Good Samaritan

Forums: Philosophy, Ethics, John Rawls
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I suspect that almost all of us would behave uniformly when encountering face-to-face with another person's misfortune?-we would all feel instant sympathy. We are born with ?'sympathetic vibrations'--we automatically tear-up in all the same situations. However there seems to be two broad categories of moral behavior in many social-political situations.

We commonly perceive the ?'bleeding heart liberal' and the ?'hard hearted conservative'. The ?'idealistic but foolish liberal' and the ?'practical but reasonable conservative'. The individual who was a liberal when young and idealistic becomes the conservative, as s/he grows older and more realistic. The ?'nurturing mother' attitude versus the ?'strict father' attitude.

In "A Theory of Justice" John Rawls seeks the principles of ?'justice as fairness'. Rawls assumes that we inherently agree on what constitutes moral behavior. He claims that if we all considered what to be the principles of justice while under a ?'veil of ignorance' we would all agree. The ?'veil of ignorance' constituted willful ignorance of our own specific social setting while considering what is fair. Willful ignorance means we ?'forget' our status of wealth or ?'born-with gifts' or social standing.

Liberals take the stance that to agree on the fact means to agree on the morality of the situation. Any deviation is indefensible and reflects only selfish rationalization. Liberals find it almost impossible to respect the moral position of conservatives and conservatives find it impossible to judge that liberals are the intellectual equals of conservatives.

The apparent reason for this disjunction is the fact that liberals and conservatives seem to have "their own kind of morality" according to the analysis in "The Morality of Politics" by W. H. Walsh.

"What we need to observe is that conservatives and liberals are working within different traditions of morality. The morality of the conservative is closed morality; it is the morality of a particular community. The morality of the liberal is an open morality; it is a morality which has nothing to do with any particular human groups, but applies to all men whatever their local affiliations."

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Re: Good Samaritan
I have no idea what you're trying to say here, coberst, so instead I'll focus on one statement you made:

coberst wrote:

Rawls assumes that we inherently agree on what constitutes moral behavior.

Where did he say that? As I understand Rawls, he says that we can come to an agreement on morality based upon the principles of justice as fairness, not that we already agree on what constitutes morality. Have you found some writing in which Rawls says otherwise?

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Re: Good Samaritan

joefromchicago wrote:

I have no idea what you're trying to say here, coberst, so instead I'll focus on one statement you made:

coberst wrote:
Rawls assumes that we inherently agree on what constitutes moral behavior.

Where did he say that? As I understand Rawls, he says that we can come to an agreement on morality based upon the principles of justice as fairness, not that we already agree on what constitutes morality. Have you found some writing in which Rawls says otherwise?

Rawls speaks of using a "veil of ignorance" while tryin to ascertain the principles of justice. This "veil of ignorance" to be effective must assume that we can find within us the urge to moral action if we do not allow our bias to distort our consideration. He is essentially saying that morality (justice as fairness) is given to humans at birth by our DNA.

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Re: Good Samaritan

coberst wrote:

Rawls speaks of using a "veil of ignorance" while tryin to ascertain the principles of justice. This "veil of ignorance" to be effective must assume that we can find within us the urge to moral action if we do not allow our bias to distort our consideration. He is essentially saying that morality (justice as fairness) is given to humans at birth by our DNA.

True, Rawls uses the "veil of ignorance" in his attempt to ascertain the principles of justice as fairness, but the veil is purely a heuristic device. Ultimately, for Rawls, morality rests on an innate sense of self-interest (i.e. in setting up the rules of society, I should act as if I were disadvantaged, so that the rules will not hurt me in the event that I am disadvantaged), not on any innate sense of fairness or morality.

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Conservatives represent religious morality; liberals, secular morality. That's always been my view, anyway.

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It is funny that classical liberalism had an extreme laissez-faire economic idea, but that has now changed (It had changed in Britain when the Liberals introduced their welfare ideas). It seems like the Liberals and the Conservatives switched economic ideology, which is probably a good thing.

I question Adam Smith's concept of the invisible hand. It seemed to me that he thinks that most, if not all, people will always think with a degree of sympathy, which is not always true, and which is complicated by power disparity.

I agree with Nietzche (the poster) to an extent about the Conservatives' and Liberal's moral ideology, except that I would replace "religious morality" to "tradition based morality." Cheers.

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Agreed. Better choice of words.

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Re: Good Samaritan

coberst wrote:

I suspect that almost all of us would behave uniformly when encountering face-to-face with another person's misfortune?-we would all feel instant sympathy.

Not quite. Sympathy is one of the emotional responses to misfortune however it's also been discovered that the human brain automatically reacts with pleasure to witnessing pain that is seen as "deserved". Your average person experiences both reactions with the possibility of one overwhelming the other.

The ratio between these two impulses depends on the personality of the individual in question.

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Re: Good Samaritan

Sleeper World wrote:

coberst wrote:
I suspect that almost all of us would behave uniformly when encountering face-to-face with another person's misfortune?-we would all feel instant sympathy.

Not quite. Sympathy is one of the emotional responses to misfortune however it's also been discovered that the human brain automatically reacts with pleasure to witnessing pain that is seen as "deserved". Your average person experiences both reactions with the possibility of one overwhelming the other.

The ratio between these two impulses depends on the personality of the individual in question.

I suspect you are correct. Even in a face-to-face encounter our reaction may be based on ideology. I tend to suspect this however. If my sympathy reaction is part of our DNA then our first response would be sympathy followed by 'just desserts' response after time to think.

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Good Samaritan

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