1、Stocker, Michael , Guttag Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy, Syracuse University, New York; Reader in Philosophy , La Trobe University, Melbourne Plural and Conflicting Values Print ISBN 0198240554, 1992 Summary Table of Contents Introduction 1 PART I: CONFLICT 1. Dirty Hands and Ordinary
2、 Life 9 2. Moral Immorality 37 3. Dirty Hands and Conflicts of Values and of Desires in Aristotles Ethics 51 4. Moral Conflicts: What They Are and What They Show 85 PART II: PLURALITY AND JUDGEMENT 5. Courage, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Possibility of Evaluative and Emotional Coherence 129 6.
3、 Plurality and Choice 165 PART III: PLURALITY AND CONFLICT 7. Akrasia: The Unity of the Good, Commensurability, and Comparability 211 8. Monism, Pluralism, and Conflict 241 PART IV: MAXIMIZATION 9. Maximization: Some Conceptual Problems 281 10. Maximization: Some Evaluative Problems 310 Bibliography
4、 343 Indexes 351 end p.ixIntroductionshow chapter abstract and keywords hide chapter abstract and keywords Michael Stocker Neither plural values nor conflicting values can be understood without understanding the other. And to understand ethics, we must understand both. They raise obvious and pressin
5、g problems in social and political theory. They also raise important problems within one person or one ethical theorythe locus of this work. Not surprisingly, then, they have received a considerable amount of attention recentlyan amount of attention they fully deserve.So, I welcome the fact that the
6、y are now being studied. But I do not welcome many of the things claimed of them. Here are three representative assertions made about them recently: Plurality and conflict depend on and show a fragmentation of value and the disparate traditions that help make up our evaluative world and sensibility.
7、 A choice between plural values involves a conflict of values. Conflict requires plurality. Sometimes concluded from those three and sometimes offered on their own, we find these four other recent and representative claims: Plural values are incommensurable and thus incomparable. There is no rationa
8、l way to compare and choose between plural values, nor therefore to resolve conflicts. Plurality and conflict preclude sound judgement and decision, allowing only vacillation and indecision, or simply plumping for one option or another. A rational ethics requires an evaluative and conflict-free moni
9、sm. As I will argue, to understand plurality and conflict, these and similar claims must be rejected. And this is what I will do.There are, of course, problematic areas that involve plural values and conflicting values. And plurality and conflict can, of course, create problems. Moreover I see no th
10、eory, much less an algorithmic end p.1one, which solves all these problems. But plurality and conflict are absolutely commonplace and generally unproblematic features of our everyday choice and action. They had thus better not be a bar to sound judgement, resolute and informed action, and a sound an
11、d rational ethics.Throughout, I will attempt to locate and correct those aspects of our ethical thought which have ledmisledus to think otherwise. These include an overconcern with action-guiding act evaluations, such as ought and duty and a concomitant unconcern with other evaluations of acts, with
12、 evaluations that are not of acts, and quite generally with moral psychology. They also involve thinking of ethics, and especially of action-guiding act evaluations, in terms of abstract rather than concrete value, i.e. asking only whether an act is the best act, rather than how and why it is good o
13、r best. They further involve an overdependence on maximizing theories of evaluation and rationality.I have divided the work into four Parts, each of which considers one central topic. Part IChapters 1-4focuses on the nature and problems of conflict. Part IIChapters 5 and 6focuses on the question of
14、whether plural values preclude sound judgement. Part IIIChapters 7 and 8discusses whether conflict requires plurality. Part IVChapters 9 and 10discusses maximization, with special emphasis on plurality.There is another way to divide these chaptersin terms of two emphases. One emphasis is on a partic
15、ular issue. In Chapter 1, Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life, the issue is dirty handswhether what is justified can be, none the less, immoral. Chapter 2, Moral Immorality, considers a cognate issue, whether what is immoral can none the less be admirable. Three other chapters take up particular issues ab
16、out conflict and plurality in Aristotles ethics and moral psychology: Chapter 3, Dirty Hands and Conflicts of Values and of Desires in Aristotles Ethics, Chapter 5, Courage, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Possibility of Evaluative and Emotional Coherence, and Chapter 7, Akrasia: The Unity of the
17、Good, Commensurability, and Comparability.The other emphasis is a more general and abstract consideration of a topic. Chapter 4, Moral Conflicts: What They Are and What They Show, takes up some general issues about conflict, which are raised particularly about dirty hands in Chapters 1 and 3. Chapte
18、r 6, Plurality and Choice, takes up the general issue of end p.2whether plurality is an impediment to sound choice. That issue is discussed in Chapter 5 in regard to Aristotles account of courage. Chapter 8, Monism, Pluralism, and Conflict, discusses whether conflict, and especially whether rational
19、 conflict, requires plurality. This is discussed in regard to weakness of will in Chapter 7. Chapters 9 and 10, Maximization: Some Conceptual Problems and Maximization: Some Evaluative Problems take up some general issues about maximization which are raised in earlier chapters.The same topics are ta
20、ken up more than once and in more than one way. Also each chapter is intended to stand on its own. Thus there is some repetition. But as suggested in the Philebus (24e) it may be necessary, or at least useful, to say some things more than once to secure agreement and understanding.I rely frequently
21、on Aristotle. As noted, three chapters are devoted to discussions of his ethics and moral psychology, as are various sections of other chapters. My reasons for this have to do, in large part, with how I came to these problems. Although, early in my studies, I was convinced by G. E. Moore and W. D. R
22、oss of the plurality and incommensurability of moral considerations, I did not consider plurality and incommensurability problematic. Two works on Aristotles ethics, and an examination of a charge frequently made against his ethics, changed this.The first work, taken up in Chapter 5, argues that bec
23、ause courage involves plural and incommensurable values, victory and danger, and the proper emotions towards these, confidence and fear, there are severe problems in seeing how courage can involve a meaneither in ones concern with these values or in ones emotions. Since they do not shade into each o
24、ther, how can too much of the one be too little of the other, and how, then, can there be a mean of, or between, them? As I will be concerned to argue, this problem can be solved by seeing how incommensurable values and emotions can fuse into complex wholes of disparate and incommensurable values an
25、d emotions, and can thus be assessed as lying or not lying in a mean.This has direct application to the more recent and quite general worry that where we have incommensurable values, sound comparisons and sound judgement will be impossiblethat there is no sound way to compare unlikes with unlikes. T
26、his general worry is taken up in Chapter 6, which shows that virtually all our choices concern plural and incommensurable considerations and that we end p.3are, none the less, able to make sound judgementsby fusing these considerations into complex wholes of disparate and incommensurable elements.Th
27、e second work on Aristotle, discussed in Chapter 7, argues that coherent akrasia, weakness of will, requires plural values. This work was concerned to show how Aristotles pluralism could thus easily allow for akrasia, whereas the monism found in the Protagoras makes akrasia conceptually impossible.
28、This easily generalizes to the view many now have, taken up in Chapter 8, that conflict quite generally requires plurality. As the leading idea can be put, There could be no conflict between two options if, as one sees, they have the very same attractive features. Thus, conflict requires difference.
29、As I will be concerned to show, both in regard to Aristotle and more generally, this linking of conflict and plurality depends on a seriously mistaken understanding of reason and reasons for acting and of the role of affectivity and emotion in action. I will, however, argue that there are very close
30、 connections between plurality and conflict, and especially rational conflictand that we may have to characterize each in terms of the other.The charge made against Aristotles ethics is that he leaves no room for moral conflicts in general or dirty hands in particulari.e. cases where no matter what
31、one does, one will do something wrong. We are told that this is so because he thought his good people could resolve all issues and act resolutely, no matter how difficult the situation. Some contemporary philosophers see this as a simple implication of his and Platos somewhat different doctrine of t
32、he unity of virtues. But conflictsbecause they involve doing what is wrong, no matter what one doesshow that such a person is at best an unrealizable ideal.As I will be concerned to argue in Chapter 3, this is a mistaken account of Aristotles ethics and moral psychology. His good people may well be
33、able to resolve issues and act resolutely in virtually any situation. None the less, as shown by what he says about mixed actsthose acts that somehow are both voluntary and nothe recognizes that it is possible even for a good person to have no choice but to do what is wrong. As he says at the beginn
34、ing of Nicomachean Ethics 3, a person may be able to save his family from a tyrant only by doing a base or shameful act.This, however, allows that such a person can see clearly what end p.4is to be done and will act resolutely. In the case at hand, the person should save his family and he should do
35、this resolutelydespite the fact that he will have to do what is base. Thus, there is conflict. It is not a conflict of indecision and vacillation, but a conflict within a single moral appreciation of what is to be done. The conflict is within the one complex whole composed of disparate and incommens
36、urable elements. Such conflict is best understood in moral psychological terms and as having to do with the conflicting elements of a situation that are seen and felt as conflicting, even where the agent also sees clearly what is to be done and resolutely takes that course of action.This line of tho
37、ught is also pursued in Chapter 1 in regard to dirty hands, and in Chapters 2 and 4 in regard to conflicts more generally. Here I argue that to understand conflictsand not to see them as posing serious, even catastrophic, problems for ethics and ethical theorywe cannot approach them as our contempor
38、ary ethical theories more or less force us to do. That is, we cannot see them simply as involving incompossible action-guiding act evaluations, telling us at once to do and not do a given act. Rather, we must recognize that there are other important evaluations of acts than action-guiding ones. And
39、we must also see that there is more to evaluate than acts. One way to get at these other areas is, as already suggested, via a study of the moral psychology of conflict. For this will help us see that there are properly conflicting ways to appreciate the complex wholes that we are faced with when we
40、 decide and act, especially where there are conflicts.My approach to plurality and conflictboth my past approach and also as I now think of the issuesis thus directed by my concern with Aristotles ethics and moral psychology. I find this entirely natural, since, as I see matters, plurality and confl
41、ict are at the heart of his ethics and moral psychology. And, also as I see matters, if we keep our problems with plurality and conflict in mind while examining his treatment of them, we will come to a better understanding of both our problems and our ethics and moral psychology, as well as his. (Mu
42、ch the same applies to Plato, to whom I also turn.)However, I know that many do not share my appreciation of Aristotleespecially on these topics. I would be pleased if my chapters on Aristotle move them towards my view. But there are some who find it distracting to discuss a contemporary or abstract
43、 end p.5issue by means of a historical text or philosopher. It is partly for this reason that, despite the repetition involved, I have tried to make each of the chapters self-contained. Those who want to pursue the contemporary and abstract issues about plurality and conflict without recourse to Ari
44、stotle can simply omit Chapters 3, 5, and 7. Those who want to concentrate on Aristotle can omit the others. For my own part, I still find it best to think about these topics together.end p.6Part I Conflictend p.7end p.81 Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life show chapter abstract and keywords hide chapter
45、abstract and keywords Michael Stocker Can there be acts of dirty handsacts that are justified, even obligatory, but none the less wrong and shameful? To borrow an example from Michael Walzer, can it be justified, even obligatory, for an official to torture someone to force him to tell where his fell
46、ows have hidden a time bomb among the innocent populace? And if, as Walzer suggests, it can be justified, even obligatory, to do this, can it also be wrong and shameful? This question has recently attracted much attention, but little agreement. 1 1 Here is a partial, chronological list: M. Merleau-P
47、onty, Humanism and Terror (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971); T. Nagel, War and Massacre, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1 (1972) 123-44; M. Walzer, Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands, Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973) 160-80; R. Brandt, Utilitarianism and the Rules of War, Philosophy and P
48、ublic Affairs 1 (1972) 145-65; R. M. Hare, Rules of War and Moral Reasoning, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972), 166-81; B. Williams, Ethical Consistency and Consistency and Realism, Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), and Conflicts of Values, Moral Luck (Cambridg
49、e: Cambridge University Press, 1981); B. Williams and J. J. C. Smart, Utilitarianism, For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); T. McConnell, Moral Dilemmas and Consistency in Ethics, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 8 (1978), 269-87; R. Marcus, Moral Dilemmas and Ethical Consistency, Journal of Philosophy, 77 (1980), 121-36; P. Greenspan, Moral Dilemmas and Guilt, Philosophical Studies, 43 (1983), 117-25; P. Foot, Moral Realism and Moral Dilemmas, Journal of Philosophy, 80 (1983)
