On respect, authority, and neutrality: A response

Ethics

Volumn 120, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 279-301

  Raz, Joseph ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 77952483238     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/651426     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (24)

1. In particular, I avoided any questions of minor misrepresentations of my views.
2. Hence the contrast between chaps. 3 (the value of staying alive) and 4 (respecting people) of Value, Respect and Attachment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
3. There usually are additional reasons to respect people, deriving from other valuable qualities they or their life possess. Needless to say (it is likely that) only the reasons to respect persons as persons apply equally to all persons.
4. I should also mention that while Green distinguishes "(1) If one ∂s in regard to A, then one has a duty to ∂ respectfully" from "(2) One has a duty to ∂ in regard to A, because ∂ing is a way of respecting A," I regard 1 as a special case of 2. My view that one need not think of certain objects of value at all, but should have attitudes appropriate to their value if one is aware of them, does not conflict with the fact that in order to meet our obligations (still using the term loosely) to others, we have to make ourselves aware of relevant conditions. Turning a blind eye, and so on, can be morally inappropriate. I believe that neither I nor my book disagree with Green on this point.
5. See my "The Myth of Instrumental Rationality," Journal for Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (2005), http://www.jesp.org/articles/.
6. A fact which should be understood in ways which allow for the complexities of human psychology, which may reverse normal meaning, as when one does something that normally expresses rejection of another in order to express hurt, betraying one's attachment to that other. The normal always opens the possibilities of variations and reversals.
7. Some people believe that "deserve" (in "deserve respect") is used "loosely" or in a different sense from "deserve" in "deserve to be rewarded for their efforts" or in some such context. Also, some may feel that the respect due to people qua people is different respect from that due to, say, great composers qua great composers. I share neither of these views. The grounds of, respectively, desert and respect in these examples differ, and the respect may well have to be manifested (partly) in different ways. But the words are used in the same sense in all these contexts and express the same concepts.
8. The RNP does apply to cases in which the state proposes action in order to promote the good because it mistakes the situation, not realizing that the case is of a choice between options, none of which is superior to any of the others. But we do not need principles to direct states not to act on mistakes. Besides, to know that RNP applies, one must realize that the case is of a choice among options, none of which are better than any of the others, and therefore it can be applied correctly only if one is not mistaken.
9. See my "The Role of Well-Being," Philosophical Perspectives 18 (2004): 269-294
10. and also "Liberating Duties," in Ethics in the Public Domain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
11. And I probably go further than Wall is willing to go in demanding such respect from the state. See my "Freedom of Expression and Personal Identification," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 11 (1991): 303.
12. Statements about what we ought to or should do are stronger than statements about what reasons apply to us-see my "Reasons: Explanatory and Normative," in New Essays on the Explanation of Action, ed. C. Sandis (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 184-202.
13. I have argued in more detail for the theoretical unimportance of the classification of reasons into moral and others in chaps. 11 and 12 of Engaging Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
14. See The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), chap. 7.
15. For a somewhat more detailed discussion, see The Authority of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1979), chap. 1.
16. Though it is not distinctively up to the victim whether to have the attitude of blame, the victim may have a distinctive standing to blame the wrongdoer overtly. I am indebted to a referee for prompting me to clarify this point.
17. The context of the observation is very obscure, referring as it does to a reason a right-holder has. Typically having a right involves a reason or duty others have toward the right-holder. Right-holders do not have reasons just in virtue of being right-holders. However, I believe that I do not distort Darwall when using the quotation as I do.
18. See my "Numbers, With and Without Contractualism," Ratio 16 (2003): 346-67
19. and "Responsibility and the Negligence Standard," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (forthcoming).
20. I disagree with much of what he says, though his identification of what he calls the right kind of reason is very similar to my analysis of standard reasons. See my "Reasons: Practical and Adaptive," in Reasons for Action, ed. D. Sobel and S. Wall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
21. See Raz, Authority of Law.
22. Authority of Law, Ibid., 18, 21.
23. This is fortunate, as it means that the criticism is not undermined by the fact that he misrepresents the Preemption Thesis. He never states its content. The closest he comes is when he writes: "The idea underlying Raz's Preemption Thesis is that in deciding what directives to issue, an authority will take account of first-order reasons, at least within some range, for and against actions that would be prescribed by directives the authority is considering and that an authoritative directive preempts the reasons for acting that the authority has already taken into account; specifically, it preempts or excludes the reasons for performing any action that would violate the directive" (268). In fact, the underlying idea is that a legitimate authority ought to consider certain reasons and that its directives preempt the reasons that it ought to have considered (though if the fact that it ignored some of them or got them so wrong deprives it of legitimacy, then the thesis does not apply). Similarly, the fact that at times he misrepresents the nature of exclusionary reasonsis-for the same reason-irrelevant to his argument. As he rightly points out, exclusionary reasons are reasons not to act for certain reasons: "As Raz usually defines the general category of exclusionary reason, namely, as a second-order reason not to be moved by or to act for certain first-order reasons" (272). It is therefore unfortunate that much of his discussion on pp. 272-73 turns on the case for or against considering certain matters, which is irrelevant to the issue.
24. Later on, referring to the wrong kind of reason argument, he writes: "The fact that one has reason to adopt an attitude does not in general make it the case that the attitude is true, correct, or 'fitting'" (270). That is of course true but, as explained in the text, irrelevant.