The historical origins of the box.

• according to Ferdinand Tönnies.• (a famous German sociologist)

1855-1936And Max Weber, whom we have already met.Followed by: the box in modern ethics.

We might mean two things by “the historical origins of the box”

• 1. How it was constructed in ancient Rome• And/or• 2. How it became the basic• structure of the modern world

• Now we mean the first of these, but later bla bla bla bla bla

today we will get more bla bla bla bla bla into the second.

First of all we will talk about something outside the box. Namely: “community”

.

Actually a pretty good definition of “community” is “what the box leaves out”

And a pretty good definition of “box” is “leaving out community”

Everybody uses the word “community”

• But what does “community” mean?• According to the O.E.D. the word comes to

English from Latin (communitati)• It originally tended to refer to people who shared

property and lived together like the early Christians described in Luke and Acts

• It has branched out to mean people who share something or other and/or live in the same locality

Ferdinand Tönnies proposed a scientific theory of community

• Tönnies proposed that

sociology take as its model

two main types of human

group.

-He called them “community”

and “society.”

-in his German Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.

-a distinction similar to “traditional” and “modern”

Some typical quotes from Tönnies on “community” (Gemeinschaft)

• “Community rests on harmony and is developed and ennobled by folkways, morals, and religion.”

• “Community is based on family life.”• “The divine will is interpreted by wise and

ruling men.”• “In a Gemeinschaft morality is an

expression of religious beliefs and forces, intertwined with family spirit and folkways.”

Community came first in time and society came later.

• In society (i.e. Gesellchafti.e. modernity):-order is based on “a union of rational wills” i.e. on contract-most importantly sales (the market)-backed up by law (the government)As in Max Weber the typical institutions of

modernity are capitalism and bureaucracy

Tönnies had a low opinion of modernity

• “In Gesellschaft individuals remain in isolation and have veiled hostility toward each other.”

• “ Only fear of clever retaliation restrains them from attacking one another.”

• “In Gesellschaft-like civilization, peace and commerce are maintained through conventions and the underlying mutual fear.”

• “The state protects this civilization through legislation and politics.”

• “Science and public opinion, attempting to conceive it as necessary and eternal, glorify it as progress toward perfection.”

Different people use the same word in different ways

• And “society” is no exception. For example:• For Tönnies a Gesellschaft (often translated

“society”) is no fun to live in.• But for Durkheim what else could “God” be if

“God” be not just another name for “society?”• And for many people “serving society”

means “being good.”• So don´t let Tönnies mislead you into

misunderstanding what other people mean when they use the word “society.”

Tonnies´ friend Max Weber took over his distinction between community and society

• Weber was less a passionateanti-modernist and more a

dispassionatescientist.

--In Weber “community” became not just the historical predecessor of modernity but part of the logical apparatus of sociological method.

For Weber every human group is necessarily a community

• Why?

• For the same reason that Emile Durkheim says every human group necessarily generates morality.

• Every human group must have norms and every scientist who wants to understand a human group must understand its norms.

• The necessity of community for Weber is the necessity of basic norms that make it possible for people to understand each other and to know what to expect from each other.

• Human action necessarily depends on expectations of how others will respond.

Weber gives the example of riding a bicycle in Germany and in England

• In Germany bicycle riders pass each other on the right.

• In England they pass each other on the left.• This is an example of Gemeinshandel or

community expectations.• WITHOUT COMMUNITY PEOPLE DO NOT

KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT FROM EACH OTHER AND CANNOT ACT COUNTING ON OTHERS TO RESPOND IN A “NORMAL” WAY

For Weber Gesellschaft is a particular kind of Gemeinschaft

• Modern society is the particular kind of community whose basic norms are

• (Hence it is a mistake to say that different social structures generate different ethics. The basic ethics and the basic social structure are the same thing.)

Emile Durkheim makes a blasimilar point

• Modern society with its high degree of division of labour (and consequently high degree

of productivity) where the products of labour are exchanged in impersonal markets where millions of people who do not know each other trade with each other.

• Does not generate the community norms it needs for its own operation and survival.

• It depends on non-economic institutions to generate those basic norms: e.g. families, schools, sports, churches, governments.

Tonnies studied the origins of the box in ancient Rome.

• Earliest Rome started as a tribal society much like any other tribal society anywhere in the world.

• But as Rome evolved it created a different social structure, which would eventually become the structure of today´s global economy.

Community came first in time, society came later

• The traditional date for the

• founding of Rome is

• 753 B.C.

• Rome was originally composed according to legend of one hundred clans (gens) united as a tribe (tribus)

• Everyone who was born was born into a clan, and every clan had access to land

It was downhill from bla bla there

• As Rome developed • There came to be peoplecalled plebs or plebeians who belonged to

no tribeAnd people called proletarians who had no

access to land or other propertyThis set the stage for class conflict which

went on for two thousand years until Rome finally fell and disappeared from history.

Rome developed differently from other tribal societies

• A legal system was set up to resolve disputes disputes between heads of households (patres (patres familias)

• By not fighting each other but instead obeying obeying the verdict of the judge (praetor) Romans saved their strength to fight their enemies.

• Unlike other early human communities, Rome developed law that was separate from religion, separate from the wisdom of the elders, and separate from communal dispute resolution.

Their system worked so well that in less than a thousand years the

Romans conquered all their neighbours

• Then the Romans had another problem:

• How to organize peaceful commerce in an Empire with many different religions, family customs, tribal structures, and economic practices?

• The solution:• A few simple

principles applicable to everybody throughout the Empire.

• Honeste vivere• Alterum non laedere• Suum cuique tribuere.

In other words, the solution was leaving community out.

Another thousand and a half years later…

• Early modern Europe had a similar problem

(Following Durkheim):• Population growth

required more productivity.

• More productivity required more division of labour

• More division of labour required larger and more efficient markets

• Markets required legal norms applicable to everybody

The solution for early modern Europe:

• The “reception” and further elaboration of the tradition of rule of law already created by Roman jurisprudence

• An example of elaboration:

• Pacta sunt servanda

• (contracts are to be

• enforced)

• Formulated by Samuel Pufendorf in 1688.

Early modern ethical philosophy

• Early modern philosophers constructed ethical philosophies suitable for a market society.

Some of them were:

- Immanuel Kant• John Locke• Voltaire• Denis Diderot• Jeremy Bentham• John Stuart Mill• Thomas Hobbes• Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Now we will consider two leading founders of modern ethics.

• Immanuel Kant 1724-1804

• Jeremy Bentham 1748-1832

To start to understand Kant´s ethics

• (what he calls his “metaphysics of morals”)• it is best to begin with Kant`s philosophy of

science

• expressed in his Critique of Pure Reason (first published in 1781)

The basic principles of science

• Namely: algebra, geometry, the general principle that nature is governed by laws that link effects to causes, and specifically the laws of Sir Isaac Newton´s basic physics (published in 1687)

• ARE NOT DISCOVERIES OF FACTS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN OTHERWISE

• THEY ARE NECESSARY FOR OF ANY ANY HUMAN EXPERIENCE

But if everything is necessarily governed by the laws of science

• …where does that leave human beings?

• …where does that leave morals and ethics?

• …considering that morals and ethics assume that people are free to make choices and responsible for the choices they make.

Answer:

• The necessary conditions of any possible experience

• Do not necessarily govern the rational being who has the experience

• Example: in our experience a falling stone must obey the law s = gt2/2

• But a rational being unlike the stone can conceive the concept of the law

• The rational being is not necessarily governed by the laws that govern experience, and logically might be free of the laws that govern nature.

• Moreover, ethics requires that humans be free.

Therefore we must assume that humans are free.

And that their freedom consists of their capacity to act from the concept of law.

So what then is the true principle of ethics?

• All previous philosophies of ethics have been mistaken

• Because they have assumed what Kant calls “heteronymy” i.e. the obedience of the human will to some outside power or influence, for example God or the desire to be happy.

• The true principle of ethics is “autonomy” i.e. the free rational being giving itself its own law.

• (Notice that the desire to be happy is an outside influence, it is an inclination (Neigung) subject to Newton´s laws like the rest of nature.)

To give yourself your own law is to act from the pure concept of law

• as only a free autonomous rational being can do• And that is to obey the categorical imperative• There is only one categorical imperative: act on

a principle that could be a universal law.• Example: If your principle is to not pay your

debts, that principle could not be a universal law because if everybody followed it then “debt” would have no meaning.

More examples:

• If you steal other people´s property your principle (“maxim” in Kant´s language) could not be a universal law because if everybody always stole from everyone else then “property” would have no meaning.

• At the end of his Fundamentals of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) Kant says he has discussed only one categorical imperative, the duty to pay debts, but he could just as easily have chosen as his example respect for property or respect for other people´s freedom.

Now consider another founder of modern ethical philosophy

Jeremy Bentham 1748-1832

• “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne.”

--Jeremy Bentham 1823

• “It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”

• “The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.”

• The felicific calculus: How much happiness is produced by a norm or law can be measured by measuring quantity of pleasure in seven dimensions: intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, nearness (how soon?), fecundity to produce more pleasure, purity (absence of mixture with pain), and extent (number of people pleased).

• “Every man is an expert on his own pleasures.”

• “Every law is an infraction of liberty.”

• In 1787 Bentham published In Defence of Usury, Showing the Impolicy of the Present Legal Restraints on Pecuniary Bargains. He argued that the greatest good of the greatest number is best achieved by leaving each individual free to manage his own property and make whatever contracts he chooses to make.

Later in life Bentham became more sentimental. At age 82 he wrote:

• Create all the happiness you are able to create:

• remove all the misery you are able to remove.

• Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains.

• --from Bentham´s letter of advice to a young girl, June 22, 1830

Kant´s ethics is called “deontology”; Bentham founded “utilitarianism”

• “To what shall the character of utility be ascribed if not to that which is a source of pleasure?”

--Bentham

• “Always treat humanity, whether in yourself or in another person, as an end in itself and not as a means only.”

--Kant

Bentham, Kant and the welfare state. Beyond the box?

• The utilitarian principle of “the greatest good for the greatest number” has been used to argue for a welfare state.

• Kant´s ethics has also been used to argue for a welfare state. It is argued that since every human being has equal dignity as a rational being, people should have in reality the same dignity they have in ethical theory.

THAT´S ALL FOR NOW !

THAT´S ALL FOR NOW !