tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/immanuel-kant-13577/articlesImmanuel Kant – The Conversation2023-11-21T23:18:44Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2180952023-11-21T23:18:44Z2023-11-21T23:18:44ZWhy George Santos’ lies are even worse than the usual political lies – a moral philosopher explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560833/original/file-20231121-4482-abz219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C15%2C5231%2C3347&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rep. George Santos on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 24, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/HouseSpeaker/89cab2060aad40ca9171f34e8e511ea4/photo?Query=george%20santos&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=262&currentItemNo=11">AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Nov. 16, 2023, the bipartisan House Committee on Ethics issued a scathing report on the behavior of Rep. George Santos, finding that Santos had engaged in “<a href="https://ethics.house.gov/press-releases/statement-chairman-and-ranking-member-committee-ethics-regarding-representative-76">knowing and willful violations of the Ethics in Government Act</a>.” That committee’s Republican chair later introduced a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/politics/santos-expulsion-resolution-introduced/index.html">motion to expel</a> Santos from Congress. Regardless of the success or failure of that motion, which will be considered after Thanksgiving, Santos himself has announced he will <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/nyregion/george-santos-ethics-committee.html">not seek reelection</a>. </p>
<p>These consequences are being brought to bear on Santos in large part because of what the report calls a “<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24169355-report-on-ethics-george-santos">constant stream of lies</a> to his constituents, donors, and staff.” Santos appears to have deceived donors about what their money would be used for. Ostensible campaign donations were redirected for his private use, including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/nyregion/santos-botox-ferragamo-expenses.html">purchases of Botox and subscriptions to OnlyFans</a>, an X-rated entertainment service. </p>
<p>What, though, makes Santos’ lies so unusual – and so damning? The idea that politicians are dishonest is, at this point, something of a cliché – although few have taken their dishonesty as far as Santos, who <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/the-everything-guide-to-george-santoss-lies.html">seems to have lied about</a> his education, work history, charitable activity, athletic prowess and even his place of residence. </p>
<p>Santos may be exceptional in how many lies he has told, but politicians seeking election have incentives to tell voters what they want to hear – and there is some empirical evidence that a willingness to lie may be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008144117">helpful in the process of getting elected</a>. Voters may not appreciate candidates who are unwilling or unable to mislead others from time to time.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://phil.washington.edu/people/michael-blake">political philosopher</a> whose work focuses on the moral foundations of democratic politics, I am interested in the moral reasons behind voters’ right to feel resentment when they discover that their elected representatives have lied to them. </p>
<p>Political philosophers offer four distinct responses to this question – although none of these responses suggests that all lies are necessarily morally wrong.</p>
<h2>1. Lying is manipulative</h2>
<p>The first reason to resent being lied to is that it is a form of disrespect. When you lie to me, you treat me as a thing to be manipulated and used for your purposes. In the terms used by philosopher Immanuel Kant, when you lie to me, you treat me as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2010.01507.x">a means or a tool</a>, rather than a person with a moral status equal to your own. </p>
<p>Kant himself took this principle as a reason to condemn all lies, however useful – but other philosophers have thought that some lies were so important that they might be compatible with, or even express, respect for citizens. </p>
<p>Plato, notably, argues in “The Republic” that when the public good requires a leader to lie, the citizens should be <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D3%3Apage%3D389">grateful for the deceptions of their leaders</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ias.edu/scholars/walzer">Michael Walzer</a>, a modern political philosopher, echoes this idea. Politics requires the building of coalitions and the making of deals – which, in a world full of moral compromise, may entail being deceptive about what one is planning and why. As Walzer puts it, no one succeeds in politics without <a href="http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Philosophers/Walzer/PoliticaAction_TheProblemofDirtyHabnds.pdf">being willing to dirty their hands</a> – and voters should prefer politicians to get their hands dirty if that is the cost of effective political agency. </p>
<h2>2. Abuse of trust</h2>
<p>A second reason to resent lies begins with the idea of predictability. If our candidates lie to us, we cannot know what they really plan to do – and, hence, cannot trust that we are voting for the candidate who will best represent our interests.</p>
<p>Modern political philosopher <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/beerbohm/home">Eric Beerbohm</a> argues that when politicians speak to us, they invite us to trust them – and a politician who lies to us <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/beerbohm/files/beerbohm_the_ethics_of_electioneering_jpp.pdf">abuses that trust</a> in a way that we may rightly resent. </p>
<p>These ideas are powerful, but they also seem to have some limits. Voters may not need to believe candidates’ words in order to understand their intentions and thereby come to accurate beliefs about what they plan to do. </p>
<p>To take one recent example: The majority of those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, when he was trumpeting the idea of making Mexico pay for a border wall, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/14/even-trump-voters-think-mexico-paying-for-the-wall-is-kind-of-a-joke/">did not believe that it was actually possible</a> to build a wall that would be paid for by Mexico. They did not take Trump to be describing a literal truth, but expressing an untruth that was indicative of Trump’s overall attitude toward migration and toward Mexico – and voted for him on the basis of that attitude. </p>
<h2>3. Electoral mandate</h2>
<p>The third reason we might resent lies told on the campaign trail stems from the idea of an electoral mandate. Philosopher John Locke, whose writings influenced the Declaration of Independence, regarded political authority as stemming from the <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm#CHAPTER_VII">consent of the governed</a>; this consent might be illegitimate were it to be obtained by means of deception.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white engraving of a man with shoulder-length hair" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Philosopher John Locke championed the idea of the consent of the governed.</span>
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<p>This idea, too, has power – but it also runs up against the sophistication of both modern elections and modern voters. After all, campaigns do not pretend to give a dispassionate description of political ideals. They are closer to rhetorical forms of combat and involve considerable amounts of <a href="https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/02/09/the-history-of-political-spin-in-washington-dc-and-why-its-not-so-bad-for-us-as-youd-think/">deliberate ambiguity, rhetorical presentation and self-interested spin</a>. </p>
<p>More to the point, though, voters understand this context and rarely regard any candidate’s presentation as stemming solely from a concern for the unalloyed truth.</p>
<h2>4. Unnecessary and disprovable</h2>
<p>Santos’ lies, however, do seem to have provoked something like <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/29/1146096826/rep-elect-george-santos-faces-growing-anger-from-new-york-voters">resentment and outrage</a>, which suggests that they are somehow unlike the usual forms of deceptive practice undertaken during political campaigns. </p>
<p>Certainly the congressional response to these lies is extraordinary. If Santos is expelled from Congress, he would be only the third member of that body to have been expelled <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2023/11/01/house-could-expel-george-santos-today-here-are-the-other-lawmakers-who-have-been-kicked-out-of-congress/?sh=386ba482c988">since the Civil War</a>. </p>
<p>The rarity of this sanction may reflect a final reason to resent deception, which is that voters especially dislike being lied to unnecessarily – nor about matters subject to easy empirical proof or disproof. It seems clear that voters may sometimes be willing to accept deceptive and dissembling political candidates, given the fact that effective statecraft may involve the use of deceptive means. Santos, however, lied about matters as tangential to politics as his nonexistent history as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/11/santos-lies-volleyball/">star player for Baruch College’s volleyball team</a>. </p>
<p>This lie was unnecessary, given its tenuous relationship to his candidacy for the House of Representatives, and easily disproved, given the fact that he did not actually attend Baruch. Similarly, the ethics report on Santos emphasized the fact that his expenditures often involved purchases for which there was no plausible relationship to a campaign, including US$6,000 at <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/george-santos-campaign-funds-how-spent-what-to-know-rcna125531">luxury goods store Ferragamo</a>. The proposition that such a purchase was useful for his election campaign is difficult to defend – or to believe. </p>
<p>I believe voters may have made their peace with some deceptive campaign practices. If Walzer is right, they should expect that an effective candidate will be imperfectly honest, at best. But candidates who are both liars and bad at lying can find no such justification, since they are unlikely to be believed and thus incapable of achieving those goods that justify their deception. </p>
<p>If voters have made their peace with some degree of lying, in short, they are nonetheless still capable of resenting candidates who are unskilled at the craft of political deception.</p>
<p><em>This is an <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-politicians-must-lie-from-time-to-time-so-why-is-there-so-much-outrage-about-george-santos-a-political-philosopher-explains-197877">updated version of an article</a> originally published on Jan. 20, 2023.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218095/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Blake receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>A political philosopher writes that voters may put up with some degree of deception from politicians, but they may not accept being lied to unnecessarily.Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2021782023-11-05T18:15:02Z2023-11-05T18:15:02ZTwo faces of dignity: a Kantian perspective on Uber drivers’ fight for decent working conditions<p>On November 3, 2016, Emmanuel Macron, who had recently launched a presidential bid, mentioned what he felt was Uber’s positive role in providing work opportunities to low-income or unemployed youth (our translation and emphasis):</p>
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<p>“You go to Stains [a low-income town outside of Paris] to tell young people who are Uber drivers that it is better to loiter or deal […]. Our collective failure is that the neighbourhoods where Uber hires these young people are neighbourhoods where we haven’t managed to offer them anything else. Yes, they sometimes work 60 to 70 hours to get the minimum wage, but they return with dignity, they find a job, they put on a suit and a tie.”</p>
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<p>A year later, the perspective of many Uber drivers in Paris was quite different, as witnessed by a handout distributed by an activist group in November 2017:</p>
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<p>“You’ve been used by Uber, regain your dignity!” (“UberUsé, regagne ta dignité!”)</p>
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<h2>Dignity as work</h2>
<p>These two quotes refer to quite distinct concepts of dignity. On the one hand, French president Emmanuel Macron tells unemployed youth from low-income towns they ought to consider themselves lucky when Uber offers them the opportunity to don a suit and a tie and get behind the wheel. On the other, Uber drivers see themselves as being exploited by management and are ready to put up a fight to regain their dignity. So does Uber restore or take away workers’ dignity?</p>
<p>The French president’s notion of dignity is what some philosophers refer to as <em>social standing dignity</em>, the traditional conception (Sensen 2011). Rooted in an individual’s rank or office, it centres on the world of behavioural rules, rights and duties that surround these positions.</p>
<p>Hierarchical societies are structured through higher and lower social positions and with each one comes different ranks and different degrees of dignity. Thus, Macron contends that young people from poor areas are better off by taking on work from Uber, even if this means long hours and low wages. Here, employment is presented as the fundamental condition to social dignity.</p>
<h2>Migrant roots</h2>
<p>It is important to note that most people who take on an Uber job hail from a migrant background, sometimes stretching back to several generations. In France, these are mainly from North and Sub-Saharan Africa. As the <a href="https://www.puf.com/content/UberUs%C3%A9s">sociological research from Sophie Bernard shows</a>, most were not unemployed before. Instead, they took on unskilled, low-paying, painful, and precarious jobs – quite a different situation to trafficking drugs or loitering. They became Uber drivers to improve their condition by gaining freedom and higher wages.</p>
<p>But they soon realised they were subjected to a new form of algorithmic management and forced to work more and more to earn less and less. This form of control is exercised remotely and indirectly by algorithms that enable the quasi-automatic supervision of many workers. Drivers are rated by customers for every journey they make. All it takes is one complaint from a customer for their account to be deactivated. Uber drivers are no longer subject to hierarchical control, but rather to customer demands. Nor are they totally free to organise their working hours as they see fit. To entice drivers to work for Uber, the company first offered them bonuses and high remuneration. Once the platform has enough drivers, <a href="https://www.puf.com/content/UberUs%C3%A9s">it removes the bonuses, lowers the fares and increases the commission</a>.</p>
<p>While they thought they were improving their conditions, they found themselves once again in another job as exploited migrants. As if Macron were telling them: “We have this opportunity for you to gain your social dignity with a job that other people in our society don’t want and don’t need, but it’s good enough for you.”</p>
<h2>Kant’s concept of equal moral worth</h2>
<p>The second notion of dignity is that of human dignity, the idea that was implemented into the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and into many constitutions after the Second World War. It is expressed in Kant’s idea of equal moral worth of all human beings. In his famous <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/persons-means/"><em>Formula of Humanity</em></a> of the Categorical Imperative, Kant states:</p>
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<p>“So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”</p>
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<p>Is that the notion Uber drivers can refer to? As we will see it is, but it needs some clarification, and Kantian philosophy has its blind spots when it comes to dignity violations. What does it mean to use someone merely as a means? Kantians think that you are used as a mere means if you cannot (reasonably) consent to the treatment of others. This is especially so if your will is manipulated by deception or coercion. According to Kant, this is addressed by the criteria of deception and coercion that manipulate or enforce consent. Now one could wonder what the problem is from a Kantian perspective, since Uber drivers took on the job willingly, as Macron emphasises.</p>
<p>And indeed, Kant did not think in categories like <em>exploitation</em>. We think that exploitation can also be understood in terms of instrumentalisation. The accusation that Uber drivers formulate: “UberUsé” refers directly to this: not to be used merely as a means to another’s purposes; not to be exploited, in the sense that platform capitalism puts you in a position where long working hours don’t give you the minimum wage, where you take all the risks for a platform that reaps all the benefits, where there’s no reasonable alternative for you and where there’s reasonable alternatives to pay you a decent wage for Uber, since their profit would allow for it. Let’s remember that while Uber defines drivers as self-employed workers who provide the platform with labour and part of the production tools, it is the platform that sets the prices and takes a commission on each trip by passing on all the risks.</p>
<p>Moreover, there is another problem, and this one cannot be captured by the Kantian prohibition of instrumentalisation. It is the unequal social positions in a hierarchical and racist society that lead to an inequality of opportunity. This goes against the Kantian requirement to treat others as ends in themselves: as persons with equal moral standing. Degradation of migrants in the form: “this job is good enough for you” contradicts that requirement. So what Uber drivers could see violated on Kantian terms is their human dignity, their equal moral standing, that would recommend to provide them with equal opportunities in the French society and not just with opportunities that are “good enough for them” because “their” social standing is already at the bottom.</p>
<p>What is striking about how Uber drivers’ striving for social dignity can be abused when it comes to exploitation of their work force. As they fight Uber’s working conditions, they are more faithful to Western Kant-induced values than Macron. The president, by contrast, offers them a glimpse of social dignity in a kind of job that keeps them in an exploitative and precarious situation. One could say in the spirit of Kant that Uber drivers show self-esteem by their protest which aims at (re)gaining their dignity. Kant states in the Doctrine of Virtue: “Do not let others tread with impunity on your rights.”</p>
<p>As <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-022-10288-7">Mieth and Williams argue</a>, there are wrongs beyond instrumentalisation when it comes to migration, which concern exclusion and inequality. Under the circumstances Uber drivers find themselves in, they put on a fight to express their human dignity, not their social dignity in Macron’s terms. But this human dignity implies social dignity in another sense: to be acknowledged as an equal member of society which implies equality of opportunity. So we think that Uber drivers’ fight to regain dignity is in line with Kant’s notion of human dignity. Their protest is even giving the notion of equal human dignity reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202178/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Corinna Mieth a reçu des financements de Fondation Maison de science de l'homme (FMSH) et du Kant-Zentrum NRW. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophie Bernard a reçu des financements de l'Institut Universitaire de France. </span></em></p>With an eye to Kant’s work, a philosopher and a sociologist argue that the Uber project robs drivers of their dignity.Corinna Mieth, Legal and political philosopher, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH)Sophie Bernard, Sociologue, professeure des universités, Université Paris Dauphine – PSLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2132472023-10-31T19:18:25Z2023-10-31T19:18:25ZŽižek: his key ideas explained<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550550/original/file-20230927-27-ib94t0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C3%2C1306%2C968&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons/Blatterhin</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It might be said that books by Slavoj Žižek don’t conclude, they just end. And indeed, no matter which of his many books you open, you’ll find philosophy, psychoanalysis, pop culture, a smattering of off-key jokes, and commentary on recent events – often in no readily-discernible order. </p>
<p>Žižek, a <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/zizek/">Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist</a>, is known to many today for his 2019 debate with psychology professor and culture warrior Jordan Peterson. This debate, held in Toronto, Canada, was about the relationship between Marxism, capitalism, and happiness.</p>
<p>Žižek was presented as the Leftist counterpoint to Peterson’s reactionary stylings. While the two disagreed on much, they agreed on certain things, such as their criticism of identity politics. Yet this debate, too, arguably ended rather than came to any conclusions.</p>
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<p>Žižek burst onto the anglophone academic scene over 30 years ago with a sequence of groundbreaking works, starting with the 1989 book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18912.The_Sublime_Object_of_Ideology?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=zWgZRLwcAJ&rank=1">The Sublime Object of Ideology</a>. Then there were wonderful explorations of Hollywood cinema in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90570.Enjoy_Your_Symptom_?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=4Rn9q66vAZ&rank=1">Enjoy your Symptom!</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18911.Looking_Awry?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=sXAKEh5ulc&rank=1">Looking Awry</a>. </p>
<p>Once dubbed a “celebrity philosopher” by <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/11/26/the-fp-top-100-global-thinkers-2/">Foreign Policy</a>, he has since written books on everything from <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19322658-violence">violence</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6636487">the GFC and September 11</a> to <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18913.The_Puppet_and_the_Dwarf?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=680CjKYP5a&rank=2">Christianity</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52667524-pandemic-covid-19-shakes-the-world">the pandemic</a>. His latest book <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/freedom-9781350357129/#:%7E:text=The%20concept%20of%20freedom%20is,freedom%20is%20transient%20and%20fragile.">explores the question of freedom</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/karl-marx-his-philosophy-explained-164068">Karl Marx: his philosophy explained</a>
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<h2>The critique of ideology</h2>
<p>The title of Žižek’s 1989 book, The Sublime Object of Ideology, points towards a key aspect of his profuse intellectual productivity. From the start, Žižek has been interested in what motivates people to act the ways they do. He is especially interested in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/pt/book/show/289666.Mapping_Ideology">why people passionately identify with political ideas and causes</a> that may not serve their own best interests.</p>
<p>An ideology is any political doctrine that promises to tell people how to organise political life, and where they fit into the larger scheme of things. Marxism-Leninism is one such ideology, liberalism another, fascism one more. An ideology can bring people meaning and a shared sense of common purpose.</p>
<p>According to Žižek, political ideologies also rationalise to their subjects why societies don’t seem to always become, over the course of time, wiser, better, more just, and less prone to rolling crises. (Since 2000 alone, we have faced 9-11, the wars on terror and in Iraq, the Global Financial Crisis, the sovereign debt crises, the resurgence of authoritarian strongmen, Covid-19, the Ukraine war and now the Israel-Hamas conflict.)</p>
<p>Political systems cannot flourish unless they can garner the peaceful support of the majority of their citizens. So, faced with problems like war, economic failures, or terrorism, argues Žižek, ideologies externalise these problems’ causes: it’s not us, it’s them, or forces beyond our control, so we cannot be blamed – if only these external or disloyal sources of disorder can be removed, all will be well.</p>
<h2>The political unconscious</h2>
<p>Žižek draws on insights from <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/lacweb/">French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan</a>, to explore the paradoxical sides of ideologies. He couples this with recourse to ideas from <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/germidea/">German idealist philosophers</a> led by Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, and Friedrich Schelling. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555759/original/file-20231025-19-i775en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting depicting Jacques Lacan." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555759/original/file-20231025-19-i775en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555759/original/file-20231025-19-i775en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555759/original/file-20231025-19-i775en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555759/original/file-20231025-19-i775en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555759/original/file-20231025-19-i775en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555759/original/file-20231025-19-i775en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555759/original/file-20231025-19-i775en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Jacques Lacan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jacques_Lacan.jpg">Blatterhin/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Lacan argued that a good deal of human behaviour is motivated by irrational drives and wishes we do not consciously grasp. This is why one of Žižek’s early books bears the portentous <a href="https://www.unity.org/bible-interpretations/luke-2334-then-jesus-said-father-forgive-them-they-do-not-know-what-theyre">Biblical</a> title, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90568.For_They_Know_Not_What_They_Do?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_30">For They Know Not What They Do</a>.</p>
<p>In order to understand these “unconscious” motives, <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/2688/language-self">Lacan drew on the linguistics and anthropology of his time</a>, producing writings of almost legendary difficulty. One reason for Žižek’s success is his great ability to help Lacan make sense to us today by using examples from pop culture, jokes, and politics. </p>
<p>For instance, Žižek illustrates the Lacanian idea of <a href="http://clarkbuckner.com/clarkbuckner/56">the unsymbolisable Real</a>, by comparing it to <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18919.How_to_Read_Lacan">the monsters of the Alien movies</a>. </p>
<p>Žižek’s basic Lacanian claim, in terms of his “critique of ideology”, is that people do not always identify with political causes on rational bases. They form passionate, sometimes unconditional identifications with causes and leaders based on their earliest attachments to parental figures. They are thus identifying with what Žižek calls the “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18912.The_Sublime_Object_of_Ideology">sublime objects</a>” of ideologies: whether it is a “charismatic” leader, or an elevating idea like “the revolution” or “human freedom”.</p>
<p>This identification does not turn upon any individual necessarily knowing what the cause means, truly, or what their “beloved leader” actually stands for. It is enough for us each to see that others around us identify with the ideological cause, and assign especial significance to it. We then “believe through the Other”, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23961515">as Žižek characteristically says</a>.</p>
<p>Parishioners in medieval churches, he writes, would mostly have not understood the mass, which was carried out in Latin. But it did not matter. The ritual still acted as a salve. People “believed through their priests”, who they supposed knew the meaning of the words being recited.</p>
<p>In exchange for our identification with ideologies, Žižek claims, we gain a sense of “ideological enjoyment”: that we are “all in this together”, sharing everything from public events and festivals to the micro-customs organising everyday life, including shared cultural senses of humour.</p>
<p>On the flipside, Žižek’s analyses suggest that what subjects of ideologies most despise in “out-groups” (ie outsiders), is that they seem not to enjoy the same things, in the same way, that “we” do. They smell, speak, eat, worship, even play differently. It is therefore a very common ideological device to position these others as trying to steal our enjoyment from us: taking away our jobs, our taxpayer’s dollars, our “way of life” …</p>
<h2>Whither Žižek?</h2>
<p>Žižek’s early work suggested that the goal of his Lacanian rethinking of ideology was to enable societies to free themselves from “ideological fantasies” – like recurrent ideas of a utopian <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-history-francis-fukuyamas-controversial-idea-explained-193225">“end of history”,</a> or of a “purified”, fascistic <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Volksgemeinschaft">community of the People</a>. The result would be a form of enlightened political democracy.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-history-francis-fukuyamas-controversial-idea-explained-193225">The End of History: Francis Fukuyama's controversial idea explained</a>
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<p>Since around the turn of the millennium, Žižek has, however, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Zizek_and_Politics.html?id=_hmrBgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">vacillated as to whether</a> any political regime can endure without resting on such irrational political myths. From this time, often seeming to utilise parodic humour, Žižek has positioned himself as a “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18925.In_Defense_of_Lost_Causes">defender of lost causes</a>”, to echo the title of arguably his most controversial book.</p>
<p>These causes sometimes seemingly include <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/gould/2003/20030721c.htm">even the Jacobin Terror of the French revolution or Stalinism</a>. He has claimed, too, that <a href="https://theconversation.com/heidegger-in-ruins-grappling-with-an-anti-semitic-philosopher-and-his-troubling-rebirth-today-200826">Martin Heidegger’s embrace of Nazism</a> was a “<a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/07/12/violent-visions-slavoj-zizek/">right step in the wrong direction</a>”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heidegger-in-ruins-grappling-with-an-anti-semitic-philosopher-and-his-troubling-rebirth-today-200826">Heidegger in ruins? Grappling with an anti-semitic philosopher and his troubling rebirth today</a>
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<p>Meanwhile, critics like political theorist <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43221">Ernesto Laclau</a> have questioned the credentials of Žižek’s professed “Marxism”. Some <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/07/12/violent-visions-slavoj-zizek/">wonder</a> if his patented radical poses are under-girded by any progressive vision of the political good. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/">Others point out</a> that his own political record in Slovenia in the late 1980s, in which he supported “more privatizations” (“if it works, why not try a dose of it?”), does not <a href="https://www.academia.edu/7180773/Time_to_get_serious">sit easily</a> with his Marxist stances in the West since the mid-1990s.</p>
<p>Žižek was recently described by philosopher <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/">Gabriel Rockhill</a> as a kind of unlikely “court jester” in today’s hyper market-driven societies: a radical anti-capitalist who is a commercial success, and whose scattered writings are uncannily suited for readers in a rapid-pace world. </p>
<p>Žižek’s evident delight in reversing expectations, and making <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/27/less-than-nothing-slavoj-zizek-review">almost unbelievably provocative propositions</a>, at times makes it difficult to ascertain just how seriously we are meant to take him. Žižek has defended himself against such criticisms by saying he wishes to challenge the “post-political” idea that social change is no longer possible, after the fall of the iron curtain. </p>
<p>Beyond the brilliant exegeses and application of some formidably difficult theory, it is perhaps as an intellectual provocateur that Žižek is most generously to be read.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Sharpe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Slovenian philosopher is one of the world’s most famous thinkers. But what does he actually stand for?Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2138452023-09-21T12:45:11Z2023-09-21T12:45:11ZPaying for hostages’ release involves moral risks − a political philosopher explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549369/original/file-20230920-25-kc87cw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=103%2C0%2C5646%2C3827&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Freed U.S. nationals released in a prisoner swap deal between the U.S. and Iran disembark from an airplane at Fort Belvoir, Va., on Sept. 19, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/freed-us-nationals-emad-shargi-greets-a-family-member-as-he-news-photo/1676843889?adppopup=true">Jonathan Ernst/Pool/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Five Americans held as hostages by Iran have been returned to the United States following a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/18/politics/biden-iran-americans-politics/index.html">political deal</a> in which President Joe Biden agreed to unfreeze US$6 billion in Iranian funds held in South Korean banks in exchange for the prisoners.</p>
<p>Hostage-taking has been frequently used by both <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/fifty-years-after-hostage-taking-went-global-were-still-learning-lessons">states and insurgent groups</a> as a means to extract funds or concessions from more powerful states. <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/iraniancrises">Iran took 52</a> American diplomats and citizens hostage in 1979 and held them for over a year. </p>
<p>In recent years, foreign citizens have been taken hostage in countries such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/nearly-100-nigerian-hostages-rescued-after-two-months-of-captivity">Nigeria</a>, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hostage-situations-penny-wong-papua-new-guinea-kidnapping-84cb6f74d48bf8e64aeb3fd2fa4f02f4">Papua New Guinea</a>, <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/05/taliban-afghanistan-hostage-diplomacy-western-prisoners/">Afghanistan</a> and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/04/30/iraq-kidnap-escape-iran-militia/">Iraq</a>.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://phil.washington.edu/people/michael-blake">political philosopher</a>, I am interested in the morality of using funds to secure the release of hostages. The appeal of doing so is powerful, but the long-term moral costs of acceding to the demands of hostage-takers is frequently even more significant. </p>
<h2>Moral reasons to pay − and to worry about paying</h2>
<p>There are some powerful moral reasons to argue that trading money for hostages is morally defensible. Eighteenth-century philosopher <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/">Immanuel Kant</a> takes the fundamental tenet of morality to be that human beings are ethically distinct from goods, such as money. Under this lens, Biden may have done the right thing by choosing to give up money in exchange for the safety and liberty of these hostages. </p>
<p>The payments may also be justified with reference to the moral purposes of the state itself. If the central job of any political government is to <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/#SH2a">protect its citizens</a>, then a government that did not work to repatriate its citizens held abroad might be seen as failing to do its job.</p>
<p>However, strong arguments can also be brought to bear against the practice of paying for the release of hostages. <a href="https://utilitarianism.net/introduction-to-utilitarianism/">Utilitarian philosophers</a> argue that public policy ought to focus on maximizing human happiness and well-being – not simply now, but over time. If hostage-takers are rewarded, it is entirely possible that they will choose to take more hostages in the future. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549371/original/file-20230920-29-f59usk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man, dressed in a blue suit and tie, speaking to a group of people." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549371/original/file-20230920-29-f59usk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549371/original/file-20230920-29-f59usk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549371/original/file-20230920-29-f59usk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549371/original/file-20230920-29-f59usk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549371/original/file-20230920-29-f59usk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549371/original/file-20230920-29-f59usk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549371/original/file-20230920-29-f59usk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a news conference as he announces that five Americans had been freed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-speaks-during-a-news-news-photo/1674818787?adppopup=true">Craig Ruttle/Pool/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The release of $6 billion to the government of Iran will bring significant benefits for the present hostages and their families. It may also, however, ensure <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/18/iran-american-prisoner-swap-hostage-sanction-biden">a stream of future hostages</a>, for whom similar ethical calculations must be made.</p>
<h2>Paying now − and in the future</h2>
<p>There are further ethical worries that stem from the use of that $6 billion. Any group that is willing to take hostages could well engage in <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/03/1134782">other morally questionable practices as well</a>. </p>
<p>The government of Iran, for instance, has come under recent criticism for its financial support for <a href="https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/g7-foreign-ministers-statement/2561876">violent, nonstate, regional agents</a> - including, notably, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/hezbollah-revolutionary-irans-most-successful-export/">Hezbollah</a>, designated as a terrorist group by both the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hezbollah">United States</a> and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/world/middleeast/european-union-adds-hezbollah-wing-to-terror-list.html">European Union</a>. Additionally, there are allegations that Iran <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15344.doc.htm">provided military support to Russia</a> during its ongoing war against Ukraine.</p>
<p>Within its own borders, Iran has come under increased scrutiny for its domestic record on human rights – which includes the extrajudicial killings of protesters, <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/12/iran-authorities-covering-up-their-crimes-of-child-killings-by-coercing-families-into-silence/">including children</a>.</p>
<p>The Biden administration has been quick to assert that the money will be used by Iran only for <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/18/politics/iran-money-explainer/index.html">humanitarian purposes</a>. Nonetheless, the influx of such a significant amount of funds seems likely to increase Iran’s overall strength and ability to act in favor of its aims. </p>
<p>Such aims may come with significant risks of <a href="https://www.americansecurityproject.org/irans-destabilizing-activities-in-the-middle-east/">violence and destabilization</a>, given the ways in which Iranian money has been used in the past to support violent, nonstate agents throughout the <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-112shrg76693/html/CHRG-112shrg76693.htm">Middle East</a>.</p>
<p>The short-term benefits to the hostages and their families must be weighed against these long-term effects.</p>
<h2>Whose lives are more valued?</h2>
<p>These future risks, moreover, are often given less weight than is appropriate, because of the natural human tendency to focus on the present and the particular over the uncertain.</p>
<p>Philosophers such as <a href="https://uchv.princeton.edu/people/peter-singer">Peter Singer</a> have criticized governments that choose to spend large sums to rescue particular people, when such money might have <a href="https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/the-book/">saved more lives</a> if directed elsewhere.</p>
<p>To take one example: Governments routinely spend great sums to rescue people lost at sea – including the wealthy travelers who chose to voyage to the <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/06/22/world/extreme-rescue-is-expensive-titanic/">Titanic on a submersible that proved to be unsafe</a>. The money devoted to that rescue operation would almost certainly have saved more lives were it devoted to other purposes, such as <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Living_High_and_Letting_Die.html?id=aa9Upeq173sC">public health or development aid</a>. </p>
<p>Medical ethicists such as <a href="https://bioethics.hms.harvard.edu/news/remembering-dan-w-brock-phd-1937-2020">Dan Brock</a> have argued that this difference in attitude reflects irrationality rather than ethics. There is no moral difference between the death of a specific and known person and a statistical death in the future. Policymakers act wrongly by <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/9938/chapter-abstract/157271094?redirectedFrom=fulltext#">ignoring the latter in favor of the former</a>. </p>
<p>The same conclusions seem appropriate for policymakers using funds to rescue hostages when those funds are likely to make violent agents more powerful. If the money provided to save one life causes the deaths of more lives in the future, those paying the money have – if Singer and Brock are correct – acted wrongly. </p>
<h2>The absence of simple answers</h2>
<p>The question of whether to pay for the release of hostages is a difficult one, and there is no single answer that does not raise significant ethical challenges.</p>
<p>The practice of hostage-taking, moreover, seems to be on the rise, with an estimated <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/08/world/europe/griner-americans-detained.html">580% increase</a> in American citizens taken hostage abroad in the past eight years.</p>
<p>There is no single reason for this increase; it reflects factors as diverse as a growing hostility toward international humanitarian norms and an increased willingness by authoritarian states to directly target <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/jason-rezaian-rise-hostage-taking">foreign journalists</a>. These factors, sadly, are unlikely to improve in the near future.</p>
<p>At the very least, if a state chooses to pay for the release of its citizens, I believe, it must do what it can to mitigate the harms wrought by that payment – including, most importantly, making some significant <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/07/19/executive-order-on-bolstering-efforts-to-bring-hostages-and-wrongfully-detained-united-states-nationals-home/">effort to prevent</a> hostile powers from taking hostages in the first place.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213845/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Blake receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. </span></em></p>States sometimes choose to pay for the release of their citizens held hostage abroad – but there could be profound, long-term costs involved.Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2105252023-08-23T19:09:52Z2023-08-23T19:09:52ZWhat would Aristotle think about the current state of politics?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543825/original/file-20230821-19874-gmn9pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3840%2C2160&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aristotle is considered the founder of political science. He probably wouldn't be surprised at the state of political discourse in modern times. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/what-would-aristotle-think-about-the-current-state-of-politics" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In recent years, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-hatred-and-othering-of-political-foes-has-spiked-to-extreme-levels/">political debate has degenerated into ever more aggressive partisan mudslinging and character assassination</a>, with no room for a reasoned and non-rancorous discussion of competing alternatives in assessing the policy issues of the day. </p>
<p>This trend is only likely to intensify as we enter a presidential election season in the United States in the months to come. </p>
<p>As the author of a book about philosophers, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108333856"><em>Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger</em></a>, it seemed like a good time to see what the founder of political science — Aristotle — had to say about how civic deliberation should unfold.</p>
<h2>Political animals</h2>
<p>Aristotle famously wrote that <a href="https://doi.org/10.5406/janimalethics.6.1.0054">“man is by nature a political animal.”</a> </p>
<p>That means as human beings, we fulfil our purpose through engaging in a civic dialogue with fellow citizens regarding the meaning of justice. Those conversations are meant to be guided by reason. </p>
<p>But for Aristotle, this definition was a high-water mark for political debate, rarely if ever achieved. Most of the time, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0006">Aristotle argued, public debate about justice, equality and who should have political authority is fractious</a> — and even leads to the breakdown of all debate in insurrection and civil war.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/america-is-on-the-brink-of-another-civil-war-this-one-fuelled-by-donald-trump-210937">America is on the brink of another civil war, this one fuelled by Donald Trump</a>
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<p>Aristotle believed that the biggest and most widespread source of political tension is the struggle between the haves and the have-nots. It’s the universal cause of unrest because, while one can be good at math as well as good at cooking, or a talented painter and a talented lawyer, a better doctor than a chess player or a worse violinist than a teacher, there are two things that nobody can be at the same time: rich and poor.</p>
<p>That’s why the haves and have-nots are at loggerheads. Society must address that potential source of conflict before it can aim for a higher politics dedicated to promoting virtue, reason and the good life.</p>
<h2>Democrat/oligarch showdowns</h2>
<p>This is where Aristotle was at his most revealing about how political debate should take place. He focuses on the two most antagonistic factions, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0006">the democrats versus the oligarchs.</a> </p>
<p>The democrats claim that because they are all equal, everyone is equal in every respect. The oligarchs reply that because they have demonstrated their superior virtue by acquiring more property than the democrats, they are superior to them in every way. </p>
<p>But for Aristotle, the state must assess the respects in which people are equal and the respects in which they are unequal, and determine on that basis who should have political authority.</p>
<p>Everyone is fundamentally equal, but society recognizes differing contributions and rewards them with recognition and often with wealth. Society has an obligation to protect everyone’s basic rights and to establish a level playing field, whereby people can compete to get ahead in life unhindered by a disadvantaged background, poverty or a lack of connections. </p>
<p>That is a responsibility of the state, because for Aristotle, virtue was meritocratic and not the result of an accident of privileged birth.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A stone statue with a body of water behind it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543831/original/file-20230821-15-8qnuy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543831/original/file-20230821-15-8qnuy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543831/original/file-20230821-15-8qnuy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543831/original/file-20230821-15-8qnuy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543831/original/file-20230821-15-8qnuy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543831/original/file-20230821-15-8qnuy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543831/original/file-20230821-15-8qnuy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aristotle didn’t believe in pure idealism or materialism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Idealism versus realism</h2>
<p>This brings us to Aristotle’s key point about how public debate should unfold. </p>
<p>Each participant, he observed, argues for a certain idea of a just political system while at the same time seeking to advance their own self-interest. </p>
<p>But the argument they make regarding justice isn’t just an ideological camouflage for their self-interest, as we might regard it today. As Aristotle puts it, each party “fastens on” a degree of truth regarding the different possibilities for devising a just society, while at the same time the element of truth in their position is combined with their desire for a bigger piece of the pie. </p>
<p>In other words, in Aristotle’s view there is no such thing in political life as a <a href="https://www.tekedia.com/sociological-imagination-between-idealism-and-realism/">pure idealist or a pure materialist</a>. Idealism and realism cannot be disentangled from one another.</p>
<p>Prudent participants in civic dialogue should be aware of that combination of realism and idealism in others and in themselves, Aristotle argued. That awareness should moderate their expectations for the degree to which perfect justice could or even should come to pass.</p>
<h2>Hobbes, Kant</h2>
<p>Aristotle’s understanding of public debate seems a blend of England’s <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes/">Thomas Hobbes</a> — who argued that without government, life would be “nasty, brutish and short” — and Germany’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Immanuel-Kant">Immanuel Kant</a>, who believed that without freedom, moral appraisal and responsibility would be impossible. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1691481121949945856"}"></div></p>
<p>It resists the reduction of prudent civic dialogue to either a grasping materialism that has no concern for a just society or an ideal of justice so pure that it demands citizens put aside any interest in their material well-being. Both extremes are likely to engender hostility and strife. </p>
<p>Perhaps the worst political leadership would be someone who combined a degree of <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/how-bad-are-billionaire-politicians-for-democracy.html">inherited wealth that made them unable to appreciate the everyday economic difficulties</a> most people face with ideological extremism. In short, it would be a leader with the danger of pure idealism combined with great privilege.</p>
<h2>Constants remain</h2>
<p>Circumstances are of course very different today than in Aristotle’s time. </p>
<p>But some constants remain, especially the potential for violent disagreement between the haves and have-nots. </p>
<p>Like any other theoretical rule of thumb, Aristotle’s advice about political debate cannot guide us to specific answers or solutions to the concrete policy issues of the day. </p>
<p>But it can remind us that political debate should be peaceful, that we should respect the convictions of others as we would like them to respect our own and that we should be realistic enough to understand that self-interest will always be a factor in what the public expects from justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Waller R. Newell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Aristotle believed that the biggest and most widespread source of political tension is the struggle between the haves and the have-nots. More than 2,000 years later, he’s got a point.Waller R. Newell, Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1953932023-07-21T13:43:39Z2023-07-21T13:43:39ZWhat Germany’s quest to define dignity – both before and after 1945 – tells us about society<p>We all know what <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-define-dignity-and-its-place-in-human-rights-a-philosophers-view-81785">dignity</a> looks like when it is taken from us. From job losses and <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-showed-i-daniel-blake-to-people-living-with-the-benefits-system-heres-how-they-reacted-73153">income deprivation</a>, to <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-racial-discrimination-does-to-young-peoples-wellbeing-141655">discrimination</a>, systemic <a href="https://theconversation.com/whiteness-is-at-the-heart-of-racism-in-britain-so-why-is-it-portrayed-as-a-black-problem-181742">racism</a> or oppression, throughout history there have been constant and countless instances of people being deprived, humiliated and <a href="https://theconversation.com/dehumanising-policies-leave-autistic-people-struggling-to-access-health-education-and-housing-new-review-202997">dehumanised</a>, their dignity refused.</p>
<p>The second world war – and the atrocities committed by the National Socialist regime in particular – represents a salient instance of dignity denied, of crimes against humanity. At its conclusion, in 1945, legal scholars, politicians and the wider public agreed that life without dignity was meaningless.</p>
<p>My doctoral research looks at the German quest, both before and after the conflict, to define dignity, in order to enshrine its protection in law. Tracing this task from German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s attempts at a universal definition, to the West German constitution drafted between 1948 and 1949, I have found that while a clear definition remains elusive, it is that very abstraction that ensures it is universal.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A sculpture of German words on a building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537493/original/file-20230714-22-a9slss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537493/original/file-20230714-22-a9slss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537493/original/file-20230714-22-a9slss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537493/original/file-20230714-22-a9slss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537493/original/file-20230714-22-a9slss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537493/original/file-20230714-22-a9slss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537493/original/file-20230714-22-a9slss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Human dignity shall be inviolable’, Frankfurt am Main.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany#/media/File:Landgericht-frankfurt-2010-ffm-081.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An inviolable attribute</h2>
<p>On September 1 1948, 65 members of the West German <em>Parlamentarischer Rat</em> (parliamentary council) convened in Bonn to draw up a constitution for the nascent democratic, federal state. The council wanted to draft an unwavering response to the atrocities Germany had committed. </p>
<p>Under Nazi law, human beings were excluded from community and thus dehumanised. <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/147631666.pdf">Dignity</a>, therefore, had to be firmly established in the new constitution. The law had to ensure that each person was positioned as a member of society and protected by society.</p>
<p>To do so, some argued that it first had to be defined. Others, including Theodor Heuss, the Free Democratic Party representative for West Germany and Berlin, disagreed. He advocated for dignity to be left as an “uninterpreted proposition”, purposefully abstract so as to be universal. </p>
<p>This, Heuss reasoned, would guarantee that the notion of dignity would be protected from political manoeuvring, yet still open to interpretation, according to different philosophical and religious backgrounds. Heuss considered defining dignity in this way to be the only proper refutation of the barbarism of National Socialism, a safeguard against ever again allowing the state to judge the value of human life.</p>
<p>Heuss’s argument <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-27830-8_14-1">prevailed</a>. The <em>Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland</em> (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany) was adopted on May 8 1949. <a href="https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html#:%7E:text=(1)%20Human%20dignity%20shall%20be,of%20justice%20in%20the%20world.">Article 1</a>, which still has its distinctive validity today, reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority. The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A universal definition</h2>
<p>One and a half centuries earlier, in his 1785 volume, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant had sought to <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/41174358.pdf">democratise human dignity</a>. His idea was that all human beings have an inner worth and should be valued simply because they are human. All should be treated as ends in themselves rather than simply as means to an end.</p>
<p>Moreover, Kant defined dignity by distinguishing it from those things that could be costed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is raised above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Illustration of a silhouette of a man in expensive 17th-century clothes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537498/original/file-20230714-30-8k8z7x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537498/original/file-20230714-30-8k8z7x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537498/original/file-20230714-30-8k8z7x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537498/original/file-20230714-30-8k8z7x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537498/original/file-20230714-30-8k8z7x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1265&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537498/original/file-20230714-30-8k8z7x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1265&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537498/original/file-20230714-30-8k8z7x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1265&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Immanuel Kant by Puttrich Johann Theodor, 1793.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/djr8t98g/images?id=pfpyjc6s">Wellcome Collection Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kant’s timeless formula did not, however, seem to fully anticipate what the second world war would go on to lay bare: the degree to which humans could deprive others of their dignity. It also stood at odds with the philosopher’s own espousal, for most of his career, of <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/4139/chapter/145901251">scientific racism</a> and his ignorance of how such views precisely denied dignity to countless people. </p>
<p>So in retrospect, Heuss’s definition of human dignity proved wise. Kant’s framing of dignity may be concise, timeless, and universal, but his judgement of who is worthy of dignity – and who is not – was indeed marred by the ideologies of his own time. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/overcoming-racism-depends-on-respect-for-every-persons-dignity-201065">Dignity today</a> still appears as a visible horizon. Everything – politics, the rule of law, our societal compass, the way we each live our lives – is directed towards it, yet it remains difficult to reach. </p>
<p>Framing dignity by what it is not (indignity) or by what denies it (humiliation) runs the risk of our only ever thinking about it in terms of victimhood. Throughout history, though, there has also been this idea that, with dignity, comes something sublime that demands respect: a sense of <a href="https://theconversation.com/awe-can-alter-our-sense-of-self-and-open-us-to-new-possibilities-could-it-help-save-the-planet-205917">awe</a>. </p>
<p>This is of course most obvious in the way a <a href="https://theconversation.com/king-charles-iiis-coronation-oath-is-a-crucial-part-of-the-ceremony-experts-explain-202870">sovereign’s dignity</a> is traditionally hailed – if only in officialdom – with words such as “excellence”, “highness” and “majesty”. </p>
<p>The modern concept of democratic dignity might be seen as exactly this sublime status, formerly reserved for the nobility and now democratised. A <a href="https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_resources/documents/a-to-z/w/Waldron_09.pdf">universalised high social rank</a> could have a persuasive force. It would not only affirm the moral worth of each individual, it would also answer the yearning for recognition – of honour and status – that everyone experiences. </p>
<p>Quite how to define the dignity of all people depends on each person’s unique interpretation of the world. The law, however, cannot equivocate on its status: as a legally recognised human characteristic, dignity must remain inviolable. It must be constantly recreated and protected from any bias.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frederick Hauke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The second world war showed that dignity had to be enshrined in law. Defining it in order to do so is no easy task.Frederick Hauke, PhD candidate, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2017492023-05-01T12:10:44Z2023-05-01T12:10:44ZRespectful persuasion is a relay race, not a solo sprint – 3 keys to putting it in practice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522413/original/file-20230421-26-rahwwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C3%2C2189%2C1352&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sure, you can try to force people to agree with you -- but respectful persuasion is something else.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/person-attracts-people-to-his-side-with-a-magnet-royalty-free-image/1310600143?phrase=persuasion&adppopup=true">Andrii Yalanskyi/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2024 presidential election is still a year and a half away, but it can feel much closer: President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/-joe-biden-president-election-2024-campaign-announcement-rcna80990">has made his reelection bid official</a>, presumed candidates are <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/ron-desantis-pennsylvania-harrisburg-florida-presidential-20230401.html">giving out-of-state speeches</a>, pundits are already <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3863529-three-reasons-nikki-haleys-candidacy-is-a-race-to-watch/">weighing in on nomination hopefuls</a>, and social media is, as ever, a mess of people trying to persuade strangers to back their favorite. All for good reason: Even a little political persuasion in the next year could change the course of history.</p>
<p>I’m a philosopher <a href="https://phil.washington.edu/people/colin-marshall">who studies and teaches the ethics of persuasion</a>. My students are eager to find ways to persuade their friends, family and neighbors about political issues such as climate change and abortion. Moreover, many of them want to persuade with integrity: They want to engage the people they’re talking with respectfully, instead of using the manipulative tricks they regularly see in politics and marketing. But what is respectful persuasion, and what distinguishes it from disrespectful manipulation?</p>
<p>There’s no simple formula for respectful persuasion. However, some philosophers see crucial hints in the work of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/">18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant</a>, whose theory of respect has guided many ethicists and policymakers for the past two centuries.</p>
<p>Drawing on Kant’s work, and that of other philosophers inspired by him, I think we can isolate three key components of respectful persuasion. This isn’t just an academic exercise. My students and I have found that these factors increase the chances of deep, meaningful conversation.</p>
<h2>1. Giving reasons</h2>
<p>Broadly speaking, reasons are considerations that rationally support some belief or action, including both empirical evidence and abstract arguments. For example, astronauts’ pictures of a round Earth rationally support the belief that the Earth is round. When we sincerely give someone reasons, we show respect for their rationality: their ability to recognize good reasons. </p>
<p>By contrast, a <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-manipulation/">hallmark of manipulation</a> is bypassing rationality, such as repeatedly exposing people to false statements to make them appear true – something that psychologists call the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01651-4">illusory truth effect</a>.”</p>
<p>Manipulation can be effective, but psychologists have found that persuasion using reasons <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4964-1_1">is more durable</a> than nonrational persuasion such as repetition-based tricks. For example, someone who comes to believe in climate change based on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-science-everyone-needs-to-know-about-climate-change-in-6-charts-170556">scientific evidence</a> probably will not be as easily swayed later on by repeated exposure to climate skepticism. The rational support that good reasons provide for a belief can make that belief more stable. </p>
<h2>2. Being open to learning</h2>
<p>Giving reasons is not difficult by itself. The second component of respectful persuasion, however, is much more challenging: being open to receiving the other side’s reasons – a form of intellectual humility. This is especially hard for persuaders, since they have to give up some of the time they would have used to make their case.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522414/original/file-20230421-14-ljke0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A centuries-old painting of a serious-looking seated man in a powdered wig and brown suit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522414/original/file-20230421-14-ljke0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522414/original/file-20230421-14-ljke0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522414/original/file-20230421-14-ljke0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522414/original/file-20230421-14-ljke0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522414/original/file-20230421-14-ljke0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522414/original/file-20230421-14-ljke0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522414/original/file-20230421-14-ljke0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kant’s ideas about respect are still helpful for thinking through sticky situations today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/immanuel-kant-portrait-painting-by-d%C3%B6bler-1791-german-news-photo/171223546?adppopup=true">Culture Club/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kant expressed this core idea nicely. Even someone encountering a person whose opinion seems obviously wrong, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813306">Kant wrote</a>, has “a duty … to suppose that his judgment must yet contain some truth and to seek this out.” This isn’t merely a suggestion to listen to people one wants to persuade. Instead, respect demands actively seeking out truth in what the other person says. </p>
<p>In fact, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217697695">some studies</a> suggest that intellectual humility makes people better able to evaluate the strength of arguments. This means that intellectually humble people may be more likely to recognize that a persuader’s arguments are actually better than their own, and have to reconsider their views – which can pose a real risk <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.5.789">to someone’s self-esteem</a>.</p>
<p>But being open to other people’s reasons also increases the chance of their being open to yours – a form of reciprocity in which you take turns learning from each other. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12773">Decades of psychological research</a> have shown that, especially in two-person exchanges, people value reciprocity in communication and see it as a way of treating each other fairly. </p>
<p>In other words, if you show openness to learning from someone else, rather than just lecturing, it may seem fair to them to be open to you too. </p>
<p>That is why faking this kind of respect can be a powerful manipulative tool. A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000923">psychologically savvy canvasser</a>, for instance, can manipulate swing voters by pretending to be open to learning about their own opinions. But this carries its own risk, since people who discover they have been manipulated <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24332280">may resent it</a>.</p>
<h2>3. Live and let live</h2>
<p>Kant’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813306">central principle of respect</a> is that one should “not degrade any other as a mere means” to one’s ends. This requires people to rein in their own self-love out of consideration for others. In popular culture, this might be summed up in the idea of “live and let live”: Other things being equal, we shouldn’t interfere in other people’s lives. </p>
<p>Overlooking this principle can make persuasion disrespectful in a variety of ways, even when the persuader has good intentions. The philosopher <a href="https://manoa.hawaii.edu/chinesestudies/tsai-george/">George Tsai</a> argues that this happens <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12026">in cases of unsolicited advice</a>: Imagine, he writes, that while your date goes to the restroom, an eavesdropping stranger tells you that she thinks you could do better. Even if the stranger is right, it’s simply none of her business.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522415/original/file-20230421-18-phutz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men in business attire chat while a woman in a sleeveless white top listens in, looking concerned." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522415/original/file-20230421-18-phutz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522415/original/file-20230421-18-phutz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522415/original/file-20230421-18-phutz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522415/original/file-20230421-18-phutz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522415/original/file-20230421-18-phutz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522415/original/file-20230421-18-phutz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522415/original/file-20230421-18-phutz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Having an opinion doesn’t mean you need to share it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/businesswoman-eavesdropping-on-conversation-royalty-free-image/1316007542?phrase=eavesdropping&adppopup=true">DragonImages/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another example of how interference can make persuasion disrespectful is that <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-the-time-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-what-should-you-say-to-someone-who-refuses-to-wear-a-mask-a-philosopher-weighs-in-142898">changing someone’s mind</a> can harm their dignity and disrupt their connection to their community. For example, say that you persuade a relative who lives in a small ranching community to become vegan. That change might lead to their being ostracized by people they rely on.</p>
<p>Because persuasion can affect other people’s lives in many ways, this third component of respect is the most difficult to adhere to. Sometimes, people may be justified in interfering in other people’s lives, such as if lives are at stake or in particularly <a href="https://doi.org/10.5206/fpq/2016.2.1">close relationships</a> – but those are special circumstances. </p>
<h2>One conversation at a time</h2>
<p>In class, my students attempt to persuade one another four times, using a range of formats: five minutes vs. a whole week; in person vs. over Zoom. At the end, they score one another on effectiveness and respectfulness.</p>
<p>My students are smart, informed and passionate, and the class offers them a positive, carefully structured environment. Despite all that, they almost never succeed in persuading one another – at least not when it comes to politics.</p>
<p>Something interesting happens, though, when they let respect guide their conversations. Instead of launching into lectures, they start seeing each exchange as an opportunity to learn from each other – perhaps as an opportunity to leave their partner thinking about something in a new way, without fully persuading them.</p>
<p>If you approach our conversation as a chance to exchange ideas, without trying to change my mind, you may lay a cornerstone of trust. That, in turn, could make me more receptive to similar viewpoints in the future – even if I’m speaking with other people. Truly respectful political persuasion might best be seen as an extended team effort, not a one-time, one-person task.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201749/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Marshall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Immanuel Kant’s ideas about respect are still important today, in a world where social media and echo chambers make manipulation easy.Colin Marshall, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2010652023-04-13T16:06:17Z2023-04-13T16:06:17ZOvercoming racism depends on respect for every person’s dignity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519895/original/file-20230406-22-97k0d0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C711%2C5084%2C3086&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">International human rights mechanisms alone cannot offer reliable solutions to racism, including racism affecting racialized migrants. Protestors support migrant worker rights in front of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, in Toronto, in August 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/overcoming-racism-depends-on-respect-for-every-person-s-dignity" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>I teach a course on race, racialization, racism and human rights. In my classes and some <a href="https://carleton.ca/africanstudies/people/evelyn-namakula/">of my research</a>, I highlight empathy, <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315107561-35/biblical-dogmatic-theology-personhood-namakula-evelyn-mayanja">personhood and</a> respect for human dignity as fundamental to overcoming racism. </p>
<p>On the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-convention-elimination-all-forms-racial">International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination</a>, a student asked: Why does racism still <a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/policing-black-lives">exist against Black people</a>, Indigenous people and people of colour when we have national and international mechanisms built upon notions of human dignity, equal rights and freedom? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People seen with placards." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519430/original/file-20230404-16-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519430/original/file-20230404-16-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519430/original/file-20230404-16-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519430/original/file-20230404-16-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519430/original/file-20230404-16-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519430/original/file-20230404-16-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519430/original/file-20230404-16-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People gather in solidarity with the George Floyd protests at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg in June 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>National and international human rights mechanisms do not seem to provide reliable solutions to racism. They are tokenistic gestures that silence the consciousness of those benefiting from racialized systems and institutions. </p>
<h2>Mechanisms for addressing racism</h2>
<p>Mechanisms like <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Canada_2011.pdf?lang=en">the Canadian Constitution</a>, the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> (1948) and the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-convention-elimination-all-forms-racial">International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination</a> (1965) don’t address the root causes of racism and do not seem to provide reliable solutions to racism. </p>
<p>After the <a href="https://theconversation.com/justice-for-george-floyd-derek-chauvins-guilty-verdicts-must-result-in-fundamental-changes-to-policing-159400">killing of George Floyd</a>, people protested against anti-Black racism and against <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-65001559">all forms of racism</a> have become common. However, racism remains engraved in Canadian and global society. </p>
<p>Nineteen racialized students from my class remarked they are traumatized, because since childhood they have lived in fear of being stopped by police, incarcerated or killed because of their skin colour. Others lamented how their parents, with qualifications including doctorates, do precarious jobs. </p>
<p>One student said that in Canada, we hide behind race-neutral excuses, multiculturalism, the cultural mosaic and the myth that Canada is more welcoming than the United States. </p>
<h2>What is human dignity and personhood?</h2>
<p>Western theories of human dignity denote basic and inherent worth that belongs to all people. In philosophy, <a href="https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226088266-006">Cicero</a> introduced the idea of “the dignity of the human race.” </p>
<p>The philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his 1785 <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300227437/groundwork-for-the-metaphysics-of-morals/"><em>Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals</em></a>, argued that every person has inherent dignity or value which demands moral respect in treating them. </p>
<p>Kant emphasized that every person has the obligation to <em>always</em> treat the Other “as an end” and “never merely as a means.” It is not only about treating others as you would like them to treat you, but behaving in a way that your conduct could be a model <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#CatHypImp">for universal laws</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chn043">In western law</a>, human dignity is key to interpreting human rights and adjudication. </p>
<p>Yet clearly, factors beyond these have shaped our societies.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman seen with a microphone in front of sign 'I can't breathe.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519434/original/file-20230404-14-ejef4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519434/original/file-20230404-14-ejef4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519434/original/file-20230404-14-ejef4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519434/original/file-20230404-14-ejef4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519434/original/file-20230404-14-ejef4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519434/original/file-20230404-14-ejef4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519434/original/file-20230404-14-ejef4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A disconnect exists between notions of human dignity and racialized violence. A protestor speaks in Montréal in June 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Greed, capitalism and racism</h2>
<p>Slavery and colonialism emerged historically in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23415098">racial capitalism</a>, meaning that a denial of the dignity, rights and humanity of groups of African and Indigenous people was an intrinsic aspect of justifying economic control of their bodies, lands and resources. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-vatican-just-renounced-a-500-year-old-doctrine-that-justified-colonial-land-theft-now-what-podcast-203229">The Vatican just renounced a 500-year-old doctrine that justified colonial land theft … Now what? — Podcast</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Today, the denial of “others’” humanity to enable brutal violence and exploitation for profits continues to deny the dignity, rights and humanity of the racialized, and to commodify, objectify and kill them. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.617">the Democratic Republic of Congo</a> (DRC), rich with gold, diamonds, coltan and the critical minerals needed for transitioning to renewable energy, is exposed to corporate resource extraction. </p>
<p><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284297/cobaltred">In the Global North</a> electronic vehicles and lithium batteries are considered a game changer for mitigating climate change. However, the extraction of minerals displaces communities, engenders deforestation, pollutes land, air and water and exposes people to diseases, poverty and incessant armed conflicts. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-coltan-mining-in-the-drc-costs-people-and-the-environment-183159">What coltan mining in the DRC costs people and the environment</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Since 1996, the DRC has been embroiled in violence that even <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/JACPR-01-2022-0671">UN peacekeepers have failed to de-escalate</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man seen wearing a mining light." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519431/original/file-20230404-28-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519431/original/file-20230404-28-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519431/original/file-20230404-28-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519431/original/file-20230404-28-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519431/original/file-20230404-28-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519431/original/file-20230404-28-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519431/original/file-20230404-28-y61zyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man who used to mine cassiterite, the major ore of tin, poses for a portrait at the entrance to a mine shaft, at a largely-abandoned mine, in eastern DRC in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Marc Hofer)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dismantling racism</h2>
<p>Without dismantling racism, we cannot achieve <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals">sustainable development goals</a>, global peace and security. </p>
<p>We need mechanisms and policies designed with the involvement of well-informed young people (like the ones I teach) who are determined to create new societies where every person’s dignity and humanity matters. </p>
<p>We need to dismantle racial capitalism that commodifies, objectifies and exploits the “other” and the planet to accumulate capital for a few. This implies being concerned with the humanity of others, including migrants: While Canada and the western world welcomed Ukrainians wholeheartedly, the same has not been the case for
<a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/roxham-road-asylum-seekers-wont-just-get-turned-back-theyll-get-forced-underground/transcript">racialized migrants</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Obligations to the collective’</h2>
<p>We need to notice each other’s personhood and be informed by wisdoms that acknowledge, affirm and celebrate our human and ecological interdependence.</p>
<p>Geographer Nicole Gombay examined how in Nunavut, “struggles of co-existence between a model of personhood founded in the gift and based on obligations to the collective,” seen in Inuit society, contrasted to colonial models “of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2015.05.008">personhood associated with individual rights and the market economy</a>.” </p>
<p>The concept of Ubuntu, which has roots in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2006/sep/29/features11.g2">humanist African philosophy</a>, is based on personhood, the dignity of every person and interdependence among people.
Translated, Ubuntu is “I am because we are and because we are, therefore I am.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/181253/no-future-without-forgiveness-by-desmond-tutu/">Desmond Tutu</a> wrote that “Ubuntu is the essence of being human… We are different in order to know our need of each other.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A crowd of people seen holding signs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519428/original/file-20230404-14-bv74y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519428/original/file-20230404-14-bv74y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519428/original/file-20230404-14-bv74y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519428/original/file-20230404-14-bv74y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519428/original/file-20230404-14-bv74y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519428/original/file-20230404-14-bv74y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519428/original/file-20230404-14-bv74y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dismantling racism requires cultural and social change that involves every individual. Protesters in Montréal in June 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Need for liberation</h2>
<p>Racism hurts the oppressed and exposes the indignity of the oppressor, highlighting the necessity to liberate both. When Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s president <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/01/07/1071278075/nelson-mandela-robben-island-prison-cell-key-auction#">after 27 years of incarceration</a>, he was committed to respecting the dignity and humanity of all races. </p>
<p>Mandela wrote that <a href="https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/nelson-mandela/long-walk-to-freedom/9780759521049/">dismantling apartheid required liberating the oppressed and the oppressor</a>.</p>
<p>The great Brazilian educator Paulo Freire was also committed to liberating the oppressor and the oppressed, the racist and the racialized. The oppressors who use their power to oppress, exploit and racialize “<a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/pedagogy-of-the-oppressed-9781501314162/">cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves</a>. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.” </p>
<p>A key implication of this is that the oppressed, though “weak” because they are denied agency even in issues pertaining to their well-being, alone understand their condition. They are better situated in creating social, political and economic processes for change. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Protesters seen kneeling down in front of city hall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519427/original/file-20230404-14-gmrcj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C606%2C2995%2C1464&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519427/original/file-20230404-14-gmrcj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519427/original/file-20230404-14-gmrcj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519427/original/file-20230404-14-gmrcj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519427/original/file-20230404-14-gmrcj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519427/original/file-20230404-14-gmrcj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519427/original/file-20230404-14-gmrcj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Racism affects us all. When we understand this as individuals and as a society, then we have a chance of effectively challenging it. Protestors seen in Toronto in June 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Racism affects us all</h2>
<p>Parents and educators have an obligation to teach and exemplify empathy, love, care and respect for every person. </p>
<p>As Mandela noted, people “learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, <a href="https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/nelson-mandela/long-walk-to-freedom/9780759521049">they can be taught to love</a>, for love comes more naturally to the human heart.”</p>
<p>Racism affects us all. When we understand this as individuals and as a society, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566247/white-fragility-by-dr-robin-diangelo/">we stop denying it</a> and start asking: How is racism operating in our midst? </p>
<p>Then, we have a chance of recognizing how racism saps our strength that lies in diversity and interdependence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201065/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Evelyn Namakula Mayanja receives funding from SSHRC to conduct research on renewable energies.</span></em></p>Dignity is at the centre of many rights-based declarations, but to eradicate racist policy and practices, we must commit to noticing each other’s personhood in new ways.Evelyn Namakula Mayanja, Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1978772023-01-20T13:37:12Z2023-01-20T13:37:12ZAll politicians must lie from time to time, so why is there so much outrage about George Santos? A political philosopher explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505395/original/file-20230119-21-2g8xoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C49%2C8215%2C5436&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rep. George Santos stands during the voting for speaker in the House chamber in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Congress/e1fa5af411b547e38518f188d6d654ea/photo?Query=george%20santos&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=104&currentItemNo=27">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea that politicians are dishonest is, at this point, something of a cliché – although few have taken their dishonesty as far as George Santos, U.S. representative for New York’s 3rd Congressional District, who <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/the-everything-guide-to-george-santoss-lies.html">seems to have lied about</a> his education, work history, charitable activity, athletic prowess and even his place of residence. </p>
<p>Santos may be exceptional in how many lies he has told, but politicians seeking election have incentives to tell voters what they want to hear – and there is some empirical evidence that a willingness to lie may be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008144117">helpful in the process of getting elected</a>.</p>
<p>If this is true, though, then why should voters care that they have been lied to? </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://phil.washington.edu/people/michael-blake">political philosopher</a> whose work focuses on the moral foundations of democratic politics, I am interested in the moral reasons voters in general have a right to feel resentment when they discover that their elected representatives have lied to them. Political philosophers offer four distinct responses to this question – although none of these responses suggest that all lies are necessarily morally wrong.</p>
<h2>1. Lying is manipulative</h2>
<p>The first reason to resent being lied to is that it is a form of disrespect. When you lie to me, you treat me as a thing to be manipulated and used for your purposes. In the terms used by philosopher Immanuel Kant, when you lie to me you treat me as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2010.01507.x">a means or a tool</a>, rather than a person with a moral status equal to your own. </p>
<p>Kant himself took this principle as a reason to condemn all lies, however useful – but other philosophers have thought that some lies were so important that they might be compatible with, or even express, respect for citizens. </p>
<p>Plato, notably, argues in “The Republic” that when the public good requires a leader to lie, the citizens should be <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D3%3Apage%3D389">grateful for the deceptions of their leaders</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ias.edu/scholars/walzer">Michael Walzer</a>, a modern political philosopher, echoes this idea. Politics requires the building of coalitions and the making of deals – which, in a world full of moral compromise, may entail being deceptive about what one is planning and why. As Walzer puts it, no one succeeds in politics without <a href="http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Philosophers/Walzer/PoliticaAction_TheProblemofDirtyHabnds.pdf">being willing to dirty their hands</a> – and voters should prefer politicians to get their hands dirty, if that is the cost of effective political agency. </p>
<h2>2. Abuse of trust</h2>
<p>A second reason to resent lies begins with the idea of predictability. If our candidates lie to us, we cannot know what they really plan to do – and, hence, cannot trust that we are voting for the candidate who will best represent our interests.</p>
<p>Modern political philosopher <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/beerbohm/home">Eric Beerbohm</a> argues that when politicians speak to us, they invite us to trust them – and a politician who lies to us <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/beerbohm/files/beerbohm_the_ethics_of_electioneering_jpp.pdf">abuses that trust</a>, in a way that we may rightly resent. </p>
<p>These ideas are powerful, but they also seem to have some limits. Voters may not need to believe candidates’ words in order to understand their intentions and thereby come to accurate beliefs about what they plan to do. </p>
<p>To take one recent example: The majority of those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, when he was trumpeting the idea of making Mexico pay for a border wall, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/14/even-trump-voters-think-mexico-paying-for-the-wall-is-kind-of-a-joke/">did not believe that it was actually possible</a> to build a wall that would be paid for by Mexico. They did not take Trump to be describing a literal truth, but expressing an untruth that was indicative of Trump’s overall attitude toward migration and toward Mexico – and voted for him on the basis of that attitude. </p>
<h2>3. Electoral mandate</h2>
<p>The third reason we might resent lies told on the campaign trail stems from the idea of an electoral mandate. Philosopher John Locke, whose writings influenced the Declaration of Independence, regarded political authority as stemming from the <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm#CHAPTER_VII">consent of the governed</a>; this consent might be illegitimate were it to be obtained by means of deception.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white engraving of a man with shoulder-length hair" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Philosopher John Locke championed the idea of the consent of the governed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/john-locke-english-philosopher-undated-engraving-news-photo/517391868?phrase=Philosopher%20John%20Locke&adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>This idea, too, has power – but it also runs up against the sophistication of both modern elections and modern voters. Campaigns do not pretend to give a dispassionate description of political ideals, after all. They are closer to rhetorical forms of combat and involve considerable amounts of <a href="https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/02/09/the-history-of-political-spin-in-washington-dc-and-why-its-not-so-bad-for-us-as-youd-think/">deliberate ambiguity, rhetorical presentation and self-interested spin</a>. </p>
<p>More to the point, though, voters understand this context and rarely regard any candidate’s presentation as stemming solely from a concern for the unalloyed truth.</p>
<h2>4. Unnecessary and disprovable</h2>
<p>The lies of George Santos, however, do seem to have provoked something like <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/29/1146096826/rep-elect-george-santos-faces-growing-anger-from-new-york-voters">resentment and outrage</a>, which suggests that they are somehow unlike the usual forms of deceptive practice undertaken during political campaigns. And this fact leads to the final reason to resent deception, which is that voters do not accept being lied to unnecessarily – nor about matters subject to easy empirical proof or disproof. </p>
<p>It seems clear that voters may sometimes be willing to accept deceptive and dissembling political candidates, given the fact that effective political agency may involve the use of deceptive means. Santos, however, lied about matters as tangential to politics as his nonexistent history as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/11/santos-lies-volleyball/">star player for Baruch College’s volleyball team</a>. This lie was unnecessary, given its tenuous relationship to his candidacy for the House of Representatives – and easily disproved, given the fact that he did not actually attend Baruch.</p>
<p>I believe voters may have made their peace with some deceptive campaign practices. If Walzer is right, they should expect that an effective candidate will be imperfectly honest at best. But candidates who are both liars and bad at lying can find no such justification, since they are unlikely to be believed and thus incapable of achieving those goods that justify their deception. </p>
<p>If voters have made their peace with some degree of lying, in short, they are nonetheless still capable of resenting candidates who are unskilled at the craft of political deception.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197877/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Blake receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>Constituents’ willingness to overlook deception may depend, in part, on whether politicians lie well and with a good purpose.Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1975382023-01-11T01:19:00Z2023-01-11T01:19:00ZIs it OK to kick a robot dog?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503953/original/file-20230111-24-oomde4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C6%2C4543%2C3437&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last Saturday night, a young woman out on the town in Brisbane saw a dog-shaped robot trotting towards her and did what many of us might have felt an urge to do: <a href="https://7news.com.au/technology/robot-dog-worth-15000-damaged-from-kick-by-woman-in-brisbanes-fortitude-valley-c-9394582">she gave it a solid kick in the head</a>.</p>
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<p>After all, who hasn’t thought about lashing out at “intelligent” technologies that frustrate us as often as they serve us? Even if one disapproves of the young woman’s action (or sympathises with Stampy the “<a href="https://shop.unitree.com/en-au/products/unitreeyushutechnologydog-artificial-intelligence-companion-bionic-companion-intelligent-robot-go1-quadruped-robot-dog">bionic quadruped</a>”, a model also reportedly <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3189099/chinese-robotic-dog-maker-unitree-distances-itself-russian-report">used by the Russian military</a>), her impulse was quintessentially human.</p>
<p>As artificial intelligence and robotics are increasingly deployed to spy on and police us, it may even be a sign of healthy democracy that we’re suspicious of and occasionally hostile towards robots in our shared spaces.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, many people have the intuition that “violence” towards robots is wrong. However, as <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12369-020-00631-2">my research</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198857815.013.16">has shown</a>, the ethics of kicking a robot dog are more complicated than might be expected.</p>
<h2>Robots feel no pain – but what about the people around them?</h2>
<p>Were robots ever to become sentient — capable of thinking and feeling — then it would be just as wrong to kick a robot dog as it was a real dog, or maybe even a human being. But the robots we have today are just machines and feel nothing, so kicking them cannot be wrong because it hurts the robot. </p>
<p>Moreover, we still don’t know what makes us conscious and have no idea about how to produce sentience in a robot. So for the foreseeable future we don’t need to worry about causing robots themselves to suffer.</p>
<p>One obvious reason to criticise those who damage robots is that the robots are often the property of another person, who may well be dismayed when their robot is damaged. This fails to distinguish damaging robots from damaging cars or bicycles, and cannot explain why we might feel disturbed when we see someone abusing a robot they own.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/abusing-a-robot-wont-hurt-it-but-it-could-make-you-a-crueller-person-126187">Abusing a robot won't hurt it, but it could make you a crueller person</a>
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<p>That other people would feel upset when they saw me kicking a robot dog gives me some reason not to do it. But it’s not a very powerful reason, since some people may be upset by anything I do, including some things that are clearly the right thing to do.</p>
<h2>Is kicking robots a gateway to ‘real’ violence?</h2>
<p>Some philosophers have argued violence towards robots is wrong because it makes it more likely the perpetrator, or perhaps witnesses, will behave violently towards entities that <em>can</em> suffer. Abuse of robots may lower the barriers to abuse of humans and animals.</p>
<p>This line of argument, which has also been rolled out to criticise “violent” video games, was actually developed by the 18th-century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, to explain why (he thought) cruelty to animals is wrong. </p>
<p>Kant denied that animals themselves were worthy of moral concern but worried that people who abused animals would develop “cruel habits”. These habits would cause them to behave badly toward those who do count according to Kant – human beings.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/you-wouldnt-hit-a-dog-so-why-kill-one-in-minecraft-why-violence-against-virtual-animals-is-an-ethical-issue-146845">You wouldn't hit a dog, so why kill one in Minecraft? Why violence against virtual animals is an ethical issue</a>
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<p>How we treat robots that represent people and animals might therefore have implications for how we treat the things they represent.</p>
<p>It’s hard not to feel the appeal of this line of thought. After all, the advertising industry is built on the idea that getting people to associate representations of things or actions with pleasure can change their behaviour. So perhaps someone who enjoys kicking a robot dog may be more likely to kick a real dog in the future.</p>
<p>The problem with this argument is that it often doesn’t bear out in real life when we look at the evidence. </p>
<p>For instance, the claim that playing “violent” video games makes people more likely to be violent in real life is highly contested. Most people can distinguish pretty clearly between fantasy and reality, and may be able to enjoy representations of violence while still abjuring real violence.</p>
<h2>What kind of person would do that?</h2>
<p>An alternative line of criticism of violence towards robots, which I have developed in my own <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12369-017-0413-z">work</a>, focuses on what our treatment of robots expresses here and now, rather than on how it might affect our behaviour in the future. </p>
<p>How we treat robots may say something about how we feel about the things that the robots represent. It may also say something about us.</p>
<p>To see this, imagine you meet someone who treated “male” robots well but “female” robots badly. This pattern of behaviour looks obviously sexist. </p>
<p>Or imagine you find your ex laughing with glee while they beat a robot made in your image with a baseball bat. It would be hard not to think this said something about how they feel about you. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter whether these actions make the people who perform them more likely to behave badly in the future. The actions express attitudes that are morally wrong in themselves.</p>
<p>As Aristotle argued in The Nicomachean Ethics, one way to decide how we should act is to ask: “What sort of person would do that?”</p>
<p>When we think about the ethics of our treatment of robots, we should think about the sort of people it reveals us to be. That might be a reason to control our tempers even in our relations with machines – or to give military and police robots in public streets the boot.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197538/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Sparrow is an Associate Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society. He was a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, which funded some of his previous work on the ethics of social robotics.</span></em></p>You can’t hurt a robot – but do you want to be the kind of person who sinks the boot into a harmless robodog?Robert Sparrow, Professor, Department of Philosophy; Adjunct Professor, Centre for Human Bioethics, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1923102022-10-24T18:07:14Z2022-10-24T18:07:14ZCanada’s ‘royal prerogative’ allows it to wage war without parliamentary approval<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491360/original/file-20221024-6031-izebvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4420%2C2686&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Prince Charles, now King Charles, speak at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on July 1, 2017. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Questions are being raised again about how the Canadian government makes decisions to use force or participate in armed conflicts, prompted by reports that special forces units of the Canadian Armed Forces were <a href="https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/canadian-special-forces-dont-deny-new-york-times-report-that-commandos-are-in-ukraine">operating on the ground</a> in Ukraine. </p>
<p>While ostensibly deployed strictly for “training purposes,” such involvement can lead to more direct engagement in an armed conflict. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490442/original/file-20221018-7255-be0h0z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6745%2C3917&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dark-haired man in a grey plaid jacket stands next to a dark-haired woman in a red coat talking to soldiers in combat gear." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490442/original/file-20221018-7255-be0h0z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6745%2C3917&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490442/original/file-20221018-7255-be0h0z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490442/original/file-20221018-7255-be0h0z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490442/original/file-20221018-7255-be0h0z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490442/original/file-20221018-7255-be0h0z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490442/original/file-20221018-7255-be0h0z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490442/original/file-20221018-7255-be0h0z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Defence Anita Anand speak with Canadian troops deployed in Latvia in March 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
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<p>The decision to engage in armed conflict is one of the most consequential decisions a government can make. Who is involved in the decision-making, and what conditions or principles govern that process? Even more importantly, how should these decisions be made?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.hilltimes.com/2022/08/31/some-mps-hope-for-more-transparency-on-canadas-military-response-to-invasion-of-ukraine/379981">As a recent report suggests</a>, the Ukrainian deployment has rekindled interest in these questions on Parliament Hill. But there should be a broader public discussion and debate. </p>
<p>Most Canadians would be surprised to learn that the prime minister and the cabinet have a far more unfettered power under the so-called <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/reports-publications/military-law/crown-prerogative/introduction.html">royal prerogative</a> to take the country to war than most other western democracies. </p>
<h2>Early limits on war-waging powers</h2>
<p>The modern idea that the power of the executive branch to wage war should be limited can be <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/section-8/clause-12/power-to-raise-and-support-an-army-historical-background">traced back</a> at least as far as the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Glorious-Revolution">Glorious Revolution in 1688</a>, when English parliament placed constraints on the king’s ability to raise and maintain an army.</p>
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<img alt="A portrait of a man with grey hair wearing a dark suit and white cravate." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491354/original/file-20221024-21-mgvbna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491354/original/file-20221024-21-mgvbna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491354/original/file-20221024-21-mgvbna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491354/original/file-20221024-21-mgvbna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491354/original/file-20221024-21-mgvbna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491354/original/file-20221024-21-mgvbna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491354/original/file-20221024-21-mgvbna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">James Madison, fourth president of the United States.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(White House Historical Association)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>American founding father <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed41.asp">James Madison</a> and German philosopher <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265377">Immanuel Kant</a>, among others, further developed these ideas in the 18th century, arguing that legislatures should be involved in any decision to engage in war. </p>
<p>In their view, not only were legislatures most representative of the people who would have to pay and die for the war, but they were less prone to self-aggrandizing adventures or capture by special interests than the executive branch. The U.S. Constitution <a href="https://fsi.stanford.edu/publications/national_war_powers_commission_report">reflects Madison’s ideas</a>, requiring Congress to approve declarations of war.</p>
<p>More <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.6.121901.085538">recent research on deliberative</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1996.tb00593.x">representative democracy</a> has found that spreading decision-making across both the executive and legislative branches, and forcing the executive to explain and defend its reasons in order to win legislative approval, make for decisions that are <a href="https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1201&context=mjil">objectively better</a> for the national interest than those made by the executive alone. </p>
<p>The process results in deeper deliberation and a wider range of perspectives, greater transparency and less opportunity for the excessive influence of narrow interests. What’s more, such a process leads to policy that is viewed as more <a href="https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4549&context=faculty_scholarship">legitimate and representative</a> — and therefore more likely to win public understanding and support.</p>
<h2>Speed, secrecy</h2>
<p>Supporters of unilateral executive authority to wage war <a href="https://www.yalelawjournal.org/essay/rational-war-and-constitutional-design">argue that</a> involving the legislature makes the decision-making process too cumbersome, and that public debate would require disclosing classified information. </p>
<p>Such a process could make countries seem unreliable in the eyes of allies, they add. Speed and secrecy are of the essence, so the argument goes.</p>
<p>But short of responding to a direct attack — for which exceptions exist in all systems — deciding to engage in armed conflict shouldn’t be easy. </p>
<p>Governments should be required to persuade citizens that force is necessary. The more obvious it is that force is in the national interest, the easier it will be to obtain approval; the more difficult it is to get approval, the more it suggests that the reasons are not compelling. </p>
<p>As for secrecy, it’s difficult to imagine what secrets would have to be disclosed in arguments about whether to go to war.</p>
<h2>Differing war powers</h2>
<p>The constitutional systems of <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/228602764.pdf">most liberal democracies</a> include constraints on which branches of government can be involved in decisions to wage war, and how such decisions are to be made. </p>
<p>Countries that include the United States, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Brazil and India explicitly require that decisions to initiate war are approved by the legislature. </p>
<p>Some constitutional systems — Germany’s, Italy’s and Japan’s, for example — <a href="https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/jil/vol30/iss1/4/">include constraints</a> on how and when the government may go to war, incorporating the international law prohibition on the use of force. Still others, including some Nordic countries, include both kinds of constitutional constraint.</p>
<p>To be sure, these constitutional war powers, both those requiring legislative involvement and those imposing conditions on when force may be used, <a href="https://gsdrc.org/document-library/parliamentary-control-of-military-missions-accounting-for-pluralism/">are contested</a> in several of these countries, with debates over their interpretation and scope. But they do operate in ways that constrain and shape government action. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Two men stand together in white shirts and suit jackets. One waves." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490449/original/file-20221018-7404-dlnjpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490449/original/file-20221018-7404-dlnjpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490449/original/file-20221018-7404-dlnjpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490449/original/file-20221018-7404-dlnjpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490449/original/file-20221018-7404-dlnjpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490449/original/file-20221018-7404-dlnjpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490449/original/file-20221018-7404-dlnjpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">David Cameron is greeted by Barack Obama at a reception at the G8 summit in May 2012 at Camp David, Md.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For instance, both <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/middleeast/syria.html">Barack Obama</a> in the U.S. and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/30/cameron-mps-syria">David Cameron</a> in the U.K. felt compelled when leading their countries to ask for legislative approval for strikes on Syrian chemical weapons facilities in 2013. The failure to obtain such approval caused both governments to seek <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/world/middleeast/syria-talks.html">diplomatic alternatives</a>.</p>
<h2>Canada’s royal prerogative</h2>
<p>Canada, in contrast, has no such <a href="https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.564963/publication.html">constitutional constraints</a>. The U.K. and its former dominions (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) are the outliers in this regard. The decision to go to war remains within an exclusive executive power known as the royal or Crown prerogative, giving the executive branch largely unfettered power to decide whether to wage war.</p>
<p>As British prime minister, Anthony Eden, for instance, decided with only an inner circle of cabinet members to conspire with the governments of France and Israel to <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/why-was-the-suez-crisis-so-important">invade Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal in 1956</a>, with no notice to parliament or even all of his cabinet. The resulting conflict was a disaster for the U.K., <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X12000246">accelerating its decline</a> from great power status.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo shows a man waving to a large crowd." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491353/original/file-20221024-6942-psrmig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491353/original/file-20221024-6942-psrmig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491353/original/file-20221024-6942-psrmig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491353/original/file-20221024-6942-psrmig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491353/original/file-20221024-6942-psrmig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491353/original/file-20221024-6942-psrmig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491353/original/file-20221024-6942-psrmig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this June 1956 photo, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser waves as he moves through Port Said, Egypt, during a ceremony in which Egypt formally took over control of the Suez Canal from Britain. Britain and France invaded five months later.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet even <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmpubadm/422/422.pdf">the U.K.</a> <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/0910/ParliamentaryInvolvement">and Australia</a> have had meaningful debate over war powers and the royal prerogative following their involvement in the Iraq invasion in 2003. </p>
<p>In both countries, there were efforts to enact legislation requiring parliamentary approval of decisions to engage in armed conflict. While neither country has yet enacted such laws, the debate was broad and meaningful. In the U.K., it led to the establishment of a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsw029">new constitutional convention</a> that requires government to obtain parliamentary approval before using force. This was evident in Cameron’s effort to obtain approval in 2013.</p>
<h2>Deeper debate needed</h2>
<p>Canada, having avoided the Iraq war, did not experience similar soul-searching and remains the extreme outlier. </p>
<p>Academic discussion of the issue tends to <a href="https://www.journalofcommonwealthlaw.org/article/23701-beyond-dicey-executive-authorities-in-canada">reflect general support</a> for the royal prerogative. </p>
<p>But democratic and constitutional theory, together with practice in other liberal democracies, suggest that Canada needs to engage in a deeper debate of these issues. It’s odd that the federal government must involve Parliament to establish a new tax but can drag the country to war without so much as a formal debate.</p>
<p>A more representative and accountable decision-making process is called for in Canada.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192310/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Martin is affiliated with The Rideau Institute on International Affairs, a not-for-profit that focuses on foreign and defence policy. </span></em></p>The decision to wage war is among the most important a government can make. How and by whom should such decisions be made? Canadians can learn a lot from other democracies.Craig Martin, Professor of Law, Washburn UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1827452022-05-13T12:14:14Z2022-05-13T12:14:14ZWhat is ‘personhood’? The ethics question that needs a closer look in abortion debates<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462571/original/file-20220511-16280-ov3b1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=70%2C8%2C5803%2C3901&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Debate about abortion is often a debate about rights -- but whose?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SupremeCourtAbortion/60e2430f34f24c27afd483e217f998f7/photo?Query=abortion&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=10431&currentItemNo=19">AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Controversy over abortion reached a fever pitch on May 2, 2022, when the leaked <a href="https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000180-874f-dd36-a38c-c74f98520000">draft of a U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion</a> was published by Politico. If the draft’s key points are reflected in the final ruling, this would strike down <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/113/">Roe v. Wade</a>, a landmark decision that nearly 50 years ago established the right to choose an abortion.</p>
<p>Current constitutional law grants a right to have an abortion until a fetus <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jlb/lsaa059">becomes viable</a> – in other words, until there is a reasonable probability it could survive outside the womb with care. Today, this typically occurs between the 22nd and 24th weeks of pregnancy.</p>
<p>The ruling in Roe v. Wade was grounded on the idea that the U.S. Constitution <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/">protects privacy</a>, stemming from the <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-14/">14th Amendment</a>. However, the draft majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, argues Roe v. Wade should be overturned because the Constitution makes no mention of abortion.</p>
<p>While a final ruling is not expected before June 2022, the decision will not put to rest controversy over abortion. Why does the legalization of abortion continue to be hotly contested, nearly a half century after Roe v. Wade? This question is of great interest to me, <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/bhdept/nancy-s-jecker-phd-sheher">as a philosopher and bioethicist</a>, since I study philosophical problems that lie just beneath the surface of contemporary controversies like abortion.</p>
<h2>Defining personhood</h2>
<p>One underlying ethical concern is, “What is a person?” How people answer this question shapes how they think about a developing human being. When philosophers talk about “personhood,” they are referring to something or someone having <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/grounds-moral-status/">exceptionally high moral status</a>, often described as having a right to life, an inherent dignity, or mattering for one’s own sake. Non-persons may have lesser rights or value, but lack the full moral value associated with persons. </p>
<p>To be a person means having strong moral claims against others. For instance, persons have a claim to be treated fairly and a claim not to be interfered with. A healthy adult human being is often considered the clearest example of a person. Yet, most philosophers <a href="https://medicine.missouri.edu/centers-institutes-labs/health-ethics/faq/personhood#:%7E:text=It%20is%20common%20to%20assume,Homo%20sapiens%20(or%20related).">distinguish being a person from being human</a>, pointing out that no one disputes the fetus’s species, but many disagree about the fetus’s personhood.</p>
<p>In current law, fetal viability is often used to mark the beginning of personhood. However, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jlb/lsaa059">viability varies</a> based on people’s access to intensive medical care. It also changes as medicine and technology advance.</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87R/billtext/html/HB01515I.htm">state laws restricting abortion</a> identify the presence of a “fetal heartbeat” as morally significant and use this as a basis for personhood. However, many living things have beating hearts, and they are not all considered persons. And as physicians point out, though they may use the term “fetal heartbeat” in conversations with patients, the fetus <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/09/02/1033727679/fetal-heartbeat-isnt-a-medical-term-but-its-still-used-in-laws-on-abortion">does not yet have a functioning heart</a> that generates sound during early development.</p>
<p>Defining the limits of personhood is especially dicey due to its far-reaching consequences. Personhood carries implications for how we treat <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/animal-liberation-peter-singer?variant=32154016415778">animals</a>, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-sand-county-almanac-9780197500262?cc=us&lang=en&">ecosystems</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/20865310_Anencephalic_infants_and_special_relationships">anencephalic infants, who are born with their cerebral cortex and large parts of their skull missing</a>. It also shapes the rights of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-intergenerational/">people who will be born in the future</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/454366">people with disabilities</a> and <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-ethics-of-killing-9780195169829?cc=us&lang=en&">individuals in a persistent vegetative state</a>. Debates over personhood have recently <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00531-5">extended to robots</a>. </p>
<p>Personhood is also important for issues at the end of life, such as disputes over <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/what-is-death-exactly/">defining death</a>. Physicians have disagreed with families over <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2017.72">whether to declare a patient dead</a> or continue to offer medical interventions. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jmp/article-abstract/26/5/527/1046807?redirectedFrom=PDF">Philosophers have debated</a> whether a person’s death occurs as soon as “higher” brain activity ceases – activity associated consciousness and cognition – or only after all brain activity ends. </p>
<h2>When personhood begins</h2>
<p>In short, there are plenty of reasons to figure out what personhood requires. Doing so demands wrestling with at least three common opposing views. </p>
<p>The first holds that fetuses qualify as persons from the moment of conception. Supporters say that from conception on, the developing fetus has “<a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2026961">a future like ours</a>,” and abortion takes that future away. A variation on this theme is that at conception, a fetus has the full genetic code and therefore the <a href="https://spot.colorado.edu/%7Eheathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/noonan.htm">potential to become a person</a>, and this potential qualifies the fetus as a person. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Men in suits speak in front of a poster that says " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462573/original/file-20220511-12-r5j7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462573/original/file-20220511-12-r5j7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462573/original/file-20220511-12-r5j7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462573/original/file-20220511-12-r5j7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462573/original/file-20220511-12-r5j7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462573/original/file-20220511-12-r5j7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462573/original/file-20220511-12-r5j7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">South Carolina Sen. Richard Cash reintroduces personhood legislation in 2019. The bill stipulated that life begins at conception, and from that moment a developing fetus has the same rights as other citizens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/AbortionBan/6576cdd5ebd0403c94f31f01a0160900/photo?Query=abortion%20personhood&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=44&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Christina Myers</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A second view regards personhood as arising at some point after conception and prior to birth. Some people reason that a human being’s moral status is not all-or-nothing, but, like human development, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.2008.tb00075.x">a matter of degree</a>. Others say that what matters is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198250401.001.0001">consciousness and other cognitive capacities</a>, thought to develop late in the second trimester.</p>
<p>Finally, a third view maintains that personhood begins at <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2264919">birth or shortly thereafter</a>, because this is when an infant first acquires a sense of themselves and an interest in their own continued existence. Another source of support for the third view is Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant’s claim <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24562795">that what makes human beings morally special is their rationality</a> and capacity to be autonomous.</p>
<h2>Conflicts between persons</h2>
<p>Which view about personhood is right? If a society can’t agree about personhood, another strategy would be to imagine that one’s opponent’s view is right, and consider the implications.</p>
<p>Suppose, for example, that fetuses are persons. Since pregnant people are too, how should conflicts between them be settled? Suppose a pregnant person’s life were in jeopardy: whose right to life prevails? Some hold that under these conditions, abortion is justified by appealing to self-defense, but others say killing in self-defense <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.1994.tb00005.x">is not justified</a> if the threat is “innocent,” without intention of doing harm.</p>
<p>Even when a pregnant person’s life is not in danger, some philosophers argue that a fetus’s right to life would not automatically override a pregnant person’s right to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265091">live their life as they wish</a>. In a famous article, <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2020/professor-emerita-judith-jarvis-thomson-influential-philosopher-dies-1204">ethicist Judith Jarvis Thomson</a> used the hypothetical example of someone extremely ill, who could only be saved by actor Henry Fonda touching their brow. Must Fonda attend to them? She argued no: a right to life is not usually understood as a claim to whatever one needs to stay alive. Instead, it requires not having one’s life unjustly ended.</p>
<p>When weighing rights, it is important to consider the toll exacted when people wishing to terminate a pregnancy are prevented from doing so. A <a href="https://www.ansirh.org/research/ongoing/turnaway-study">decade-long study</a> showed people in this situation suffered adverse health effects; were less likely to have money for basic living expenses like food, housing and transportation; and were more likely to remain with violent partners. Since the risk of dying from childbirth is much greater than the risk of dying from legal abortion, a ban on abortion is projected to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-9585908">increase maternal mortality</a>.</p>
<p>The constitutional right to abortion will likely soon be settled. If the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade, this will raise yet more ethical questions – about fairness, for example, considering, that people living in poverty and members of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/black-and-hispanic-people-have-the-most-to-lose-if-roe-is-overturned">minority groups would be among those most affected</a>, and that a majority of Americans <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abortion-quandary/">support abortion rights</a>. </p>
<p>Only by shifting the conversation from politics and law to ethics will Americans start to reckon with what truly matters in abortion debates.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182745/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nancy S. Jecker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The definition of personhood is a key and contested philosophical issue that has made legalized abortion such a longstanding controversy.Nancy S. Jecker, Professor of Bioethics and Humanities, School of Medicine, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1764422022-03-24T12:16:02Z2022-03-24T12:16:02ZVaccine hesitancy is complicating physicians’ obligation to respect patient autonomy during the COVID-19 pandemic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453633/original/file-20220322-14897-1yu4lto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C91%2C5112%2C3311&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Over the past couple of decades there has been a shift away from upholding patient autonomy to prioritizing public health.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/chinese-doctor-talking-to-woman-royalty-free-image/98818405?adppopup=true">Terry Vine/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sitting barely 6 feet away from me, my patient yelled angrily, his face mask slipping to his upper lip: “No, I will not get vaccinated. And nothing you do or say will change that fact.” He provided no reason for why he was so opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine.</p>
<p>As a primary care resident physician working in an underserved area of Reading, Pennsylvania, I have seen patients of all age groups refusing to follow COVID-19 guidelines such as wearing a mask, social distancing or getting the vaccine.</p>
<p>Exposure in health care settings has accounted for a large number of infections. Early on in the pandemic, health care workers and their household members accounted for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m3582">1 in 6 patients ages 18 to 65 admitted to the hospital with COVID-19</a>. Vaccines reduced that risk considerably, and by August 2021, <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.15585%2Fmmwr.mm7034e4">the risk of infection to health care workers had been cut by two-thirds</a>. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/">less than 70% of the vaccine-eligible U.S. population is fully vaccinated, not accounting for the booster</a>, although these numbers are changing.</p>
<p>When a patient refuses to get the vaccine, a health care worker usually gets involved to counsel that patient. This may take a considerable amount of time, and unfortunately, the results may not always be favorable. Many in the medical community believe that the onus is on the patient to get vaccinated, and if they do not do so, they should be seen as culpable for contracting COVID-19. One such example is the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13020">case being made to give lower priority for organ transplants to those willfully unvaccinated</a>.</p>
<p>As new variants of COVID-19 emerge and pose threats to everyone’s health, doctors are struggling with their obligation to “do no harm” and their obligation to respect patient autonomy. Some wonder whether the two might even conflict with each other. </p>
<h2>‘Do no harm’</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young woman getting a vaccine shot on her upper arm." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453652/original/file-20220322-15-g9l43f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453652/original/file-20220322-15-g9l43f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453652/original/file-20220322-15-g9l43f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453652/original/file-20220322-15-g9l43f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453652/original/file-20220322-15-g9l43f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453652/original/file-20220322-15-g9l43f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453652/original/file-20220322-15-g9l43f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Doctors are concerned that unvaccinated people might pose a risk to others.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-woman-getting-vaccinated-royalty-free-image/1310458105?adppopup=true">Andriy Onufriyenko/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>People who refuse to get vaccinated put the lives of doctors and nurses at risk. <a href="https://www.chop.edu/news/feature-article-if-vaccines-work-why-do-unvaccinated-people-pose-risk">They also negatively affect the outcomes of other patients</a>. Whether or not this is done with malicious intent, this refusal is a disregard for human lives. As much as physicians are directed to “do no harm” to the patient, they must also “do no harm” to everyone else.</p>
<p>Physicians respect the patient’s right to refuse treatment for their own illness, but may find it difficult to respect the patient’s right to refuse treatment for a contagious disease that can affect everyone else.</p>
<p>Ethical theories may help provide an understanding of the physician’s duties.</p>
<p>German philosopher Immanuel Kant developed the concept of <a href="https://doi.org/10.3399%2Fbjgp13X665422">an absolute, universal reason to act from duty</a>. In this theory, it would appear that educating patients to get vaccinated is not just something physicians have the option to do, but something they have a moral duty to do.</p>
<p>While doctors cannot force the patient to get vaccinated out of respect for the patient’s ability to make informed decisions, doctors have a duty to educate their patients on COVID-19, the vaccine and the importance of protecting other patients and the general public.</p>
<h2>Autonomy of patients</h2>
<p>This also raises an important issue of patient autonomy. Autonomy is one of the pillars of bioethics, and it is the notion that the patient has the ultimate decision-making power. There is no denying that a patient’s decision-making responsibility is important. After all, patients want the best for themselves, and respecting their decisions is respecting their well-being. </p>
<p>[<em>3 media outlets, 1 religion newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-3-in-1">Get stories from The Conversation, AP and RNS.</a>]</p>
<p>However, some scholars are also discussing the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/23294515.2018.1462273">idea that the doctor knows best</a>. This concept, known as “paternalism,” is the idea that physicians ought to be the ones to ultimately make the decision for what is ethically right for the patient, as physicians know better. One example would be using soft materials to restrain the hands of an intubated COVID-19 patient <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733019858711">if they become agitated and try to remove their breathing tube</a>. </p>
<p>Just last year, some doctors <a href="https://doi.org/10.7326/M21-2366">made the case to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for health care workers</a>. This argument from doctors inevitably gets pushback from those who are anti-mandate, and the discord further divides the patient from the physician.</p>
<h2>Scarce resources</h2>
<p>Then there is the issue of who should get scarce lifesaving treatments: one who has been vaccinated or one who has refused the vaccine?</p>
<p>One example of this issue is the use of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03379-5">Paxlovid</a>, a relatively new medication that can be prescribed in the outpatient setting for the treatment of COVID-19. <a href="https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/statement-on-therapies-for-high-risk-nonhospitalized-patients/">The clinical trials initially treated those who were unvaccinated</a>. Based on those studies, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer claims that Paxlovid is 89% effective in reducing the risk of hospitalization or death among <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n2713">study participants receiving treatment within three days of symptom onset</a>. If there is one lifesaving medicine and two patients – one with breakthrough COVID-19 and one refusing to be vaccinated – which one should doctors prioritize? </p>
<p>There are other ethical implications from an insurance standpoint, in terms of who should bear the cost and whether the unvaccinated should pay a higher premium.</p>
<p>In my personal practice, I have been successful in changing people’s minds about the vaccine through education and counseling. But what patient autonomy should look like as we learn to live with COVID-19 and how the doctor-patient relationship might change are questions left unanswered. The conversations on these bigger issues are just getting started.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176442/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Liu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New ethical issues are emerging during COVID-19 as doctors struggle with their obligations to ‘do no harm’ and respect patient autonomy.Ryan Liu, Family Medicine Resident Physician, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1799432022-03-24T01:55:14Z2022-03-24T01:55:14ZGuide to the classics: Immanuel Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace and its relevance to the war in Ukraine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454018/original/file-20220324-27-1ubjnn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=82%2C133%2C4166%2C2669&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Refugees from Mariupol sit in a bus crossing the Ukraine-Russia border on March 15.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arkady Budnitsky/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A powerful European country invades a less powerful one. This is a story that German philosopher Immanuel Kant, while writing his essay <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Peace:_A_Philosophical_Sketch">Toward Perpetual Peace</a> in 1795 in Prussian <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46440713">Königsberg</a> (now a Russian territory on the Baltic Sea called Kaliningrad), was all too familiar with. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, it is a story repeating itself today as Ukraine is invaded by Russia. But what can we still learn from Kant’s essay?</p>
<p>At the time of writing, Kant was 71-years-old. He was reflecting on the bloody aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789 and the numerous Revolutionary wars between France and various European powers, including Austria and Kant’s Prussia. Indeed, Prussia had been engaged in wars for most of Kant’s life.</p>
<p>Kant’s essay takes the form of a philosophical project aimed at <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-social-political/">achieving perpetual peace</a>. To be perpetual, a peace must not merely be temporary, like a ceasefire, but lasting. </p>
<p>To be lasting, it must have a solid foundation. To this end, Kant drafts six preliminary articles aimed at reducing the chance of war. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454015/original/file-20220324-15-nmfxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454015/original/file-20220324-15-nmfxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454015/original/file-20220324-15-nmfxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454015/original/file-20220324-15-nmfxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454015/original/file-20220324-15-nmfxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454015/original/file-20220324-15-nmfxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454015/original/file-20220324-15-nmfxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454015/original/file-20220324-15-nmfxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>These include not making peace treaties while secretly plotting war, forbidding annexing another state or interfering in its internal affairs, abolishing standing armies with their associated danger of stoking arms races, the limiting of foreign debt, and forbidding acts of war so heinous they prevent future peace.</p>
<p>Many of these articles remain highly relevant today. Russia is clearly interfering in the internal affairs of another state and has annexed part of its territories; its actions have the potential to spark an arms race in Europe; the role of sanctions and their impacts on debt and trade is a crucial element in the broader attempt to stop Putin; and Russia’s threats to use <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/biden-says-putin-s-back-is-against-the-wall-moscow-considering-chemical-weapons-20220322-p5a6wt.html">chemical, biological</a> and even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/21/science/russia-nuclear-ukraine.html">nuclear weapons</a> could lead to heinous acts of violence that make future peace difficult to achieve.</p>
<p>While these six articles may help to limit war, they do not guarantee peace. For that, Kant outlines three further articles that establish the domestic rights of citizens within a state, the rights of states in an international community, and the cosmopolitan rights of all individuals (including those who are stateless) as citizens of the world.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-ideas-of-kant-121881">Explainer: the ideas of Kant</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Democratic peace theory</h2>
<p>In setting out these articles, Kant articulates a view known as “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory">democratic peace theory</a>”. This theory holds that democratic states: 1) are less likely to go to war in general; 2) are much less likely to go to war with other democratic states; and 3) help to create a more peaceful international system.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454019/original/file-20220324-17-1ihrc9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454019/original/file-20220324-17-1ihrc9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454019/original/file-20220324-17-1ihrc9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454019/original/file-20220324-17-1ihrc9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454019/original/file-20220324-17-1ihrc9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454019/original/file-20220324-17-1ihrc9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454019/original/file-20220324-17-1ihrc9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454019/original/file-20220324-17-1ihrc9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Portrait of Immanuel Kant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>While various aspects of this theory have been strongly contested, such as the claim that democratic states are less likely to go to war (for example, compare the higher number of recent wars involving the US versus those involving China), elements of this theory remain plausible. </p>
<p>For example, it is unimaginable that democratic France and Germany would go to war with one another today, whereas we have clear evidence of Putin’s despotic regime invading a neighbouring democratic country. But to see how this theory works, we need to look at Kant’s three articles in turn.</p>
<p>Kant’s first article is that the constitution of every state shall be “republican” or what we would now call a representative democracy. Such a state is based on the idea of each citizen as a free, equal and independent co-legislator of the state’s legislative functions through their elected representatives. </p>
<p>Separation of institutional powers, the role of a free press and critical discussion, and the need of representatives to be responsive to the views of the broader public all help to limit the ability and desire of democratic (or “republican”) states to go to war.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454020/original/file-20220324-27-y6igy6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454020/original/file-20220324-27-y6igy6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454020/original/file-20220324-27-y6igy6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454020/original/file-20220324-27-y6igy6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454020/original/file-20220324-27-y6igy6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454020/original/file-20220324-27-y6igy6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454020/original/file-20220324-27-y6igy6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454020/original/file-20220324-27-y6igy6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Armed men and barricades in the Maidan Square in Kyiv.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Miguel A. Lopes</span></span>
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<p>Kant’s second article concerns the right of nations to be protected through a “federalism of free states”. Kant argues that before a state is formed, citizens exist in a state of nature. To secure their rights, individuals may coerce one another to leave the state of nature and enter a constitutional state that can protect the rights of all.</p>
<p>Likewise, in the international sphere, states exist in a state of nature, as there is no greater power to secure their rights and adjudicate disagreements between them with the coercive force of law. Thus, states are also obligated to leave the international state of nature and enter a union of states. But what form that union should take is unclear.</p>
<p>Kant considers several models, including a global monarchy achieved through coercive means, a pacific league of states which lacks all coercive powers, and a freely entered federation of states (or world republic) with coercive powers. While Kant clearly rejects a global monarchy obtained through force, it is less clear which of the other two options he endorses. </p>
<p>One plausible reading is that Kant thinks a pacific league is a first step, and that over time states within it will form greater ties, and more states will join it, until eventually it morphs into a stronger federation that <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo19170976.html">(ideally) encompasses all states</a>.</p>
<p>Kant’s idea is that formal alliances between nations, as well as more federative organisations such as the European Union, help to ensure peace between its members. The danger is that those outside these alliances or federated unions can feel threatened by them, which typifies Russia’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-follows-decades-of-warnings-that-nato-expansion-into-eastern-europe-could-provoke-russia-177999">view of the expanding NATO alliance</a>.</p>
<p>This is why Kant envisages the need for all states to become republican and for any pacific alliance to eventually encompass all nations if perpetual peace is to be secured.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-follows-decades-of-warnings-that-nato-expansion-into-eastern-europe-could-provoke-russia-177999">Ukraine war follows decades of warnings that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe could provoke Russia</a>
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<h2>Universal hospitality</h2>
<p>Kant’s third article is the cosmopolitan right of universal hospitality. This requires states not to treat those individuals arriving from other states with hostility or turn them away if this would put them in harm’s way. With estimates of ten million Ukrainian civilians having fled their homes, a cosmopolitan right that supports the millions of Ukrainians seeking refuge in other nations, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60555472">such as demonstrated by Poland</a>, can help to limit civilian casualties during war.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454023/original/file-20220324-15-1529uix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454023/original/file-20220324-15-1529uix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454023/original/file-20220324-15-1529uix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454023/original/file-20220324-15-1529uix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454023/original/file-20220324-15-1529uix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454023/original/file-20220324-15-1529uix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454023/original/file-20220324-15-1529uix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454023/original/file-20220324-15-1529uix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A refugee who fled the war from Ukraine carries a child at the Medyka border crossing in Poland, on March 12.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Petros Giannakouris/AP</span></span>
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<p>Kant was not unrealistic about the prospects of perpetual peace. Indeed, he warns against the other form of perpetual peace, that of the silence in the graveyards created by war. But he did identify two key drivers for progress: self-interest and publicity. </p>
<p>Just as it is in the self-interest of individuals to leave the state of nature to secure their rights, it is in the interests of states to join expanding pacific alliances to secure their own international rights and to defend their ability to engage in international trade and commerce. Kant also emphasises the important role of a free press and academic freedom in holding politicians in republican states to account.</p>
<p>This leads to Kant’s principle of publicity, which is that the policies of states that cannot be publicly pronounced if they are to succeed at achieving their aims are unjust. Here Kant exposes <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23558664">three common maxims of cynical politicians and despots</a>: 1) act first and make excuses later; 2) do it, then deny having done it; and 3) divide and conquer your opponents.</p>
<p>While widely used, Kant notes that even the most cynical politician does not publicly espouse acting on these principles, since to do so would arouse such opposition as to make it impossible for them to achieve their aims. This is why even the most despotic leader tends to pay lip service to justice by giving it “all the honor due it, even if they should think up a hundred pretexts and subterfuges to evade it in practice”. </p>
<p>For example, Putin was unable to make public his preparations for war, instead peddling the transparent falsity of military exercises to justify the pre-invasion <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/595096-extension-of-military-drills-ramps-up-concerns-of-russian-invasion">build-up of troops on the Ukrainian border</a>, and he has felt the need to invent flawed historical narratives to try and <a href="https://theconversation.com/vladimir-putin-points-to-history-to-justify-his-ukraine-invasion-regardless-of-reality-177882">justify his unjust invasion of another nation</a>.</p>
<p>The influence of Kant’s short essay has been enormous. His ideas have given rise to democratic peace theory, which has influenced the foreign policies of many liberal states; his idea of a world union formed part of the intellectual foundation for founding the League of Nations and later the United Nations; and his focus on the cosmopolitan right of hospitality, or what we know call refugee rights, has been of increasing global importance. </p>
<p>While more than 200 years old, Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace continues to be a rich resource for not only diagnosing contemporary injustices, but also for setting out a project for perpetual peace we can still aspire to achieve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Formosa has received funding from the Australian Research Council, Macquarie University, and Facebook.</span></em></p>Written more than 200 years ago, Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace sets out a plan for peace we can still aspire to achieve.Paul Formosa, Associate Professor in Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Agency, Values and Ethics (CAVE), Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1644742021-07-20T12:16:33Z2021-07-20T12:16:33ZWhy the US won’t be able to shirk moral responsibility in leaving Afghanistan<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411714/original/file-20210716-21-1oz1u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C11%2C1275%2C1079&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A handover ceremony as U.S. troops prepare to leave Afghanistan.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/APTOPIXAfghanistanUS/db1c810c8d814901b313c9cac287ed7b/photo?Query=afghanistan%202021&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=2515&currentItemNo=43">Afghan Ministry of Defense Press Office via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The majority of the remaining American troops in Afghanistan were withdrawn recently, with the rest due to leave <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/06/us-90-percent-afghanistan-withdrawal-498279">by the end of August 2021</a>. This withdrawal marks the end of nearly <a href="https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan">20 years of American military presence in Afghanistan</a>.</p>
<p>Support for the withdrawal is widespread in the United States, with the majority of Americans – <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/162949/popularity-bidens-afghanistan-withdrawal-driving-republicans-mad">regardless of political affiliation</a> – in favor of ending American military operations in Afghanistan. The war has been, and would continue to be, <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-07-12/the-cost-of-the-afghanistan-war-in-lives-and-dollars">costly</a>, both in financial terms and in terms of American lives.</p>
<p>But the present regime in Afghanistan is unstable, and some experts estimate it may collapse <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghan-government-could-collapse-six-months-after-u-s-withdrawal-new-intelligence-assessment-says-11624466743">within the year</a>. If it does so, the resulting power gap would likely be filled by the Taliban, whose <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/afghanistan/report-afghanistan/">history of human rights</a> abuses include <a href="https://www.peacewomen.org/node/89159">violence against women and children</a>. </p>
<p>There are significant moral costs at stake in either remaining in or withdrawing from Afghanistan. As a <a href="https://phil.washington.edu/people/michael-blake">political philosopher</a> whose work focuses on international affairs, I have tried to understand how ethical reasoning might be applied to such cases. </p>
<p>The first, and most important, ethical question might be: Is the United States justified in withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan? </p>
<p>A second question might involve asking about how the moral wrongs that are likely to emerge in Afghanistan should weigh upon the American conscience. Should American political leaders regard these wrongs as, in some fashion, their responsibility? </p>
<p>More broadly, is it sometimes possible that, in doing the best available thing, we are nonetheless guilty of doing something morally wrong?</p>
<h2>Power and moral tragedy</h2>
<p>Many philosophers have disliked the idea that someone might make the best choice available and nonetheless be thought to have committed a moral wrong. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/">Immanuel Kant</a>, for one, thought this vision was fundamentally in conflict with the purposes of morality – which is to tell people what it is they ought to do. </p>
<p>If a moral theory told us that, sometimes, there is no option open to us that does not involve doing wrong, then that theory would sometimes imply that even a perfect moral agent might end up having to become a wrongdoer. </p>
<p>That sort of theory would mean that there might be situations in which we could not escape from doing wrong. If we were unlucky enough to end up in those situations, we would become liable for wrongdoing because of this bad luck. Kant thought this sort of “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-luck/">moral luck</a>” was simply implausible. For Kant, if we do what is best, we can regard ourselves as having avoided <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2010.01507.x">doing wrong</a>.</p>
<p>Other philosophers, however, have been more willing to entertain the possibility of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511817915">moral tragedy</a>, which is understood as a state of affairs in which all options open to us involve serious moral wrongdoing. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ias.edu/scholars/walzer">Michael Walzer</a>, a political philosopher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, argues that those who exercise power over others may frequently find themselves unable to do good for some without doing <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265139">serious wrong to others</a>. Instead of thinking that the good they do outweighs the wrong, Walzer argues, individuals ought to accept that the wrong continues to be a genuine wrong.</p>
<p>For example, the politician who must make a deal with a corrupt colleague in order to help protect vulnerable children does wrong in the name of a greater good. This individual does their best but nonetheless stains their soul in the doing.</p>
<p>On this view, politicians who do wrong while trying to do what is right may do the best thing, but they should also be understood as having done wrong, and having stained their consciences in the doing. For Walzer, it is difficult for a person to be both good at politics and a genuinely good person.</p>
<h2>Afghanistan and moral responsibility</h2>
<p>If Walzer is right about politicians, his analysis might also help in understanding the morality of international relations – and the morality of withdrawing from Afghanistan. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411721/original/file-20210716-21-pg13rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Afghan girls study science at a government-run girl's high school." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411721/original/file-20210716-21-pg13rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411721/original/file-20210716-21-pg13rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411721/original/file-20210716-21-pg13rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411721/original/file-20210716-21-pg13rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411721/original/file-20210716-21-pg13rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411721/original/file-20210716-21-pg13rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411721/original/file-20210716-21-pg13rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">There are fears that the Taliban might once again impose restrictions on girls once U.S. troops withdraw from the country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/govt-girls-high-school-class-in-science-re-threat-of-news-photo/50604139?adppopup=true">Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Taken in this context, the benefits of withdrawal may be sufficient to make it the right act. However, the rights violations that are likely to follow in the aftermath of this withdrawal are genuinely wrong, and they are rightly attributed to the United States. The women and girls of Afghanistan are likely to face human rights abuses, and the inhabitants of Afghanistan will likely face significant violence as the Taliban seek to reassert their rule. This ought to trouble the politicians who <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/08/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-drawdown-of-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan/">defend the withdrawal</a>, and those voters who gave power to those politicians. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>This vision of international politics is echoed in former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s advice to then-President George W. Bush about the invasion of Iraq – codified as the “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Ethics_of_Armed_Humanitarian_Interve/33c9AwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pottery+barn+rule&printsec=frontcover">Pottery Barn rule</a>” after the perceived store policy: If you break it, you bought it. That is: If you make yourself the ruler over others, you are responsible for them, and what happens to them should be on your conscience. </p>
<p>There are at least two things that might follow this moral vision. The first is that, even if the withdrawal entails taking ownership of some moral wrongs, the United States has an obligation to ensure that such wrong is minimized. </p>
<p>It might therefore acquire, for instance, an obligation to provide refuge to those people who have borne particular risks in the name of the United States, such as the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/19/1004991965/afghan-interpreters-who-await-visas-after-helping-the-u-s-now-fear-for-their-liv">translators who worked on the military bases</a> within Afghan territory and have been targeted by the Taliban for their work. </p>
<p>The second is, more broadly, that the United States works to ensure that it avoids entering into such morally tragic situations in the future. If Walzer’s analysis is correct, it might be impossible to avoid situations in which the United States is responsible for serious moral wrongs. Having power over others always involves the risk of moral bad luck, and the United States has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z6frqp3/revision/2">exceptional power</a> in the global community. </p>
<p>But it might at least be expected that the United States, in future conflicts, take account of what philosopher <a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/philosophy/people-profiles/brian-orend">Brian Orend</a> calls <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7093.2002.tb00374.x">justice after war</a> and enters into such conflicts only with some clarity about how and when to end them well. </p>
<p><em>The article has been updated to clarify that Michael Walzer is a scholar at Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164474/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Blake has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>There is much at stake as the US withdraws troops from Afghanistan. A political philosopher explains why the US cannot escape the moral consequences of its actions.Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1529192021-01-11T19:58:41Z2021-01-11T19:58:41ZWhy ‘free speech’ needs a new definition in the age of the internet and Trump tweets<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377864/original/file-20210109-17-124oukp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=102%2C6%2C3917%2C2669&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Donald Trump speaking at a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as President, on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The day following the storming of Capitol Hill by Trump supporters, whose use of the Confederate flag signalled a white supremacist insurrection, Simon & Schuster announced that it was <a href="http://about.simonandschuster.biz/news/josh-hawley/">cancelling the publication of Sen. Josh Hawley’s book, <em>The Tyranny of Big Tech</em></a>. Simon & Schuster justified their decision based on Hawley’s involvement in challenging the election results and helping incite the violence. </p>
<p>Hawley replied with an angry tweet about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/books/simon-schuster-josh-hawley-book.html">how this was an affront to the First Amendment and he would see them in court</a>. Of course Hawley, a graduate of Yale Law School, is fully aware that a publisher cancelling a book contract has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Simon & Schuster is a private company that acts in its own interests and this depends only on the fine print of the book contract. </p>
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<p>Hawley’s anger is not just folly or misplaced disappointment, but the continuation of a long-term strategy that American historian Joan Wallach Scott has termed the “<a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-the-right-weaponized-free-speech/">weaponizing of free speech</a>” by the right wing, or the deliberate misrepresentation of the very idea of free speech. </p>
<p>As Scott demonstrates, this dangerous redefining of freedom of speech by the right wing has nothing to do with accepting diverse opinions. Rather, it is a weapon in their culture war premised on creating confusion and misunderstanding. </p>
<p>It’s in this context that we all must think through the implications of the mayhem on Jan. 6 and understand the argument behind the principle of freedom of speech. We must also be willing to ask if this foundational principle developed in the 18th and 19th centuries is able to fulfil its function today in a very different digital and social media environment.</p>
<h2>Social media platforms and free speech</h2>
<p>English philosopher and economist J.S. Mill’s classic defence of freedom of speech includes a limitation directly relevant to the siege of the Capitol. In his philosophical treatise <em>On Liberty</em>, Mill notes that action cannot be as free as speech. He immediately provides the example of speech in front of angry mob that could incite violence. Mill contends that such speech should not count as free speech but is action, and when harmful should be regulated. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/facebook-antitrust-battle-escalates-tensions-between-government-big-tech-151959">Facebook antitrust battle escalates tensions between government, Big Tech</a>
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<p>This describes exactly how most media commentators and Democratic politicians understand Trump’s incendiary speech at his rally on Jan. 6. Importantly, Republican leaders who had supported Trump, such as senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, agreed. They explicitly noted that the violent attack was, in former Trump chief of staff John Kelly’s words, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/politics/john-kelly-trump-25th-amendment-capitol-riot-cnntv/index.html">the direct result</a>” of Trump’s speech. </p>
<p>But it was not the government but private corporations, Twitter and Facebook, that made the decision that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/trump-twitter-ban.html">Trump’s speech was so incendiary that it had to be suspended</a>. These companies are <a href="https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-josh-hawley-media-social-media-f40a7667bef5af155397bc2004775b0b">targets of Hawley’s now-cancelled book</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377863/original/file-20210109-19-1crkij4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A photo of a smartphone with the screen showing Trump's suspended Twitter account" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377863/original/file-20210109-19-1crkij4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377863/original/file-20210109-19-1crkij4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377863/original/file-20210109-19-1crkij4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377863/original/file-20210109-19-1crkij4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377863/original/file-20210109-19-1crkij4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377863/original/file-20210109-19-1crkij4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377863/original/file-20210109-19-1crkij4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On Jan. 8, 2021, Twitter permanently suspended Trump from its platform, citing ‘risk of further incitement of violence.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Tali Arbel)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As critics have noted, both social media platforms are <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-about-social-media-neutrality-1517175805">hardly neutral in making such determinations</a>. They can be harmed by — and at the same time, benefit from — Trump’s incessant tweets that bypass traditional media to communicate directly to his supporters. </p>
<p>Twitter and Facebook are private, for-profit institutions and must put their own interests first. They cannot be expected to be a primary vehicle of the public interest. The future of Twitter and Facebook will be shaped by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/29/no-twitter-did-not-violate-trumps-freedom-speech/">congressional legislation and potential regulation</a>. To expect them not to have a dog in this fight is unreasonable.</p>
<h2>History of free speech</h2>
<p>The principle of free speech developed historically after the advent of the printing press, newspapers and, significantly, mass literacy through mandatory public education. Prior to the invention of the printing press and mass literacy, this would have made little sense as the “reading public” did not really exist. </p>
<p>Radical for 1784, German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s argument in favour of freedom of speech — what he called the “<a href="http://web.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/KantOnElightenment.htm">public use of reason</a>” — was specifically dependent on non-democratic and illiberal restrictions on all other civil freedoms. Kant applauded the slogan he attributed to Frederick the Great, “<em>argue</em> as much as you will, and about what you will, <em>but obey</em>.” Kant’s optimism about the public use of reason was so great, it surpassed any worry of autocracy. While an important argument in the development of freedom of speech, Kant’s general position is obviously out of place for contemporary democracies. </p>
<p>Mill, writing 75 years later, feared democracy as the “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#LibeFreeSpee">tyranny of the majority</a>,” but was more accepting of it than Kant. Mill did not posit an antagonistic relationship between freedom of speech and other civil freedoms as Kant had. However, to justify freedom of speech, he too clearly distinguished it from action. And Mill’s position rested on a similar optimism about the best ideas triumphing over objectionable and potentially harmful ones. Mill goes much further, with the utilitarian view that even false and terrible ideas can strengthen true and better ideas. </p>
<p>Of course, we have to question if this remains true in terms of hate speech and racism at the heart of much of Trump’s base. </p>
<h2>Free speech and violent actions</h2>
<p>Kant and Mill both accepted the now commonplace principle that more speech is the best response to dangerous or objectionable ideas. But today, pollsters tell us 70 per cent of Republican voters do not think the 2020 election was “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/09/republicans-free-fair-elections-435488">free and fair</a>” despite massive amounts of empirical and legal evidence that it was at least as legitimate as Trump’s 2016 electoral win. And there is a clear link between this and the violence we saw on Jan. 6, as well as an irony concerning the history of voter suppression (<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/poll-prri-voter-suppression/565355/">especially of Black voters</a>) and gerrymandering in the U.S. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377862/original/file-20210109-19-1syyaqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman at a protest holding a sign reading TRUMP WON I KNOW IT YOU KNOW IT" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377862/original/file-20210109-19-1syyaqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377862/original/file-20210109-19-1syyaqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377862/original/file-20210109-19-1syyaqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377862/original/file-20210109-19-1syyaqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377862/original/file-20210109-19-1syyaqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377862/original/file-20210109-19-1syyaqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377862/original/file-20210109-19-1syyaqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A supporter of President Donald Trump gathers to protest in solidarity on Jan. 6, 2021 in Salem, Ore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Paula Bronstein)</span></span>
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<p>However difficult it might be to determine in practice, the logic of free speech rests on that childhood formula: “Sticks and stone may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” Of course, not only can names and speech hurt people, but as we have seen, they can also threaten democracy. </p>
<p>Trump’s angry mob was not just incited by his <a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-save-america-rally-transcript-january-6">single speech on Jan. 6</a>, but had been fomenting for a long time online. The faith in reason held by Mill and Kant was premised on the printing press; free speech should be re-examined in the context of the internet and social media.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Ives does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Freedom of speech emerged as a concept after the invention of the printing press, and that’s worth revisiting in the context of social media and Trump’s presidency.Peter Ives, Professor, Political Science, University of WinnipegLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1524132020-12-21T17:09:16Z2020-12-21T17:09:16ZWe are facing a difficult winter – but philosophy can help<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376200/original/file-20201221-13-1ugz37w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5880%2C3799&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sad-woman-face-mask-video-calling-1856656819">Sam Wordley/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>All around the world, Christmas dreams are becoming nightmares. As R numbers increase and the epidemic spikes, people are seeing long cherished plans go up in smoke. </p>
<p>In England, plans have been curtailed as the five-day Christmas bubble which would have allowed three households to celebrate together has been reduced to one day for two households. For those in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/21/covid-tier-4-what-are-the-new-rules-london-south-east-england-christmas">the new Tier 4</a>, no household mixing at all is permitted.</p>
<p>After months of lockdowns and social distancing guidelines, many people will be feeling defeated – and exhausted by the prospect of a long winter to come, with further lockdowns possible before vaccines have been widely rolled out. If even the goal of spending one warm and happy day with friends and family cannot be attained, what is the point of all the hard work? </p>
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<p>In times like this, though, we can find solace in a few philosophical ideas. One is the concept of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17449642.2018.1505150">human finitude</a>. Simply put, human finitude means we are imperfect creatures with a limited lifespan. We are far from god-like; we do not have a god’s eye view, nor are we immortal. </p>
<p>In philosophy, finitude refers to the study of our human limitations. <a href="https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/infinity/v-1/sections/human-finitude">Many philosophers</a> have explored finitude, including Kant, Heidegger, Levinas and Nietzsche.</p>
<p>This may seem an odd idea to cling to, but recognising that we are finite, imperfect creatures can bring comfort during trying times. It is understandable to feel bewilderment at changing government advice. It is understandable to resent other people telling us to stay away from our loved ones, and to feel deep sadness at cancelled plans. And it is understandable to begin to lose the resolve to do the right thing. If finitude tells us anything, it is that we are only human.</p>
<p>And as finite humans, we are vulnerable. Among other things, we can die, we can lie and we can be used against our wishes.</p>
<p>COVID-19 has taught us how <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/bounds-of-justice/26F8BBC2142DB2B23795B7F95B025654">intensively mutually vulnerable</a> we really are. We depend on each other – but this dependency also puts us at risk. More socialising means an increase in virus transmission. Carrying on socialising during a spike in the epidemic might mean an increase in the number of people suffering severely from COVID-19, and a rise in the number of deaths.</p>
<p>So, while finitude tells us that it is understandable to feel the desire to break lockdowns and travel limits, vulnerability keeps us committed to doing the right thing by others – others who might be more vulnerable than us.</p>
<p>There is another philosophical concept that can keep us going in trying times. It is also more recognisably upbeat: hope. </p>
<p>Philosophically, there is a difference between <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/06/05/we-roar-andrew-chignell-discusses-good-hope-dark-times">“good hope” and “bad hope”</a>. While bad hope is simply unrealistic optimism, good hope has warrant; it is based on the idea that goals and aspirations are possible, no matter how bad things seem. </p>
<p>In our current situation, hope is an attitude we have warrant to adopt: what we hope for is really possible. A vaccine is already being rolled out, and with it come warranted hopes: for summer meet-ups with family, holidays with friends, the continuance of lives and loves.</p>
<p>In fact, hope is also related to human finitude. Were we god-like, we would be immortal and all-knowing, and hope for how the future might turn out would be unnecessary. Uncertainty is an inescapable part of the human condition. Even when we cannot be certain of the end result of a commitment or aspiration, we can still hope.</p>
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Read more:
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<p>It is understandable to feel resentment when plans are changed – and to feel the desire to ignore guidelines. Yet, recognising our mutual vulnerability means we cannot ignore the small voice telling us that the right thing to do is stay home. And hope can help us. Even as some hopes this Christmas are dashed, we can begin to formulate others. Spring is coming, and with it the hope of a better future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katy Dineen is affiliated with The Mizen Group. </span></em></p>Understanding our own limitations, and turning to hope, can help us deal with hardship.Katy Dineen, Assistant Lecturer in Moral Responsibility and Political Theory, University College CorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1518882020-12-16T11:27:42Z2020-12-16T11:27:42ZBeethoven 250: how the composer’s music embodies the Enlightenment philosophy of freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375381/original/file-20201216-17-1p1ugp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6016%2C4016&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Beethoven statue in Vienna, Austria. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/vienna-austria-1103-beethoven-monument-on-1671544777">Mitzo/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Freedom in Beethoven’s music takes many, frequently overlapping forms. There is heroic freedom in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXjJwxU5WbI">Eroica</a> (1803), freedom from political oppression in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChcrZX2rZ1M">Egmont Overture</a> (1810), artistic freedom and innovation in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJQ32q2k8Uo">Ninth Symphony</a> (1824). </p>
<p>Today, Beethoven’s music remains deeply connected with a true humanism, which has the principles of freedom and self-determination at its heart. </p>
<p>The composer’s music grew out of the age of <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/enlightenment">European Enlightenment</a>, which located human reason and the self at the centre of knowledge. The German philosopher <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html">Immanuel Kant understood enlightenment</a> as the ability to use one’s understanding without the guidance of another. Enlightenment is achieved when we have the freedom to rely on our intellectual capacities to determine how to live. This process of internal legislation based on reason is for Kant equivalent to the principle of free will. </p>
<p>A contemporary of Kant, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/hegel-the-philosopher-who-viewed-history-as-inevitable-progress/a-54707032">Georg Hegel</a> was also a philosopher of freedom, autonomy, reason and will. Hegel, like Kant, understood the free individual as someone who self-consciously makes choices through the action of a will governed by reason. Hegel adds a further dimension of social freedom, which he conceives as the actualisation of free will. In his <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/">Phenomenology of Spirit</a> (1807), Hegel famously describes freedom as “the highest destiny of the human spirit”. </p>
<h2>Music as will</h2>
<p>In its exploration of the freedom of human spirit, reason and will, 18th and 19th-century German thought provides the intellectual context in which Beethoven composed. Beethoven imbibed this spirit, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13272/13272-h/13272-h.htm">writing in an 1819 letter</a> that:</p>
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<p>Freedom and progress are our true aim in the world of art, just as in the great creation at large. </p>
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<p>To understand how the sounds of Beethoven’s music communicate this philosophy of freedom we must reflect on a curious process by which Beethoven’s music came to be heard as the movement of the will itself. </p>
<p>To the German philosopher <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40868/40868-pdf.pdf">Arthur Schopenhauer</a> Beethoven’s symphonies were a direct representation of the will, “a true and perfect picture of the nature of the world which rolls on in … innumerable forms”. </p>
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<p>Schopenhauer’s will draws on Aristotle’s understanding of <em><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/">anima</a></em> (spirit or mind) as the animating or moving principle. As the musicologist <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Beethoven_Freedom.html?id=6KKNswEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Daniel Chua</a> explains, this Aristotelian idea of will as self-movement is key to 19th-century musical thought. Both freedom and will were understood as movement – and no music evoked this better than Beethoven’s. Through their dramatic motion, Beethoven’s symphonies, in particular, demonstrated the will enacting its freedom and unfolding its destiny.</p>
<p>Following Schopenhauer, the composer Wagner reflected on Beethoven’s music as expressing the will in his <a href="http://users.skynet.be/johndeere/wlpdf/wlpr0133.pdf">1870 centenary essay</a>. He turns instead to the late quartets, praising Beethoven’s C-sharp minor quartet (opus 131) as “the dance of the whole world itself”. In <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51356/51356-h/51356-h.htm">The Birth of Tragedy</a> (1872), the philosopher Nietzsche similarly sees Beethoven’s music as expressing the will. </p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, a composer who could capture the very essence of human freedom in sound would himself come to be cast in the image of his music and mythologised as a liberator. During his life and after, Beethoven was held up as a <a href="https://www.visitingvienna.com/footsteps/beethoven-statue/">Promethean figure</a> – a creative and defiant innovator, liberating music from convention. </p>
<p>Different writers offered variations on this theme. Wagner describes <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jmodelite.40.2.05?seq=1">Beethoven as Columbus</a>, exploring the sea of music and making new discoveries in the Ninth Symphony. By the 20th century, Beethoven was known as “the man who freed music”, as described in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Beethoven.html?id=6AEXAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">the title of a 1929 study</a> by the American biographer and musician Robert Schauffler. </p>
<h2>Freedom as joy</h2>
<p>Of course, nowhere is Beethoven’s legacy of artistic freedom more visible or memorable than in his introduction of the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChygZLpJDNE">Ode to Joy</a>” in the Ninth Symphony, which marks the <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/composers/beethoven/music/symphony-no-9-d-minor/">first appearance of choral music in a symphony</a>. For some, Beethoven’s musical setting of <a href="https://www.saxonica.com/%7Emike/OdeToJoy.html">Friedrich Schiller’s poem</a> suggests an almost <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5487727">naive joy</a> in human unity and brotherhood. </p>
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<p>The symphony’s chorus also celebrates the meeting of the world with its creator, who “surely dwells among the stars”. This image is often associated with Beethoven’s February 1820 entry in his notebooks:</p>
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<p>The moral law within us and above us the starry sky. Kant!!!</p>
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<p>In other words, Schiller’s poem suggests to Beethoven an image of the will as both human and transcendent. Joy here is the realisation of morality as freedom. </p>
<p>The freedom of the will remains at the centre of Beethoven’s music. And so, 250 years from Beethoven’s birth, his music continues to offer his listeners a freedom that is experienced or echoed in the depths of their innermost selves. Beethoven’s music is the sound of human freedom at its core – the freedom of our minds, spirit or consciousness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aakanksha Virkar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In his work, many heard freedom as espoused by contemporary Enlightenment philosophers, like Immanuel Kant.Aakanksha Virkar, Senior Lecturer in Literature, University of BrightonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1506062020-12-02T13:26:10Z2020-12-02T13:26:10ZThe morality of canceling student debt<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372083/original/file-20201130-21-1boo981.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C28%2C4770%2C2507&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students pulling a heavy ball representing the total outstanding student debt in the U.S. at over $1.5 trillion.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/students-pull-a-mock-ball-chain-representing-the-1-4-news-photo/613631652?adppopup=true">PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President-elect <a href="https://joebiden.com/beyondhs/">Joe Biden promised to forgive</a> at least some student debt during his campaign, and he now supports immediately canceling <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/11/17/935743741/biden-wants-to-help-pay-some-student-loans-but-theres-pressure-to-go-further">US$10,000</a> per borrower as part of COVID-19 relief measures.</p>
<p>Such proposals are likely to be quite popular. A poll from 2019 found that <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/461106-majority-of-voters-support-free-college-eliminating-student-debt">58% of voters support</a> canceling all federal student debt.</p>
<p>But there are <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/11/22/opinion/student-debt-bailout-would-be-unjust">those who question the idea</a> of debt forgiveness and call it unfair to those who never took out student debt or already paid it off.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Padgett-Walsh%22%20author_fname%3A%22Kate%22&start=0&context=1759512&facet=">ethicist</a> who studies the morality of debt, I see merit in the question: Should student debt be canceled?</p>
<h2>The moral case against canceling</h2>
<p>Educational debt is often regarded as an investment in one’s future. Millennials with a B.A., for instance, typically earn <a href="https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2020/data-on-display/education-pays.htm">$25,000</a> more than those with a high school diploma. College education is also generally correlated with a variety of positive life outcomes, including <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629616301382">physical</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3298813/">mental</a> health, <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102503">family stability</a> and <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.25.1.159">career satisfaction</a>. </p>
<p>Given the benefits of college education, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/11/12/five-facts-about-student-loans/">canceling student debt appears</a> to some as a giveaway for those who are already on their way to becoming well-off. </p>
<p>Canceling debt also seems to violate the moral principle of following through on one’s promises. Borrowers have a moral duty to fulfill their loan agreements, the philosopher <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ff5d/112a814a2016f045f63a31755792c757e8b8.pdf">Immanuel Kant</a> argued, because reneging on promises is disrespectful to oneself and others. Once people have promised to do something, he noted, others rely upon that promise and expect them to follow through. </p>
<p>In the case of federal student loans, a borrower signs a promissory note agreeing to pay back the government and, ultimately, the taxpayers. And so student borrowers seem to have a moral duty to pay their debts unless mitigating circumstances like injury or illness arise.</p>
<h2>The moral case for canceling</h2>
<p>Fairness and respect, however, also demand that society addresses the magnitude of student debt today, and especially the burdens it imposes on low-income, first-generation and Black borrowers. </p>
<p>Young people today start their adult lives burdened with much more student debt than previous generations. Almost <a href="https://ticas.org/wp-content/uploads/legacy-files/pub_files/qf_about_student_debt.pdf">70% of college students</a> now borrow to attend college, and the average size of their debt has risen since the mid-90s from less than <a href="https://ticas.org/wp-content/uploads/legacy-files/pub_files/qf_about_student_debt.pdf">$13,000 to about $30,000</a> today. </p>
<p>As a result, total outstanding student debt has jumped to over <a href="https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/topics/student-debt">$1.5 trillion</a>, making it the <a href="https://heller.brandeis.edu/iasp/pdfs/racial-wealth-equity/racial-wealth-gap/stallingdreams-how-student-debt-is-disrupting-lifechances.pdf">second largest</a> form of debt in the U.S. after mortgages. </p>
<p>This explosion in student debt raises two significant moral concerns, as my student <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10790-020-09770-1?wt_mc=Internal.Event.1.SEM.ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst&utm_source=ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AA_en_06082018&ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst_20201001">Justin Lewiston and I argue in an article</a> published last month by The Journal of Value Inquiry. </p>
<p>The first concern is that the distribution of costs and benefits is very unequal. Fairness requires equal opportunity, as the philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/">John Rawls</a> argued. Yet, while borrowing for education is supposed to create opportunities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, those opportunities often fail to materialize due to educational challenges and wage gaps in the labor market.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372084/original/file-20201130-17-1pnwm7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372084/original/file-20201130-17-1pnwm7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372084/original/file-20201130-17-1pnwm7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372084/original/file-20201130-17-1pnwm7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372084/original/file-20201130-17-1pnwm7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372084/original/file-20201130-17-1pnwm7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372084/original/file-20201130-17-1pnwm7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372084/original/file-20201130-17-1pnwm7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Students hold a demonstration in New York to protest against ballooning student loan debt.</span>
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<p>Data show that low-income students, first-generation students and Black students face much greater struggles in repaying their loans. About 70% of those in <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-postsecondary/reports/2017/12/14/444011/student-loan-defaulters/">default</a> are first-generation students, and 40% come from low-income backgrounds. Twenty years after college, when white borrowers have repaid 94% of their loans, the typical Black student has been able to <a href="https://heller.brandeis.edu/iasp/pdfs/racial-wealth-equity/racial-wealth-gap/stallingdreams-how-student-debt-is-disrupting-lifechances.pdf">repay only 5%</a>. </p>
<p>These repayment and default rates reflect significantly lower <a href="https://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport16/">graduation rates</a> for students in those groups, who typically need to work long hours while also in school and hence <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023116664351">engage</a> less with both the academic and nonacademic aspects of college.</p>
<p>But they also reflect significantly lower post-graduation incomes for such students, due in no small part to continuing social and racial wage gaps in the labor market. Black men with a bachelor’s degree make, on average, more than <a href="https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2017-26.pdf?mod=article_inline">20% less than white men</a> with the same education and experience, though that wage gap is smaller for women. And first-generation graduates typically make <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11162-018-9523-1">10% less than students whose parents graduated</a> from college.</p>
<p>A second moral concern is that student debt is increasingly causing widespread distress and constraining life choices in significant ways. Consider that even before the pandemic, <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2018-student-loans-and-other-education-debt.htm">20% of student borrowers</a> were behind on their payments, and first-generation borrowers and borrowers of color are struggling even more. </p>
<p>The financial distress indicated by this high rate of delinquency is undermining both the <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jfamec/v40y2019i1d10.1007_s10834-018-9594-3.html">physical</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953614007503">mental</a> health of young adults. It prevents young adults from starting <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2968250">families</a>, purchasing cars, renting or buying their own <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927537117303317">homes</a> and even starting new <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2633951">businesses</a>. </p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, these negative effects are <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/10.1177%2F2167696819879252/full">disproportionately</a> experienced by first-generation, low-income and Black student borrowers, whose life choices are especially restricted by the need to make loan payments. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>Avoiding moral hazard</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2019/10/28/the-massive-moral-hazard-problem-in-mass-student-loan-forgiveness/?sh=73667707e927">Some analysts</a> have argued, however, that canceling student debt will create a problem of moral hazard. A moral hazard arises when people no longer feel the need to make careful choices because they expect others to cover the risk for them.</p>
<p>For example, a bank that expects to be bailed out by the government in the event of a financial crisis thereby has an incentive to engage in riskier behavior. </p>
<p>Moral hazard can be avoided by combining student debt cancellation with programs that reduce the need for future borrowing, especially for first-generation students, low-income students and students of color. </p>
<p>One success story is the Tennessee Promise, a program enacted in 2015 to make tuition and fees at community and technical colleges free to state residents. This program has <a href="https://comptroller.tn.gov/content/dam/cot/orea/advanced-search/2020/TNPromiseMo4Final720.pdf">increased enrollment</a>, retention and completion rates, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/39369076/Do_Promise_Programs_Reduce_Student_Loans_Evidence_from_Tennessee_Promise">while reducing borrowing by over 25%</a>. </p>
<p>Ultimately, morality requires a forward-looking as well as a backward-looking approach to debt cancellation. </p>
<p>Looking backward at initial promises to repay can explain why people are generally required to pay their debts. But looking forward will enable policymakers to imagine how canceling student debt could help create a fairer society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Padgett Walsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>President-elect Joe Biden promised to forgive some part of student debt. An ethicist considers what’s fair.Kate Padgett Walsh, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Iowa State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1459952020-09-17T11:25:37Z2020-09-17T11:25:37ZFrom Washington to Trump, all presidents have told lies (but only some have told them for the right reasons)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358440/original/file-20200916-16-l9zkoa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C52%2C2176%2C1690&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Nixon at a White House news conference in March 1973.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/NixonsWatergateTestimony/d59d9c49c6164dbdafc4647310ca0c26/photo?Query=nixon&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=7400&currentItemNo=10">AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Michael Cohen, in his recent <a href="https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510764699/disloyal-a-memoir/">book,</a> has called President Trump a <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/09/08/Michael-Cohens-tell-all-book-out-Tuesday-calls-Trump-liar-bully/1041599562972/">“fraud,” a “bigot,” a “bully” – and, most emphatically, a “liar”</a>. The Trump administration’s response to this book simply reverses the accusation, calling Cohen someone <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cohen-trump-book/2020/09/05/235aa10a-ef96-11ea-ab4e-581edb849379_story.html">who attempts to “profit off of lies”</a>. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the media has often noted the frequency with which President Trump lies. The Washington Post, for instance, maintains a running database of what it terms the President’s “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?utm_term=.27babcd5e58c&itid=lk_inline_manual_2&itid=lk_inline_manual_2">false or misleading claims</a>” – which now number over 20,000, or an average of 12 per day. </p>
<p>Media’s accounts of Trump’s lies would seem to indicate that most people are wholeheartedly opposed to lying – and, in particular, opposed to being lied to by presidents. And yet a recent <a href="https://progressive.org/dispatches/lies-more-lies-presidential-history-lueders-200810/">survey of presidential deception</a> found that all American presidents – from Washington to Trump – have told lies, knowingly, in their public statements.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://phil.washington.edu/people/michael-blake">political philosopher</a>, with a focus on how people try to reason together through political disagreement, I argue that not all lies are the same. </p>
<p>History shows examples of presidents who have lied for a larger public purpose – and have been forgiven. </p>
<h2>The morality of deception</h2>
<p>Why, though, are lies thought so wrongful in the first instance?</p>
<p>Immanuel Kant, in the 18th century, provided one powerful account of <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577415.001.0001/acprof-9780199577415-chapter-4">the wrongness of lying</a>. For Kant, lying was wrong in much the same way that threats and coercion are wrong. All of these override the autonomous will of another person, and treat that person as a mere tool. </p>
<p>For Kant, human beings were morally special precisely because they could use reason to decide what to do. When a gunman uses threats to coerce a person to do a particular act, he disrespects that person’s rational agency. Lies are a similar disrespect to rational agency: One’s decision has been manipulated, so that the act is no longer one’s own.</p>
<p>Kant defended these conclusions without exception. Kant regarded any lie as immoral – even one told to <a href="http://www.mesacc.edu/%7Edavpy35701/text/kant-sup-right-to-lie.pdf">a murderer at the door</a>. </p>
<p>Modern-day philosophers have often accepted Kant’s account, while seeking exceptions from its rigidness. In his book “Ethics for Adversaries,” philosopher <a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/arthur-applbaum">Arthur Applbaum</a> <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691057392/ethics-for-adversaries">explains</a> why citizens might sometimes consent to being deceived, which might be useful in understanding presidential deception. </p>
<p>For example, a political leader who gives honest answers about a forthcoming military operation would likely imperil that operation – and most people would not want that. The key, though, is that people might accept such deception, after the fact, because of what that deception made possible. </p>
<p>To take one example: The British government sought to deceive the Nazi command about its plans for invasion – which entailed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/06/d-day-would-be-nearly-impossible-pull-off-today-heres-why/">lying even to British allies</a>. Applbaum argues that what might seem like simple deception might become justified, if those deceived could eventually consent – after the fact – to being so deceived.</p>
<h2>Honorable lies?</h2>
<p>History reveals examples of how presidents must sometimes lie, and how their lies might sometimes be morally defensible. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C21%2C2019%2C1513&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leaders could lie for many reasons, and some lies might be morally defensible.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mobili/43673422552/in/photolist-29xgGY1-2hKoNBg-2j1pTjB-2hspAbt-2iQpJ3v-2jjMAs3-RstBMm-RfyVW8-2j4Sr86-2gQ51vv-NZZjP5-2iNirUn-2iUnp18-MG2Grz-2iyLLE3-2iWsiDV-2iPdXoT-5oZqVC-2ixpw1Y-2hKrrmT-2ipMPiT-2hKsymy-TBXjDU-2hx4j17-26maq25-PdLjs-2hKoTPA-2hiFkvJ-2hKoSTs-2hKsCuJ-P6wqKa-2iV4QKp-LqVmws-299JgzE-2iQpFM3-25pSpbv-2hHkLEC-2iJDa2u-QpuRP5-LMgAhE-2j8hpCk-Y6nwUN-2hKrr1h-2hXFKWP-2hHY2Cg-2iM55ri-2j7Yrs9-M96MPT-2iuTs8d-NhAJd8">Mobilus In Mobili</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was convinced that Hitler’s expansionism in Europe was a threat to the liberal democratic project itself, but he faced an electorate without any will to intervene in a European war. Roosevelt chose to insist publicly that he was opposed to any intervention – while doing everything he could to prepare for war and to covertly help the <a href="https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2017/01/04/how-franklin-d-roosevelt-prepared-us-for-wwii/">British cause</a>. </p>
<p>As early as 1948, historian Thomas Bailey noted that Roosevelt had made a calculated choice to both prepare for war and insist he was doing no such thing. To be open about his view of Hitler would have led to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CVqTXJjmtmUC&pg=PA298&lpg=PA298&dq=roosevelt+lying&source=bl&ots=0frUEvK02d&sig=ACfU3U3djJZzxplhbGcQwVXwPOAqWJaa2w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ_cKC_evrAhUBip4KHUTjDqY4ChDoATAGegQICBAB#v=onepage&q=the%20man%20in%20the%20street&f=false">his defeat in the 1940 election.</a></p>
<p>Prior to Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln made similar calculations. Lincoln’s lies regarding his negotiations with the Confederacy – described by <a href="https://www.marlboro.edu/live/profiles/32-meg-mott">Meg Mott</a>, a professor of political theory, as being “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/24/politics/presidents-lie/index.html">devious</a>” – may have been instrumental in preserving the United States as a single country.</p>
<p>“Honest Abe” Lincoln was willing to open peace negotiations with the Confederacy – knowing that much of his own party thought that only unconditional surrender by the South would settle the question of slavery. At one point, Lincoln wrote a note to his own party asserting – falsely – that there were “<a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0021.104/--hampton-roads-peace-conference-a-final-test-of-lincolns?rgn=main;view=fulltext">no peace commissioners</a>” being sent to a conference with the Confederacy. </p>
<p>A member of the Congress later noted that, in the absence of that note, the 13th Amendment – which ended the practice of chattel slavery – <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0021.104/--hampton-roads-peace-conference-a-final-test-of-lincolns?rgn=main;view=fulltext">would not have been passed</a>.</p>
<h2>Good lies and bad lies</h2>
<p>The problem, of course, is that a great many presidential lies cannot be so easily linked to important purposes. </p>
<p>President Bill Clinton’s lies about his sexual activities were either simply self-serving or told to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Fe88rwSW8ywC&pg=PT507&lpg=PT507&dq=bill+clinton+%22the+lie+saved+me%22&source=bl&ots=AJY7EQZHoq&sig=ACfU3U2uGl7_XXWvjxHXE5jYNH0XyzOZyA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjFsPGE0enrAhWTvJ4KHY_WB5MQ6AEwC3oECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q=bill%20clinton%20%22the%20lie%20saved%20me%22&f=false">preserve his presidency</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, President Richard Nixon’s insistence that he knew nothing about <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-insists-that-he-is-not-a-crook">the Watergate break-in</a> was most likely a lie. John Dean, Nixon’s legal counsel, confirmed years later that the president <a href="https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/08/07/john-dean-uncovers-what-nixon-knew-about-watergate">knew about, and approved of</a>, the plan to rob the Democratic National Committee headquarters. This scandal eventually ended Nixon’s presidency. </p>
<p>In both cases, these presidents faced a significant threat to their presidencies - and chose deception to save not the nation, but their own power. </p>
<h2>President Trump and truth</h2>
<p>It is likely that President Trump has lied <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/podcast-glenn-kessler-david-corn-lies-washington-post-fact-checker/">more than previous presidents</a> in public – and, perhaps more significantly, he has also apparently lied about a wider variety of topics than his predecessors.</p>
<p>Soon after being elected he claimed, falsely, that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/22/trump-inauguration-crowd-sean-spicers-claims-versus-the-evidence">his inaugural crowd</a> was the largest ever. More recently, he insisted that Hurricane Dorian was likely to affect the coast of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/06/politics/trump-sharpie-hurricane-dorian-alabama/index.html">Alabama</a> – and he seems to have altered a map with a Sharpie to bolster his false claim. The pattern of deception has continued, most recently with his acknowledgment that he <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-bob-woodward_n_5f58fd32c5b6b48507fabc99">deceived the public</a> about the coronavirus – and then his insistence <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-is-lying-about-lying-1058436/">that he had done no such thing</a>. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>What is striking about these lies, in contrast to the lies of previous presidents, is that they have generally been told in the absence of a particular and acute threat to either the president’s power or to the preservation of the United States. </p>
<p>Presidents have lied for good reasons and for bad ones, but very few have chosen to lie without a particularly unusual threat to themselves or their nation. If some presidential lies might be forgivable, it could be only because of the good to the nation those lies bring about; and President Trump’s lies seem unlikely to meet that test.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Blake has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>Some presidents have lied for honorable reasons, while for others the lies have been simply self-serving.Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1446612020-09-11T12:19:59Z2020-09-11T12:19:59ZPhilosophy and psychology agree - yelling at people who aren’t wearing masks won’t work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357277/original/file-20200909-14-1rx5dym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=372%2C40%2C6297%2C4325&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Masks Up, Surf City, banner campaign in Huntington Beach, Calif.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pedestrians-dont-heed-the-masks-up-surf-city-banner-news-photo/1228408046?adppopup=true">Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is strong <a href="https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-about-masks-heres-science-behind-how-face-masks-prevent">scientific evidence</a> that wearing a mask reduces the risk of transmitting the coronavirus. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization recommend wearing them. </p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/23/most-americans-say-they-regularly-wore-a-mask-in-stores-in-the-past-month-fewer-see-others-doing-it/">many people believe</a> it is important to take precautions to reduce the risks we pose to others and wear masks. They conclude that wearing a mask <a href="https://time.com/5815299/coronavirus-face-mask-ethics/">is the right thing to do</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="http://harvey.cc.binghamton.edu/%7Enhassoun">professor of philosophy</a> working on <a href="https://theconversation.com/ending-the-pandemic-will-take-global-access-to-covid-19-treatment-and-vaccines-which-means-putting-ethics-before-profits-141763">global health ethics</a>, I believe the conflict between mask wearers and non-wearers raises some important ethical questions: </p>
<p>Is it acceptable to comment on others’ apparent irresponsibility when they choose not to wear a mask or try to shame them into wearing one? Is this approach effective?</p>
<h2>Moral outrage</h2>
<p>There is psychological <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2349">evidence</a> to show that people express <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/200901/moral-righteousness-in-trying-times">moral righteousness</a> – act from an outraged sense of justice – when they are uncertain and afraid.</p>
<p>When people are anxious, they often try to regain composure by clinging strongly to their moral norms. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2349">Some studies</a> also show that such moral outrage may be “self-serving” – a way to bolster one’s own moral status. </p>
<p>But there is also reason to believe that <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-motivates-moral-outrage-75035">moral outrage</a>, whatever its psychological source, can be an important lever for bringing about positive change – such outrage was, for instance, essential for ending slavery. </p>
<p>The righteous outrage of abolitionists who tried to end slavery in the mid-1800s was justified even if they would not have been so outraged in different circumstances – say, where the country had not been on the brink of civil war. </p>
<p>Martin Luther King’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/691298594/the-power-of-martin-luther-king-jr-s-anger">struggle for civil rights</a> was motivated as much by anger at injustice as by love. For King, anger was part of a process that included forgiveness and led to constructive action.</p>
<h2>Refusal to wear masks</h2>
<p>To decide whether outrage is an appropriate response to even the most selfishly motivated refusal to wear a mask, consider the consequences of such outrage.</p>
<p>Those who follow 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill believe people should act so as to maximize the positive and minimize the negative <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/">consequences</a> of their actions, for the benefit of the greatest number of people.</p>
<p>But even those who reject Mill’s views and follow another philosopher, Immanuel Kant, believe that consequences matter. On <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/">Kant’s</a> view we need to understand how to help people adhere to the moral law because he thought that what matters most is one’s goodwill or motive.</p>
<p>But in these times, masks have become <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/06/25/face-masks-america-divided/">politicized</a> in the U.S. Therefore, some might well argue that the gains made through the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover-guidance.html">number of lives saved</a> may not outweigh the consequences of further <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/01/masks-politics-coronavirus-227765">polarizing our political system</a>.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there might be those who argue that this polarization is well worth the risk. Recent studies have found that masks <a href="https://www.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/news/your-mask-cuts-own-risk-65-percent/">cut down the risk of infection to the wearer by as much as 65%</a>. </p>
<h2>Listening carefully</h2>
<p>But this need not be a choice between further polarization and risk reduction. </p>
<p>Epidemiologist <a href="https://www.populationmedicine.org/jmarcus">Julia Marcus</a> argues that shaming people who do not wear masks <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/dudes-who-wont-wear-masks/613375/">will not work to anyone’s advantage</a>. People can better convince others to wear masks if they share the fear, loss and uncertainty that <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-the-time-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-what-should-you-say-to-someone-who-refuses-to-wear-a-mask-a-philosopher-weighs-in-142898">motivates their concern</a> rather than use their outrage to shame others.</p>
<p>As Kant argued, everyone should treat other people with respect. This applies no matter what side of the political fence people occupy. <a href="https://www.pdcnet.org/resphilosophica/content/resphilosophica_2013_0090_0003_0413_0438">We all share needs</a> for safety, economic security and health. Evidence suggests that shame can undermine, rather than promote, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3083636/">moral motivation</a>. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if people share their feelings and candidly explain their <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-act-be/202005/why-are-masks-triggering-conflict-and-rage">fears</a> and aspirations to others, they might better motivate positive change.</p>
<h2>Show empathy</h2>
<p>Trying to understand why people might be resistant to wearing a mask might be a good place to start. For example, some people may be worried that a mask may <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/886299211/why-some-people-dont-wear-masks">not allow for a free flow of oxygen into their lungs</a>, even though such concerns may not be valid. Some people also find it hard to breathe with a mask on if they are running or exercising in another way. All these concerns can be acknowledged and discussed. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Similarly, everyone should remember that some people have good reasons not to wear a mask. People <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/helping-people-with-autism-spectrum-disorder-manage-masks-and-covid-19-tests-2020061020089">may have underlying health conditions</a> like autism or anxiety disorders that make wearing a mask difficult.</p>
<p>Even when someone refuses to wear a mask only to make a <a href="https://scroll.in/article/961017/an-ethnographer-tries-to-understand-the-anti-lockdown-protests-erupting-across-the-us">political statement</a>, it is important to hear why it matters so much to them. As Kant argues, it is important to understand different perspectives.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are anti-maskers afraid that their businesses wouldn’t be allowed to open any time soon due to the fear of the spread of COVID-19?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dolores-garrity-a-hair-salon-owner-demands-that-gov-larry-news-photo/1210378865?adppopup=true">Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is possible that people who have lost jobs might see masks as a threat that would further <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-act-be/202005/why-are-masks-triggering-conflict-and-rage">delay the reopening of the economy</a>.</p>
<p>Everyone should also remember that in our daily lives, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractualism/">each of us undertakes activities that pose at least a little risk to others</a>. Day-to-day activities such as <a href="https://time.com/5810782/grocery-store-safety-coronavirus/">grocery shopping</a> or even <a href="https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus/can-you-get-coronavirus-from-talking-to-someone">having conversations with friends or neigbors</a> carry a small risk of virus transmission.</p>
<p>Focusing on facts – rules that states, cities or private employers put in place to protect people – <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Mask-the-rage-How-to-talk-to-people-who-don-t-15273357.php">rather than blaming</a> others might be a more effective way to convince them.</p>
<p>People on <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/8/7/21357400/anti-mask-protest-rallies-donald-trump-covid-19">both</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/Epidemiologists-coronavirus-protests-quarantine.html">sides</a> of the mask debate have found reasons to turn this into a most contentious issue. Perhaps listening carefully and with empathy might help everyone understand that we all really are in this together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Hassoun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many of us believe that outrage is an appropriate response to what appears to be a selfishly motivated refusal to wear a mask, but is it?Nicole Hassoun, Professor of Philosophy, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1428982020-08-24T12:19:25Z2020-08-24T12:19:25ZIn the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, what should you say to someone who refuses to wear a mask? A philosopher weighs in<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354158/original/file-20200821-20-zkw4lj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C42%2C5632%2C3687&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 'no mask, no taco' sign at Chelsea Market in New York City</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/los-tacos-employee-wearing-a-mask-poses-near-a-no-mask-no-news-photo/1267250805?adppopup=true">Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Multiple studies have shown that <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920302301">masks reduce the transmission</a> of virus-loaded droplets from people with COVID-19. However, according to a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/315590/americans-face-mask-usage-varies-greatly-demographics.aspx">Gallup poll</a>, almost a fifth of Americans say they rarely or never wear a mask in public. </p>
<p>This raises a question: Can the anti-maskers be persuaded to wear masks? </p>
<p>To some, it might appear that such a question has no ethical dimension. Wearing masks saves lives, so everyone should do it. Some even believe <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/opinion/us-republicans-coronavirus.html">anti-maskers are simply selfish</a>. </p>
<p>But as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jVbxIksAAAAJ&hl=en">philosopher</a> who studies ethics and persuasion, I argue that things are more complicated than that. </p>
<h2>Kant on love and respect</h2>
<p>To start, consider one of the most influential ethical frameworks in Western thought: that of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.</p>
<p>According to Kant, morality is ultimately about respect and love. Respecting someone, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Kant_The_Metaphysics_of_Morals/GcEmAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=kant+metaphysics+of+morals&printsec=frontcover">Kant claims</a>, is “limiting our self-esteem by the dignity of humanity in another person.” In other words, we should refrain from undermining others’ dignity.</p>
<p>Alongside respect, for Kant, we should also show others a certain type of love. To love others in the moral sense, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Kant_The_Metaphysics_of_Morals/GcEmAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=kant+metaphysics+of+morals&printsec=frontcover">he writes</a>, is not about having a feeling, but is rather to “make others’ ends my own (provided only that these are not immoral).” </p>
<p>That is, moral love requires that we help others achieve their aims, as long as those aims aren’t immoral. </p>
<p>Altogether, this means that treating others well requires an understanding about what gives them their dignity and what things they are ultimately trying to achieve. </p>
<h2>What is social dignity?</h2>
<p>One could ask why trying to persuade someone to wear a mask would threaten their dignity.</p>
<p>Consider one type of dignity in particular: social dignity. According to ethicist <a href="https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/suzanne-killmister">Suzy Killmister</a>, social dignity consists in someone <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/contours-of-dignity-9780198844365?cc=us&lang=en&">living up to the standards</a> that her community holds her to. The specific standards that matter are those which the community sees as being “shameful” to violate. </p>
<p>Someone’s social dignity can be damaged whether or not she accepts her society’s standards. One way this can happen is if she is a member of different social groups with conflicting standards. </p>
<p>For example, imagine a teenager from a conservative religious community who attends a secular public school. According to her religious community’s standards, it is shameful to dress immodestly. According to the standards of her classmates, however, it is shamefully unfashionable to dress conservatively. She faces a dilemma of dignity: No matter how she dresses, she cannot achieve full social dignity.</p>
<h2>Shame and social standards</h2>
<p>Because a significant majority of Americans do wear masks, and because of its importance in protecting public health, mask-wearing has become a social standard connected to shame. </p>
<p>In response, epidemiologist <a href="https://www.populationmedicine.org/jmarcus">Julia Marcus</a> has recently <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/dudes-who-wont-wear-masks/613375/">cautioned</a> that it is not effective to shame people who do not wear masks. Instead, she proposed approaching anti-maskers with empathy.</p>
<p>To see the ethical importance of Marcus’ suggestion, consider <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/315590/americans-face-mask-usage-varies-greatly-demographics.aspx">another finding</a> from a Gallup poll: While most groups do report always or often wearing masks in public, that is not true for Republicans. Over 50% of Republicans say they never, rarely, or only sometimes do. Similarly, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/17/upshot/coronavirus-face-mask-map.html">other studies</a> have found sharp regional differences in mask-wearing.</p>
<p>A Republican whose social group sees wearing a mask as shameful faces a dilemma of dignity. For example, a sheriff in Washington state <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/dont-be-a-sheep-sheriffs-across-u-s-rebel-against-new-statewide-mask-requirements/">told a cheering crowd</a> that he would not enforce the state’s mask mandate. His advice was: “Don’t be a sheep.” </p>
<p>Similarly, psychologist <a href="https://faculty.lawrence.edu/glickp/">Peter Glick</a> has suggested that wearing a mask is seen by some groups as “<a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/masks-and-emasculation-why-some-men-refuse-to-take-safety-precautions/">unmanly</a>” because it appears to them as a weakness.</p>
<p>People in such communities are subject to anti-mask standards, even as their larger society’s standards require masks. Their dignity is therefore in a precarious position. Ethically speaking, then, any respectful engagement with them calls for a recognition of that fact, not a blunt attempt at persuasion.</p>
<h2>Making small efforts</h2>
<p>Remember that Kant says that, alongside respecting others’ dignity, we must also help them achieve their aims, provided those aims are not immoral. Refusing to wear a mask might well be immoral. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>However, trying to maintain one’s social status by living up to society’s standards is not intrinsically immoral. If that is what is driving anti-maskers’ refusals, then Kant’s framework could help pro-maskers see the ethical nuance of the situation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354159/original/file-20200821-16-gayfut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354159/original/file-20200821-16-gayfut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354159/original/file-20200821-16-gayfut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354159/original/file-20200821-16-gayfut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354159/original/file-20200821-16-gayfut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354159/original/file-20200821-16-gayfut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354159/original/file-20200821-16-gayfut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354159/original/file-20200821-16-gayfut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">US President Donald Trump wears a mask as he visits Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in July 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-wears-a-mask-as-he-visits-walter-news-photo/1226303255?adppopup=true">Photo by ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Appreciating this ethical challenge could also help those who are seeking to persuade anti-maskers. They might need to offer anti-maskers some way of maintaining their dignity in their anti-mask social groups while wearing a mask in other settings.</p>
<p>For example, they might find examples of conservatives, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/11/trum-wears-face-mask-walter-reed-visit-357249">including President Trump</a>, who wear a mask in some contexts but not others. After all, even small efforts in mask-wearing can save lives. </p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the proportion of Americans who say they rarely or never wear a mask in public.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142898/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Marshall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A philosopher argues that wearing masks could be tied to living up to the standards of one’s social group and recognizing that could help in persuading anti-maskers.Colin Marshall, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1437302020-08-06T12:31:45Z2020-08-06T12:31:45ZAs the coronavirus rages in prisons, ethical issues of crime and punishment become more compelling<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351175/original/file-20200804-16-13pf01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=104%2C27%2C3548%2C2414&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 1970 image of prisoners in cell blocks at Rikers Island Prison.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rikers-island-new-york-prisoners-in-cell-blocks-at-rikers-news-photo/515297520?adppopup=true">Bettmann / Contributor/Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Across the United States, prisons and jails have become <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html#clusters">hot spots</a> for COVID-19. Governments at the state and federal level are being pressed to release inmates before the end of their sentence in order to minimize the spread of the disease.</p>
<p>So far more than 100,000 of them <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200708121423.htm">have been infected</a> with the coronavirus, and at least 802 inmates and several correctional officers have died. </p>
<p>New Jersey’s correctional facilities have been hit particularly hard. With 29 deaths for every 100,000 inmates, they have <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/05/01/a-state-by-state-look-at-coronavirus-in-prisons">the highest COVID-19-related death rate</a> in the nation.</p>
<p>In response, New Jersey has already <a href="http://d31hzlhk6di2h5.cloudfront.net/20200410/c0/64/ce/2c/0ef068b5d2c6459546c33a46/EO-124.pdf">released more than 1,000 inmates</a>, and Gov. Phil Murphy on April 10, 2020 authorized a case-by-case review of prisoners who are at greater risk. Additionally, the state legislature is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/nyregion/New-jersey-inmate-release-Covid.html">considering</a> a bill to authorize release of about 20% of its prison population. </p>
<p>As a scholar who <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814762479/life-without-parole/">has studied penal policy in the U.S.</a>, it is clear that the coronavirus requires Americans to think hard about what is unjust and disproportionate punishment. It is a question that ethicists have tried to tackle for millennia, but has been given added urgency during the pandemic. </p>
<h2>Overcrowding, infections and deaths</h2>
<p>Social distancing is <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/RuleOfLaw/OverIncarceration/ACLU.pdf">impossible</a> in correctional facilities and, as a result, so is COVID-19 prevention. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/In-California-s-crowded-prison-system-COVID-19-15273236.php">California</a>, for example, where 109,000 prisoners are housed in facilities with a maximum capacity of 85,000, the <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2020-06-29/prisons-are-coronavirus-hotbeds-in-california-despite-billions-spent-on-inmate-health">infection rate</a> in June for the state’s jails and prisons was about 40 per 1,000 inmates – more than seven times the rate for the state’s population as a whole. </p>
<p>In New York City’s jails, <a href="https://www.legalaidnyc.org/covid-19-infection-tracking-in-nyc-jails/">it was was more than 7%</a>, compared to just over 2% for the city’s population. </p>
<p>Inmates fear for their lives. One California prisoner, who is serving an eight-year sentence for causing injury while driving drunk, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-25/i-dont-deserve-a-death-sentence-says-inmate-with-coronary-disease-in-chino-coronavirus-prison-hotspot">told the Los Angeles Times</a>: “I don’t deserve a death sentence.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351178/original/file-20200804-14-15cqv7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351178/original/file-20200804-14-15cqv7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351178/original/file-20200804-14-15cqv7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351178/original/file-20200804-14-15cqv7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351178/original/file-20200804-14-15cqv7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351178/original/file-20200804-14-15cqv7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351178/original/file-20200804-14-15cqv7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Overcrowding in prisons: Inmates at the Mule Creek State Prison in a gymnasium that was modified to house prisoners in Ione, California.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/inmates-at-the-mule-creek-state-prison-interact-in-a-news-photo/76479839?adppopup=true">Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Justice in punishment</h2>
<p>Philosophers since Aristotle have debated what justice in punishment requires. For him, punishment is governed by the requirements of what he <a href="https://www.amazon.com/ethics-Aristotle-2-Aristotle/dp/B0037CFD3W">called</a> “corrective justice.” By this he meant that when someone is injured, the offender should be punished by inflicting comparable harm. </p>
<p>Aristotle‘s idea that punishment is a deserved and proportional response to an offense provides a building block for <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Punishment_and_Retribution.html?id=5go7I84EGI0C">retributive theories of punishment</a>, which embrace some form of “an eye for an eye” as a way to do justice. </p>
<p>Those theories insist, as 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant <a href="https://antilogicalism.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/kant-practical-philosophy.pdf">noted</a>, that punishment “can never be inflicted merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society. It must always be inflicted upon him because he has committed a crime.” In other words, just punishment must give people what they deserve, nothing less and nothing more.</p>
<p>Thus, Kant <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3505232?seq=33#metadata_info_tab_contents">suggested</a> that the amount of punishment should be governed by a principle of proportionality. </p>
<p>Many contemporary theorists of punishment embrace this idea. As legal scholar <a href="https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/bernard-e-harcourt">Bernard Harcourt</a> recently <a href="https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1667&context=faculty_scholarship">said</a>, punishment “should be proportional to the amount of harm caused by the offender.” </p>
<h2>Prison conditions</h2>
<p>To determine whether the risk of being exposed in prison to sickness or death from COVID-19 is disproportionate punishment requires paying attention to prison conditions. One question to ask is whether the harsh conditions of life behind bars are part of a criminal’s punishment or merely a collateral consequence of their sentence. </p>
<p>Throughout most of American history, a criminal sentence was thought to be the full measure of the punishment inflicted – jail and prison conditions, as bad as they might be, were not regarded as part of the punishment. </p>
<p>In 1992, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/503/1/#tab-opinion-1958937">observed</a>, in a case brought by an inmate who had been beaten by a guard, that the prohibition on cruel punishment found in the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment did not apply to any “deprivations” or “hardships” during incarceration. </p>
<p>Two years later, Thomas <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/511/825/#tab-opinion-1959529">reiterated</a> his view that the overcrowding, disease or violence which are often part of confinement “are not punishment in any recognized sense of the term.” </p>
<p>But Thomas’ view has not prevailed.</p>
<p>In a series of recent cases, the United States Supreme Court has <a href="https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/heaps.pdf">held</a> that what happens in jails and prisons is in fact part of an inmate’s punishment and must be considered in deciding whether their treatment is just. </p>
<p>As Justice Lewis Powell <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/452/337/">said</a> in a 1981 case challenging prison overcrowding, such conditions are part of the punishment and are “subject to scrutiny under the Eighth Amendment standards.” </p>
<p>Those conditions “must not,” he said, “involve the wanton and unnecessary infliction of pain, nor may they be grossly disproportionate to the severity of the crime warranting imprisonment.” </p>
<p>In 2011, the Supreme Court <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/563/493/#tab-opinion-1963501">reaffirmed</a> the view that jail and prison conditions were very much part of the punishment. The court upheld a lower court order directing the state of California to reduce the size of its prison population so as to reduce overcrowding and provide better medical treatment for inmates. </p>
<h2>Protecting prisoners</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351176/original/file-20200804-14-14d07je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351176/original/file-20200804-14-14d07je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351176/original/file-20200804-14-14d07je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351176/original/file-20200804-14-14d07je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351176/original/file-20200804-14-14d07je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351176/original/file-20200804-14-14d07je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351176/original/file-20200804-14-14d07je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A family enters a women’s prison in New Jersey to visit their mother.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/family-enters-a-womens-prison-in-new-jersey-to-visit-their-news-photo/539606566?adppopup=true">Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In the coming weeks, courts <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/politics/covid-19-supreme-court-prisoners-rights/index.html">will be handling</a> a number of pandemic-related cases involving prisoners, and legislatures <a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/05/05/prisoner-release-coronavirus-massachusetts-bill">will be considering</a> proposals to let large numbers of inmates leave confinement. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>As they do so, it is important for them to acknowledge that when the government puts someone behind bars and deprives them of the capacity to provide for their own care and protection it has, what law professor <a href="https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/sharon-dolovich">Sharon Dolovich</a> <a href="https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=facpub">calls</a> “an affirmative obligation,” a duty to act to protect them from harm. </p>
<p>Judges and legislators will need to consider both whether being exposed to COVID-19 in prison is a disproportionate and unjust punishment and also how to discharge the government’s responsibilities to the incarcerated.</p>
<p>Doing so should, I believe, lead them to release as many inmates as possible from the dangers to which COVID-19 is exposing them every day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143730/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Infection rates of COVID-19 have soared among prisoners in the US. An expert on penal policy considers what is ‘unjust and disproportionate’ punishment at this time.Austin Sarat, Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1392412020-05-28T12:13:18Z2020-05-28T12:13:18ZEveryday ethics: Should I allow my kids to visit Mom despite her high risk status?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338031/original/file-20200527-20223-15olnd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5391%2C3597&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Visiting parents during the pandemic poses new risks.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Virus-Outbreak-Contact-Tracing/f48f48d1dbab498cb3b87561300c747d/6/0">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>A lot of people are facing ethical decisions about their daily life as a result of the coronavirus. Ethicist <a href="http://www.leemcintyrebooks.com/">Lee McIntyre</a> has stepped in to help provide advice over the moral dilemmas we face. If you have a question you’d like a philosopher to answer, send it to us at <a href="mailto:us-ethicalquestions@theconversation.com">us-ethicalquestions@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
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<p>I read your last article advising against <a href="https://theconversation.com/everyday-ethics-should-i-visit-my-mother-138779">visiting a mother against her wishes</a> and it left me wondering, what if Mom wants to be visited? My wife is very high-risk – she suffers from COPD, has congestive heart failure and is on oxygen 24/7. But she has told our children to visit because she would rather die than not be able to see them. Even social distancing has broken down, and our son was horrified when his mom wanted a hug. He is afraid of giving her COVID-19, as she would likely not survive another hospitalization on a ventilator (she’s had two over the past two years). Should she be forcing herself on her children? - Alan Bolick </p>
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<p>I am so sorry to hear about your wife’s ill health and agree that it would be best for her not to be exposed to any risk of contracting COVID-19. But it sounds like she’s got other priorities. Literally, she is willing to risk her life in order to see her children. So should they respect her choice and simply bow to her autonomy? </p>
<p>The tricky thing here is that it’s not just your wife’s autonomy that is at stake. It’s clear that your children are terrified of giving their mom COVID-19. If your son is “horrified” at the prospect of a hug, the guilt he might feel upon giving your wife a life-threatening illness could be devastating. </p>
<p>Put aside for a moment the idea that your wife could expose her children to coronavirus – that’s unlikely and not really what this is about. But she is exposing them to the possibility of a lifetime of remorse if they happen to be the one who gives her the illness that kills her. Is she okay with that? </p>
<p>Respect for individual autonomy is a foundational idea in ethics. Even John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant – two philosophers who stood on either side of the debate over whether morality should be judged by measuring consequences – agreed on the importance of <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/aut-norm/">autonomy as a core component</a> of human well-being. Even if your wife feels it is “worth it” for her to take a risk, your children clearly don’t feel the same way. As such, she may not be respecting their autonomy while thinking of her own. </p>
<p>One solution might be for your kids to go on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/06/coronavirus-how-to-self-quarantine/">complete quarantine</a> for a set period of time – the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/quarantine-isolation.html">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends 14 days</a> from the last potential of exposure – with absolutely no contact with any other human being, and then spend as much time with your wife as circumstances allow. This would severely reduce the risk of infection, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/01/824903684/the-science-behind-a-14-day-quarantine-after-possible-covid-19-exposure">according to public health experts</a>, and would apparently mean more to your wife than life itself. Knowing this, might your kids be willing to make this sacrifice? </p>
<p>Knowing how much it would mean to their mom, maybe so.</p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-help">Read The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139241/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lee McIntyre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A mother with underlying conditions wants to hug her children even if means risking her own life with COVID-19. Should they abide by her wishes or keep their distance?Lee McIntyre, Research Fellow, Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1382322020-05-14T12:05:40Z2020-05-14T12:05:40ZEveryday ethics: Stripping puts me in close contact with others – should I go back to work?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334449/original/file-20200512-82353-4uxgm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2986%2C2110&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tipping from a social distance at The Lucky Devil strip club in Portland, Oregon.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dancer-harlow-uses-a-pair-of-tongs-to-grab-a-tip-during-the-news-photo/1222418089?adppopup=true"> Steve Dykes/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
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<p><em>A lot of people are facing ethical decisions about their daily life as a result of the coronavirus. Ethicist <a href="http://www.leemcintyrebooks.com/">Lee McIntyre</a> has stepped in to help provide advice over the moral dilemmas we face. If you have a question you’d like a philosopher to answer, send it to us at <a href="mailto:us-ethicalquestions@theconversation.com">us-ethicalquestions@theconversation.com</a></em></p>
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<p><strong>I’m a stripper and struggling to decide whether or not I should go back to work as normal once the lockdowns are lifted. I live with my boyfriend and his two kids. My job is very high contact with no social distancing at all. I don’t know if it’s irresponsible for me to work in this fashion due to the pandemic, as I might be putting other people – and myself – at risk. But I don’t have any other form of income that can sustain me at this level at the moment, especially since I am also in school. – Michelle O.</strong></p>
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<p>I commend you for looking out for the health and safety of all concerned. Even if they aren’t able to do so, your patrons should thank you for thinking of them too.</p>
<p>As the COVID-19 crisis continues, work is changing in many industries. Millions of people have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/09/jobs-report-demographics/">lost their jobs</a>, while others who were once required to show up in person – including high-tech workers and those in customer service call centers – have discovered it’s possible to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/12/twitter-coronavirus-covid19-work-from-home">work from home and still get paid</a>. </p>
<p>Instead of routine examinations, many doctors are now <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-future-telemedicine/">seeing patients through telemedicine</a>. Might something similar be a possibility for you? Your line of work seems no different than any other in the possibility for innovation in the face of lockdowns or social distancing. </p>
<p>Instead of going back to stripping in person, perhaps you could make an <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/cam-girl-who-earns-150000-13285408">equivalent amount of money</a> as a “cam girl” online? You’d be in control of both your level of interaction and clientele and even your schedule. Some of your previous patrons might welcome the opportunity to see you again.</p>
<p>Alternatively, depending on where you live, you might search out clubs whose owners have retooled their business plan in response to the novel coronavirus, to allow for no contact or drive-thru service, such as the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-dancers/food-2-go-go-oregon-strip-club-brings-burlesque-to-coronavirus-carry-out-idUSKCN22A1EF">Lucky Devil Lounge in Portland</a>, Oregon.</p>
<p>As you recognize, financial considerations can make it a lot harder to do the “responsible” thing, even when we know what that is. But that has always been so. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that virtuous behavior arose not from any moral calculus or weight of consideration, but from the <a href="https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/virtue-ethics">discovery of one’s true nature</a>. Virtuous behavior is what virtuous people do. Instead of trying to make the right decision, the greater challenge for you might be to accept the kind of person that you already are: thoughtful and concerned. </p>
<p>The facts would seem to suggest that it’s not safe for you to go back to stripping right now. But whether you do that or not, one hopes that, as the German philosopher Immanuel Kant <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/751815-a-good-will-is-good-not-because-of-what-it">put it</a>, your character might “like a jewel, still shine by its own light as something which has full value in itself,” whether anyone else can see it or not. </p>
<p>[<em>Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-facts">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lee McIntyre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Strippers, by the nature of their jobs, need to get close to others. Is there a way to do this safely during the coronavirus crisis?Lee McIntyre, Research Fellow, Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.