. Or think of all the ways of creating a territory of one's own at the beach.

Torsten Malmberg describes parallels between animal and human territoriality.⁸ He stresses three basic needs that territoriality fulfills:identity, privacy, and safety. According to Malmberg the struggle for survival is first and foremost a struggle for space, and in the modern city the need for space is difficult to satisfy, and this fact causes psychic stress.⁹ In a study, architect Christina Redvall refers to interviews that reflect the need for a territory.¹⁰ For example: “It's about safety, isn't it? You have your little home where you can huddle up and be left in peace. Shut the door. A firm footing. It's safety, isn't it?” or “It is absolutely vital to belong somewhere. To feel that this is mine. That I can shut the door behind me.”

We presume that animals try to defend a territory of their own that is large enough for nourishment and reproduction but small enough to be defended. Do human beings seek a territory, for example, a home, a garden, or a working-place, which is as large as possible? Is there an optimal size for a human territory? Perhaps there is one period in life for growing expectations, and another at the end of life for diminishing or concentrating the “life-space”? Could it be compared with a tendency of the severely ill to contract and concentrate bodily resources?

Let me sum up the view of man—the anthropology that follows from my observations so far. Man lives in interaction with and interdependence on the external material world, and the border between himself and that world is diffuse. This diffuse border delineates three concentric spheres: (1) the intimate sphere, (2) the social sphere, and (3) the territorial sphere.

The intimate sphere is typically constituted by the living body, but also by personal belongings, such as glasses, clothes, hearing-aid, rings, and so on. The intimate sphere is granted very strong legal protection. For instance, theft, which is combined with threat or violence against this sphere, is looked upon as especially encumbering.

The social sphere may consist of a person's nearest surroundings. First and foremost his home belongs to this category, but so may, for example, the car, or the writing desk, or else the working place. It is essential to note that the limits of this sphere may or may not coincide with the limits of his or her possessions. The law grants this sphere strong protection. Violation of the privacy of my home is a criminal offense, irrespective of whether it is linked to theft or other violations. Typically, it makes no difference (legally or morally) whether the home is owned or hired.

The territorial sphere may be much wider. It may include a big farm with many acres of land, or a village, or a town, or even a region or country. In Swedish, the term “hembygd” (English: “home district”) signals a kinship with the word for the concept of a home (Swedish: “hem”).

I will focus on the second and the third kinds of personal spheres.

The Home

The concept of a home is a wide concept. It has a rich content that is factual, emotive, and evaluative.¹¹ The English language does not have the more neutral term for it as has the German (”Wohnung”) or the Swedish (”bostad”). In German there are two words that carry the same meaning as the English “home” (beside the more neutral “Wohnung”): “Heim,” and compounds with “Haus”—zu Hause sein, etc. “Home,” “Heim,” and “Hem” all have strong positive connotations. This is notable if one considers that the home is often a place of conflicts and of sorrow. Most cases of violence against women and children are committed at home. These terms can be used for an individual home, but also in connection with greater territorial entities, such as homeland, Heimat, hemland, or hemort. There are related words that confer the idea of being at home as an ideal state: homesick, Heimweh, hemlängtan, hem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Roots
• 2 Reverence, Respect, and Dependence
• 3 Aesthetic Experience and Virtue: Narrative, Emotions, and the Understanding of Others
• 4 Autonomy's Sources and the Impact of Globalization
• 5 Personal Independence and Social Justice: Contradictions of Liberal Virtues?
• 6 Autonomy and Moral Responsibility: On Virtues and the Common Good1
• 7 The Politics of Virtue in the French Revolution
• 8 Volunteering as Virtue
• 9 The Relation between Independence and Trust
• References
• Contributor
• Index