A Philosophy of Peace
Objectivity in Moral Philosophy
Written in September 2007. Oslo
1 Preface
This essay was written when I was about to start on my Master Degree in Philosophy in 2007. At that time the intention was that it might be an outline of the Master Degree report itself. However, after some discussion with my advisor, Professor Kjell Eyvind Johansen at the University of Oslo
Even if I today am open to revise parts of it, it may contain some ideas which are worthwhile reading.
2 Introduction
The essay addresses the problem of objectivity in moral philosophy.
Descartes and Kant have the concept of ’God’ as a ’guarantee’ for the objectivity of their moral philosophy. But especially since Nietzsche’s’ proclamation ‘God is dead’, few philosophers have used ‘God’ as a concept in philosophy.
After giving up his theological studies, also Heidegger left the concept of ‘God’.
Especially Poole [1] has shown that Heidegger has taken many of his ideas from Kierkegaard. Dreyfus and Rubin is naming the way Heidegger is using Kierkegaard for “Heidegger’s secularization of Kierkegaard” (Dreyfus and Rubin 1991:299).
However, instead of the Christian ‘God’ as is an integrated part of Kierkegaard’s philosophy, Heidegger reintroduces the concept ‘Being’ from the ancient philosophy. I think this a weakness in Heidegger’s philosophy. While he is criticising Nietzsche together with most philosophers since Plato and Aristotle for being metaphysical, he reintroduces the term ‘being’ which remains an idea throughout his life. So Heidegger ended in the same ‘gorge’ as his predecessors: he remained metaphysical. In my opinion, and as will be documented below, Heidegger still may give fruitful ideas to get a clearer concept for ‘objectivity in moral philosophy’.
Habermas give in an introductory section of his moral philosophy (Habermas 1990:1ff.) an overview of the development in moral philosophy, also after Heidegger. From this discussion I include a passage which indicates his staring position compared to Rorty who possibly is his main opponent as a philosopher.
First a reference to one of Rorty’s books:
”Without the Kantian assumption that the philosopher can decide questiones juris concerning the rest of culture, this self-image collapses.... To drop the notion of the philosopher as knowing something about knowing which nobody else knows so well would be to drop the notion that his voice always has an overriding claim on the attention of the other participants in the conversation. It would also be to drop the notion that there is something called “philosophical method” or “philosophical technique” or the “philosophical point of view” which enables the professional philosopher, ex officio, to have interesting views about say, the respectability of psychoanalysis, the legitimacy of certain dubious laws, the resolution of moral dilemmas, the soundness of schools of historiography or literary criticism, and the like.”[2]
Habermas’ comment to this is:
”Richard Rorty’s impressive critique of philosophy assembles compelling metaphilosophical arguments in support of the view that the roles Kant the master thinker had envisaged for philosophy, namely those of usher and judge, are too big for it. While I find myself in agreement with much of what Rorty says, I have trouble accepting his conclusion, which is that if philosophy forswears (avsverger) these two roles, it must also surrender the function of being the “guardian of rationality”. If I understand Rorty, he is saying that the new modesty of philosophy involves the abandonment of any claim to reason – the very claim that has marked philosophical thought since its inception. Rorty not only argues for the demise of philosophy; he also unflinchingly accepts the end of the belief that ideas like truth or the unconditional with their transcending power are a necessary condition of human forms of collective life.” (Habermas 1990: 3)
Habermas does not think any of his predecessors has a satisfactory solution to moral philosophy and give his own proposal based on his ‘theory of communicative action’. Building on Kant’s philosophy he keeps Kant’s idea of basing the moral philosophy of terms which are defined by man himself. Man is considered ‘autonomous’ and gives itself its own rules for living. However, Habermas, do not accepts Kant’s metaphysics with the terms ‘Good will’ and ‘God’. Therefore he drops Kant’s categorical imperative. Instead he introduces some principles which, in his opinion, participants in a ‘communicative action’ necessarily must follow to reach meaningful conclusions. This means that Habermas leaves the criteria of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and then what has traditionally been looked on the main criteria for objectivity in moral philosophy.
3 Outline of analysis
The objective of this essay is to evaluate and present some proposals on how to get a higher degree of objectivity into moral philosophy. I have no intentions of reintroducing the concept of ‘God’ or other metaphysical terms. Instead the intention is to keep it on an immanent and phenomenological level.
It is suggested to introduce three levels in moral philosophy: Individual, Relational and Universal.
- The Individual Level means individual in the kierkegaardian and heideggarian sence; i.e. the level where a human being relates itself to itself
- The Relational Level means the level where a human being relates itself to other human beings
- The Universal Level means the level where a human being relates itself to society in general, ultimately to the collection of all human beings
The Individual Level is introduced in terms of an interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy.
The Relational Level is introduced in terms of an interpretation of Habermas’s moral philosophy.
The Universal Level is introduced here of the following reasons:
· To get a level intended to be common to all people on earth, independent of background, personal qualifications, living location etc.
· To get an ultimate objective level; however, the intention is not to get an infallible objective criteria, but as ‘objective as possible’ and open to falsification. However, it is not up to each individual to make the falsifications, but up to the local and global society.
· As the ultimate ‘maxim’ for this level, I will suggest the United Nation’s Human Rights.
4 Individual Level
4.1 An interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy
As mentioned in the Introduction Heidegger reintroduced the term ’being’ and in Sein und Zeit (hereafter named SuZ) uses it as a base for his analysis. In the introductory remarks Heidegger writes:
”’For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression “being”. We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed.’[3].
Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word ‘being’? Not at all. So it is fitting that we raise anew the question of the meaning of Being. But are we nowadays even perplexed at our inability to understand the expression ‘Being’? Not at all. So first of all we must reawaken an understanding for the meaning of this question. Our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the meaning of Being and to do so concretely. Our provisional aim is the Interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being.” (Heidegger 2004:1) (translators footnotes omitted).
I understand this as Heidegger’s intention was to find the answer to the questions of what the ‘being’ is as well as what the meaning of ‘being’ is. In SuZ the intention was to get an answer to the questions through the so called ‘Dasein’-analysis. That means through analysing in depth the most prominent being he new: the human being, or more precisely a type of being like that a human being is. However, as far as I have understood he did not find an answer in SuZ. Later, after the so called ‘turn’, he changed his strategy hoping that the ‘being’ should come to us from some outside source. But, he never came to a concluding answer to the questions.
In our context an important question is: has Heidegger anything to contribute to today’s moral philosophy even if he did not finally answer these questions which he considered critical?
I think: yes.
This even if he, as far as I know, is not attributed such a role by neither Habermas nor Rorty. What is then left of Heidegger’s philosophy which may be useful ? Answer: The Dasein-analysis in general. The reason for this is that I consider Heidegger’s Dasein-analysis as a neutral and objective description of the human being as an individual. I have seen no main objections to this analysis among philosophers. My conclusion is then, that by eliminating the difficult questions on ‘being’, SuZ still has fruitful ideas for moral philosophy.[4].
4.2 Moral Philosophy at the individual level.
Heidegger does not present a theory in moral philosophy. Why? The reason is that he intends to, and in my understanding gives, a neutral description of a human being. What does that mean? It is what Heidegger describes essentially as a human being’s relation to itself. Even if he has other people as a part of his description (‘Mitsein’), actions are always performed as a consequence of the human being’s relation to its own existence. In other words the subject and the object are within the same body. Dasein is the ‘judge’ or the subject, the ‘existence’ is the ‘object’.
But it means also that Heidegger gives no indication of when a human being is ‘moral’. It is up to the human being itself to judge when it is ‘moral’ to itself and not.
However, Heidegger gives us some ‘rule of tomb’ on how to judge ourselves. From his neutral description of the daily normal life of a human being ‘In-Der-Welt-Sein’, he describes two alternatives: an unauthentic life, which according to Heidegger is the normal state for all human beings, and an authentic life, which is an ‘option’. The difference is that when we live authentic, we have ourselves expressively as an integrated part of our ‘maxims’ for acting. But Heidegger does not have an outside rule telling when we are authentic and when not. We are our own ‘judge’.
What characterizes Dasein in a moral context?
To see this, I think we should go to the ‘judge’ itself, i.e. the existential which controls all the other, the care which means that a human beings deepest motive for action is to care for its own being. Heidegger’s definition of care is:
”The formally existential totality of Dasein’s ontological structural whole must therefore be grasped in the following structure: the Being of Dasein means ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-(the-world) as Being-alongside (entities encountered within-the-world). This Being fills in the signification of the term “care” (Sorge), which is used in a purely ontologico-existential manner. From this signification every tendency of Being which one might have in mind ontically, such as worry (Besorgnis) or carefreeness (Sorgloskeit), is ruled out.”(Heidegger 2004:237,H192)
As I understand it, it means only that we always are acting based on our own judgement. Not on somebody else’s. Which means that that we are basically ‘egoistic’. The quotes means that this is no moral judgement from some outside judge, but a consequence of the facticity of a human being. It is a fact that a human being always act based on its own judgement. Another expression of this idea is: “...Dasein is that entity which, as being in the world, is an issue for itself”(Heidegger 2004:182,H143)
How does this picture fit with other ideas we have?
In a first view, it may seem very pessimistic, but I think it is realistic. It is a good ‘start’ for a moral philosophy. If we assume as Darwin
The conclusion is that a human being has no moral when it is born. Morality is something it develops. And whether the life we live is meaningful or not, is up to ourselves to judge. Heidegger gives us the alternatives of being-in-the-world in an authentic and an unauthentic way. But leaves it to ourselves to judge what type of life we want to live.
5 Relational level
This level is based on Habermas’ moral philosophy. It is described in his book Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Habermas 1990). According to Habermas, as far as I have understood, the only sense of morality we have on the relational level is the norms in terms of validation claims which we, according to Habermas, must put on ourselves if we want to participate in a communicative action. With a communicative action, Habermas do not only mean an ordered debate as we know it from e.g. a parliament, but most of our daily contact with other people.
To illustrate what Habermas means with a communicative action and when his norms are met or not, I like an example my teacher[5] in philosophy gave:
It is a bus driver who is leaning out of the window and saying to a waiting passenger:
‘I am sorry, the bus is filled up, and so it is no room for you.’
This is a type of situation that happens in everyday life and which most people accepts without comments. But to see what happens if one or more of Habermas’ validation claims are not met, let us suppose the bus driver is saying what is quoted above, but the situation is that the bus is only half filled up. One thing is the reaction of the passenger waiting, if he sees the fact of the situation. But what with the other people in the bus when they hear that the bus driver is saying that the bus is full but see with their own eyes that there are plenty of seats? They get indignant. And this illustrates clearly what it means that a validation claim is not met. In this situation probably all Habermas’ three validation claims for communicative actions are broken. First: what the bus driver says is not true. He says that the bus is full when it is not. Second: in the social context given, the other people in the bus get indignant, which means that they feel it is not fair what the bus driver is doing. Third, if the passenger waiting understands the situation and conclude that the bus driver is saying what he does because he has something personal feelings against the passenger, the third norm is broken. If the driver in this situation choose to continue driving without listening to any comments, the action he is doing is clearly no more ‘communicative’ but ‘strategic’ as Habermas name it.
I think the example illustrate quite well what type of relations and what type of society we would live in if the normal situation was that these validation claims not were met. In the situation above, it would clearly make bus transport impossible if people had an alternative, since they never could know when they ‘succeeded’ to get a seat and not.
In his moral philosophy ‘moral’ is connected to the second validation claim which says that the communicative action must be correct in the social context given.
Habermas defines two principles for approving valid norms for a communicative action, a universal (U) and a discourse principle (D):
“Thus every valid norm has to fulfil the following condition:
(U) All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects its general observance (overholdelse) can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone’s interests (and these consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation).
We should not mistake this principle of universalization (U) for the following principle, which already contains the distinctive idea of an ethics of discourse.
(D) Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.” (Habermas 1990:65-66).
The universal principle (U) is assuring that the communication action is not what he call monological (as he claims that Kant as well as Rawls concept presupposes). The discourse principle (D) means that the action must be performed in a real communication where all participants must approve the conclusions.
Here are two questions which I consider critical:
- Are Habermas’ norms for acting too wide? As far as I understand Rorty, they are. However, I cannot see a society which can function in a reasonable manner without a minimum of norms on how they use the language when they communicate. I can see that the norms are society dependent. For example it seems that in some societies it is generally accepted that police and government officials receives a bribe to give you a proper service. However, I think that the consequence of such norms or lack of norms ultimately will lead to anarchy (if everybody cheats each other). So my conclusion is that a set of minimum norms as suggested by Habermas are required. This does not mean that they necessarily are infallible. They may be open for revision. But when they are, the communicative actions leading to a revision should follow the norms given until substituted by an improved set.
- Are Habermas’ norms for acting too narrow? This is not a very radical question, since accepting some of the dominant moral theories up to now, say Kant’s deontology based on the categorical imperative or utilitarianism would mean a widening. As I understand Habermas, he thinks it is difficult to find criteria which are objective and general enough to be used as a measure. If we are not reintroducing a term for something ‘absolutely good’ or ‘absolutely correct’, we have nothing to measure the morality of concrete actions against. With the norms given, the people involved or the society decides what are good or bad, right or wrong.
Conclusion: I accept Habermas’ norms for communicative actions as appropriate as a moral standard for the Relational level.
6 Universal level
Reasons for introducing a universal level are:
- It is that it is unsatisfactory for the people on the earth to not have any general criteria for deciding what is right or wrong, e.g. wars
- If we think that a society is best ruled in terms of a democracy, as I do, we have to accept the ‘rules of the game’ for such a society. This means that we have to accept the laws decided in democratic way, whether we like them or not. In praxis it means that each citizen must accept the nation’s laws as objective
- Many people, I am among them, agree that mankind should accept some general minimum human rights. The most explicit of such rights to day is the ‘United Nation Human Rights’.
The conclusion is that the following sets of norms are introduced at the universal level:
- Citizens of a democracy have to accept the laws of their society. Their own moral norms should be adjusted according to these laws.
- As a minimum norm which should be accepted by the whole mankind are ‘United Nation Human Rights’. These are not infallible and they should be adjusted based on experience and the rules given for such adjustments. I believe that the communicative actions which takes place like parliaments and in the United Nations Assembly are probably among those which most closely meets Habermas’ norms for communicative actions. I have heard that Habermas in the later years has accepted that no discussions are pure communicative, but generally are combined with strategic elements. This is probably true, especially for parliaments. However, since everybody in the parliament is supposed to know that that is the ‘rule of the game’, I suppose such discussions still may be considered to be within Habermas’ norms.
7 Connection between the levels
The connections between the levels are supposed to be as follows:
- A human being acting on the Individual level has to, at the same time, accept the moral norms given for the Relational level and the laws and norms given for the Universal level
- Discourse forums accepting communicative actions as an essential part of its total actions, should accept the laws and norms given for the Universal level
A human being decides itself whether it considers its actions as good or bad, right or wrong. However, it must expect to be denied access to discourse forums where any of the participants has objections to such a participant. It must also accept the rules of the society it lives in and the United Nation Human Rights’. A human being acting according to these rules is said to be just, otherwise unjust.
A discourse forum decides itself whether it considers its actions as good or bad, right or wrong. Any participant may withdraw from the forum. But as a participant she/he must be accepted as a participant by the other participants. A discourse forum must also accept the rules of the society it operates in and the ‘United Nation Human Rights’. A discourse forum acting according to these rules is said to be just, otherwise unjust.
8 Refereces:
1. Kierkegaard, Søren. 2003. Sygdommen til Døden, Danske klassikere, Det danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab Borgen, 2. udgave.
2. Hannay, Alastair og Marino Gordon D. 1998. “Introduction” i The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, redigert av Alastair Hannay og Gordon D. Marino. New York : Cambridge University
3. Poole, Roger. 1998. “Twentieth-century receptions” i The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, redigert av Alastair Hannay og Gordon D. Marino. New York : Cambridge University
4. Heidegger, Martin. 1993. Sein und Zeit, 17. Auflage. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
5. Heidegger, Martin. 2004.Being and Time, Oxford
6. Heidegger, Martin. 1992. Varat och tiden. Gøteborg: Daidalos.
7. Fløistad Guttorm 1993. Heidegger. En innføring i hans filosofi. Oslo: Pax Forlag A/S.
8. Wyller Egil A. 1959. Fra Homer til Heidegger, Oslo: Johan Grundt Tanum Forlag.
9. Safranski Rudiger 1998.En mester fra Tyskland. Heidegger og hans tid. På dansk ved Hans Christian Fink. København: Gyldendal.
10. Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Rubin, Jane 1991. ”Kierkegaard, Division II, and Later Heidegger” i Being-in-the-World A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I, redigert av Hubert L. Dreyfus. Cambridge, Massachusetts. London, England: The MIT Press.
11. Own notes from lessons in FIL4542 by Professor Kjell Eyvind Johansen autumn 2006.
12. Habermas, Jurgen 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge CB2 1 UR
[1] In the The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard Poole has given several examples of how Heidegger has used Kierkegaard – in Poole ’s opinion with too few references. See for example (Poole 1998:51-52).
[2] Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton , 1979), pp. 392ff.
[3] Heidegger references here Plato, Sophistes 244a.
[4] Some philosophers seem to continue Heidegger’s search for ‘being’ and the meaning of it. I do not say that I necessarily consider this meaningless. But I do not think it is a good idea to keep it in today’s discussions on moral philosophy.
