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December 09, 2005
Neo-NeoCon on Morality of Torture...
Good post here by Neo-NeoCon. I especially liked this analysis:
- Gearty believes that one cannot make judgments about good or evil while simultaneously maintaining esteem (I think by this he means "respect") for the evildoer. And, since Geary elevates equal esteem for all humanity as the highest good because it underpins human rights, then we cannot make judgments about good and evil.
However, in writing it out that way, I think a basic contradiction becomes glaringly obvious: Geary is himself making such a "good and evil" sort of moral judgment, and that is that the greatest good is to esteem all people on earth equally, and accord them all equal and complete human rights. It's impossible, however, if one follows his logic, to escape the notion that groups with more of a dedication to preserving human rights would be more "good" and less "evil" than those who torture freely. I think this is an illustration of the fact that it's simply impossible to talk about moral decisions without making some sort of moral judgments.
I think this point is correct. You have to stand somewhere. There is no way to talk about the right thing to do, the correct thing to do, without making implicit moral judgements, value statements. It can't be avoided. People who try to avoid them end up saying nothing.
- In the real world in which we live--rather than the lofty world of the London School of Economics in which Gearty seems to live, and where I'm sure no one ever does anything unethical--moral choices are usually between the lesser of two evils (or, as I've written before, the least crazy of several competing crazinesses). Failure to make such choices between relative goods/evils would make us into moral monsters of another sort, trapped in a rigid rules-bound way of thinking that would lead almost inevitably to tragic consequences.
Yes. We often have to face choices where all the decisions we make are bad and will hurt people. We still have to choose. Even not choosing is a choice that will hurt or kill. The old high-school stand-by of "I only want to leave other people alone" doesn't work when your choices are death for some vs. death for others.
Posted by rakhier at December 9, 2005 05:09 PM