This book, by Peter Unger, I've just finished in a several-day spurt after it being unexpectedly recalled by the university library (I've had it out since late 2014) - is one of the hardest-hitting tracts on practical ethics I've ever read. Utilitarianism on steroids.
It opens with a simple factual statement: that a relatively small amount of money, sent by the reader (who is, in all likelihood, a relatively affluent American academic philosopher)* to a humanitarian charity, will be able to substantively extend the expected lifespans of tens or hundreds or thousands of children in developing countries. However, when readers encounter donation-requesting-leaflets from such charities, it is not widely considered morally reprehensible to ignore what, upon reflection, seems to present itself as an unshakable moral obligation. Unger goes on to develop an ethical position he calls Liberationism, whereby such obligations are laid bare through a thorough scouring of our responsive processes and painstakingly weedling out all the common psychological, social, and behavioural hurdles of irrationality (i.e. half-thunk excuses) that we have to learn to leap before we can join him in assenting to the Liberationist's ethical position.
This development of an admittedly extraordinarily challenging view of ethics is demonstrated at regular intervals by thought experiments, which Unger devised and threw out at a sample group of Moral Agents (i.e. people) to see how they responded, then comparing general responses about right and wrong behaviours to the Liberationist position. These thought experiments are varied and colourful - there are bombs rolling down hills, fat men in remote-controlled rollerskates, the spare and easily-hijacked yachts of selfish billionaires, and more innocent children tied to train tracks soon to be crushed under a runaway trolley than you could shake an envelope from UNICEF at - and ultimately do serve to demonstrate, develop and gradually expose the Liberationist ethic extremely well, also serving tangible detailed examples where the irrationalities of non-Liberationist ethics become murky or troubling. That's all I'll say about the content of the book: it's one the core message of which I am enthusiastically-but-shrewdly for, yet I would not recommend this book** - unless you're an academic philosopher (of course including students of this) who shares my fascination with altruism.
Nor do I have many particularly original reflective responses to the book. (However, it does fit nicely into my personal map of ideas, so prepare for a final paragraph chock-full of hyperlinks to old posts.) Liberationism is a strong ethical position, sure, but not too dissimilar from that advocated by someone whose moral teachings I take quite seriously - Jesus Christ (google him if you must).***
As a Christian, I believe the nature of God as purely good means that the entire of reality is structured around and toward goodness, including ethics, including socioeconomic justice as a necessary pursuit. But the nature of God's holy loving goodness so far surpasses our capacities to imitate (as explored beautifully by Kierkegaard here) that we are prone to blind spots; the ultimate blind spot is other people in need when our needs are our priorities - the fundamental tendency toward selfishness is innate to our brokenness, and corrupts our worldly understandings of good and right. Economics is a great starting point - despite having originated as a field with just as much moral concern as material, it is now largely unreliable, and at worst, the academic arm of neoliberal hegemony's ongoing reign. Neoliberalism is a philosophy that fundamentally feeds off the selfishness of the already-successfully-selfish, and then basically just kicks everyone else in the self-esteem their whole lives unless they strike lucky (and then probably even moreso). This means the person-level blind spots of the real needs of others (generally on a socioeconomic scale this whole element can just be referred to as 'the poor') are elevated to social-level blind spots, rampant poverty and inequality goes unaddressed, despite the obviousness of a solution - give them money. This book seeks to make the non-theistic philosopher's ethical case for the worrisome undeniability of such an obligation (which is also tried-and-tested one of the best ways to actually help). Our world's richest economies are living well beyond their means, using resources unsustainably to prop up grotesquely wonderfully convenient lifestyles while billions live precariously on the brink, and that brink is only growing nearer and less predictable given the economic-ecological crisis we face - I believe that richer nations have a duty to both massively reduce their own impacts and support less-developed neighbours in mitigating the worst of climate change and transitioning their economies through huge transfers of money to the poor (this idea comes from not-too-far down the degrowth rabbit-hole, see this and this). While making a lot of sense to me in a political-economic sense, it also neatly brings to bear the demand of Christian ethics on the way our economies operate - a demand that is radical, costly, and difficult, like Unger's, but there doesn't seem to be a way out of it but for irrationality or selfishness.
* Unger states this 'target audience' himself. This book is not written for the layman.
** He states himself that the purpose of the book is not to convince a general reader, as it would far more likely alienate them - he's trying to further the debate within academic philosophy, in the hope that straightforward hard-talking solutions such as his may bloom longer-term and lay the socio-cultural groundwork for radical economic altruism.
*** As I'm aware, readers may well just give up on a paragraph offering only my own opinions which have been hewn into the imperfect chambers of my worldview by many a book, conversation, or short period of time staring at walls; if you can't be arsed to read it, fair enough, and so as an alternative (or, if you did read it any only just got to this bit, consider it a reward), here's another Vulfpeck.
It opens with a simple factual statement: that a relatively small amount of money, sent by the reader (who is, in all likelihood, a relatively affluent American academic philosopher)* to a humanitarian charity, will be able to substantively extend the expected lifespans of tens or hundreds or thousands of children in developing countries. However, when readers encounter donation-requesting-leaflets from such charities, it is not widely considered morally reprehensible to ignore what, upon reflection, seems to present itself as an unshakable moral obligation. Unger goes on to develop an ethical position he calls Liberationism, whereby such obligations are laid bare through a thorough scouring of our responsive processes and painstakingly weedling out all the common psychological, social, and behavioural hurdles of irrationality (i.e. half-thunk excuses) that we have to learn to leap before we can join him in assenting to the Liberationist's ethical position.
This development of an admittedly extraordinarily challenging view of ethics is demonstrated at regular intervals by thought experiments, which Unger devised and threw out at a sample group of Moral Agents (i.e. people) to see how they responded, then comparing general responses about right and wrong behaviours to the Liberationist position. These thought experiments are varied and colourful - there are bombs rolling down hills, fat men in remote-controlled rollerskates, the spare and easily-hijacked yachts of selfish billionaires, and more innocent children tied to train tracks soon to be crushed under a runaway trolley than you could shake an envelope from UNICEF at - and ultimately do serve to demonstrate, develop and gradually expose the Liberationist ethic extremely well, also serving tangible detailed examples where the irrationalities of non-Liberationist ethics become murky or troubling. That's all I'll say about the content of the book: it's one the core message of which I am enthusiastically-but-shrewdly for, yet I would not recommend this book** - unless you're an academic philosopher (of course including students of this) who shares my fascination with altruism.
Nor do I have many particularly original reflective responses to the book. (However, it does fit nicely into my personal map of ideas, so prepare for a final paragraph chock-full of hyperlinks to old posts.) Liberationism is a strong ethical position, sure, but not too dissimilar from that advocated by someone whose moral teachings I take quite seriously - Jesus Christ (google him if you must).***
As a Christian, I believe the nature of God as purely good means that the entire of reality is structured around and toward goodness, including ethics, including socioeconomic justice as a necessary pursuit. But the nature of God's holy loving goodness so far surpasses our capacities to imitate (as explored beautifully by Kierkegaard here) that we are prone to blind spots; the ultimate blind spot is other people in need when our needs are our priorities - the fundamental tendency toward selfishness is innate to our brokenness, and corrupts our worldly understandings of good and right. Economics is a great starting point - despite having originated as a field with just as much moral concern as material, it is now largely unreliable, and at worst, the academic arm of neoliberal hegemony's ongoing reign. Neoliberalism is a philosophy that fundamentally feeds off the selfishness of the already-successfully-selfish, and then basically just kicks everyone else in the self-esteem their whole lives unless they strike lucky (and then probably even moreso). This means the person-level blind spots of the real needs of others (generally on a socioeconomic scale this whole element can just be referred to as 'the poor') are elevated to social-level blind spots, rampant poverty and inequality goes unaddressed, despite the obviousness of a solution - give them money. This book seeks to make the non-theistic philosopher's ethical case for the worrisome undeniability of such an obligation (which is also tried-and-tested one of the best ways to actually help). Our world's richest economies are living well beyond their means, using resources unsustainably to prop up grotesquely wonderfully convenient lifestyles while billions live precariously on the brink, and that brink is only growing nearer and less predictable given the economic-ecological crisis we face - I believe that richer nations have a duty to both massively reduce their own impacts and support less-developed neighbours in mitigating the worst of climate change and transitioning their economies through huge transfers of money to the poor (this idea comes from not-too-far down the degrowth rabbit-hole, see this and this). While making a lot of sense to me in a political-economic sense, it also neatly brings to bear the demand of Christian ethics on the way our economies operate - a demand that is radical, costly, and difficult, like Unger's, but there doesn't seem to be a way out of it but for irrationality or selfishness.
* Unger states this 'target audience' himself. This book is not written for the layman.
** He states himself that the purpose of the book is not to convince a general reader, as it would far more likely alienate them - he's trying to further the debate within academic philosophy, in the hope that straightforward hard-talking solutions such as his may bloom longer-term and lay the socio-cultural groundwork for radical economic altruism.
*** As I'm aware, readers may well just give up on a paragraph offering only my own opinions which have been hewn into the imperfect chambers of my worldview by many a book, conversation, or short period of time staring at walls; if you can't be arsed to read it, fair enough, and so as an alternative (or, if you did read it any only just got to this bit, consider it a reward), here's another Vulfpeck.
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