7 - Ignorance, History, and Moral Membership

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This chapter begins with the assumption that there is little to be said morally in favor of many of the social practices of the past. Here, in particular, I have in mind the United States' shameful connections to the institution of slavery and, especially, the connections between this institution and many of our most revered leaders, leaders such as Thomas Jefferson. Atrocities committed against generations of human beings and the legal framework that made these atrocities possible remain on our collective conscience. But these past ethical failures are not the only ones I have in mind. My argument also draws on other criticizable aspects of our history – for example, our own society's treatment of women. Of course, practices of this moral turpitude are not limited to the United States or, for that matter, even to the West. However, I want to focus on the immoral social practices that will be most familiar to our leaders because my argument is ultimately one about how they ought to draw on these examples to negotiate the difficulties associated with the moral evaluation of present social practices. My claim, then, is that recognizing central features of our historical immorality has important implications for how contemporary leaders should respond to some of the most important moral problems they currently face. The main implication of this argument is that there are strong epistemic reasons against the kind of moral exclusiveness that characterizes leadership as it is ordinarily understood.