CHAPTER 10Pleasure, Contemplation, and JudgmentThe field o.docx

CHAPTER 10
Pleasure, Contemplation, and Judgment
The field of aesthetics casts a very wide net. The arts are many,
and they happen in different places all over the world. They
always have. Our enjoyment, appreciation, and judgment of
art—together with the question of what defines art to begin
with— are the key elements to consider in aesthetics. The word
itself is derived from the Greek Αισθητικη ́ , aisthetikos,
meaning “coming from the senses.”
More than any other branch of axiology, that is, of the
philosophy of making value judgments, aesthetics has sensuality
built into it as much as it has seductive, ineffable quality in its
critical analysis. Still, though some philosophers disagree, it is
not just a matter of taste.
Aesthetics, Art, and Criticism
You might ask, what is it critics do, exactly? Serious arts critics
have to travel, usually a lot. They contemplate paintings in
museums all over the world, listen to different orchestras in
different concert halls, witness ballet and opera wherever they
may come to life. Critics also often serve on juries, observe the
impact of social and politi-cal forces on the art of their time,
reflect on the art of the past and the art of the future and do so
by experiencing that art in person. A literary critic can of
course just sit and read a book, and that book will be the same
artistic object that everyone elsewhere is reading. But the other
arts, especially the performing arts, are different. To analyze
painting and sculpture, or theater, music, dance, and opera, the
critic has to travel wherever these artistic works may be.
Yes, critics travel. And the toughest journey a critic takes is the
vast one from the statement “I like this”’ to “This is good.” The
shortest distance between those two points is seldom a straight

line.
“Today it goes without saying that nothing concerning art goes
without saying. Everything about art has become problematic:
its inner life, its relation to society, even its right to exist.”
—Theodor Adorno
One easy way of dividing the arts is between what we like,
which must be good, and everything else. On some level, this
remains the case even in the most complex aesthetics systems.
Blaise Pascal’s clever littler dictum that “the heart has its
reasons that reason does not know” is as unsettling as it is true.
Say something strikes you as absolutely right in the concert
hall, something in the theater has a powerful effect on you. You
begin to articulate what you will choose to call the reasons for
the work’s success. But maybe your heart still has other
reasons; these reasons do not begin to touch. It is in this sense
that criticism defines not so much what the work of art is as
what happens when we witness it. The act of witnessing is what
transforms a work of art standing alone into the object of our
aesthetic experience. This is the moment of attention, the
vehicle for the journey from the report of a private experi-
ence—“I like this”—to the public utterance and judgment “This
is good.”
“I like ‘x’” or “I don’t like ‘x’” are always true, and they also
are not interesting unless you’re talking to your best friend or to
your mother: these statement are simply reports on one’s own
feelings. On the other hand, “‘x’ is good” or “‘x’ is bad’” are
judgments and require arguments with clearly defined reasons
for each judgment.
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: DO THE KARDASHIANS
MAKEGREATTV?
Critically analyze the difference between these two statements:
• I like the TV show Keeping Up with the Kardashians. •

Keeping Up with the Kardashians is great TV show.
How can you defend the truth of either statement?
Two things are going on here. First, the critic’s point of view is
not that of the artist. It is, rather, that of the spectator, the
witness. We are all witnesses, and art is intrinsically democratic
in that sense. Second, there is an implied acknowledgment of
the work of art’s unique sensuousness. There are real feelings at
work, and these feelings not only color but actually may define
the aesthetic experience.
And these feelings guide the critic’s journey. When we in the
audience jointly con- spire in what the English poet Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (1772–1884) first noted amounts to a “willing
suspension of disbelief ” while watching a performance, we also
agree that there is much more to the object of our attention than
its physical ingredients.
POWERFUL IDEAS: CRITICS
“Critics of words use words. Critics of music use words. Those
thirteen syllables . . . are as pertinent as any I can make on the
matter. If the final comment on a work of art is another work of
art, might some critical prose, as art, equal the art it describes?
Yes, but that very prose is independent of the art it describes.
The best critical writing is superfluous to its subject, and
musical criticism is the most superfluous of all.”
—Ned Rorem
The Phenomenology of Artistic Experience
This is the stuff of objective reporting, elements that are not a
matter of opinion: the articulation of a cellist’s phrasing, the
steps of a dance, the rhythmic texture of an aria, the words of a
play, and the notes of a symphony. But the critic, along with the
rest of the audience, responds to more than these objective

components of a work of art. The object of our attention
transcends its material character: suddenly, miracu- lously,
steps are more than steps, words become theater, a string of
notes can break your heart. That is why it is fair to call the
aesthetic experience sensual.
Of course, it takes two to have any sensual experience. It takes
not just the performance and performer, but also the witness
who perceives them in a particular way. Our presence at a
performance, our perception of a performance, and our feel-
ings about a performance are the happy bundle of elements that
create meaning in the arts. This is the phenomenological
process, and it is particularly useful in talking about the
performing arts. Examining the phenomenon of what happens
onstage reveals not just the basic truth of a particular work but
also its universality, its ines- capable humanity.
Context and dialectic are everything in aesthetics. There is no
essential artistic meaning out there waiting to be discovered,
and neither is there just a series of language relations waiting
to be analyzed. In our time, even with today’s dreary decon-
structionists or politicized critics, the role of the witness and
the dialectic of witnessing remain ever more useful in talking
about the arts.
A score unperformed, an aria unsung, a play unread, or a dance
merely intended is never the point. Theories of textual truth,
political relevance, or social benefit also are never the point.
The experience of an actual performance is what matters in
criticism. That said, it is also true that the critic cannot claim to
be just another witness among many. A critic is not what
Virginia Woolf had in mind when she famously described the
common reader. There is such a thing as judgment, even if the
term has become decidedly unfashionable both in philosophy
and in mainstream popular arts criticism.
POWERFUL IDEAS: ART
“The word ‘art’ first signified a manner of doing and nothing
more. This unlimited sense has disappeared from use . . . . Art,

considered as contemporary activity, has had to submit to the
conditions of the generalized social life of our time. It has taken
its place in the general economy”
—Paul Valéry
What Makes a Critic’s Opinion Authoritative?
David Hume (1711–1776) believed that emotions are significant
in both aesthetics and ethics, as we will discuss in the next
chapter. In other words, he thought that a judgment consisted
simply of approving or not, a matter of feeling. His theory has
more adherents in aesthetics than in ethics today, particularly
because aesthetics involves both contemplation and judgment.
The problem remains, however, that “I don’t like that movie” is
no better argument in aesthetics than “I don’t like those people”
in ethics, although both statements are passed for arguments
with alarming frequency.
Still, Hume has a point about the cultivation of taste, and a
critic must certainly have good taste and good judgment. A
critic’s opinion, an aesthetic judgment, depends on knowledge,
experience, and passion. Knowledge not just of the arts but also
of the mechanics of criticism: aesthetics, logic, and rhetoric.
Experience that must come from a thirst for knowledge and a
wealth of opportunity. This last may seem cruel, but it remains
true; all the theoretical knowledge of music in the world will
not help in judging an orchestral performance if all you have
heard is one orchestra in one hall, just as acquaintance with
only a handful of museums or ballet companies is simply not
enough in judging painting or dance with any perspective.
Context also is vital, and often it can help shape an aesthetic
judgment. The Abstract Expressionists such as Willem De
Kooning (1904–1997) and Robert Motherwell (1915–1991), who
put American art on the map in the twentieth century, were
often quite good at explaining their intentions. They were often
as helpful and always at least as sensitive as philosophers and
poets variously judged and praised their work. Words can help,

no matter what the composer Ned Rorem may think.
Truth in Criticism
A critic’s passion must be a given. Criticism must be willing to
make a case for the art that matters, not just for ways to pass
the time. A creeping fear of authority is one of the most
disturbing dangers of popular criticism: the suggestion that
reviews are mere statements of preference, not judgments.
This is a lie. For example, if a critic believes that Edward
Albee’s Three Tall Women’ is a sublime climax to a lifetime of
genius, that Tom Morton-Smith’s Oppen- heimer is the most
challenging and disturbing dramatic treatment to date of the
ethics of the atomic bomb, or that cello concerto Philip Glass
composed for the movie Naqoyqatsi is one of the most exciting
and moving scores of the last 100 years, then that critic must
argue vigorously to win over anyone who will listen. If a critic
believes that something like So You Think You Can Dance? or
The Voice are trash as dance, music, or television, it would be
unimaginable defend it as anything else. The rest is misplaced
politeness, timidity, and an abdication of critical responsibility.
Socrates roundly condemned the unexamined life as not worth
living, but is the unexamined music worth hearing? Is the
unexamined dance worth watching? Is it worth dancing? On one
level, there must be such a thing as simple, unambi- tious, and
even mindless entertainment. What can be the harm? And yet,
what is it that makes a stupid piece irritating? Hope springs
eternal each time, the curtain goes up; the joy of discovery is
great, but disappointment can be bitter. If art is to matter—and
a critic must believe that it does—judgments must be made with
almost cruel clarity. Then, the expressions of utter joy at
witnessing greatness onstage will ring true.

Powerful Thinkers: Richard Wagner
Radical, transgressive, and revolutionary Richard Wagner
(1813–1883) sets out to reinvent theater at the decadent heights
of the Romantic Revolution. His opera tetralogy Der Ring des
Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) premiered in 1876, in a
theater built expressly for the then extraordinary staging
demands the opera called for the Bayreuther Festspielhaus,
where a festival of Wagner operas continues to this day.
Wagner’s vision was to recapture the impact of ancient Greek
drama, while synthesizing all the arts in a feast of music, dance,
theater, and art—a total work of art, or Gesamtkunstwerk.
His influence was and is enormous. He explained Wagnerian
aesthetics in a series of essays between 1849 and 1852; but it
was in his operas, on stage, that his argument is proved.
Particularly between Tristan and Isolde (1865)—an ode to
impossible love beyond death— and his final masterpiece, the
sacred mystery play Parsifal (1882), Wagner asks crucial
questions about the possibility of ethics in a godless world and
the importance of freedom to the fabric of humanity. His operas
are about love and death, those constant elements in the
dialectic of the human condition.
In Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, the composer wanted most of all
to recapture what he imagined to be the depths, simplicity, and
truth of Greek tragedy. He succeeded in theater better than
anyone since Shakespeare. He also succeeded in creating plays
so rich in meaning that there has been room for wildly different
interpretations. Der Ring des Nibelungen in particular has been
at the mercy of—or has received the richest interpretations by—
the greatest stage directors since its creation.
The mystical ring and the magical sword, enchanted water
nymphs and flying warrior maidens, and even the building and
destruction of the gods in Valhalla and perhaps the end of the
divine and the birth of humanity—these have been fodder for
interpretation and reinter- pretation in our time. There have
been Marxist Rings—with the fall of the gods seen as the

inevitable result of class struggle, just as once
there were Nazi Rings in which the Norse hero Siegfried was
distorted into standing for the Aryan ideal. There have been
Freudian and Jungian Rings, deconstructionist Rings, and
postmodern Rings. The English National Opera set it in outer
space, and the Paris Opera in a fashionable department store.
Patrice Chereau’s controversial land- mark 1976 Bayreuth
Festival production was the first to be filmed complete and is
perhaps still the best acted, though it’s sweet New Left flavor
dates it as a nostalgic pre-glasnost affair. Goetz Friedrich set
his 1976 Ring in a time tunnel with designs inspired by the
Washington, DC metro stations—a gift for the American
Bicentennial that had a successful run at the Kennedy Center in
Washington. Otto Schenck’s 1989 Ring for the Metropolitan
Opera was a rarity by being free of anachronisms, innocent of
ideological cant. The Met dropped that production in 2013, in
favor of Robert LePage’s dementedly expensive, riotously
unsuccessful version.
Wagner‘s Parsifal tells the tale of God’s own Holy Fool whose
role is to save humanity. He is the Wagnerian hero closest to the
ideal of Greek tragedy. The opera, Wagner’s last, carries an
invitation to abstraction that—paradoxically—has made this
character easy to recognize as Wagner’s creation even in the
strangest productions. François Girard’s 2012 Met production,
with Jonas Kaufmann as Parsifal in a musical and dramatic
characterization that set a high standard for years to come, was
set in what looked like a vast pool of blood.
Maybe each age has its own Wagner. The theater and opera
director Goetz Friedrich once said that “It doesn’t really matter
what directors do—the score will always be there, the music
will always be there, Wagner will always be there.”
A critic’s work can be a lonely journey, a case of judging and
writing against the grain. A critic should aim to rescue the
details worth noting from what the great French novelist

Nathalie Sarraute (1900–1999) called the magma of everyday
banal- ity. Concepts as rich in meaning as “good” or “beautiful”
are falling out of favor as popular criticism grows ever more
innocent of moral authority.
Elitism and the Arts
In an age when being judgmental has become a bad thing,
condemned by those who would destroy the canon and dumb
down the arts as far as they will go, criticism may surrender its
role out of a sense of survival: television arts critics remain on
the air by summarizing movie plots, book reviews become book
reports, rap and hip-hop are treated as if on the same level as
Beethoven, the concept of elitism has become anathema to those
who fund the arts, and even the rules of grammar are seen as
quaint suggestions.
Maybe Elitism Is a Good Thing
An elitism of vision, excellence, imagination, and genius. An
elitism of talent, taste and bravery are something to treasure. It
is not for everyone, but it can represent the best in all of us and
it certainly ought to be there for all of us to admire. These are
strange times indeed, when the concept of elitism has become
an insult, a way to smear the arts. Elitism, often in the eye of
the beholder, has become doublespeak for exclusion, for
everything that is not politically correct. To be placed in a
position of defending, elitism is decidedly awkward.
Enemies of culture cry that the arts should be democratic, ergo
the arts have failed. They presume that since not everyone can
reach excellence, then excellence, too, is somehow
undemocratic. They make use of perverse educational trends
that, when arts education takes place at all, preach that
everyone can be an artist while showing no one how to be part
of an educated audience. Advisory committees, boards of
directors, and tribes of ideological guardians today ensure the
multicultural, pangeographic, and heterogeneous quality of
funded artistic projects, as if great art ever had been created by

committee rather than by an individual’s unique and passionate
vision.
When artistic canons are devalued, and every opinion, no matter
how base and uninformed, is worth the same as every other,
mediocrity is rewarded and individual genius languishes
unrecognized. Shunning the elite, we prop up the bland, the
safe, hoping that if we call it great often enough we might
believe in its greatness.
“Not every opinion is worth considering, just as not every work
of art is worth our time. There are such things as stupid
remarks, ignorant judgments, misplaced affections and, of
course, there is such a thing as bad art”
—Octavio Roca
Yet consider, for example, that no one would choose a brain
surgeon by neigh- borhood committee vote. If your country
were invaded, you would want elite troops for your defense.
Only the best will do for things we care about. Yet too often we
let artistic discourse be shaped by those who care the least
about the arts.
Why not aim for the best in the arts, humanity’s highest
achievement, as we clearly do in other endeavors? Why allow
ourselves to be embarrassed by our culture’s greatness? Why
tear down what is most sublime in our culture and vulgarize it
to the lowest possible level just so everyone, no matter how
crass or bigoted, will not be offended by it?
Elitism Is Not the Problem. Elitism Is the Answer
We may be in danger of forgetting how to have a meaningful
argument about the arts, a true reckoning of aesthetics. The
collectivization and internationalization of popular
entertainment, and their worship in much of the popular press,
are fast heading toward the hegemony of the banal.

Yet, contrary to popular cant, not every opinion is worth
considering, just as not every work of art is worth our time. A
flat note in opera is not a matter of opinion, and neither is
flawed turnout or lazy épaulement in ballet. But we respond to
more than these objective components of a work of art. The
object of our attention transcends its material character. There
are such things as stupid remarks, ignorant judgments,
misplaced affections and, of course, there is such a thing as bad
art.
Multiculturalism, Art, and Politics
Multiculturalism is at once a reality and a noble goal. But
accepting its many advantages should not dampen our courage
to call something civilized and something else barbaric,
something advanced and something else retrograde, and
something good and something else bad. Multiculturalism at its
most vulgar amounts to this, in ordinary language: anything
goes, so nothing is worth it. That is relativism at its worst.
There is an appalling lack of moral outrage in criticism these
days, when few things offend some readers more than a critic’s
taking offense at anything. With indulgences all but guaranteed
for any art, no matter how low, having high standards is
considered suspect. Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1783)
remarked that “we ought to think with the learned and speak
with the vulgar.” The Irish philosopher was not being cynical,
just practical. Critics often are tempted to place their faith in
small matters, not so much in acceptance of lowered
expectations as in resigned enjoyment of modest details. Then
just wait to be surprised.
POWERFUL IDEAS: LOOKING AT DANCE, JUDGING
DANCE
The easiest way to look at a ballet is just that: look at it. Few
things any- where compare with ballet in being easy to love.
There are beautiful people, usually moving to ravishing music,

using their bodies in ways that are at once athletic and sublime,
telling tales in motion that reveal truths and suggest mysteries
we might otherwise be too shy or afraid to see.
Details are everything, and they mean different things to
different people. There is a small moment in the first ballet I
ever saw that still breaks my heart every time.
In “Giselle,” an emotionally shattering ballet and one of the
glories of romantic theater, a poor peasant girl suddenly faces a
rich, elegant woman who is wearing what must seem like
impossibly beautiful clothes: Giselle’s simple gesture as she
reaches and almost touches the hem of Bathilde’s dress
embodies innocent hope against all odds, longing for so much
happiness that Giselle will never know, and ineffable sadness.
How each ballerina plays that moment can be as telling as how a
Violetta in Act One of Verdi’s opera La Traviata notices the
ravages of a fast life star- ing back in the mirror in the simple
line “O, qual pallor.” “How pale I look.” Or it can be as
devastating as how the dying Åse in Ibsen’s epic Peer Gynt can
suggest irony, fervor, and terror all at once as she listens to her
fantas- tical liar of a son describe the gates of heaven she will
soon enter.
Dancers turn and run, lift and caress each other, stand very still.
These are things all of us do in our everyday lives, but it would
be wrong to say that dance is like everyday life. It isn’t. Every
one of those moves is as different from the way ordinary
mortals move as Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony is different
from the actual sounds of a summer morning.
Then again, the power of suggestion may be the most staggering
trick in an artist’s bag: almost everything listed just now, from
balances to good looks, can matter not at all when a great
dancer chooses to make us believe in his or her performance.
Just as Maria Callas in her last tour had the power to make the
audience believe that it had heard notes she clearly had not
sung, so could the great Alicia Alonso (b. 1920) in her 50s be
the most youthful Giselle we are ever likely to see.
Do we fall in love with the dancer or the dance? The story or

the move- ment? The athletic prowess, poetic interpretation, or
sexy good looks? With the emotions brought out by a series of
steps or gestures, or with the dazzling geometry of these same
phrases? Do we fall in love with the fact that this is the best we
have ever seen, or just the first we have ever seen? All of these,
as it happens, are good reasons. So is loving The Nutcracker’
because your little niece Consuelo is making her debut as a
dancing lolli- pop. Whatever makes you return to the theater is
a good reason, if only because chances are you will like it even
better the next time. You might even begin to judge it.
Keep in mind that a critic most likely works from a theoretical
framework as well as from a knowledge of history. But it is
worth remembering, however, that what makes the difference in
the success of a concerto, a play, or a dance is not its adher-
ence to any theory at all. Bad criticism takes us away from the
experience of the arts and into the realm of theory.
That is one problem with Marxist aesthetics, for example, or
with other utilitarian views of the arts that can turn critics into
propagandists or censors. Talk of whether or not a concerto, a
play or a dance is socially relevant or politically useful is all
very nice, but the real question is whether it is good or bad.
Does Pablo Picasso’s immortal Guernica (1937) require
knowledge of the Spanish Civil War in order to be emotionally
devastated by it? Is it part of our aesthetic appreciation or
judgment of Dmitri Shostakovich’s symphonies or string
quartets that they were composed by one of most tragic
composer of our time whose life was made nearly impossible by
Stalinism? Or can we just listen to it and still judge it to be
great music, apart from its historical context?
The ballet Giselle (1841), the apotheosis and climax of the
Romantic Era, is not a communist dance if it is performed by
the Ballet Nacional de Cuba in Havana any more than it is a
fascist or kleptocratic dance as performed by today’s Bolshoi
Ballet in Moscow, or a Republican or Democrat dance when

brought to life by the Ameri- can Ballet Theatre in New York. It
is just Giselle.
political criticism of art a form of ad hominem argument, or is
all art political? Being able to tell the difference, performance
by actual performance, moment by living moment, is a critic’s
responsibility. And that means separating competence from
incompetence, acting from acting out, professional polish from
mere good intentions, and art from dross or worse.
The phenomenal thing about the arts—in every sense of that
very useful term—is that it takes two to give meaning to the
phenomenon. There is no unmedi- ated, essential truth in
literature, painting, music, theater, or dance. The truth of those
art forms arises not in a vacuum but in public, in real life, in the
magical moment when the audience witnesses the performers in
action.
How You Can Judge
Forget program notes, forget for now how wonderful the arts are
for the community. Forget the artists’ heartwarming
backgrounds or political associations. For heaven’s sake, forget
Sigmund Freud and V. I. Lenin, whose aesthetic theories are at
last achieving the neglect they so richly deserve. A critic first
and foremost must concentrate on what is happening on the
page or onstage.
In the end, it is still the journey from “I like this” to “this is
good,” from “I like Marcel Proust” to “Proust is sublime,
beautiful, good” that matters.
Is this personal? Sure. Should anyone really want criticism to be
impersonal, pretending to be objective, scientific? No. The truth
is that, in the arts as in life, you fall in love all of a sudden.
Then, if you are lucky, you spend a lifetime working out the
details.

CHAPTER 11
The Meaning of Ethics
11
Upon completing this chapter, students should be able to meet
the following Learning Outcomes:
11.1 Discuss the elements of any moral dilemma: the act, the
consequences of the act, and the moral agent.
11.2 Critically analyze the false starts in moral philosophy
including relativism and Divine Command.
11.3 Discuss the practical and logical problems with Aquinas’
Natural Law moral theory.
11.4 Explain how ethics can be said to be always personal and
often political.
Ethics is, in a very real sense, philosophy in an emergency.
Most philosophical questions—everything from the possible
existence of a god and our place in the universe to the nature of
beauty and the pleasures of identifying it—invite leisurely
discussion over long periods of time. Someone facing an ethical
problem, on the other hand, more often than not has to make a
personal decision about that dilemma with little chance of
waiting around. Decisions concerning academic integrity,
professional behavior, and sexual ethics, for example, often fall
in this category. A woman who has just found out that she is
pregnant and happens to be pondering the morality of abortion
had better decide that moral point herself soon or the decision
will be made for her.
POWERFUL IDEAS: BETTER TO BE SILENT
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
nglo-American analytic philosophers in particular tend to agree
with Wittgenstein that, basically, if you can’t be clear about
something, just be quiet. This tenet, nourished by an increasing

trust in science as well as a trust that science has good
foundational arguments for certainty, have led in the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries to a quasi-scientific view of moral
philosophy and to such academic balkanizations as met-ethics
(asking “where did that moral question come from and what
does it mean?”), normative ethics (asking “How do you define a
moral standard?”), and applied ethics (at last asking “Now what
should I do?”). Continental philosophers for the most part have
stayed with this last question, often asserting that all ethics is
applied and most often it is also political.
These philosophers, too, aim for clarity. But they also
understand that clarity is not always possible and that action is
always necessary. Civil rights, women’s rights,
reproductive rights, marriage equality, abortion, assisted suicide
and euthanasia, , legalization of drugs, capital punishment—all
of these burning issues need solid moral arguments and
ethically justified action. The action is the aim of all moral
theories discussed in this chapter. Questions about right and
wrong and questions about the right way to live are the subject
of ethics. In that sense, and, this is crucial, ethical theory is
never abstract: it concerns real human problems. The discussion
in this chapter is an introduction to moral philosophy. Moral
philosophy will be considered through critical analyses of the
most common types of theories as well as of some examples that
help illustrate these different ways to look at life. These include
the theories underlying Aristotelian, Kantian, and Utilitarian
arguments as they pertain to everyday life we live. Moral dead-
ends such as relativism and divine command theories are also
considered, along with the lasting influence of the Mid- dle
Ages’ Natural Law ethics. The goal of this chapter is to apply
critical thinking to help develop reasoned justifications for
judgments on diverse moral issues, an exer- cise of reason that
can point the way to better understanding of the role ethics
plays in our daily lives.

Moral Dead-Ends
There are various moral dead-ends including all the people who
think they are experts in ethics (without any formal study of the
subject). Cultural relativism and the divine command theory of
morals are in fact discredited in the field of philosophy, but
both remain powerful in their cultural impact. Natural Law,
which aimed higher than either of these but ultimately failed, is
also examined later.
Cultural Relativism
The educator and critic Allan Bloom has noted with dismay that
most of today’s students arrive at college as relativists.
Remarks such as “Who’s to say who is right?” or “Who am I to
judge” and “Maybe it’s right for them, just not for me” reflect
common and well-intentioned attitudes that nevertheless can
destroy the possibility of responsible ethical judgment. While it
is true that different cultures have different moral codes, must it
follow that therefore there is no objective truth in morality?
There are major drawbacks in accepting this form of cultural
relativism, both from within a given culture and for outsiders to
that culture.
If you are within the culture in question, relativism leaves no
room for dissent or progress, since the culture is right by
definition. If you are outside that culture in question, relativism
leaves the outsider with no moral standing. The massacres com-
mitted by the religious extremists of ISIS, the treatment of
women in the Middle East, the lunching of Blacks in the
American South, or the Holocaust murder of millions of Jews by
the Nazis all would be beyond your judgment if you don’t hap-
pen to be part of these cultures. The beheading of gays or the
stoning to death of adulterous women, as our allies in Saudi
Arabia do, is something we have every right to condemn even if
you are not a citizen of that country. Relativism would force
you to respect that culture to the point of standing by and not
passing judgment at all.

Ethics, at the very least, should enable us to say that something
is right or wrong, no matter where and no matter who is
involved. Relativism precludes that judgment.
Divine Command
If relativism claims that the way we have always done things
must be right for us, Divine Command claims that without doubt
the right thing to do is whatever our god or gods command. Like
relativism, this is one of the most primitive ethical theories.
Some common problems range from the difficulty of
identifying and verifying god’s commands to the undeniable
challenge that several competing gods present in a multicultural
world. Whose god are we talking about? Whose scriptures, or
whose interpretation of those scriptures? What about trusting
the messenger? When several presidential candidates state that
Jesus commanded them to run for president, and clearly only
one of them might win an election, does that mean the Jesus was
just messing with the others?
The biggest problem with Divine Command theory, however, is
put most clearly, most unsettlingly, by Socrates in Plato’s
Euthyphro: is something right because the gods command it, or
do the gods command it because it is right? Why is this a
problem?
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: THE EUTHYPHRO PROBLEM
Is something right because god said so, or did god say so
because it is right?
Is It Right Because God Says It Is Right . . .
If something is right because god commands it, then given his
omnipotence, god could command anything. Murder is wrong,
but perhaps it will be right tomorrow afternoon at 3. This is not
a frivolous crazy example—god commanded Abraham to

slaughter his own child, and that act would be right as long as
god said so. That mer- ciless god is not the one most people
worship. It also makes ethics impossible in that you would have
no way of deciding what to do since the concepts of right or
wrong could change on a whim.
On the other hand, if your god wouldn’t do that and god
commands something because it is right—an omniscient god
would not steer you wrong and, after all, he know everything—
the you have diminished his authority and turned him into a
good source of information. When you mother teaches you not
to cross the street without looking both ways, she does so
because she know better; once you learn that bit of truth, you
don’t need your mother to tell you again. This second option
turns god into a divine Google.
One way you take away your god’s power, the other way you
take away his mercy. In fact, the omniscience and omnipotence
of any god are a major dilemma for theologians to this day.
Either way, divine command theory destroys your idea of god.
Theologians agree. And in fact St. Thomas Aquinas came up
with a clever, but fatally flawed, way of avoiding the Euthyphro
Problem.
Natural Law
St. Thomas Aquinas used Aristotle’s metaphysics to build a
moral philosophy. The result was his Natural Law, a theory that
is no longer taken seriously among most philosophers but one
which nevertheless has remained influential in the public imag-
ination. If reason reveals to us how nature works—as Aristotle
believes—and if we also know that God made nature, then it
follows that reason reveals to us that this is the way it has to
work, since God made it that way. So it is the case that the right
thing to do ends up being what God commands, but not because
God commands it but rather because “in the light of reason” you
yourself find that moral truth revealed to you. Unnatural equals
bad, natural equals good. That is Natural Law according to St.

Thomas Aquinas. Never mind that, for example, the most
natural thing in life would be to die of cancer, slowly and in
pain. It is a good bet few people today would call chemother-
apy, radiation therapy, and pain killers wrong—though they are
all certainly unnatural. If you have ever taken an aspirin, you
have committed an unnatural act. The idea that “unnatural”
means “bad,” or that “letting nature take its course” is always a
good thing are just two examples of the influence of Aquinas’
Natural Law—as is the Catholic church’s continuing
endorsement of all of Aquinas’ teachings. This is not merely an
academic topic: such current issues as the morality of condom
use, abortion, and homosexuality are still discussed in some
quarters in terms of Natural Law. Is there a natural way to do
things? Do you think everything in the universe has a proper
function? Does reason reveal this to you?
“An ‘is’ is not an ‘ought’”
—David Hume
David Hume, a brilliant Scottish philosopher, proposed some
devastating cri- tiques of Natural Law, namely that one can’t
get an “ought” out of an “is.” How is a law of nature different
from a law of morals? Even if Aquinas had been right about
every description of nature that his reason apparently revealed
to him—and clearly he was not: the Earth is not flat, though
many people were burned at the stake for saying that it wasn’t—
merely describing something is not the same thing as prescrib-
ing or judging it. Science is descriptive, ethics is prescriptive,
normative.
One needs reasons, clear and impartial reasons, to begin making
ethical arguments. One cannot obtain a prescriptive or
normative statement—that is, a moral judgment—from a
descriptive statement. As Hume pointed out in one of the most
devastating, pithy claims in all of moral philosophy, an “is” is

not an “ought.” Natural Law rests on a mistake.
POWERFUL IDEAS: HOW DO YOU JUDGE?
There are three elements to consider in making a moral
judgment: the act in question, the consequences of that act, and
the moral agent, that is, the person performing that act. Which
do you think matters the most?
John Stuart Mill and the Utilitarians
Mill’s no-nonsense philosophy is behind most of today’s civil
rights, privacy rights, marriage equality, and reproductive rights
arguments. In his groundbreaking essay On Liberty, he points
out that over one’s own body and mind, one is sovereign, and no
government or individual has a right to interfere. Classical
utilitarianism, based on the ideas of Mill and others, is also
called consequentialism and encompasses three propositions.
First, in judging an action right or wrong, consider only the
consequences; nothing else matters. Second, is assessing those
consequences, consider only the amount of happiness or
unhappiness they bring; nothing else matters. Third, and this
remains perhaps the most controversial, the happiness of each
and every person affected by the action counts the same.
CONSEQUENCES MATTER?
Are the consequences of an act what matter the most in making
a moral decision? Would you call yourself a utilitarian? Why, or
why not?
Immanuel Kant and the Categorical Imperative
Are some things simply always right and some others wrong no
matter what? Kant’s philosophy is also called deontological,
from the Greek word for duty. There are actions that reason
shows us it is our duty to take, and actions that are always
wrong no matter what. Kant’s Categorical Imperative
revolutionized ethics and remain perhaps the most influential

uses of reason applied to moral matters: “Act only according to
that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it
should become a universal law,” and “Act so that you treat
humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another,
always as an end and never only as a means.” In other words,
don’t do something you wouldn’t want everyone else to do. And
don’t treat people as things, because you know better.
This theory has wide implications. For example, it is wrong to
kill innocent people and you would not want anyone to do
that—that would go against the categorical imperative that your
own reason shows you. So you can’t do it, even if the innocent
person is a terminal cancer patient experiencing excruciating
pain, even if it is you. The main argument against suicide today
is Kantian. The main argument favoring assisted suicide is
utilitarian: the consequences of the act are the end of suffering
for the person who is suffering, that is a good consequence that
it the patient’s choice, and no one else’s happiness or
unhappiness is affected directly in the same way.
Aristotle and The Ethics of Virtue
The oldest moral philosophy we have is in many ways still the
freshest. Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, tells us that ethics is
about “no small matter, but how we ought to live.” Three
generations after Socrates, around 325 BC, Aristotle in his
Nichomachean Ethics—the first full, comprehensive treatment
of the subject in the history of humanity—put this crucial
question not in terms of the right thing to do, but rather of the
right way to be: for Aristotle, ethics is a question of character.
The most desir- able character is that of a virtuous person
because, according to Aristotle, that person simply will fare
better in life. That is, a virtuous person in the long run is
likelier to be happy.
So What Is Virtue?

Aristotle defines it as a midpoint between two extremes, those
of excess and defi- ciency. For example, a generous person is
neither cheap nor extravagant. A coura- geous soldier is neither
reckless nor coward—to which Aristotle adds that “courage in
an unworthy cause is no courage at all.” These and other virtues
are cultivated by habit: no one is born friendly, industrious,
dependable, tactful, thoughtful, or tolerant. Just as it is only by
practicing and competing that one becomes a great Olympic ath-
lete, Aristotle mentions in one of his examples, it is only by
doing the things a virtuous person does that one becomes
virtuous. Loyalty, fairness, honesty, consideration, dis- cretion,
and even love all are things we learn only by doing and by
doing them well.
They are also qualities that are likelier to lead to a happy life.
The ethics of virtue has become a powerful force in current
moral debates. Particularly in an increasingly secular world, the
ethics of virtue provides common ground for dialog among
believers and nonbelievers alike, as among Jews, Chris- tians,
and Muslims—all of whom, incidentally, have been greatly
influenced by Aris- totle in matters of theology as well as in
ethics. Regardless of the source of one’s beliefs, it seems
eminently sensible to ask both what makes people happy and
what traits of character make for a good person. In other words,
it makes more sense to ask “What kind of person would do
this?” or “Would a good person do such a thing? than to ask “Is
this right? or “Is this wrong?”
Elizabeth Anscombe, a British philosopher known not only for
her neo-Kan- tian views but also for having gravitated toward
Aristotle near the end of her life, perhaps put it best in her 1958
Modern Moral Philosophy when she claimed that “The concepts
of obligation—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—
and of what is morally right and morally wrong, and of the
moral sense of ‘ought,’ ought to be jettisoned . . . . . It would be
a great improvement if, instead of ‘morally wrong,’ one always
named a genus such as ‘untruthful,’ ‘unchaste,’ ‘unjust.’.These,
Aristotle and his followers believe, all are things everyone

needs. That is, despite all our differences, we all want to be
happy, and we all can approach happiness by leading virtuous
lives.
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: DOING THE RIGHT THING
• MAKING AN ARISTOTELIAN MORAL ARGUMENT. —
Would a virtuous person do this? —What kind of person would
do this? —Would the kind of person I want to be do this?
• MAKING A KANTIAN MORAL ARGUMENT. —Am I
acting as if according to a maxim that I would will to become a
universal law? —Am I treating humanity, in my own person as
well as that of others, as
an end in itself and never as a means to an end?
MAKING A UTILITARIAN MORAL ARGUMENT.
—Consider the consequences of the act, not the act itself and
not the moral agent.
—Consider the amount of happiness or the elimination of
unhappiness those consequences bring. Nothing else counts.
—Everyone counts the same, if the consequences affect them
directly in the same way.
MAKING AN EXISTENTIALIST MORAL ARGUMENT.
—Whatever reasons you choose to back up your argument—and
any of the methods above can provide clear reasons that may be
impartially applied—never lose sight of the fact that it is you
who are choosing. Ethics is always, unavoidably and intensely
personal. It really is up to you to choose.
Ethics Is Always Personal
Aristotelian ethics plays well with others, and it has not only
gained ground among Kantians but also closed parallels in
existentialist ethics of ambiguity. This ambiguity is always

personal, and it is part of human existence.
POWERFUL IDEAS: LIFE HERE AND NOW
“From the moment he is born, from the instant he is conceived,
man begins to die . . . Man knows it. For him, this life that
makes itself by unmak- ing itself is not just a natural process; it
itself thinks itself. He affirms himself as pure interiority
against which no exterior power could take hold, and he also
submits himself as a thing crushed by the obscure weight of
other things” (S. de Beauvoir, Introduction to an Ethics of
Ambiguity)
The consoling metaphysics Beauvoir mentions in passing is
actually a couple of thousand years’ worth of moral philosophy,
from Aristotle to Kant and Mill, to this day. There is no such
thing as ethics in a vacuum, as Aristotle noticed in his
magisterial Nicomachean Ethics. Fond of using examples from
sports and the arts— there were good games in nearby Olympia,
after all, and Athens by all accounts had a fine theater scene—
Aristotle points of what virtues are needed to help lead athletes
and artists alike reach excellence in their chose fields.
According to Aristotle, we learn how to do something by doing
it well, and by doing it that way often enough that it becomes a
habit. Excellence in, say, playing the lyre requires many virtues
including talent, education, persistence, practice and more
practice and then actually showing up to play and play well.
Excellence in sports wants many of the same virtues, talent,
education, persistence, practice and more practice and then
actually showing up to play and play well. Lionel Messi,
arguably e world’s greatest football player, reached that goal of
excellence through years of training, persistence, practice, and
by making use of his talent by belonging to a great training
program and a great team. He also showed up, and he keeps
showing up, get- ting better and better—no one stays the same,
and that direction up or down is always personal as well as in

relation to material conditions. It is not what you mean to do or
what you able to do that counts for Aristotle. It is what you
actually do and do well.
In both sports and music, you also need equipment: the lyre
player needs a lyre; the football player needs a ball and a team.
Someone has to pay for these, and there the ethical question
becomes political: a good piano, for example, costs about
$30,000, and the most musically talented child may never reach
his or her potential as a great pianist if that piano is not
available. Who will pay for that? Who has the right to
opportunity—the young musician with the talent or the one with
the money? This particular element of the discussion is political
and is at the heart of the chapter that follows.
In ethics, Aristotle was among the first to notice the obvious but
often over- looked requirement talent, education, practice us to
happiness, and how excellence in any of the virtues is likelier
than its opposite to help anyone reach that happiness.
We are not alone here, we are with other people who themselves
are facing the same moral decisions.
“. . . This means that in establishing a certain conduct as a
possibility and precisely because it is my possibility, I am
aware that nothing can compel me to adopt that conduct. Yet I
am already there in the future, and in this sense there is a
relation between my future being and my present being. But a
nothingness has slipped into the heart of this relation. What I
am now is not the foundation of what I will be. I am the self
which I will be in the sense of not being it”
—Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness.
These hard questions don’t go away. Beauvoir and Sartre are
right in their phenomenological description of what goes on
when we make any moral decision. Moral pitfalls remain, too,

and this is itself a good reason to strive for as much clarity as
possible in making moral judgments. Different, sound moral
theories from Aristo- tle to this day alarmingly can lead to
different and often opposing ethical positions on specific ethical
problems in everyday life. There is in fact a lot to be said for
helping ourselves to these theories that have emerged over
millennia of moral philosophy. But the moral decision is still
yours to make, and the action is yours to take. Ethics is
personal, and it is definitely on you.
CHAPTER 12
There are various questions raised by rise of civilized society
and the formation of government. Governments are arranged in
various ways. Some governments have a single leader, elected
by no one while other governments are lead by leaders elected
by the citizens. The economic distribution and redistribution
also vary in a number of ways. In this chapter, we examine
some classic views on government as well as some
contemporary views on the notion of justice.
POWERFUL IDEA: SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT
Democracy—rule by the people, after Ancient Athens always
through elected officials.
Socialism—rule by the people, with its elected government
guaranteeing their welfare.
Monarchy—rule by a king. Oligarchy—rule by a group.
Theocracy—rule by religious leaders.
Despotism or Dictatorship—rule by someone who has seized the
government by force.

POWERFUL ANALYSIS: FREEDOM OR CONTROL?
What should the balance be between individual freedom, our
individual autonomy, and social control?
Natural Right’s Theorists: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Thomas Hobbes and John Locke both discuss their views on
political philosophy within a school of thought known as natural
rights theory. Natural rights are rights we have without a
government. They are rights that we have in virtue of our
humanity. Natural rights are akin to what we now call human
rights although there are important philosophical differences.
One key difference is that natural rights are argued to exist even
in the absence of government or civil society. Many of the
“human rights” argued for by groups like Amnesty International
or the United Nations are the rights that could only be held
within a civil society.
Often, when you hear people discussing human rights abuses,
they mean abuses of certain basic rights. Unlike the notion of
human rights (which can be rather muddled as various
organizations and groups define such rights in different ways),
natural rights have a long detailed history in philosophy. Rights
such as the right to life or the right to liberty are often argued
to be natural rights.
Natural rights are rights that people have without any
legislation or action by the government; some (such as Hobbes
and Locke) argue that they would exist even if there were no
government. These rights should be distinguished from positive
rights, which are created by an act of legislation by the
government. The government makes a law, and a right is
created. Dogs have positive rights. Even trees can have positive
rights so long as the government passes a law granting them
certain pro- tections. For example, at present, people living in
the state of Colorado have a right to smoke marijuana, whereas
no such right exists in the state of Florida. In Colorado, the

voters (by means of political process) have obtained the right—
a right which is not a natural right. Positive rights vary from
state to state and country to country.
There is no clear philosophical foundation for natural rights.
Writers such as Hobbes and Locke argued that natural rights
were granted by God. However, this view carries little
philosophical weight. It may simply be that there existence is
simply a basic supposition of political theory.
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: WHERE DO RIGHTS COME FROM?
We assume we have many rights, but where do our rights
originate? Do all of our rights come from the government?
Hobbes and Locke also argue for natural rights in the context of
the state of nature. The state of nature is a hypothetical
situation where mankind is living without any government.
Rousseau discusses the state of nature as well, but mainly to
criticize the conception of it presented by Hobbes and Locke.
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes was born in Wiltshire, on April 5, 1588. His
father was the vicar of a parish. He studied at Magdalen Hall in
Oxford entering the college with a firm grasp of both Greek and
Latin. He left Oxford in 1608 and became the private tutor for
the eldest son of Lord Cavendish of Hardwick (later known as
the Earl of Devonshire). He traveled with the Cavendish family
across Europe tutoring their young son. Given his connections
to the noble family, he had the opportunity to meet many of his
contemporary thinkers including Francis Bacon, Herbert of
Cherbury, and Ben Johnson.
In 1651, Hobbes published his most influential book, Leviathan.
Hobbes argues that the government can be seen as a great
creature (The leviathan, a mythical ser- pent) composed of the
citizens with the king as its head. Hobbes argued that the

government’s main purpose was the protection of people from
their own selfishness. A ruler with absolute authority was the
only one who could maintain peace.
Hobbes argues for this analysis of government by discussing the
state of nature. According to him, mankind was born into the
state of nature. As noted above, the state of nature is a
hypothetical situation where mankind is living with no
government. In such a situation, there is no one in charge to
make political or legal decisions. On Hobbes’ view, life in the
state of nature is “short, nasty, and brutish.” There are no arts
or letters, only a “war of all against all.” In this state, all people
have an equal right to everything. Right, in Hobbes’ view, is
equal to freedom, “the freedom, to do what he would, and
against whom he thought fit, and to possess, use and enjoy all
that he would or could get.”
Although we have a bare right to all, we also have two natural
rights. As Hobbes says, “The right of nature, which writers
commonly call jus natural, is the liberty each man hath to use
his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own
nature; that is to say, his own life, and consequently, of doing
anything which, in his own judgment and reason, he shall
conceive to be the most apt means thereunto.” In other words,
we are at liberty to do anything we must for the preservation
of our life.
On his view, the life of war ultimately becomes tiresome, for
even the strongest must sleep, and even then the weakest could
kill them. The constant fear of death and loss leads mankind out
of the state of nature. In order to leave the state of nature, we
must employ our natural reason, which he believes allows us to
be aware of two laws of nature. The laws of nature are to “seek
peace and follow it” and two, “be willing, were others are
willing to do so too, as far as needed for peace, and defense of
himself as he shall think it necessary, to lay down his right to
all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other
men, as he would allow against himself.” From these two laws
of natural reason, Hobbes concludes that all men should lay

down their bare right to everything and alienate all of their
rights to one individual, the sovereign.
Hobbes goes on to argue that once we form a social contract and
leave the state of nature, we are bound by the contract for
eternity. In other words, we may not revolt against the
government since we have promised to obey the sovereign.
The reality, of course, is that none of us where there when the
original social contract was formed, so it is unclear if we are
bound by the hypothetical/ historical oath.
Contemporary political philosophy may argue that although
many citizens may have never given express consent to be
governed, we give our tacit consent by remaining in the
country. Express consent is when a person actually states an
oath of allegiance or a promise to obey the government. Persons
that become naturalized citizens do this when they take an oath,
as do men whom are 18 years of age and fill out a draft card for
military service. Tacit consent is consent that is “unexpressed,
unspoken, unsaid, and implicit.” The fact that we remain
present in the country is taken are our tacit consent to obey its
laws and constitution.
John Locke
John Locke was born on August 29, 1632, in Warrington, a
village in Somerset, England. In 1668, he was elected as a
fellow of the Royal Society; in 1674, he gradu- ated as a
bachelor of medicine; and in 1675, he was appointed to a
medical student- ship at the college. Although he was formally
trained in medicine, he worked in a number of advisory
positions to high-level government leaders such as the Earl of
Shaftesbury who became Lord Chancellor in 1672.
Locke wrote his major political work, Two Treatises of Civil
Government in the 1680s, but in a time of political turmoil and
upheaval in England, the ideas and the works expressed were
thought to be revolutionary and contrary to royal authority.
Locke had to flee into exile in Holland during this period in his

life. The work was finally published in 1690. In the works he
puts forth his theory of natural law and natural rights in which
he makes a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate civil
governments. He also argues that there can be times when
revolution is justified. He argues that the reason the government
is established is to protect the life, liberty, and property of a
people. If these goals are not fulfilled by the government, then
rebellion is legitimate.
POWERFUL IDEAS: JOHN LOCKE AND THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION
John Locke had a powerful influence upon the American
Revolution. His ideas served as the basis for various documents
including the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson,
the author of the Declaration of Independence readily admitted
that he based it upon John Locke’s political philosophy. The
most obvious example found in the Declaration is the phrase,
“life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,” which mirrors Locke’
notion of the natural rights to “life, liberty and property.”
Locke’s philosophy provided a philosophical legitimacy for
the American Revolution and revolutions against tyrannical
governments everyone.
John Locke argues from the state of nature to the foundations of
political society. Locke’s conception of the state of nature
differs from Hobbes. He says that it is not a state of war but
rather, “Men living together according to reason, without a
common superior on Earth with authority to judge between them
is, properly, the state of nature.” Locke argues that we have
certain fundamental natural rights. We are endowed with these
rights even in absence of any government or political
association.
“The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say,
are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state
that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labor

with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby
makes it his property”
—John Locke, 1690, Two Treatises of Civil Government
Locke argues that mankind has three natural rights: life, liberty,
and property. He says that in the state of nature, we can acquire
property rights. He employs a notion known as the labor theory
of property. The labor theory of property, succinctly put, states
that if you work for something, and it is not already owned by
someone, then you acquire ownership of it. This is to be
distinguished from the theory of surplus value analyzed by
Karl Marx, which is discussed below.
Locke argues that because we can have property rights in the
state of nature, but we cannot adequately protect it, we ought to
enter into a civil government. On Locke’s view, we do not give
up all of our rights to the government rather the government has
a duty to protect us and our rights. Governments that fail to
protect our basic rights are illegitimate and we may revolt
against them.
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: THE STATE OF NATURE
Compare and contrast the various views of Hobbes and Locke
on the state of nature and natural rights.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau claims that both Hobbes and Locke
mischaracterize the state of nature. In a true state of nature,
man is not motivated by greed, envy, or acquisition of material
things. On Rousseau’s view, natural man (living in a true state
of nature) is motivated by love of self and only cares about self-
preservation. Natural man is not motivated by greed or love of
material goods. One does not see wild ani- mals wearing gold
and jewels. Even the higher primates do not acquire property—
so in Rousseau’s mind, a true state of nature would be mankind

living together in peace and harmony. He seems to assume there
would be enough resources for people to survive without war or
conflict, but in his view, that is a true and accurate represen-
tation of the state of nature.
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground,
bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people
simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil
society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how
many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved
mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and
crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you
are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong
to us all, and the earth itself to nobody”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754, Discourse on Inequality.
The state of nature presented by Hobbes and Locke is what
Rousseau calls pre-political man. Pre-political man has yet to
form a government but has been corrupted from the natural state
by the goals of acquisition of property and wealth. Ultimately,
mankind completely leaves its natural state and enters into civil
society once we move from the goal of self-preservation toward
the goal of acquiring property and wealth. At this point,
mankind becomes motivated by greed and corrupted by envy.
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man
thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave
than they are”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762, The Social Contract
Rousseau is highly critical of civil society. He is so critical in
fact that he began his literary career by entering (and winning)

an essay contest in which writers were supposed to applaud and
praise civilization by writing an essay expressing the exact
opposite views. He argued that morals had become corrupted by
science and technology and that mankind had placed too much
emphasis on logic at the expense of our natural senses and
feelings.
In regards to his political views, he argues that all of mankind
is in chains. He thinks we are all prisoners and slaves of the
government. We are controlled by laws, rules, and regulations
we did not impose on ourselves but rather that were imposed on
us from outside political forces and politicians. He thinks that
we can only be truly free when we are part of a direct
democracy. Direct democracy is the notion that each citizen has
an active role in the government and has an equal say and role
in the creation of laws. Given the fact that most countries have
millions or hundreds of millions of citizens, it seems to be a
very impractical (if not impossible) approach to governance.
Most democratic countries rely upon representative democracy.
Under such a system, the citizens vote for representatives that
represent their political interest.
Although Rousseau’s approach seems rather improbable, he
does argue that it would lead mankind toward freedom in that
we all would be executives and citizens at once. Each person
would be the government, and at the same time, subject to laws
of their own creation.
Rousseau continues his romantic idealism by maintaining that
under such a system, the people must be guided by the general
will. The general will is the opinion people will reach, if they
consider a matter objectively and determine what is best for
society as a whole (and are not swayed by their personal
interest). Rousseau believes that if given the unbiased facts,
everyone in a society could unanimously agree about what is the
correct course of action that will benefit the common good of
society.

In contrast to the general will, Rousseau discusses the dangers
of the will of all. The will of all is simply the will of the
majority, considering only their self- interest—not what is best
for society. At present, it would seem most political elec- tions
end in results which are motive by the will of all, not the
general will. The will of all is the will of the majority, it is
what the majority of people desire, it may not have the common
good of all society as its goal. This notion of rule by majority is
a serious problem for Rousseau, and in his view this leads to an
immoral government.
Social Justice, Equality, and Liberty
John Stuart Mill was a social reformer and proponent of liberty
and freedom. He worked to reform and revised Jeremy
Bentham’s statement of the ethical theory of utilitarianism and
was a precursor to libertarian ideals. In his essay On Liberty, he
argues that the limiting principle against positive legislations of
government is harm. The government must not extent into the
private affairs of its citizens except to stop harm to others. So,
the only legitimate laws according to Mill are laws that protect
you from others, but not from yourself.
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill puts forth a famous liberty
limiting principle that is known as “the Harm Principle.” This
principle is probably the most per- missive of the liberty
limiting principles. It says, in extended form, “ The sole end for
which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in
interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is
self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be
rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community,
against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good,
either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot
rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better
for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in
the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right . . .
The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is

amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part
which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right,
absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the
individual is sovereign.”
Libertarianism
John Hospers is a contemporary philosopher who argues for
libertarian views. Libertarians argue for a limited government,
one that has as its sole purpose, protection. Hospers states that
of the three types of laws that government enacts: 1) laws
protecting you from yourself, 2) laws protecting you from
others, and 3) laws making you help others, only the second
class of laws are legitimate. The other two are the result of
government superseding its bounds.
In his 1974 book, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Robert Nozick
argues for a modern libertarian view, similar to that of John
Hospers. Nozick argues for a minimalist state, one limited
whose sole purpose is to provide to protection to its citizens. He
maintains that citizens need protection from: force, fraud, and
breach of contract. In his view, a government, which acts like
more than a night-watchman, is infringing upon the rights and
liberty of its citizens. Nozick also defends a view known as the
entitlement notion of justice. Under this view, a person is
entitled to what they have rightly acquired, and justice consists
in each person’s retaining control over their acquisitions.
Justice as Fairness
John Rawls defined justice as fairness. He argues that everyone
ought to have the same basic liberties, and any social or
economic inequality ought to benefit the poor instead of the
rich. Inequality, say in taxes, ought to be at the expense of the
rich in order to benefit the poor. He argues that we would arrive
at these principles if we were in the original position. The
original position is a hypothetical situation where there is no
government.
He argues that these two principles are the guiding force behind

his conception:
1) Each person has an equal right to the most extensive scheme
of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of
liberties for all.
2) Social and economic inequalities are to meet two
conditions: they must be (a) to the greatest expected benefit to
the least advantaged; (b) attached to offices and positions open
to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity (A Theory
of Justice, 1971).
In the original position, each participant represents various
social groups that are present in society. In the original
position, each participant is under the veil of ignorance. The
veil of ignorance is a hypothetical thought experiment where
one is to imagine oneself as a representative of the populous as
a whole. Under the veil, you will be looking for guiding
principles of justice and begin to stipulate laws and regulations
for your government.
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: RAWLS VS. NOZICK
Compare and contrast the views of Rawls and Nozick on
Justice. Which, if any, seems to have a more reasonable notion?
Rawls believes that if you did not know if you were a man, a
woman, or a minor- ity, you would not create laws that benefit
one social group at the expense of another— since you are
ignorant of your social status and position. Given that you do
not know your race or your economic class, Rawls thinks that a
reasonable person in such a situation would adapt his strategy
of maximizing the situation of those in the least advanta- geous
social position. It is Rawls’ view that if one were to engage in
such a thought experiment, then you could develop the most fair
and just social principles and laws.

Powerful Thinkers: Karl Marx
Karl Marx (1818–1883) employs a dialectical analysis of history
to argue that because of the exploitation of the workers by the
capitalist will lead to a revolution of the workers, to socialism
where the pro- letariat’s interests and welfare will be
guaranteed by the state; and eventually to communism, where
the necessity for the state will dis- appear along with alienation
of labor from life. Simply put, according to Marx’s analysis of
society, it is not fair that the owners of business make all the
money and profit, when the workers are the ones actually
doing the work.
This notion is captured by his theory of surplus value. In this
theory, the harder you work for something, the more value it
has. In his mammoth 1863 Theories of Surplus Value, intended
as a fourth vol- ume of his revolutionary Capital, the value in
question is the difference between what it costs to have a
worker create a product with his labor and what price the
capitalist who owns the means of production can get for
whatever the worker creates. In Marx’s view, the owners of the
means of production do little but reap the rewards, and he
proposes that those actually performing the labor should earn
the money.
An anti-Marxist objection would suggest that Marx never spent
any time in a middle management position. There is no question
that day laborers work very hard, but perhaps the owner and
manager have some say in a business’s success. Furthermore,
the saying “work smarter not harder” may call this theory into
question from a reac- tionary point of view. You could work
very hard and struggle to climb a tree and pick a coconut,
whereas someone else could use a pole and knock the coconut
out of the tree with little effort, but at the end of the day, it is
just a coconut—it has limited value. The value of
objects does not vary in accordance with how hard you worked
to get or create the object in most cases. Marx’s point remains,

however, that whoever owns the coconut gets to eat or sell it for
a profit— whether he or she picked it or not.
It is important to note that Marx’s philosophy has little to do
with the way his views were put to revolutionary use after his
death. His early works in particular, from his 1841 doctoral
dissertation on Democritus (460–370 BCE) and Epicurus (341–
270 BCE) through The German Ideol- ogy (1845), The Poverty
of Philosophy (1847), and the Communist Mani- festo (1848)—
excerpted in this chapter—are primarily philosophical works
that are far from the so-called “scientific materialism” of later
developments in Marxism. Marx was not a materialist, though
his views are certainly ambiguous on this crucial ontological
issue. Marx’s later writings, which focus on the philosophical
foundations of political action, did provide Vladimir Illych
Lenin (1870–1924) the philosophical trappings of a practical
plan for what would prove to be tragic and ruth- lessly
opportunistic perversions of Marx’s own humanistic philosophy.
Criticism of what Marxism became after the Russian Revolution
has been strong and pointed, from philosophers as diverse as
Rosa Luxem- burg (1871–1919) in Leninism or Marxism? Georg
Lukacs (1885–1975) in the visionary History and Class
Consciousness; Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) in Reason and
Revolution and One-Dimensional Man, and Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905–1980) in The Ghost of Stalin and especially in his
posthumously published masterpiece of political philosophy
Critique of Dialectical Reason.
Making full use of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–
1831) dialectic method and his vision of the human being
constantly making and remaking himself, Marx in fact
anticipated much of today’s humanism in his own dialectical
philosophy. What Sartre called humanism in action is at the
heart of Marx’s vision, as the French philosopher explained in
his celebrated preface to Franz Fanon’s (1925–1961) 1961 The
Wretched of the Earth: “The demands of the least favored
members of society express the truth of a society,” Sartre
writes, “not least because their interests are often in clear

contradiction with the values espoused by that society itself.”
Marx ultimately believes in an egalitarian society, where
everyone is equal in social status. This type of humanism—
egalitarianism in action has yet to happen.
“We work for the betterment of mankind, not material gain.”
— Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: First Contact
It should be pointed out that Marxist socialist views of the role
of the state in guaranteeing the welfare of all citizens have
become the current state of affairs in many, if not most,
developed democracies: guaranteed free health care, guaranteed
retirement with dignity, free education for everyone, a lessening
rather than widen- ing gap in overall income, and heavy taxing
of capitalist interests in order to pay for these social guarantees
are more often the rule, not the exception, in post-World War II
Western Europe. If anything, Lenin’s Russian revolution of
1917, held back the cause of Marxism as Marx himself
envisioned it, and the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1989 is
leading to a re-examination of Marx’s ideas in the twenty-first
century.
Without doubt, socialism as Marx envisioned it has never been
realized under the tyrannies of self-described Marxist societies,
as Alan Ryan notes in “Socialisms” at the end of this chapter.
From the Soviet Union’s murderously influential Marxism–
Leninism and China’s Maoism with its bizarre transformation
into a state- capitalist hybrid, right through Cuba’s Castrismo
and Venezuela’s Chavismo during
and after the Chávez dictatorship, human rights, freedom, and
life with dignity are not valued in any of these governments any
more than well-planned economic development or general
happiness.
Perhaps humanism in action, that elusive egalitarian society for
which Karl Marx made the blueprint, has only been epitomized

in Star Trek: First Contact, where Captain Picard once said,
“We work for the betterment of mankind, not material gain.”
Ultimately, it is unfortunate but true that there is no agreement
regarding the structure, nature, and purpose of government.
History may be the ultimate judge of which systems work. It
may be the case that certain systems can thrive at certain times
and under certain social or cultural conditions.
SoWhatDoYouDoNow?
We are not alone here, and none of us lives in a perfect society.
No question is posed in a vacuum, and few answers are
perfectly clear when it comes to how to live and what to do. We
don’t in fact all work for the betterment of mankind, as
Captain Picard would want us to in Star Trek. If we think about
it, there is not a lot we can be sure of. In the meantime, we live,
here and now, always with others. It is no accident that
philosophy and democracy grew up side by side, that ethics in
ancient Athens was from the beginning discussed in the polis,
always leading to politics. These are not just theoretical
questions that philosophy is posing; these are powerful ideas
that can point our way. Philosophy matters, particularly amid
the balkanization of disciplines and fragmentation of learning
that are all too common. These are powerful ideas that lead us
away from isolation and toward the immense diversity all
around us.
So, what now? There is so much we don’t know. Philosophy as
the first learning discipline began with a thirst for knowledge.
Philosophy began by asking what life means, and that is still an
open question. It can be such a confusing and also fuzzy
question that some philosophers shy away from asking it. Still,
it seems like a perfectly good question, and it is your life after
all that you are asking about.
Perhaps you find meaning in believing in another life after this
one. Or not. Perhaps life has no meaning, as Albert Camus and
Jean-Paul Sartre have suggested, except whatever meaning we

create for ourselves. But, since we will all be dead in a hundred
years, what does it matter anyway?
“It is better for a private citizen to live on equal terms with his
fellows, and not to cringe and grovel or to hold his head too
high, and in public affairs to support peaceful and honorable
policies”
—Cicero
Maybe the meaning of life matters because we’re still here
living it. If a desire for immortality makes no sense to you,
maybe the meaning of life lies in a higher purpose, in living and
working with others, in loving. In being part of a family, of a
nation, and of humanity.
Powerful Ideas
Aristotle suggested that the purpose of human life is in fact
happiness, eudaemo- nia, not any quick-fix passing pleasure but
rather true happiness over an entire life. The post-Aristotelians
proposed more modest goals, such as Epicurus’s concept of
ataraxia, that is, freedom from worry. Concentrate on what
really matters to you and just relax.
“Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for
good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the
privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that
death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not
by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the
yearning after immortality”
—Epicurus

Still, what Marx called material conditions always have been
undeniable, and these conditions in fact place brutal limits on
your possibilities. Political philosophy can only guide you a bit
in affecting your situation in the here and now. What Marx
called material conditions always have been undeniable, and
these conditions in fact place brutal limits on your possibilities.
And what about suffering? According to both Buddhists and
existentialists, life is suffering. For the Buddhists, suffering
emerges from desire, so eliminating unneces- sary desire may
put us on the right path to happiness. For existentialists,
suffering and anguish are the flip side of blind faith. If indeed
we are alone here—alone with other people, that is—in a world
that will not give us any answers, then our situation is absurd.
What meaning can we find in that?
Perhaps we can find meaning amid all the absurdity. All this
philosophy seemingly has not led to clear answers so far. All
these big abstract questions about what is real and how we know
that, about how to love and what to do—none of these ever lead
to answers that are as clear as 2 + 2 + 4. Philosophy may not
give us clear answers, but isn’t it a great travel companion for
this life journey?
“There is no shame in choosing joy”
—Albert Camus
Powerful ideas for centuries, for millennia, have set us on an
intensely personal journey of discovery. “There is only one
serious philosophical question,” wrote Albert Camus, “and that
is suicide. Whether life is worth living or not amounts to
answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” Start with
that one and keep going.
As Camus describes the human condition in his Myth of

Sisyphus, we are all condemned to roll a rock uphill ceaselessly
and constantly, then we die. The catch here, and it’s a good one,
is that we can choose our attitude. We can choose to be happy.
No, we are not alone here. And it’s on us to make that happen.

Assignment 2: Sales Force Compensation
Due Week 4 and worth 150 points
For companies that have a mission of selling, a major objective
is to motivate the salespeople. While that are many factors that
go into motivating these people, one of the primary factors is
the compensation plan that describes how they will be rewarded.
Research a large organization’s sales force and its compensation
plan.
Write a five to seven (5-7) page paper in which you:
In order to motivate the sales force to produce the highest
number of clients, describe six (6) features of an effective total
rewards program.
Describe the behaviors of the sales force that are targeted with
the compensation plan.
Assess how a value proposition is achieved for current and
future employees in the plan you have outlined.
Based upon the type of plan you have created, indicate how
attracted you think future salespeople may be to this plan.
Use at least five (5) quality academic resources in this
assignment. Note: Wikipedia and other Websites do not quality
as academic resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size
12), with one-inch margins on all sides; references must follow
APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for
any additional instructions.
Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the
student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the
date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in
the required page length.
The specific course learning outcomes associated with this
assignment are:
Define total rewards and describe the advantages of a total
rewards approach.
Analyze an organization’s strategy, workforce, operating
environment, and key stakeholders to identify critical factors in
designing a total rewards strategy.
Use technology and information resources to research issues in
total rewards.
Write clearly and concisely about total rewards using proper
writing mechanics.
Grading for this assignment will be based on answer quality,
logic / organization of the paper, and language and writing
skills, using the following rubric.

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