Living through institutions

The question for this week concerns Robert Bellah's notion that “we live through institutions” and in particular, what this means in relation to ethics, both "personal" and "social."

My approach to this question comes from the perspective of someone who is much more interested in social issues than "personal" ethics.  Moral issues focused on the private sphere and our personal lives (including those relating to personal relationships, sexuality, reproduction, etc.) seem to receive more attention than those that are explicitly social and political.  This is in part because of the high level of individualism in American culture, and Bellah and his colleagues discuss in their book Habits of the Heart.  Their point is that this individualism sometimes gives us an illusion of being more isolated from others, and more self-sufficient, than we really are.  Humans are social animals, and every aspect of our lives is influenced by our relations to other people and by our embeddedness in social, economic, and political institutions. This means that even when we think a moral issue is private or personal in nature, there are often larger implications.  If we are to do good moral analysis and come to good ethical decisions, we need to see this larger picture.

Good examples might be abortion and pornography, both of which were mentioned by students in last week's discussions.  Both are often portrayed as purely private choices or activities, but both are also the subject of much heated debate.  Sometimes people argue that there is debate not because these are in fact not private but rather because some people want to "dictate" their private morality to others. 

Bellah's quotation offers a different way to view this.  There are countless institutions -- from schools and families to insurance companies and legislatures -- that shape people's experiences of sex, pregnancy, childbirth, abortion, and childrearing.  Similarly, some of the same institutions (as well as others) shape the way people think about and experience pornography.  Each one of us comes to our personal experiences and opinions of these issues as a result of being shaped by institutions.  Our moral opinions never emerge in a vacuum, in other words, and they are never something we just thought up all by ourselves. 

Bellah helps to make a point that I think is important:  since we are social animals by nature, maybe all ethics is social ethics.  What do you think?

Ethical Questions.

This week's blog assignment is "Explain one ethical question you hope to be able to answer by the end of the class."  This assumes that you know what an ethical question is.  In my blog entry, I'll try to offer some help figuring that out.

A question may or may not have an answer -- but to be an ethical question, at the very least the answer should not be too obvious.  For example, "Should I beat up innocent small children in order to steal their candy?" really isn't an ethical question, or at least it's not the kind of question that leads to very interesting ethical reflection.  This is because there are not any strong moral arguments in favor of beating up small children.

 

Thus an ethical question should be one in which there are at least two possible answers, both of have some potentially legitimate moral arguments made in their favor.  They may not both be equally strong, in your opinion, but it cannot be a no-brainer.  Another way to put this is to say that an ethical question is one that has more than one possible right answer.

What is a moral (or ethical) argument?  It's one that appeals to concepts like good and bad.  "I like to do it" is not a moral argument (unless you are a solipsist, but that is not a position that is taken seriously by many ethical thinkers.)  Ethics, as done in both religion and philosophy, requires rational arguments and supporting evidence in favor of moral claims.  (Not everyone accepts the same evidence, of course, which becomes an issue particularly in the context of religious ethics, as we will discuss later in this class.)  Nor is "Someone made me" an ethical argument. Ethics also presumes some degree freedom on the part of the moral actor. 

Thus an ethical question is one that has more than one possible answer, and each answer must have some legitimacy or seriousness.  An ethical question, in other words, is a question that provokes some reflection, not an immediate or instinctive reaction.

 

 

A good ethical question not only makes you stop and think before answering, but it also generates good discussion, precisely because there is more than one "right" answer, and different people will have well-supported arguments in favor of different possible answers.

 

With these definitions in mind, what constitutes an ethical question?  How about, "Is it morally justified to tell a lie in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings?"  Or "If eating pigs is accepted, why is it not generally considered okay to eat cats?"  And so on.  You can probably think of many possibilities.  When you write your blog post, you can stick to just one if you'd like, but you can also talk about others, including ones you might have rejected, or ones that you don't think will really be answered by this class (or any class, even).  

The point of the exercise is above all to think about what you hope to gain from spending a semester reflecting on ethical questions, arguments and evidence.  Have fun!