the broadest possible sense

Posner seems to be on to something when he complains about what he calls “academic moralists”: the writings of the folk he characterizes in this manner don’t seem likely to have much influence (at least not directly). But I also agree with Dworkin when he suggests that many people want an “inspiring” and “justifying” “vision of how to live”, and that the concern to possess such a vision does naturally lead to the sort of thinking that Posner disparages as “lofty” and “high falutin”. So what is the solution?

One thing, I think, is that we should not attempt to draw such a strong dichotomy between “academic moralists” and “regular folk”. Academic moralists, some of them, are careerists who make things unnecessarily complex with obfuscatory jargon and hair splitting. And ordinary folk, some of them, have no interest in deep moral issues and how they can be understood. But there is still a lot of overlap, and it doesn’t seem like a good idea to artificially reify and then separate these groups even further. Perhaps under the right conditions most ordinary folk have a lot more capacity and interest in these matters than Posner is willing to even contemplate.

Dworkin gives the example of abortion, and suggests that ordinary folk who take a position on abortion may very well ask themselves “whether their views about abortion presuppose some more general position about the connection between sentience and interests or rights”. This seems entirely correct to me, but Posner ridicules it by suggesting that very few people could even understand what Dworkin is saying here, or even know what the word “sentience” means. Is he right, or is he setting bar way too low for some other reason?

Socrates said that “to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others is really the very best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living, you will be even less inclined to believe me. Nevertheless, that is how it is.” To cite this is nothing more than an appeal to authority, of course, but to me the view seems inspiring and also, for the bulk of us, not as impossible or undesirable as Posner seems to believe.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 1st, 2004 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Classification Pending. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.