Here is what I presented in class yesterday:

John Rawls was concerned with what we call distributive justice and the question of what we should do about inequalities in society. Should goods be distributed equally to everyone? Should we permit vast differences in social and economic status? How are justice and socioeconomic opportunity tied to each other?

This is relevant to the book Deep Economy in two ways.

1. First, we can use the justice framework to make the case that our social system (that is, our system of social policy, ethics, and economic exchange) is conventional. We have a certain social/political/economic system and it produces certain results. But we don’t have to have that system. It might be the most just system, or it might undermine justice. If it does not produce the maximum degree of justice, then we should try to change it so that it is more just. In particular, we should always be working to try to improve the status of those that have the least, and we should always try to give people equality of opportunity.

This observation supports McKibben in his attempt to rethink economics, and in particular in his attempt to replace some market trends with a deeper concern for community. He argues very much like someone in the justice framework would: he argues that deeper and more robust communities will make people happier and will be more economically stable. This last point is important, because in the justice framework, people are risk-averse.

2. A second way that Rawls’s justice framework can be linked to the book is McKibben’s recognition that for people who are living at a subsistence level, access to global markets makes more sense than pursuing deeper, local economies. That’s because McKibben, like Rawls, knows that the concerns of people who have the least social status and economic goods will be different than those who have plenty.

John Stuart Mill wrote that “Ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done from other [than moral] motives, and rightly so done if the rule of duty does not condemn them.” What this implies is that a utilitarian theory provides guidance on framing and solving certain kinds of moral problems. It is not intended to apply to every choice you make or action you undertake. 

But, intuitively, most of us believe that normativity extends beyond solving big problems. Leading a good life is built up on daily habits and is not only the result of making the right choice at critical junctures. Virtue ethics speaks to this by casting morality as a matter of constantly building moral character.

We could find some weaknesses with virtue ethics as a way of characterizing morality, too. Such weaknesses don’t indicate that we should reject it, necessarily; rather, they are intended to show where the theory needs to be filled out and where it has to be applied cautiously. 

One such weakness is that there is sometimes a fine line between virtue and vice. We don’t all admire the same people, or admire them for the same reasons. Is a politician who changes her mind on an issue an indecisive “flip-flopper” or someone who considers evidence and is not afraid to admit she was wrong?

How wide is the gap that separates being committed from being a fanatic? Or the difference between displaying perseverance and being stubborn? between being enthusiastic and being a zealot? between being cautious and being timid? between being assertive and being aggressive? between being confident and being an egomaniac?

For instance, both hold that pleasure and pain are the measure of what is good and bad. And both put a high value on empirical investigation. For both, “the good life” is a life that has a high ratio of pleasure to pain, and so pursuit of pleasure is a basis for moral action.

However, one difference is that Epicurus thought that this evaluation of pleasure and pain would lead people to value and pursue tranquility or a state of mental peace. (This is a position that certainly shares something with the philosophy of Zen Buddhism.) Pursuing tranquility would lead people to withdraw from politics and other stressful situations or concerns.

In contrast, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill were very involved in politics. Mill was a Member of Parliament for several years and an advocate of women’s rights.

• Kantian ethics responds to the need for moral truths to have an independent justification which depends on reason and not just on intuition or implicit agreement.
• Kant argues that if a law is to be morally valid, then it must follow with absolute necessity.
• He provides such an algorithm in the form of the Categorical Imperative.
• The Categorical Imperative is similar to–but more universal and less personal than–the Golden Rule.
• The core of morality is not what we do but why we do it.
• Principle-based ethical theories are called deontological.

If you have any questions, feel free to raise them in the comments section. On Wednesday I’d like to hear your ideas about whether you foresee any problems with applying this ethical theory to specific moral problems.

Just for fun, here’s a political attack ad: