Moral Clarity I - Reason and Ideals
Robert Wechsler
I recently read Susan Neiman’s book Moral
Clarity:
A
Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008) and found a lot
there
of value to government ethics, even though government ethics doesn’t
generally involve the
big questions of moral philosophy (see my
blog
post on this). I am going to write a few blog posts on some
valuable ideas raised by this excellent book. This is the first.
Neiman is a devotee of Immanuel Kant, the eighteenth-century Prussian philosopher who tried to bring order to moral philosophy by means of a few principles based on the “categorical imperative” (please don’t be put off by the fancy lingo). Kant is the leading philosopher to take a deontological, or rules-based approach to ethics (the other major school is the consequentialist or utilitarian, ends-based approach). Government ethics takes a primarily rules-based approach in an arena where values are primarily ends-based (as in "the end justifies the means").
Government ethics professionals tend to be grown-up idealists, to use the term in Neiman’s title. And this, like "government ethics," is not an oxymoron.
Ideals aren't just for kids. “The ideals of your youth,” Neiman writes, “are no more naïve than they ever were; what you must abandon is the naïve belief that they can be completely fulfilled.” I don’t think any of us has such a naïve belief.
In fact, it is realists whose growth effectively stops, not at childhood, but at adolescence, the period when the recognition of reality leads to serious disappointment with the world. By writing a better future off as wishful thinking, realists are less disappointed, but they also prevent themselves from acting to improve the world, simply because they feel their effort will be wasted.
"Growing up means taking our lives out of others' hands and into our own,” Neiman writes. This is accomplished by using our reason, the power we have to think beyond the reality we're faced with every day. Reason allows us to look at what is, and think of what ought to be. Happily, Neiman’s example of how reason works involves a government official:
“Ideals,” Neiman says, “are not measured by whether they conform to reality; reality is judged by whether it lives up to ideals.”
Other blog posts in this series:
Intentions
Ethics Environments
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
Neiman is a devotee of Immanuel Kant, the eighteenth-century Prussian philosopher who tried to bring order to moral philosophy by means of a few principles based on the “categorical imperative” (please don’t be put off by the fancy lingo). Kant is the leading philosopher to take a deontological, or rules-based approach to ethics (the other major school is the consequentialist or utilitarian, ends-based approach). Government ethics takes a primarily rules-based approach in an arena where values are primarily ends-based (as in "the end justifies the means").
Government ethics professionals tend to be grown-up idealists, to use the term in Neiman’s title. And this, like "government ethics," is not an oxymoron.
Ideals aren't just for kids. “The ideals of your youth,” Neiman writes, “are no more naïve than they ever were; what you must abandon is the naïve belief that they can be completely fulfilled.” I don’t think any of us has such a naïve belief.
In fact, it is realists whose growth effectively stops, not at childhood, but at adolescence, the period when the recognition of reality leads to serious disappointment with the world. By writing a better future off as wishful thinking, realists are less disappointed, but they also prevent themselves from acting to improve the world, simply because they feel their effort will be wasted.
"Growing up means taking our lives out of others' hands and into our own,” Neiman writes. This is accomplished by using our reason, the power we have to think beyond the reality we're faced with every day. Reason allows us to look at what is, and think of what ought to be. Happily, Neiman’s example of how reason works involves a government official:
-
Suppose you observe an official who has failed at
all the tasks he was appointed to fulfill and is nevertheless rewarded
with
goods and glory. Reason tells you not
only that things could be otherwise, but that they ought to be
otherwise. It thus moves you to ask: What accounts for
this discrepancy between is and ought?
You seek an explanation: The man has powerful connections who care more
about loyalty than competence. Now you
might stop there, having explained the original data, but reason is
still
discontent. A system in which competence
is disregarded in favor of loyalty is dysfunctional; institutions need
to be
differently constructed. What accounts
for the existence of this one? ... Why do we have a political system
that gives
contingency and corruption free reign? At some point you will
likely throw up your
hands in rage or dismay; you have a sick child, a double shift, an urge
to
dance, a need to sleep. Reason does
not. Left to its own devices it will
keep asking why the gap between the way things are and the way things
should be
exists at all, until it reaches a point where no gap exists.
“Ideals,” Neiman says, “are not measured by whether they conform to reality; reality is judged by whether it lives up to ideals.”
Other blog posts in this series:
Intentions
Ethics Environments
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---