nicely written, good thing i have two movie passes left for this weekend.

John Morison

Additionally, once we get into this habit, our bodies will be sensitized to the natural taste of healthy foods and we’ll develop a deep appreciation and a willingness to defend the food that nourishes us.

friis,

the statement that everyone and everyone’s property is dependent almost entirely on other people was ill put at best, i think a few glasses (bottles) of wine were involved in that comment. what i meant to elucidate was that for the most part the things consumed today are not purchased/earned outright by the consumer. if i go to walmart and buy a television set for the everyday low price of $199.99 my money hardly covers the totality of costs associated with the tv. think of the resources, labor, and shipping needed to make and get my tv to the walmart, not to mention the environmental impact. clearly their are myriad others suffering the burden of pillaged resources, unjust wages, and undeserved pollution, thereby paying in large part for my tv set.
a better (20 min.) explanation of how this works can be found at http://www.thestoryofstuff.com.

rawls is/was headed in the right direction, that is in beginning to combine traditional theories of ethics in order to compensate for short comings associated with each individually, but i think his kantian constructivism still falls short. i’d go into it but my thoughts on the matter are many though incomplete.

having read some baier my feeling that the traditional moral theories were incomplete seems to have been confirmed and after reading jonas i’m convinced that there are some huge problems which remain un-addressed and require substantial advances in the realm of moral theory.

i can’t write anymore right now my attention has been captured by the redsox/national geographic’s “human footprint” – more to come later

I think you guys have Hobbes down pretty well. As Morison points out, Hobbes views all men as self-interested, rational individuals. Remember also that Hobbes is essentially an egalitarian – in the state of nature we are all equal and desire the same things. That is to say we all desire scarce goods. Now, we can’t all have them but since we are equal in powers in respect to things we can’t have, that results in war or a threat to our survival.

So Hobbes essentially asks how can warring individuals cease to be warring individuals, how can the war of everybody against everybody else (bellum omnium in omnes) be finally resolved? Well, as rational beings we come to share the view that nothing is more intolerable than sudden and violent death, so we form a covenant.

We all decide that if there is to be peace, some persons will must count as the will of everyone, which is to say we collectively repudiate our individual claims to independent will. We give up any right to exercise our discretion in respect to the law, with the one exception of when our survival is threatened (this becomes tricky with things like conscription, capital punishment, etc.).

And this is where I begin to find Hobbes’ conception of society ethically insufficient, because he essentially claims that the role of the sovereign is not to represent the interests of each of us individually, but to represent the interests of all of us as one. But that is because Hobbes’ does not believe in the idea of the body politic as something independent of the artifice of the sovereign. The common good for Hobbes is the protection and survival of the collective, not any conception of individual rights of each citizen.

So for me the fundamental question concerning Hobbes, which brings us indirectly to moral courage, is what is the relationship between the body of the people and the sovereign? Take our own government as an example: Hobbes might argue somewhat successfully that our representative government is an inherited form of his Leviathan. We appoint our representatives for a given period in which there is little we can do because we’ve given them sovereign power to make the decisions about what THEY THINK is in our interest. In the Hobbesian tradition, if they take us to war in Iraq and we think that is the greatest blunder in recent times, it’s really not for us to say. We do not, it might be argued, function as a “direct democracy” but as a “representative democracy” or a form of a covenant.

This is where I diverge fully with Hobbes, and also where one of my personal beliefs in moral courage arises. Hobbes might be right that our system is not a “direct democracy” in the sense that we are not constantly instructing the sovereign.

Nonetheless, because I believe in the concept of the body of the people as something distinct from the sovereign, I believe that the people as a collective have a moral duty to dissent from their government when their government goes astray or acts outside of their direct interest. This can take the form of writing, organizing, protesting and, if necessary, civil disobedience. I fundamentally believe that “representative democracy” is a dialogue between the body politic and the elected representatives, not a covenant or denunciation of political or social will. Indeed, it is those people, such as MLK Jr. that have the finest moral fiber that are able to perceive the injustices perpetrated by our government and call them out on it, and effect real change as in forcing LBJ to sign the Civil Rights Act among other things…

As for treatment of workers and employees, I think this is an area where government regulation is obligatory. You are right, Karl, that most profit oriented businesses will not prioritize the well-being of their employees as fundamental to their monetary success (though, I think that is bad policy… just look at companies like Google that treat their employees like kings, they end up being more productive). If government fails in its duty to regulate, then it is our moral duty as citizens to organize unions and protest that kind of governmental malfeasance…

Morison, I am interested to know what you mean by everyone’s property depending entirely on other people. Also, what do you think about Rawls?