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Altruism, Ingroups, and Fairness: Comments on Messick's “Social Categories and Business Ethics”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2020

Edwin M. Hartman
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Extract

In attacking utilitarianism Bernard Williams1 likes to consider the case of the man who has a choice of saving his wife or a stranger from drowning. Williams takes it as clear, and a problem for consequentialism, that the man has a moral obligation to save his wife. The relationship is a good thing without reference to consequences that one might suppose it requires if it is to be valuable.

David Messick suggests a consequentialist view of certain relationships—for example, those that create a limited altruism—that have survival value. Some kin relationships are like that; and insofar as they are, there is something to be said for them from a utilitarian point of view. Messick does not rest there, as his primary concern is fairness, but he does seem to hold that there is a utilitarian basis for valuing families and family ties. One need not be a sociobiologist to learn something about practical morality from the facts Messick adduces.

Type
Section IV
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue S1: The Ruffin Series Special Issue No.1 , 1998 , pp. 179 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © Business Ethics Quarterly 1998

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