Claudia Card
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195145083
- eISBN:
- 9780199833115
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195145089.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter proposes, and illustrates, with the idea of gray zones, a more historically accurate conception of diabolical evil than the one rejected by Kant: the deliberate and successful pursuit of ...
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This chapter proposes, and illustrates, with the idea of gray zones, a more historically accurate conception of diabolical evil than the one rejected by Kant: the deliberate and successful pursuit of others’ moral corruption (as the serpent of Genesis does with Eve), rather than evil for evil's sake (Kant's view). Primo Levi described as “gray zones” the predicaments of prisoners in Nazi death camps who were selected to administer evils to other prisoners in exchange for reductions in or postponements of their own torture and who thereby faced choices between extreme suffering (or immediate and horrible death) and serious moral compromise; the deliberate creation of gray zones, this chapter argues, is a paradigm of diabolical evil. People in gray zones are forced to risk moral corruption in becoming implicated, by their own choices, in perpetrating on others’ evils that threaten to engulf themselves. Gray zones are marked by the presence of severe duress, combinations of evil and innocence, and lack of clarity of one's responsibilities, one's motivations, or what is morally justifiable, given one's options. Outsiders may be in no position to judge gray zone agents, but insiders face better and worse choices and sometimes hold each other accountable; refusing to abdicate responsibility for one's choices in a gray zone works to disrupt cycles of evil.Less
This chapter proposes, and illustrates, with the idea of gray zones, a more historically accurate conception of diabolical evil than the one rejected by Kant: the deliberate and successful pursuit of others’ moral corruption (as the serpent of Genesis does with Eve), rather than evil for evil's sake (Kant's view). Primo Levi described as “gray zones” the predicaments of prisoners in Nazi death camps who were selected to administer evils to other prisoners in exchange for reductions in or postponements of their own torture and who thereby faced choices between extreme suffering (or immediate and horrible death) and serious moral compromise; the deliberate creation of gray zones, this chapter argues, is a paradigm of diabolical evil. People in gray zones are forced to risk moral corruption in becoming implicated, by their own choices, in perpetrating on others’ evils that threaten to engulf themselves. Gray zones are marked by the presence of severe duress, combinations of evil and innocence, and lack of clarity of one's responsibilities, one's motivations, or what is morally justifiable, given one's options. Outsiders may be in no position to judge gray zone agents, but insiders face better and worse choices and sometimes hold each other accountable; refusing to abdicate responsibility for one's choices in a gray zone works to disrupt cycles of evil.
Barry Hoffmaster and Cliff Hooker
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780262037693
- eISBN:
- 9780262345637
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262037693.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
The new conception of rationality as non-formal reason is completed by an explanation of how design in engineering can be brought to the design of practical problems in ethics, from which the notion ...
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The new conception of rationality as non-formal reason is completed by an explanation of how design in engineering can be brought to the design of practical problems in ethics, from which the notion of ethics as design for flourishing is developed. The conventional notions of balancing and specification in applied ethics are rejected and replaced by two methods that use non-formal reason: fully engaged moral compromise and wide reflective equilibrium. A case depicts a disagreement between a nurse and a doctor in an intensive care unit that is resolved by a compromise that emanates from a process of deliberation among the staff. Reflective equilibrium was widely adopted into moral philosophy, and it quickly expanded into wide reflective equilibrium. Here it is further enhanced by adding the three features of liberation, extension, and enrichment. The upshot of these developments is a completed initial account of non-formal rationality with four resources, two specific methods, and a shift from principles to values.Less
The new conception of rationality as non-formal reason is completed by an explanation of how design in engineering can be brought to the design of practical problems in ethics, from which the notion of ethics as design for flourishing is developed. The conventional notions of balancing and specification in applied ethics are rejected and replaced by two methods that use non-formal reason: fully engaged moral compromise and wide reflective equilibrium. A case depicts a disagreement between a nurse and a doctor in an intensive care unit that is resolved by a compromise that emanates from a process of deliberation among the staff. Reflective equilibrium was widely adopted into moral philosophy, and it quickly expanded into wide reflective equilibrium. Here it is further enhanced by adding the three features of liberation, extension, and enrichment. The upshot of these developments is a completed initial account of non-formal rationality with four resources, two specific methods, and a shift from principles to values.
Ayala Fader
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780691169903
- eISBN:
- 9780691201481
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691169903.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of life you had ever known? This book tells the fascinating, often ...
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What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of life you had ever known? This book tells the fascinating, often heart-wrenching stories of married ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and women in twenty-first-century New York who lead “double lives” in order to protect those they love. While they no longer believe that God gave the Torah to Jews at Mount Sinai, these hidden heretics continue to live in their families and religious communities, even as they surreptitiously break Jewish commandments and explore forbidden secular worlds in person and online. Drawing on five years of fieldwork with those living double lives and the rabbis, life coaches, and religious therapists who minister to, advise, and sometimes excommunicate them, the book investigates religious doubt and social change in the digital age. The Internet, which some ultra-Orthodox rabbis call more threatening than the Holocaust, offers new possibilities for the age-old problem of religious uncertainty. The book shows how digital media has become a lightning rod for contemporary struggles over authority and truth. It reveals the stresses and strains that hidden heretics experience, including the difficulties their choices pose for their wives, husbands, children, and, sometimes, lovers. In following those living double lives, who range from the religiously observant but open-minded on one end to atheists on the other, the book delves into universal quandaries of faith and skepticism, the ways digital media can change us, and family frictions that arise when a person radically transforms who they are and what they believe. In stories of conflicts between faith and self-fulfillment, the book explores the moral compromises and divided loyalties of individuals facing life-altering crossroads.Less
What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of life you had ever known? This book tells the fascinating, often heart-wrenching stories of married ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and women in twenty-first-century New York who lead “double lives” in order to protect those they love. While they no longer believe that God gave the Torah to Jews at Mount Sinai, these hidden heretics continue to live in their families and religious communities, even as they surreptitiously break Jewish commandments and explore forbidden secular worlds in person and online. Drawing on five years of fieldwork with those living double lives and the rabbis, life coaches, and religious therapists who minister to, advise, and sometimes excommunicate them, the book investigates religious doubt and social change in the digital age. The Internet, which some ultra-Orthodox rabbis call more threatening than the Holocaust, offers new possibilities for the age-old problem of religious uncertainty. The book shows how digital media has become a lightning rod for contemporary struggles over authority and truth. It reveals the stresses and strains that hidden heretics experience, including the difficulties their choices pose for their wives, husbands, children, and, sometimes, lovers. In following those living double lives, who range from the religiously observant but open-minded on one end to atheists on the other, the book delves into universal quandaries of faith and skepticism, the ways digital media can change us, and family frictions that arise when a person radically transforms who they are and what they believe. In stories of conflicts between faith and self-fulfillment, the book explores the moral compromises and divided loyalties of individuals facing life-altering crossroads.
Barry Hoffmaster and Cliff Hooker
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780262037693
- eISBN:
- 9780262345637
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262037693.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
The ethics in this book is unique. It is not about philosophy’s moral theories and principles and their logical application. That standard conception of ethics is too simple, too spare, too abstract, ...
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The ethics in this book is unique. It is not about philosophy’s moral theories and principles and their logical application. That standard conception of ethics is too simple, too spare, too abstract, and ultimately too impersonal. Real moral problems are complex, contextual, and dynamic. They need to be framed, examined, and settled, and these constructions, analyses, and resolutions need to be rational. The normativity of this novel conception of ethics is embedded in judgment, which is ubiquitous in our lives, and good judgment emanates from rational processes of deliberation, that is, the ones that have been well designed. This book is about non-formal reason, a conception of rationality that subsumes formal reason, both logic -- deducing what ought to be done from moral principles -- and calculating optimal net benefits among options, but it is a more expansive, more creative conception of rationality. Re-reasoning ethics is about designing rational processes of deliberation that produce rational judgments in ethics and bioethics, as well as other domains such as science and our lives. In ethics it marks problem solving as deliberative design for human flourishing. This conception of ethics is unusual because it is grounded in the empirical realities of human beings and their worlds, and its naturalism takes rationality to be an empirical learnable, improvable deliberative skill. Given this orientation, the examples offered are real and drawn from anthropology and sociology. The ethics of this book is about the best that finite, fallible human beings can do and should do.Less
The ethics in this book is unique. It is not about philosophy’s moral theories and principles and their logical application. That standard conception of ethics is too simple, too spare, too abstract, and ultimately too impersonal. Real moral problems are complex, contextual, and dynamic. They need to be framed, examined, and settled, and these constructions, analyses, and resolutions need to be rational. The normativity of this novel conception of ethics is embedded in judgment, which is ubiquitous in our lives, and good judgment emanates from rational processes of deliberation, that is, the ones that have been well designed. This book is about non-formal reason, a conception of rationality that subsumes formal reason, both logic -- deducing what ought to be done from moral principles -- and calculating optimal net benefits among options, but it is a more expansive, more creative conception of rationality. Re-reasoning ethics is about designing rational processes of deliberation that produce rational judgments in ethics and bioethics, as well as other domains such as science and our lives. In ethics it marks problem solving as deliberative design for human flourishing. This conception of ethics is unusual because it is grounded in the empirical realities of human beings and their worlds, and its naturalism takes rationality to be an empirical learnable, improvable deliberative skill. Given this orientation, the examples offered are real and drawn from anthropology and sociology. The ethics of this book is about the best that finite, fallible human beings can do and should do.