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Paradigmatic Immorality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Justin Leiber
Justin Leiber*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y.
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Extract

  1. The notion of moral philosophy that has been dominant in Anglo-American philosophizing since G.E. Moore is peculiar. Reviewing traditional works such as Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Hume's Treatise, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and Mill's Utilitarianism, one is tempted to call this new notion of moral philosophy a different subject; and if one does this, it is less peculiar. However, let us accept that this new sort of moral philosophy does belong to the previous tradition; granted this, I shall explain why I think it peculiar through considering the status of the judgement that Hitler was a bad man.

  2. Consider the sentential function ‘x is (was) a bad man’. ‘Hitler’ seems an obviously suitable substitution for ‘x, at least in the most important sense. That is, one wants to say that if it is not proper or true to say that ‘Hitler was a bad man’ or ‘Hitler was bad’, it fs never proper or true to issue a sentence of this form, restricting x to human beings. Hitler seems indeed, in this most important sense, to be a paradigm case. One wants to say: if Hitler was not a bad man, who could be?

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , June 1975 , pp. 689 - 695
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1975

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References

1. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960.

2. In Moral Concepts, ed. Feinberg, J.. Oxford: The University Press, 1969, pp. 60–73.Google Scholar

3. Jonathan Bennett makes a somewaht similar comparison between Huckleberry Finn (as weak-willed rule-breaker) and Heinrich Himmler. See his ‘The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn’, Philosophy, April, 1974.

4. ‘How to Derive an “Ought” from an “Is” ’,Philosophical Review, 1964, pp. 43–58.

5. Nichomachean Ethics, iii. 1. 1110b. 30.

6. Through most human societies until quite recently slavery has been commonplace. I find it reasonable to maintain that most, if not all, societies where literal slavery has been practiced have not been tolerably moral. Similarly, what is one to say, for example, of China during the thousand years in which the mangling of women's feet was a nearly universal practice (a practice much the same in its effects as the use of ‘tiger cages’ in South Vietnamese prisons)?