FEMINIST ETHICS:

AN ALTERNATE VOICE

Feminism is a social and intellectual movement that, since its inception, has impacted nearly all
aspects of social life including but not limited to politics, economics, education, history, art, and
philosophy. Critical to feminism is the issue of gender equality and the dignity accorded to being a
woman. What these notions mean, however, have evolved and changed as feminism has assumed a
variety of forms since its early inception.

A feminist ethics...

As feminism applies to ethics, most ethical speculation in the Western world until the 1980s voiced
primarily what males had been propounding. The rise of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the
United States during the 1960s and 1970s, however, signaled a sea change in ethical discourse as
females voiced serious and scholarly challenges to those aspects of traditional Western ethics that
feminists viewed as depreciating or devaluing the experience of women while also neglecting the
historical contributions women have made to ethical discourse.

It is a challenging endeavor to identify precisely what makes an approach to ethics “feminist.” At a

surface level, this body of speculation would certainly be women-centered and focused primarily
upon women’s ethical experiences, as Gilligan (1992) noted. More substantively, however, feminist
approaches would be distinctive—and they are—by inquiring into power—issues of domination and
subordination in a social structure—before inquiring into what constitutes the good as this may be
expressed in virtues like justice and care, as ethical speculation in the Western world did until the
1980s. These distinctions sometimes make feminist ethics appear to be political in the sense that the
agenda proffered by feminist ethicists is committed, first and foremost, to eliminating women’s
subordination—and, in some instances, that of any other oppressed persons—in all of its
manifestations. Feminist ethics, then, seeks to subvert rather than to reinforce any systematic
subordination of women and other human beings.

In general, feminist ethics is the attempt: 1) to highlight the differences between how males and
females experience and interpret their respective situations in life (e.g., biologically, socially,
culturally); 2) to provide strategies for human agents to deal with the dilemmas arising in the private
as well as in public spheres; and, 3) to deconstruct any ethic and ethical conduct that bolsters any
systematic subordination of women and other human beings. In short, feminist approaches to ethics
have the goal of creating gender-equal rather than gender-neutral ethics, that is, an ethical theory
which generates non-sexist ethical principles, policies, and practices for both females and males
(Card, 1991).

A very brief history of feminist ethics...

Although feminist ethics grew in popularity in the 1980s, its emergence in scholarly circles was not
simply a consequence of the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Debates about
the allegedly gendered nature of ethics can be traced back at least to the 18th century.

Mary Wollstonecraft, for example, reflected deeply about what makes a character good and a
personality socially acceptable. Like ethicists before her, Wollstonecraft prized the ability to reason
more highly than feelings which, she believed, distinguished human beings—not simply males—from
brute animals. In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Wollstonecraft (1988) concluded that, if
women are to be regarded as ethical creatures, they should also display the psychological traits
usually associated with virtuous men.

The 19th century utilitarian philosopher, John Stuart Mill, concurred that gender should define neither
virtue nor intellectual prowess. Arguing that society had set up a double standard which not only
assessed ethics and ethical conduct differently for women and men but also specified and imposed
upon women a set of virtues and intellectual powers which served only to re-enforce society’s
patriarchal structure, Mill argued that female “virtue” was not something unique to females but,
instead, something society imposed upon women. In The Subjection of Women, Mill (1970) argued
that to praise women on account of their virtue was to dictate that a woman’s worth is to be
discovered in living for and sacrificing for others, to give and not to receive in return, to submit, yield,
and obey, as well as to be long-suffering. Like Wollstonecraft, Mill believed one set of virtues must
apply equally to both women and men. The set of virtues advocated by Mill, however, contained the
psychological traits commonly associated with men.

While it may be asserted that Mill was an early forerunner or proponent of what later would be called
"feminist ethics," it would later be argued that this was not the case. Why? Because Mill was male.
By virtue of this fact, he could more articulate a feminist ethic than any other male in that males
possess no experience of or ability to interpret a female's experience from a female's perspective.

Given this critique, one early forerunner of feminist ethics might be Catherine Beecher who rooted her
reflections in a “separate but equal” theory of virtue which insisted that male and female virtues are
different. She viewed the home and the woman’s central role in it as absolutely essential not only for
the well being of society but also the construction of a better society. Together with her sister,
Harriet, Catherine described the discipline of “domestic science” in The American Woman’s Home
(1971) which required a different yet equally demanding kind of intelligence and skill as well as kind of
virtue than that required in the public sphere of politics, commerce, and finance.

Building upon this notion, most feminist ethicists during the 20th century considered ethics to be
gendered. Rejecting the assumptions that autonomy develops and strengthens the sense of self and
that rationality mirrors reality best, feminist ethicists generally embraced two different assumptions.
The first is that relationships—“connectedness” with others—develop and strengthen the sense of
self. The second assumption is that the more particular, concrete, partial, and emotional knowledge
is, the more likely it is to represent reality as it truly is.

In Feminist Ethics, Alison Jaggar (1992) perhaps best summarizes the feminist position in ethical
speculation as it developed during the 20th century, asserting that traditional Western ethics failed
women in five inter-related ways. First, this body of ethical speculation has demonstrated little
concern for women’s as opposed to men’s interests and rights. Second, traditional Western ethics
dismissed as ethically uninteresting the problems arising in the “private world,” the realm in which
women cook, clean, and care for the young, the aged, and the sick. Third, this body of thought
implies (at a minimum) that, on the average, women are not as ethically developed as men. Fourth,
traditional Western ethics prizes culturally masculine traits (e.g., independence and autonomy, mind
and rationality, culture and transcendence, war and death) and exhibits little regard for culturally
feminine traits (e.g., interdependence and community, body and emotion, nature and immanence,
peace and life). Fifth, this body of ethical speculation favors culturally masculine approaches to
ethical reasoning which emphasize rules, universality, and impartiality over culturally feminine ways
of ethical reasoning which emphasize relationships, particularity, and partiality. The culprit? Jaggar
points the finger of blame directly at traditional Western ethics.

Some feminist ethical theories...

Arguably the most influential feminist ethicist, Carol Gilligan, has stressed that traditional Western
ethical theory is deficient to the degree that it lacks, ignores, trivializes, or demeans those traits of
personality and virtues of character culturally associated with women. In a book in which she reports
her study of how 80 men and women reacted to various hypothetical situations, In a Different Voice
(1982), Gilligan discovered that women more often focus upon “care” while men focus upon “justice.”

The “care orientation” focuses upon emotional relationships of attachment and networks of concrete
relationships, connections, loyalties, and circles of concern whereas the “justice orientation” focuses
upon equality, impartiality, universality, rules, and rights. While agents operating from the care
orientation view human beings as so interdependent as to blur the boundaries demarcating them
from one another, agents operating from the justice orientation are obsessed with the individual’s
autonomy and inclined to think of human beings in the most abstract way possible. Gilligan does not
insist, however, that the care orientation is superior to the justice orientation.
Yet, Gilligan did assert that women are different than men and the “ears” of traditional Western
ethicists have been attuned to male rather than female ethical “voices.” American society, she
argued, muffles boys’ and men's sensitivity and encourages them to be less than caring and fully
nurturing human beings. In contrast to this generation’s women who speak the ethical language of
justice and rights nearly as fluently as the ethical language of care and relationship, Gilligan argued
that this generation’s boys and men are largely unable to articulate their ethical concerns in anything
other than the moral language of justice and rights.

Reflecting five years later upon her research, Gilligan summarized what she believed are its lasting
impacts. She wrote that her research

…shift[s] the focus of attention from ways people reason about hypothetical dilemmas
to ways people construct [ethical] conflicts and choice in their lives…and [makes] it
possible to see what experiences people define in [ethical] terms, and to explore the
relationship between the understanding of [ethical] problems and the reasoning
strategies used and the actions taken in attempting to solve them. (1988, p. 21)

For her part, Nell Noddings (1984) has argued for the development of a feminine relational ethics of
“caring.” Caring is not about simply feeling favorably disposed toward people with whom one has no
concrete connection. In Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, Noddings
asserted that authentic care requires actual encounters with specific individuals—the “one-caring”
and the one “cared-for”—something that cannot be accomplished through an agent’s good intentions
alone. Women have an innate and immensely powerful sentiment of care as is evidenced in their
unflinching care for their infants (p. 247), Noddings insisted, and the feelings of ethical obligation
women experience emanate from this innate sentiment. Children also act from a natural form of
caring that moves them to assist others simply because they want to. But, as children mature,
society distorts what children want to do, making it harder for them to care. And, when they do care,
“the deliberateness of ethical caring” supplements the spontaneity of natural caring. The latter is
better than the former and, according to Noddings, the condition of its possibility.

The critics...

Like all ethical theories, feminist ethics has its share of critics. Perhaps this is an indication of the
importance this body of speculation has assumed in recent decades.

Some critics—especially non-feminist critics—focus upon the relationship between justice and care,
considered as two, gender-neutral ethical perspectives. These critics assert that even if care is an
ethical virtue and not simply a pleasing psychological trait human beings can cultivate, care is a less
essential ethical virtue than is the virtue of justice. Furthermore, when justice and care conflict,
impartiality must trump partiality. Why? Because no one’s fundamental rights and basic needs are
neither more nor less important than are any other else’s fundamental rights and basic needs.

To clarify this criticism, consider the following argument.

It logically stands to reason that in genuine cases of need agents would be better off if they were to
act out of general ethical principles (e.g., to provide assistance to the poor) than out of feelings of
care. Why? Because, in reality, principles are more reliable and less ephemeral than feelings are.
Many people in the South felt positively about the institution of slavery during the 17th, 18th, and 19th
centuries. Ethically speaking, was it truly a "good" thing simply because people felt that way about
it?

In addition, because feminist ethics focus upon power and how power is used to oppress women in
particular, non-feminist critics assert that these approaches are “female-biased.” These critics insist
that ethics cannot proceed from a particular standpoint as Rawls has argued (1999, 2000)—for
example, from the standpoint of women—and be regarded as ethics. For centuries, traditional
Western ethics has proceeded from the assumption that its values and principles must apply to all
persons equally. From this perspective, it is a misguided venture—and, an injustice—to construct an
ethical program that deliberately targets a specific group of people and, in turn, to generalize that
program to include all people for all times and in all places. Yet, isn't that exactly the assumption
feminist ethics is constructed upon, namely, to talk about women's experiences as a monolith?

Other critics—especially feminist critics—focus upon the fact that women are associated culturally
with care and men are associated culturally with justice. If women care “better” than men, it may be
epistemically, ethically, and politically imprudent to associate women with the virtue of care. Linking
women and caring promotes the view that because women care, they should care no matter the cost
to themselves. In a patriarchal society, care would be dangerous to women, part of the problem
rather than its resolution (Mullet, 1988).

Claudia Card (1991) has also explored some of the problems associated with the relational and caring
orientation of feminist ethics. She asked: Which of my relationships with others underwrite my
ethical duties toward them? After all, isn’t it fact that people with whom an agent has an emotional
relationship comprise only a tiny fraction of the people in the world? Shouldn’t one’s ethical
obligations extend beyond that tiny fraction (pp. 257-258)? Card also worried that a caring
relationship can become abusive to one or both parties (p. 259).

Lastly, empirical research first conducted by Blasi (1980), and later substantiated by Rest (1986) as
well as Stewart and Sprinthall (1994), which utilized psychometric instruments designed to test
Kohlberg's (1984) theory, indicated no bias against women. In fact, women appear to perform
similarly—and oftentimes better—than males when responding on the instrument. Women utilize
principled thinking to support ethical conduct, undercutting the feminist argument that "care"
supersedes "justice" in women's ethical decision making.

In summary...

Feminist ethics is a body of philosophical speculation that, from diverse perspectives, purports to
validate women’s different ethical experiences and to identify the weaknesses and strengths of the
values and virtues culture traditionally has labeled “feminine.” There are, for example, liberal,
Marxist, radical, socialist, multicultural, global, and ecological feminists who have offered various
explanations and sometimes conflicting solutions to the problems posed by the differences between
the sexes and as these are purported to resolve the value conflicts embedded in contemporary ethical
dilemmas. In addition, there are existentialist, psychoanalytic, cultural, and postmodern feminists
who seek the destruction of all systems, structures, institutions, and practices that create or maintain
invidious power differentials between men and women. And that is to say nothing about lesbian
ethics which emphasize how ethical value emerges from what Hoagland (1989) has called “energy
field capable of resting oppression” where lesbians model for others the kind of human beings who
refuse to participate in anything other than egalitarian relationships.

Feminist ethics suggest several paths women can walk, each of which is alleged to lead toward the
singular goal of an all women-centered ethics, namely, the elimination of gender inequality and the
liberation of women (and perhaps all other human beings) from any subjugation to a lesser form of
human dignity. In general, all feminist ethics require an agent to listen first to others’ divergent points
of view and, then, to develop an ethical theory and practice which will, despite the shortcomings of
each, help as many women as possible move toward the goal of gender equality with men.

Lacking an appropriate theological base, the feminist critique of previous ethical theories is not as
strong as it could be. For example, the Christian theology of the Trinity provides one such base. As
Ratzinger (1990) has noted, St. Augustine's discussion concerning the Trinity is rooted in something
that feminist ethics is very interested in, namely, an understanding about human beings and their
relations to one another. Ratzinger argues:

...the three persons that exist in God are in their nature relations. They are, therefore,
not substances that stand next to each other, but they are real existing relations, and
nothing besides. I believe this idea of the late patristic period is very important. In
God, person means relation. Relation, being related, is not something superadded to
the person, but it is the person itself. In its nature, the person exists only as relation.
Put more concretely, the first person does not generate in the sense that the act of
generating a Son is added to the already complete person, but the person is the deed
 of generating, of giving itself, of streaming itself forth. The person is identical with this
act of self-donation. One could thus define the first person as self-donation in fruitful
knowledge and love.... (p. 439)

Absent this appropriate theological basis, feminist ethics succumbs to the trap into which the
Enlightenment project is ensnared, that is, a sterile and rugged individualism that ultimately ends in
alienation. Understanding the human person as a relational being, one who is by nature intrinsically
related to other human persons and discovers oneself in relation to other persons, provides the most
appropriate foundation for a feminist ethics that offers the hope and promise of overcoming sterile
individualism—the "autonomous person"—that ends in alienation.

ant's philosophy is generally designated as a system of transcendental criticism tending towards Agnosticism in theology,
and favouring the view that Christianity is a non-dogmatic religion.

Immanuel Kant was born at Königsberg in East Prussia, 22 April, 1724; died there, 12 February, 1804. From his
sixteenth to his twenty-first year, he studied at the university of his native city, having for his teacher Martin Knutzen,
under whom he acquired a knowledge of the philosophy of Wolff and of Newton's physics. After the death of his father
in 1746 he spent nine years as tutor in various families. In 1755 he returned to Königsberg, and there he spent the
remainder of his life. From 1755 to 1770 he was Privatdozent (unsalaried professor) at the University of Königsberg. In
1770 he was appointed professor of philosophy, a position which he held until 1797.

It is usual to distinguish two periods of Kant's literary activity. The first, the pre-critical period, extends from 1747 to
1781, the date of the epoch-making "Kritik der reinen Vernunft"; the second, the critical period, extends from 1781 to
1794.

The pre-critical period

Kant's first book, which was published in 1747, was entitled "Gedanken von der wahren Schatzung der lebendigen
Kräfte" (Thoughts on theTrue Estimation of Living Forces). In 1775 he published his doctor's dissertation, "On Fire" (De
Igne), and the work "Principiorum Primorum Cognitionis Metaphysicae Nova Dilucidatio" (A New Explanation of the
First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge), by which he qualified for the position of Privatdozent. Besides these, in
which he expounded and defended the current philosophy of Wolff, he published other treatises in which he applied that
philosophy to problems of mathematics and physics. In 1770 appeared the work "De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis
Formis et Principiis" (On the Forms and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World), in which he shows for the
first time a tendency to adopt an independent system of philosophy. The years from 1770 to 1780 were spent, as Kant
himself tells us, in the preparation of the "Critique of Pure Reason".

The critical period

The first work of Kant in which he appears as an exponent of transcendental criticism is the "Critique of Pure Reason"
(Kritik der reinen Vernunft), which appeared in 1781. A second edition was published in 1787. In 1785 appeared the
"Foundation for the Metaphysics of Ethics" (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten). Then came asuccession of critical
works, the most important of which are the "Critique of Practical Reason" (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft ), the
"Critique of Judgment" (Kritik der Urtheilskraft, 1790), and "Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason" (Religion
innerhalb der Grenzen der blossenVernunft, 1793). The best editions of Kant's complete works are Hartenstein's second
edition (8 vols., Leipzig, 1867-69), Rosenkranz and Schubert's (12 vols., Leipzig, 1834-42), and the edition which is
being published by the Academy of Sciences of Berlin (Kants gesammelte Schriften, herausg. von der königlich
preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902-).

During the period of his academic career, extending from 1747 to 1781, Kant, as has been said, taught the philosophy
then prevalent in Germany, which was Wolff's modified form of dogmatic rationalism. That is to say, he made
psychological experience to be the basis of all metaphysical truth, rejected skepticism, and judged all knowledge by the
test of reason. Towards the end of that period, however, he began to question the solidity of the psychological basis of
metaphysics, and ended by losing all faith in the validity and value of metaphysical reasoning. The apparent
contradictions which he found to exist in the physical sciences, and the conclusions which Hume had reached in his
analysis of the principle of causation, "awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber" and brought home to him the necessity
of reviewing or criticizing all human experience for the purpose of restoring the physical sciences to a degree of certitude
which they rightly claim, and also for the purpose of placing on an unshakable foundation the metaphysical truths which
Hume's skeptical phenomenalism had overthrown. The old rational dogmatism had, he now considered, laid too much
emphasis on the a priori elements of knowledge; on the other hand, as he now for the first time realized, the empirical
philosophy of Hume had gone too far when it reduced all truth to empirical or a posteriori elements. Kant, therefore,
proposes to pass all knowledge in review in order to determine how much of it is to be assigned to the a priori, and how
much to the a posteriori factors, if we may so designate them, of knowledge. As he himself says, his purpose is to
"deduce" the a priori or transcendental, forms of thought. Hence, his philosophy is essentially a "criticism", because it is
an examination of knowledge, and "transcendental", because its purpose in examining knowledge is to determine the a
priori, or transcendental, forms. Kant himself was wont to say that the business of philosophy is to answer three
questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope for? He considered, however, that the answer to the
second and third depends on the answer to the first; our duty and our destiny can be determined only after a thorough
study of human knowledge.

It will be found most convenient to divide the study of Kant's critical philosophy into three portions, corresponding to the
doctrines contained in his three "Critiques". We shall, therefore, take up successively (1) the doctrines of the "Critique of
Pure Reason"; (2) the doctrines of the "Critique of Practical Reason"; (3) the doctrines of the "Critique of the Faculty of
Judgment".

"Critique of Pure Reason"

In accordance with his purpose to examine all knowledge in order to find what is and what is not a priori, or
transcendental, that is anterior to experience, or independent of experience, Kant proceeds in the "Critique of Pure
Reason" to inquire into the a priori forms of (a) sensation, (b) judgment, and (c) reasoning.

A. Sensation

The first thing that Kant does in his study of knowledge is to distinguish between the material, or content, and the form,
of sensation. The material of our sense-knowledge comes from experience. The form, however, is not derived through
the senses, but is imposed on the material, or content, by the mind, in order to render the material, or content, universal
and necessary. The form is, therefore, a priori; it is independent of experience. The most important forms of sense-
knowledge, the conditions, in fact, of all sensation, are space and time. Not only, then, are space and time mental entities
in the sense that they are elaborated by the mind out of the data of experience; they are strictly subjective, purely mental,
and have no objective entity, except in so far as they are applied to the external world by the mind.

Because of what is to follow, it is important to ask at this point: Do the a priori forms of sensation, since they admittedly
enhance the value of sense-knowledge by rendering it universal and necessary, extend the domain of sense-knowledge,
and carry us outside the narrow confines of the material, or data, of the senses? Kant holds that they do not. They affect
knowledge, so to speak, qualitatively, not quantitatively. Now, the data of sensation represent only the appearances
(Erscheinungen) of things; therefore all sensation is confined to a knowledge of appearances. Sense-knowledge cannot
penetrate to the noumenon, the reality of the thing (Ding-an-sich).

B. Judgment

(b) Taking up now the knowledge which we acquire by means of the understanding (Verstand), Kant finds that thought
in the strict sense begins with judgment. As in the case of sense-knowledge, he distinguishes here the content and the
form. The content of judgment, or in other words, that which the understanding joins together in the act of judgment, can
be nothing but the sense-intuitions, which take place, as has been said, by the imposition of the forms of space and time
on the data of sensation. Sometimes the sense-intuitions (subject and predicate) are joined together in a manner that
evidently impliescontingency and particularity. An example would be the judgment, "This table is square." With
judgments of this kind the philosopher is not much concerned. He is interested rather in judgments such as "All the sides
of a square are equal", in which the relation affirmed to exist between the subject and the predicate is necessary and
universal. With regard to these, Kant's first remark is that their necessity and universality must be a priori. That nothing
which is universal and necessary can come from experience is axiomatic with him. There must, then, be forms of
judgment, as there are forms of sensation, which are imposed by the understanding, which do not come from experience
at all, but are a priori. These forms of judgment are the categories. It is hardly necessary to call attention to the contrast
between the Kantian categories and the Aristotelean. The difference is fundamental, a difference in nature, purpose,
function, and effect. The important point for the student of Kant is to determine the function of the categories. They
serve to confer universality and necessity on our judgments. They serve, moreover, to bring diverse sense-intuitions
under some degree of unity. But they do not extend our knowledge. For while representations (or intuitions) without the
categories would be blind, the categories without representative, or intuitional, content, would be empty. We are still
within the narrow circle of knowledge covered by our sense-experience. Space and time do not widen that circle; neither
do the categories. The knowledge, therefore, which we acquire by the understanding is confined to the appearances of
things, and does not extend to the noumenal reality, the Ding-an-Sich.

It is necessary at this point to explain what Kant means by the "synthetic a priori" judgments. The Aristotelean
philosophers distinguished two kinds of judgments, namely, synthetic judgments, which are the result of a "putting-
together" (synthesis) of the facts, or data, of experience, and analytic judgments, which are the result of a "taking-apart"
(analysis) of the subject and predicate, without immediate reference to experience. Thus, "This table isround" is a
synthetic judgment; "All the radii of a circle are equal" is an analytic judgment. Now, according to the Aristoteleans, all
synthetic judgments are a posteriori, because they are dependent on experience, and all analytic judgments are a priori,
because the bond, or nexus, in them is perceived without appeal to experience. This classification does not satisfy Kant.
He contends that analytic judgments of the kind referred to do not advance knowledge at all, since they always "remain
within the concepts [subject and predicate] and make no advance beyond the data of the concepts". At the same time he
contends that the syntheticjudgments of the Aristoteleans have no scientific value, since, coming as they do from
experience, they must be contingent and particular. Therefore he proposes to introduce a third class, namely, synthetic a
priori judgments, which are synthetic because the content of them is supplied by a synthesis of the facts of experience,
and a priori, because theform of universality and necessity is imposed on them by the understanding independently of
experience. An example would be, according to Kant, "Every effect must have a cause." Our concepts of "effect" and
"cause" are supplied by experience; but the universality and necessity of principle are derived from the a priori
endowment of the mind. The Aristoteleans answer, and rightly, that the so-called synthetic a priori judgments are all
analytic.

C. Reasoning

In the third place, Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" is occupied with the reasoning faculty (Vernunft). Here "ideas" play
a role similar to that played in sensation and judgment by space and time and the categories, respectively. Examining the
reasoning faculty, Kant finds that it has three distinct operations, namely, categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive
reasoning. To these, he says, correspond the three "ideas", the idea of the soul as thinking subject (psychological idea),
the idea of matter as the totality of phenomena (cosmological idea), and the idea of God as the supreme condition of all
reality (theological idea). He first takes up the idea of the soul, and, examining the course of reasoning of the
psychologist who teaches the substantiality, immateriality, and immortality of the human soul, he pronounces that line of
philosophical thought to be fallacious, because it starts with the false supposition that we can have an intuitive
knowledge of the soul as the substantial subject of conscious states. This, he claims, is an erroneous supposition, for,
while we can and do know our conscious states, we cannot know the subject of them. Rational psychology, then, makes
a wrong start; its way is full of contradictions; it does not conclusively establish the immortality of the soul. Next, Kant
subjects the cosmological idea to a similar analysis. He finds that as soon as we begin to predicate anything concerning
the ultimate nature of matter we fall into a whole series of contradictions, which he calls "antinomies". Thus, the
propositions, "Matter has a beginning", "The world wascreated", are apparently no more true than their contradictories,
"Matter is eternal", "The world is uncreated." To every thesis regarding the ultimate nature of the material universe an
equally plausible antithesis may be opposed. The conclusion is that by pure reason alone we cannot attain a knowledge
of the nature of the material universe. Finally, Kant takes up the theological idea, the idea of God, and criticizes the
methods and arguments of rational theology. The speculative basis of our belief in the existence of God is unsound he
says, because the proofs brought forward to support it are not conclusive. St. Anselm's ontological argument tries to
establish an existential proposition without reference to experience; it confounds the order of things with the order of
ideas. The cosmological argument carries the principle of causality beyond the world of sense-experience, where alone it
is valid. And the physico-theological argument from design, while it may prove the existence of an intelligent designer,
cannot establish the existence of a Supreme Being. Kant, of course, does not deny the existence of God, neither does he
deny the immortality of the soul or the ultimate reality of matter. His aim is to show that the three ideas, or, in other
words, speculative reasoning concerning the soul, the universe, and God, do not add to our knowledge. But, although the
ideas do not extend our experience, they regulate it. The best way to think about our conscious states is to represent them
as inhering in a substantial subject, about which, however, we can know nothing. The best way to think of the external
world is to represent it as a multiplicity of appearances, the ground of which is an unknowable material something; and
the best way to organize and systematize all our knowledge of reality is to represent everything as springing from one
source, governed by one law, and tending towards one end, the law, the source, and the end being an unknown and
(speculatively) unknowable God. It is very easy to see how this negative phase of Kant's philosophy affected the
subsequent course of philosophic thought in Europe. The conclusions of the first "Critique" are the premises of
contemporary Agnosticism. We can know nothing except the appearances of things; the senses reach only phenomena;
judgment does not go any deeper than the senses, so far as the external world is concerned; science and philosophy fail
utterly in the effort to reach a knowledge of substance (noumenon), or essence, and the attempts of metaphysics to teach
us what the soul is, what matter is, what God is, have failed and are doomed to inevitable failure. These are the
conclusions which Kant reaches in the "Critique of Pure Reason"; they are the assumptions of the Agnostic and of the
Neo-Kantian opponent of Scholasticism.

"Critique of Practical Reason"

Kant, it has often been said, tore down in order to build up. What he took away in the first "Critique" he gave back in the
second. In the "Critique of Pure Reason" he showed that the truths which have always been considered the most
important in the whole range of human knowledge have no foundation in metaphysical, that is, purely speculative,
reasoning. In the "Critique of Practical Reasoning" he aims at showing that these truths rest on a solid moral basis, and
are thus placed above all speculative contention and the clamour of metaphysical dispute. He has overthrown the
imposing edifice which Cartesian dogmatism had built on the foundation "I think"; he now sets about the task of
rebuilding the temple of truth on the foundation "I ought." The moral law is supreme. In point of certainty, it is superior
to any deliverance of the purely speculative consciousness; I am more certain that "I ought" than I am that "I am glad", "I
am cold", etc. In point of insistence, it is superior to any consideration of interest, pleasure or happiness; I can forego
what is for my interest, I can set other considerations above pleasure and happiness, but if my conscience tells me that "I
ought" to do something, nothing can gainsay the voice of conscience, though, of course, I am free to obey or disobey.
This, then, is the one unshakable foundation of all moral, spiritual, and higher intellectual truth. The first peculiarity of
the moral law is that it is universal and necessary. When conscience declares that it is wrong to tell a lie, the voice is not
merely intended for here and now, not for "just this once", but for all time and for all space; it is valid always and
everywhere. This quality of universality and necessity shows at once that the moral law has no foundation in pleasure,
happiness, the perfection of self, or a so-called moral sense. It is its own foundation. Its voice reaches conscience
immediately, commands unconditionally, and need give no reason for its behests. It is not, so to speak, a constitutional
monarch amenable toreason, judgment, or any other faculty. It exacts unconditional, and in a sense unreasoned
obedience. Hence the "hollow voice" of the moral law is called by Kant "the categorical imperative". This celebrated
phrase means merely that the moral law is a command (imperative), not a form of advice or invitation to act or not to act;
and it is an unconditional (categorical) command, not a command in the hypothetical mood, such as "If you wish to be a
clergyman you must study theology." One should not, however, overlook the peculiarly empty character of the
categorical imperative. Only in its most universal "hollow" utterances does it possess those qualities which render it
unique in human experience. But as soon as the contingent data, or contents of a specific moral precept, are presented to
it, it imposes its universality and necessity on them and lifts them to its own level. The contents may have been good, but
they could not have been absolutely good; for nothing is absolutely good except good will--the acceptance, that is, of the
moral law.

We know the moral law not by inference, but by immediate intuition. This intuition is, as it were, the primum
philosophicum. It takes the place of Descartes' primary intuition of his own thought. From it all the important truths of
philosophy are deduced, the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. The freedom of
the will follows from the existence of the moral law, because the fact that "I ought" implies the fact that "I can." I know
that I ought to do a certain thing, and from this I infer that I can. In the order of things, of course, freedom precedes
obligation. In the order of knowledge, I infer freedom from the fact of obligation. Similarly, the immortality of the soul
is implied in the moral law. The moral law demands complete fulfilment of itself in absolute human perfection. But the
highest perfection that man can attain in this life is only partial or incomplete perfection, because, so long as the soul is
united with the body, there is always in our nature a mixture of the corporeal with the spiritual; the striving towards
holiness is accompanied by an inclination towards unholiness, and virtue implies a struggle. There must, therefore, be a
life beyond the grave in which this "endless progress", as Kant calls it, will be continued. Finally, the moral law implies
the existence of God. And that in two ways. The authoritative "voice" of the law implies a lawgiver. Moreover, the
nature of the moral law implies that there be somewhere a good which is not only supreme, but complete, which
embodies in its perfect holiness all the conditions which the moral law implies. This supreme good is God.

"Critique of the Faculty of Judgment"

Intermediate between the speculative reason, which is the faculty of knowledge, and practical reason, which is the
faculty of voluntary action, is the faculty which Kant calls judgment, and which is the faculty of æsthetic appreciation.
As the true is the object of knowledge, and as the good is the object of action, the beautiful and purposive is the object of
judgment. By this peculiar use of the word judgment Kant places himself at once outside the ranks of the sensists, who
refer all the constituents of beauty to sense-perceived qualities. He is an intellectualist in æsthetics, reducing the beautiful
to elements of intellectuality. The beautiful, he teaches, is that which universally and necessarily gives disinterested
pleasure, without the concept of definite design. It differs, consequently, from the agreeable and the useful.
However,Kant is careful to remark that the enjoyment of the beautiful is not purely intellectual, as is the satisfaction
which we experience in contemplating the perfect. The perfect appeals to the intellect alone, while the beautiful appeals
also to the emotions and to the æsthetic faculty. Closely allied to the beautiful is the purposive. The same faculty,
judgment, which enables us to perceive and enjoy the æsthetic aspect of nature and of art, enables us also to perceive that
in the manifold variety of our experience there is evidence of purpose or design. Kant introduced in his "Critique" of the
teleological judgment an important distinction between external and internal adaptation. External adaptation, he taught,
exists between the organism and its environment, as, for instance, between the plant and the soil in which it grows.
Internal adaptation exists among the structural parts of the organism, or between the organism and its function. The
former, hebelieved, could be explained by merely mechanical causes, but the latter necessitates the introduction of the
concept of final cause. Organisms act as though they were produced by a cause which had a purpose in view. We cannot
clearly demonstrate that purpose. The teleological concept is, therefore, like the "ideas" (the soul, the world, God) not
constitutive of our experience but regulative of it. The highest use of the æsthetic faculty is the realization of the
beautiful and the purposive as symbols of moral good. What speculative reason fails to find in nature, namely, a
beautiful, purposive order, is suggested by the æsthetic judgment and fully attained by religion, which rests on the
practical reason.

Kant, as is well known, reduces religion to a system of conduct. He defines religion as "the acknowledgement that our
duties are God's commandments". He describes the essence of religion as consisting in morality. Christianity is a religion
and is true only in so far as it conforms to this definition. The ideal Church should be an "ethical republic"; it should
discard all dogmatic definitions, accept "rational faith" as its guide in all intellectual matters, and establish the kingdom
of God on earth by bringing about the reign of duty. Even the Christian law of charity must take second place to the
supreme exigencies of duty. In fact, it has been remarked that Kant's idea of religion, in so far as it is at all Scriptural, is
inspired more by the Old than by the New Testament. He maintains that those dogmas which Christianity holds sacred,
such as the mystery of the Trinity, should be given an ethical interpretation, should, so to speak, be regarded as symbols
of moral concepts and values. Thus "historical faith", he says, is the "vehicle of rational faith". For the person and
character of Christ he professes the greatest admiration. Christ, he declares, was the exemplification of the highest moral
perfection.

Evaluation of Kant

Critics and historians are not all agreed as to Kant's rank among philosophers. Some rate his contributions to philosophy
so highly that they consider his doctrines to be the culmination of all that went before him. Others, on the contrary,
consider that he made a false start when he assumed in his criticism of speculative reason that whatever is universal and
necessary in our knowledge must come from the mind itself, and not from the world of reality outside us. These
opponents of Kant consider, moreover, that while he possessed the synthetic talent which enabled him to build up a
system of thought, he was lacking in theanalytic quality by which the philosopher is able to observe what actually takes
place in the mind. And in a thinker who reduced all philosophy to an examination of knowledge the lack of the ability to
observe what actually takes place in the mind is a serious defect. But, whatever may be our estimate of Kant as a
philosopher, we should not undervalue his importance. Within the limits of the philosophical sciences themselves, his
thought was the starting-point for Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer; and, so far as contemporary philosophic
thought in Germany is concerned, whatever of it is not Kantian takes for its distinguishing characteristic its opposition to
some point of Kantian doctrine. In England the Agnostic School from Hamilton to Spencer drew its inspiration from the
negative teaching of the "Critique of Pure Reason". In France the Positivism of Comte and the neo-Criticism of
Renouvier had a similar origin. Kant's influence reached out beyond philosophy into various other departments of
thought. In the history of the natural sciences his name is associated with that of Laplace, in the theory which accounts
for the origin of the universe by a natural evolution from primitive cosmic nebula. In theology his non-dogmatic notion
of religion influenced Ritschl, and his method of transforming dogmatic truth into moral inspiration finds an echo, to say
the least, in the exegetical experiments of Renan and his followers.

Some philosophers and theologians have held that the objective data on which the Catholic religion is based are
incapable of proof from speculative reason, but are demonstrable from practical reason, will, sentiment, or vital action.
That this position is, however, dangerous, is proved by recent events. The Immanentist movement, the Vitalism of
Blondel, the anti-Scholasticism of the "Annales de philosophie chretienne", and other recent tendencies towards a non-
intellectualapologetic of the Faith, have their roots in Kantism, and the condemnation they have received from
ecclesiastical authority shows plainly that they have no clear title to be considered a substitute for the intellectualistic
apologetic which has for its ground the realism of the Scholastics.

A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls

General Conception
 All social primary goods - liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect - are to be
distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods is to the advantage of the least
favored.

Social Contract

John Locke: Free people need to agree on some ground rules in order to live together in harmony.

Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham: Act so as to maximize good (pleasure) in the aggregate.

Later twist: minimize pain. From either perspective, your actions are judged good or bad depending on the
consequences they have for you and for others.

"The greatest good for the greatest number" can be abused, leading to the "tyranny of the majority" (e.g., Nazi
Germany's mistreatment of the Jews and the United States' mistreatment of African Americans). Rawls'
approach guards against this common source of injustice.

Intuitionism

Acknowledge a set of first principles to be subscribed to, but do not prescribe a priority ordering.

Good vs. Right

A person's good is that which is needed for the successful execution of a rational long-term plan of life given
reasonably favorable circumstances.

• Liberty
• Opportunity
• Income
• Wealth
• Self-respect

"The good is the satisfaction of rational desire." (Section 15)

Each person has his or her own plan of life - what is good may vary. Right is set down in the social contract, the
same for everyone, influenced by the "veil of ignorance." Rawls specializes the concept of something's being
right as it being fair. (Section 18)

Principles of Justice

(Section 11)
 First Principle: Liberty

Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with
a similar system of liberty for all.

Second Principle: Wealth

Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
(a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and

(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

Representative persons: prototypical members of any identifiable group (e.g., women, high school students,
citizens of Haiti, etc.).

Efficiency: any re-arrangement in which every representative person gains is more efficient.

Difference principle: in order for any change to be accepted as an improvement, it must help the least
advantaged representative person.

Priority Rules

Rawls explicitly addresses the fact that there will be situations where these two primary principles will be in
conflict with each other. Rather than compromise between them in such cases, he takes the position that there is
a specific priority.

The Priority of Liberty

The principles of justice are to be ranked in lexical order and therefore liberty can be restricted only for the sake
of liberty. There are two cases:
(a) a less extensive liberty must strengthen the total system of liberty shared by all;

(b) a less than equal liberty must be acceptable to those with the lesser liberty.

The Priority of Justice over Efficiency and Welfare

The second principle of justice is lexically prior to the principle of efficiency and to that of maximizing the sum
of advantages; and fair opportunity is prior to the difference principle. There are two cases:
(a) an inequality of opportunity must enhance the opportunities of those with the lesser opportunity;

(b) an excessive rate of saving must on balance mitigate the burden of those bearing this hardship.

Efficiency
 Rawls adopts the concept of efficiency that is associated with the name Pareto in the field of economics. It is
perhaps most easily described in the negative:

No system can be called efficient if there is an alternative arrangement that improves the situation of some
people with no worsening of the situation of any of the other people.

In general, there are many arrangements that are efficient in this sense. Not all of them are equally just; other
principles of justice must be invoked to select the most just arrangement.

The Difference Principle

"The difference principle is a strongly egalitarian conception in the sense that unless there is a distribution that
makes both persons better off (limiting ourselves to the two-person case for simplicity), an equal distribution
is to be preferred [page 76, emphasis added - RDP]."

In other words, there should be no differences except those that can be justified on grounds of efficiency.

The Veil of Ignorance

Rawls supposes that a (virtual) committee of rational but not envious persons will exhibit mutual disinterest in a
situation of moderate scarcity as they consider the concept of right:

1. general in form
2. universal in application
3. publicly recognized
4. final authority
5. prioritizes conflicting claims

Rawls claims that rational people will unanimously adopt his principles of justice if their reasoning is based on
general considerations, without knowing anything about their own personal situation. Such personal knowledge
might tempt them to select principles of justice that gave them unfair advantage - rigging the rules of the game.
This procedure of reasoning without personal biases Rawls refers to as "The Veil of Ignorance."

Pinker (2002), describes Rawls' Veil of Ignorance this way in the midst of presenting wide-ranging evidence
that a significant fraction of the variability among human beings, including variations in mental abilities, must
be attributed to genetic, rather than purely environmental, factors:

Can one really reconcile biological differences with a concept of social justice? Absolutely. In his famous
theory of justice, the philosopher John Rawls asks us to imagine a social contract drawn up by self-interested
agents negotiating under a veil of ignorance, unaware of the talents or status they will inherit at birth--ghosts
ignorant of the machines they will haunt. He argues that a just society is one that these disembodied souls would
agree to be born into, knowing that they might be dealt a lousy social or genetic hand. If you agree that this is a
reasonable conception of justice, and that the agents would insist on a broad social safety net and redistributive
taxation (short of eliminating incentives that make everyone better off), then you can justify compensatory
social policies even if you think differences in social status are 100 percent genetic. The policies would be,
quite literally, a matter of justice, not a consequence of the indistinguishability of individuals.

Indeed, the existence of innate differences in ability makes Rawls's conception of social justice especially acute
and eternally relevant. If we were blank slates, and if a society ever did eliminate discrimination, the poorest
could be said to deserve their station because they must have chosen to do less with their standard-issue talents.
But if people differ in talents, people might find themselves in poverty in a nonprejudiced society even if they
 applied themselves to the fullest. That is an injustice that, a Rawlsian would argue, ought to be rectified, and it
would be overlooked if we didn't recognize that people differ in their abilities.

Natural Duties and Obligations

• Support just institutions

• Mutual respect
• Mutual aid
• Do no harm
• Do your fair share
• Be faithful (keep your promises)

Civil Disobedience

Civil disobedience is by its nature an act responding to injustices internal to a given society, appealing to the
public's conception of justice. (Section 57)

Civil disobedience can be justified if the following three conditions are all met:

1. If the injustice is substantial and clear, especially one that obstructs the path to removing other
injustices (e.g., poll taxes and other burdens on the right to vote). This certainly includes serious
infringements of the principle of liberty and blatant violations of the principle of fair equality of
opportunity.
2. If the normal appeals to the political majority have already been made in good faith and have
failed. Civil disobedience is a last resort.
3. If there are not too many other minority groups with similarly valid claims. The just
constitution would be eroded if too many groups exercised the choice of civil disobedience. The
resolution of this situation is a political alliance of these multiple minorities to form a working majority
coalition.

Some of Galbraith's Ideas

Galbraith's main ideas focused around the influence of the market power of large corporations.[4] He believed that this
market power weakened the widely-accepted principle of consumer sovereignty, allowing corporations to be price
makers, rather than price takers,[33] allowing corporations with the strongest market power to increase the production of
their goods beyond an efficient amount. He further believed that market power played a major role in inflation[4] and
argued that corporations and trade unions could only increase prices to the extent that their market power allowed them
to. He argued that in situations of excessive market power, price controls effectively controlled inflation, but cautioned
against using them in markets that were basically efficient such as agricultural goods and housing.[34] He noted that price
controls were much easier to enforce in industries with relatively few buyers and sellers.[34]:244 Galbraith's view of market
power was not entirely negative; he also noted that the power of US firms played a part in the success of the US
economy.

In The Affluent Society Galbraith asserts that classical economic theory was true for the eras before the present, which
were times of "poverty"; now, however, we have moved from an age of poverty to an age of "affluence," and for such an
age, a completely new economic theory is needed. Galbraith's main argument is that as society becomes relatively more
affluent, so private business must "create" consumer wants through advertising, and while this generates artificial
affluence through the production of commercial goods and services, the public sector becomes neglected. He points out
that while many Americans were able to purchase luxury items, their parks were polluted and their children attended
poorly maintained schools. He argues that markets alone will underprovide (or fail to provide at all) for many public
goods, whereas private goods are typically 'overprovided' due to the process of advertising creating an artificial demand
above the individual's basic needs. This emphasis on the power of advertising and consequent overconsumption may
have anticipated the drop in savings rates in the USA and elsewhere in the developing world.[4]

Galbraith proposed curbing the consumption of certain products through greater use of consumption taxes, arguing that
this could be more efficient than other forms of taxation, such as labour or land taxes. Galbraith's major proposal was a
program he called "investment in men" — a large-scale publicly-funded education program aimed at empowering
ordinary citizens. Galbraith wished to entrust citizens with the future of the American republic.

Volume 20, issue 4 of the Review of Political Economy was dedicated to John Kenneth Galbraith's ideas.

[edit] Criticism of Galbraith's Work

Galbraith's work, in general, and The Affluent Society, in particular, have drawn sharp criticism from free-market
supporters at the time of its publication. Monetarist Milton Friedman in "Friedman on Galbraith, and on curing the
British disease" views Galbraith as a 20th century version of the early 19th century Tory radical of Great Britain. He
asserts that Galbraith believes in the superiority of aristocracy and in its paternalistic authority, that consumers should
not be allowed choice, and that all should be determined by those with "higher minds":

Many reformers – Galbraith is not alone in this – have as their basic objection to a free market that it frustrates them in
achieving their reforms, because it enables people to have what they want, not what the reformers want. Hence every
reformer has a strong tendency to be averse to a free market.

Richard Parker, in his biography John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Economics, His Politics, characterizes Galbraith
as more complex. Galbraith's primary purpose in Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (1952) was,
ironically, to show that big business was now necessary to the American economy to maintain the technological progress
that drives economic growth. However, Galbraith saw the necessity of "countervailing power," not only including
government regulation and oversight, but also collective bargaining, and the suasion that large retailers and distributors
could bring to bear on large producers and suppliers. In The New Industrial State (1967), Galbraith argued that the
dominant American corporations had created a technostructure that closely controlled both consumer demand and
market growth through advertising and marketing. While Galbraith defended government intervention, Parker notes that
he also believed that government and big business worked together to maintain stability.[35]

Paul Krugman, the influential, Nobel Prize–winning Princeton University professor and New York Times op-ed
columnist, has denigrated Galbraith's stature as an economist. In Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in
an Age of Diminished Expectations, he calls Galbraith a "policy entrepreneur" – an economist who writes solely for the
public, as opposed to one who writes for other professors, and who therefore makes unwarranted diagnoses and offers
over-simplistic answers to complex economic problems. He asserts that Galbraith was never taken seriously by fellow
academics, who viewed him as more of a "media personality". For example, Krugman believes that Galbraith's work The
New Industrial State is not considered to be "real economic theory", and that Economics in Perspective is "remarkably
ill-informed".[36] However, acknowledging the alleged damage caused by the George W. Bush administration, Krugman
now says of his polemics in the 1990s, “I was wrong obviously. If I’d understood where politics would be now, it would
have been quite different.”[37]

Describing the reception of Galbraith's lectures by students at Harvard, Thomas Sowell coined the term "the Galbraith
Effect":

“On the first day of class, Professor Galbraith gave a brilliant opening lecture, after which the students gave him a
standing ovation. Galbraith kept on giving brilliant opening lectures the whole semester. But, instead of standing
ovations, there were now dwindling numbers of students and some of them got up and walked out in the middle of his
lectures. Galbraith never got beyond the glittering generalities that marked his first lecture. After a while, the students
got tired of not getting any real substance.”