Applied Ethics and Human Rights: Conceptual Analysis and Contextual Applications (Anthem South Asian Studies) - Hardcover

Shashi Motilal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8190757075 ISBN 13: 9788190757072

Publisher: Anthem Press India, 2010

Synopsis

This collection of papers offers a philosophical perspective including the all-important and significant perspective from the point of view of 'dharma' to a host of intricate ethical problems in personal, professional and social life, by providing an understanding of the concepts of human rights and responsibilities which are central to those problems.

About this title

About the Author

Shashi Motilal is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Delhi.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Applied Ethics and Human Rights

Conceptual Analysis and Contextual Applications

By Shashi Motilal

Wimbledon Publishing Company

Copyright © 2010 Shashi Motilal
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-81-907570-7-2

Contents

Preface, ix, 
Introduction, xiii, 
Part One: Rights, Obligations and Responsibilities, 1, 
1. Applying Ethics: Modes, Motives and Levels of Commitment Rajendra Prasad, 3, 
2. Jurisprudence and the Individual: Bridging the General and the Particular Abhik Majumdar, 33, 
3. Why Moral Relativism Does Not Make Sense R.C. Pradhan, 51, 
4. Human Rights – A Theoretical Foray Krishna Menon, 57, 
5. Moral Relativism and Human Rights Shashi Motilal, 67, 
6. Complicity and Responsibility Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 83, 
7. Dharma: The Overriding Principle of Indian Life and Thought S. R. Bhatt, 91, 
8. Moral Foundations of Social Order as Suggested in the Vaisesikasutras Shashi Prabha Kumar, 101, 
9. Modern Western Conception of Justice as Equality before the Law and Dharmasastras Saral Jhingran, 109, 
Part Two: Human Rights Issues, 127, 
10. Fragile Identities and Constructed Rights Rakesh Chandra, 129, 
11. Affirmative Action: Compensation or Discrimination? Madhucchanda Sen, 139, 
12. Ethics, Human Rights and the LGBT Discourse in India Ashley Tellis, 151, 
13. Distributive Justice: Locating in Context Bhagat Oinam, 171, 
14. Punishment and Human Rights Ruplekha Khullar, 183, 
15. Rights of the 'Mad' in Mental Health Sciences Ranjita Biswas and Anup Dhar, 193, 
16. Choice, Life and the (m)Other: Towards Ethics in/of Abortion Anirban Das, 219, 
17. The Nationalist Project and the Women's Question: A Reading of The Home and the World and Nationalism Rekha Basu, 237, 
18. On the Idea of Obligation to Future Generations Nirmalya Narayan Chakraborty, 247, 
19. Morality in Cyberspace: Intellectual Property and the Right to Information Maushumi Guha and Amita Chatterjee, 253, 
20. Violence – A Right to the Survival of the Self? Anup Dhar, 265, 
21. 'Moral Obligation' to Fight for the Prevention of Greater Calamity: A Debate between Sadharana Dharma and Sva Dharma Malabika Majumdar, 293, 
22. Globalisation and Human Rights R. P. Singh, 315, 
Notes on Contributors, 327, 

CHAPTER 1

APPLYING ETHICS: MODES, MOTIVES AND LEVELS OF COMMITMENT

Rajendra Prasad

Ethics and the World

'Ethics does not treat', says Wittgenstein, 'of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic.' (Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914-16, 77e) He seems to suggest that ethics must be a condition of the world in the same sense in which logic must be. Logic must be a condition of the world, as I take him to mean, in the sense that it determines what the world may or may not contain: the world can contain only that which is logically possible and cannot contain anything which is not. This does not mean that it contains, or must contain, all that is logically possible. It means that any x it contains, or may contain, must be logically possible. X's logical possibility is a necessary condition of its being contained in the world.

But no sense can be given to the corresponding terms 'ethically possible' and 'ethically impossible'. Ethical principles do not determine the possibility or impossibility of anything they are relevant to; rather, they determine its desirability or undesirability. Of course, they are not relevant to anything and everything, but only to certain types of things, like individuals, their groups, their actions, motives, intentions, attitudes, plans and policies, projects and projections, etc. Let us then speak of ethically desirable and undesirable things, that is, things which are in accordance with, or violative of, ethical principles, and not of ethically possible and impossible things. But even then we cannot say that ethics must be a condition of the world in the sense that the world must have only ethically desirable things because it cannot have any ethically undesirable thing. To say that would be flying in the face of facts because the world does contain at least a few ethical evils, that is, ethically undesirable things. However, we definitely can say that the world should contain ethically desirable things. It is (almost) a logical truth that a desirable world, a world living in which would be worthwhile, must contain ethically desirable things. Negatively speaking, if a world does not contain any ethically desirable thing or contains lesser number of ethically desirable than ethically undesirable things, it would not be a desirable world, or would at the most be only a marginally desirable world.

To make ethical desirability a condition of the desirability of a world does not imply that a world's being ethically desirable would make it desirable on the whole. For example, a miserable world in which poverty abounds, whose inmates lead by and large a moral life though eating only half a meal a day, would not be a desirable world even if it is an ethically desirable one. On the other hand, even if it is desirable in other, say, political, economic, etc., but not in ethical, respects, it would not be a desirable world. Ethical goodness is foundational to all other kinds of goodnesses in the sense that its presence in any one of them heightens the latter's natural or distinctive value, and its absence in the latter, or the latter's having been polluted with some ethical evil, does the contrary. It can also be asserted with a good amount of reasonable force that no non-ethical goodness can sustain itself, or its dignity, unless it is accompanied, or fortified, with some kind of ethical goodness. A necessary component of our ethical concern is a concern, or care, for the welfare of others. In a world, whose inhabitants completely lack this concern, any non-ethical goodness, like economic, political, etc., can have, if at all, only an anaemic existence. No wonder that life in it would become 'nasty, short, and brutish'.

The things which a world may contain can be classified into the following types: things which it ought to have, things which it ought not to have, things which it may or may not have, and things whose absence in it would not make it ethically poorer but whose presence in it would add some lustre to its ethical value. Slightly stretching the use of a terminology meant to be applicable to human actions, when considered from the ethical (or even some non-ethical evaluative) point of view, we can call the above four types of things obligatory, forbidden, permissible, and recommended. In an ideal ethical world the number of forbiddens would be nil, but all the other three types it can very well accommodate. In any actual world, all the four types of things exist. The normal way to improve its ethical quality is to minimize the number of forbiddens and increase that of the obligatory and the recommended. The permissible are ethically indifferent, and therefore their status, that is, any plan or policy about encouraging or discouraging the existence of one or more of them, is determined, in any society by some other, non-ethical, consideration or considerations. For example, the direction a house should face is generally determined by considerations which maybe climatic, spatial, situational, economic etc. and seldom by some ethical consideration.

Anyway, a desirable world should have as few of the forbiddens as possible and definitely fewer than any one of the three others. This is only to assert that in a desirable world undesirables should be less than desirable, or even morally indifferent, ones. The obvious implication here is that it is empirically possible for an actual world to have all of the four types of things. This implication is true because it is a matter of fact that our world contains all of them. Here the analogy with logic breaks. No possible (therefore, actual) world can have what logic forbids or disallows, that is, what is logically impossible, and no world can miss or avoid to have what is logically obligatory for it to have, that is, what is logically necessary. Corresponding to the ethically permissible, we have the logically possible which may or may not be empirically possible. Nothing in logic corresponds to the ethically recommended. Logic allows, disallows, or requires, but does not do any of these things in a more or less manner. Therefore, there is no place in logic for anything which may be called the logically recommended, that is, something more logically possible than the merely logically possible and less logically required than the logically necessary. The concepts of logical possibility, impossibility and necessity do not admit of degrees. In the ethical context, on the contrary, we have the concept of recommendation which applies to a thing of which we cannot say that the desirable world ought to have, but only that it would be good if it has it. Its importance becomes clearer if we contrast it with the permissible, the ethically neutral. It does not matter to the desirability of a world whether or not the world has it, but it does matter to it if the world has what it is recommended to have. Having the recommended carries more credit than having the permissible, less credit than having the obligatory, and not having it carries no discredit, and definitely less discredit than not having the obligatory.

From the granting to ethics the status of being a necessary condition of the desirable world, that is, of being necessary to its very structure or constitution, two very important lessons follow: one about the relation of ethical theory to the desirable world, which I would call the build-in applicability of the former to the latter, and the other about the relation of the ethically desirable to other kinds of desirables, which I would call the primacy of the ethical.

An ethical theory primarily aims at telling us what is ethically desirable and thereby what is ethically forbidden, permissible, or recommendable. If it tells us what is ethically desirable, or what makes a thing ethically desirable, by implication it tells us what is, or what makes a thing, ethically undesirable or forbidden, and obviously we can then determine what is permissible or recommendable. If something is neither ethically desirable nor undesirable, neither obligatory nor forbidden, it is permissible. The ethically desirable is basic or necessary to the very being of a desirable world. Therefore, the connection of ethical theory with the desirable world must be very close. It must be true of the latter, of course, but not in the sense of being accurately descriptive of it, because it 'does not treat of the world'. It should be true of the latter in the normative sense; it should tell us what is involved in being ethically desirable, or, what makes a thing ethically desirable and distinguishes it from the undesirable, the permissible, and the recommended.

A thing could be desirable from the ethical as well as from many other points of view. For example, economic, political, prudential, religious, strategic, etc. Since ethical desirability is the condition of a desirable world, it occupies the place of primacy in the sense that any world, to be desirable in any way whatsoever, must first be ethically desirable. That is, to be desirable economically, politically, etc., it must first be ethically desirable. This would perhaps look more persuasive if it is said negatively or contrapositively: if something is not ethically desirable, it is not desirable economically, politically, etc. The vice versa of it is obviously not true because no other kind of desirability, economic, political, etc. can be said to be a condition of ethical desirability.

Ethical reasons for considering something undesirable (or desirable) would thus override, or supersede in merit, other reasons for considering it desirable (or undesirable). Similarly, if ethical and non-ethical reasons point in the same direction, i.e. if both tend to show that something is desirable (or undesirable), the former would very greatly increase the normative force of the latter.

Applicability of an Ethical Theory

Without prejudging anything about the nature or possibility of non-human ethics, like animal ethics, environmental ethics, etc., I shall limit myself in this essay to human ethics. The term 'ethical theory', therefore, would mean an ethical theory concerning the human things relevant to ethicizing, that is, relevant to constructing an ethical theory. This is also, by and large, its traditional sense.

There is another clarification that I need to make about the term's use. A large number of philosophers have used it restrictively to stand only for a normative ethical theory and distinguish the latter from what they call a metaethical theory. I myself have done that in more than one writing of mine. But here I am using it in a liberal sense to include both normative ethical and meta-ethical theories. I am doing this because in claiming that that an ethical theory has built into it its applicability I am claiming that it is true of both of them.

Some professional philosophers as well as non-philosophers complain: (i) present-day ethical theorizing has become very technical and sophisticated, and (ii) therefore, cut-off from the practical affairs of life, meaning that thereby it has become inapplicable to real life situations.

The first part of the complaint is true but there is no reason at all to grieve over it. Becoming technical and sophisticated is a sign of advancement and growth. Even a folk song, to be sung well, has to be sung in a technical and sophisticated manner. De-sophisticating even a practice, and not only a theory, tends to make it inelegant. The attempts made by some Indian politicians of the post-Nehru period and more enthusiastically by some recent ones to de-sophisticate Indian political practice, in the name of bringing it nearer to the grassroots, have made a large part of it inelegant, uncouth, and crude. A sensitive and neutral observer may as well say that they have made it much more backward, or uncivilized, than what it was in the Gandhian period of pre-Independence, and even in the early years of post-Independence Nehru period.

The second part of the complaint is invalid because the technical sophistication of a theory does not make it inapplicable if it is not otherwise inapplicable. A general understanding of the broad aspects of an ethical theory is enough for applying it in normal situations. Only in a tricky situation one needs to take into account its technical, sophisticated, precisified version. And, there may occur a problem, in which case even an acknowledged possessor of ethical knowledge may fail to see how the relevant theory or theories are to be applied to yield a satisfactory solution. This would not necessarily imply that the theory or theories concerned are inapplicable. Rather, it may simply imply that the problem is unusually complicated and human intelligence is finite on account of which the application of ethical knowledge has become so difficult. When Draupadi asks Bhisma whether Dharma allows Yudhisthira, even after his having lost his freedom and therefore his agency, to have the moral right to put her, who is not a thing but his wife, on the stakes, his saying that, because the meaning of Dharma is extremely subtle and deep, he does not know how to answer her question, very well illustrates this truth. It would, of course, mean assuming that the reason which Bhisma gives for not answering Draupadi's question is his real reason.

Comprehending properly the applicability of a sophisticated theory is itself a sophisticated job, and actually applying it to a concrete, difficult, or unusual situation still more sophisticated. There need be no wonder, therefore, if the people, who complain against the alleged inapplicability of recent ethical theorizing, are generally those who have not cared to read seriously even a single technical work in the area.

But we are not always in a Blisma-like situation. In the majority of cases we know how to apply the available ethical knowledge, or which part of it to apply. We do apply it and solve our ethical problems, which may sometimes require immediate action, and sometimes only taking a decision to act in a certain manner at some appropriate time in the immediate, or not too immediate, future. Solving an ethical problem either way involves applying an ethical principle, or a point of view, to the situation concerned. More often than not the application takes place in a smooth and effortless manner. Sometimes it is so smooth that we feel no pressure at all on our moral nerves. Had it not been the case, life would have become, if not impossible, definitely much more difficult than what we in fact find it to be.

A tenable theory of any sort has to be applicable to the field it is a theory about. A psychological theory of human learning, for example, has to be applicable to our learning behaviour in the sense that it should be able to explain how we learn and also in the other sense that it should be usable in making us better learners. These are two different types of traits or features which its applicability has. This sort of complexity, or one similar to it, is present in the applicability of any theory, though it may not be obvious in the case of a natural, scientific or mathematical theory. The physical theory, that heat expands and cold contracts a metallic body, not only enriches our understanding of the behaviour of the metallic bodies concerned but also enables us to expand or contract any one of them if we need to. Similar is the case with a mathematical theory. The geometrical theorem, that the straight-line drawn from the vertex to the base of an isosceles triangle, bisecting the base, also bisects the triangle, not only explains how an isosceles triangle can be divided into two equal parts, but also enables a father to equally divide among his two quarrelling sons his isosceles triangular drawing room.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Applied Ethics and Human Rights by Shashi Motilal. Copyright © 2010 Shashi Motilal. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Anthem Press India
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 8190757075
• ISBN 13: 9788190757072
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 372
• Editor: Shashi Motilal