Towards a perfectionist response to ethical conflict

Studies in Philosophy and Education

Volumn 17, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 295-302

  Hostetler, Karl ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN   (United States)

Author keywords

Ethical conflict; Liberalism; Perfectionism

Indexed keywords

EID: 54749105138     PISSN: 00393746     EISSN: 1573191X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1005151400015     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. See Amy Gutmann, ed., Multicutturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1994)
2. Charles Taylor acknowledges that confronting "highest ideals" might result in ''mutilation or destruction", and that "the prudent path'' might be safest. Yet. he still urges us to see this problem as "our greatest spiritual challenge" rather than as an "iron fate". See his Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989, pp 520-21)
3. A perfectionist will not be over anxious for less desirable conceptions of the good to disappear insofar as they do capture some element of the truth that might challenge dominant conceptions and so prompt ethical growth. Perfectionists can endorse fallibilism and toleration. Also, issues of the extent and form of "promotion" are relevant (and complicated) here. Better conceptions of the good could be promoted more vigorously by the state, but even that is not straightforward. For instance, adequate support of the best conception simply might not require state involvement, whereas a lesser good would need state support if it is to exist in any sort of viable (even if not vigorous) form.
4. I draw this pluralist position from Susan Wolf "Two Levels of Pluralism", Ethics 102 (1992), pp 785-798.
5. See Joseph Raz. The Morality of Freedom (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1986) for a liberal pluralist critique of liberal anti-perfectionism. Raz grounds his liberal perfectionism in a purported rational interest of all individuals to be free from moral error. This part of his argument is problematic. It is not unreasonable for people to decline to make pursuit of ethical truth a central part of their personal lives. But that is different from pursuing ethical truth as a central part of political life, hence my emphasis of the political basis for perfectionism.
6. Martha Nussbaum, "Aristotelian Social Democracy", in R Bruce Douglass, Gerald M Mara, and Henry S Richardson, eds.. Liberalism and the Good (New York: Routledge. 1990), pp 203-52.
7. William A Galston, 'Two Concepts of Liberalism", Ethics 105 (1995), 516-34.
8. Amy Gutmann, "Civic Education and Social Diversity". Ethics 99 (1995). 557-79.
9. Will Kymlicka, "Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality", Ethics 99 (1989), 901. One issue here concerns the dynamics of power, which are more complicated than Kymlicka's simple majoritv-versus-minority scheme implies. But 1 will set that aside.
10. Will Kymlicka, "Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality", Ethics 99 (1989), 901, Ibid.
11. David B Wong. "Coping with Moral Conflict and Ambiguity-". Ethics 102 (1992), 763-84.
12. David B Wong, Ethics, Ibid, p 776.
13. David B Wong, Ethics,Ibid, p 778.
14. William E Connolly. Politics and Ambiguity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987)
15. See Richard J Bernstein's chapter "Reconciliation/Rupture in his The New Constellation (Cambridge. MA: MIT Press. 1991). pp 293-322. where he suggests we live with the "both/and" of "reconciliation/rupture".
16. Bernstein, p 337.
17. Wong. p781.
18. Charles Taylor. "'The Politics of Recognition", in Multiculniralism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, pp 66-73.
19. Wong, p 779.
20. Charles Taylor. "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man", Review of Metaphysics 25 (1971), 30-31. As Taylor argues in Sources of the Self, "It's not the disagreement which is the problem. Rather the issue is what sources can support our far-reaching moral commitments to benevolence and justice" (p 515). Similar to what I'm proposing here, Taylor links this search for sources to recognition of the worth of human beings, without which the aims of benevolence and justice are unlikely to be realized.
21. Alastair Maelntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), p 351.
22. Henry S Richardson. "The Problem of Liberalism and the Good'', in Liberalism and the Good, p 21.
23. See Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Richardson's conception of rational progress has much in common with Maclntyre's.
24. Georgia Warnke, Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp 169-170. Bernstein questions Gadamer's notion of "fusion" because it ''does not do adequate justice to those ruptures that disturb our attempts to reconcile different ethical-political horizons" (New Constellation, p 10). I agree with Bernstein that we should not be complacent about our ability to reconcile the ruptures in ethical and political life, but. at least in Warnke's interpretation, "fusion" is hospitable to ruptures, as it does not imply convergence of beliefs.