This Part 3 of the Ethics Series – What is Good and What is evil?
Part I can be read from here – Click Here
Part II can be read from here – Click Here
Note :- Not all names of philosophers to be remembered or used. The idea is to show the under current of thought and processes that shaped the idea of good and evil. So, a word of caution, don’t be over-whelmed by the reference to various philosophers.
Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, and Leibnitz :-
Modern philosophy wrestles with the same problem, but has introduced many new elements in its attempt either to meet the original difficulty or to put the whole matter on a different level.
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THOMAS HOBBES was concerned, as we have seen, with interpreting the entire universe on a materialistic basis. Motion was, for him, the fundamental factor in the universe. Thus, good and evil were for him matters of motion. When motion is successful it generates pleasure, and when it is unsuccessful pain results.
That which pleases a man is good, and that which causes pain or discomfort is evil. Thus, good and evil are, as Hobbes sees it, relative to the particular man. That which pleases one man may not please another. Consequently, there can be no absolute good or evil. Both depend upon the nature of the individual at the time, and as he changes good things may become evil and evil things good.
Hie relation of a philosopher s general view to his attitude toward the question of good and evil is well illustrated by DESCARTES. For him, God is perfect, and incapable of causing us to err. But we do fall into error and suffer from our mistakes. This is explained on the theory that the power which God has given man to distinguish the true from the false is not complete. Thus, man is often guilty of making judgments when he does not have enough understanding to Judge accurately. In such cases he may choose that which is wrong, evil, rather than the good. For Descartes, error lies not in God’s action but in ours. We make up our minds and act before we have sufficient evidence.
The theory of SPINOZA is much in the same vein. Error is lack of knowledge. Action without knowledge will produce results which are not desired, and pain will follow.
As he studied the individual, Spinoza came to the conclusion that the fundamental striving of everyone is to preserve himself. This striving is good. Thus, anything which tends to block this striving is bad, and everything which helps man to reach the goal of his striving is good.
But man’s striving must be rational Merely to strive is not enough; he must strive intelligently, realizing what he is doing and its consequences. The highest happiness of man lies in the perfect understanding of what he is doing, his striving. As we come to understand our own strivings we recognize that, since we are modes of God, our striving is in truth the striving of God, for we are God. The highest good of man is this complete realization. In it he sees that by loving himself he actually loves God. Spinoza calls this the “intellectual love of God.”
The basic philosophic theory of JOHN LOCKE gives rise to his theory of good and evil. Just as all our ideas come from the outside and are written on the mind as one might write on a blank sheet of paper, so our conceptions of what is good and what is evil are produced. The fact is, many people have the same experiences and come to the same conclusions. They agree that certain things are good and others are bad. Further, our parents have impressed upon us ideas of right and wrong from the first days of our lives. Later we come to believe that they are innate, inborn. For Locke, human conscience is nothing more than these ideas which we have had so long that they seem to be given by some divine power.
Further, Locke taught that pleasure and pain are native to man. Nature has made it so that we enjoy happiness and seek to avoid pain. Therefore, those things which bring happiness are called good, and those which bring pain are called evil.
But it is not always true that the same act will bring happiness to everyone. Consequently there are laws which we must obey under penalty of being unhappy if we refuse to obey.
Locke believed that three groups of laws existed. Divine laws are those set by God to determine duty and sin. If we break these laws we suffer greatly. Then, there are civil laws established by the group as a constituted civil unit. These determine crime and innocence. Disobedience is punishable by the group making the laws. The third group of laws are those of opinion or reputation. These are by far the greatest in number and are enforced by the mere fact that men cherish their reputations and do not desire the condemnation of their companions and friends
But, we learn what is good and bad by experience, by the experience of pain if we do evil and pleasure if we do good. Thus, Locke was in the ethical tradition of Hobbes and others who made morality largely a matter of enlightened self-interest: that is, one is good because being good pays the highest dividends in individual pleasure.
Thinkers who followed Locke sought to expand this position so as to include others, and to make morality dependent upon the happiness of others as well as upon the happiness of the individual.
RICHABD CUMBERLAND, founder of the Utilitarian school of thought, argued that man is not wholly selfish, but is basically sympathetic. Thus, the welfare of the group, of society, determines the good and the bad. LORD SHAFTESBURY taught that man is interested in the welfare of both himself and society and that good actions result when both of these interests are properly balanced. FRANCIS HUTCHESON, of this same general opinion, coined the phrase “the greatest good for the greatest number/ and made it the criterion of a good act.
LEIBNITZ encountered the same difficulty as did many of his predecessors when he came to the problem of good and evil. In a universe of monads, how is evil possible? His answer was similar to that of earlier philosophers. This world, he taught, is “the best possible world,” but it is not perfect. God limited himself when he expressed himself in finite beings. These limits result in suffering and sin. Further, evil serves to make good really good. It is like the shadows in a picture, shadows which serve to bring the colors into bolder relief and greater beauty.
Further, in the human soul, he suggested, there are certain innate principles which, if followed logically, lead to criteria of good and bad. One of these principles is that we should seek pleasure and avoid pain. Reasoning from this principle, we can prove that certain acts are good and others are bad.
Often men do not obey these innate principles because of their passions and impulses, but this does not prove that they do not exist, Leibnitz held. All that this proves is that such men are ignorant of the principles.
The Ethical Philosophy of Kant :-
The basic problem of KANT was to discover the meaning of right and wrong, good and bad. He asked, How is duty to be defined, and what are the implications of the definition? In attacking the problem, Kant accepted as fundamental the principle, laid down by Rousseau, that the only absolutely good thing in the universe is the human will governed by respect for the moral law or the consciousness of duty. A moral act is one which is done out of respect for the moral law rather than for selfish gain or sympathy for others.
Thus, for Kant, consequences are not to be taken as determining the rightness or wrongness of an act. Whether the results of an act are productive of happiness or of pain is not the matter of greatest concern. If the actor performs the act with good intentions, out of respect for the moral law, it is thereby good.
This moral law, in the thinking of Kant, is inherent in reason itself. It is a priori, before experience, in the very nature of human thinking. Stated in a sentence, it reads: “Always act in such a way that the maxim determining your conduct might well become a universal law; act so that you can will that everybody shall follow the principle of your action.” In every instance, Kant believed, this rule, this “categorical imperative,” is a sure criterion of what is right and what is wrong. An act which you would be willing that anyone or everyone should perform would be a good act.
This law, if thoroughly understood, is in everyone. It may not be recognized in die terms stated, but anyone who stops to think will discover that human life is possible only on this moral basis. Should man attempt to act contrary to this principle, human association would be chaotic.
Another law, an implication of the categorical imperative, is stated by Kant: “Act so as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of another, in every case as an end and never as a means” Here the fundamental worth of every individual is affirmed. Our actions should not be such as to use individuals as means for our ends, but rather to serve others as ends in themselves.
Thus, for Kant, there is imbedded in the human reason itself a law which is so basic and fundamental that it directs all moral activity. It demands that everyone act at all times as though he were the ruling monarch of the universe and the principle of his action would automatically become the principle of the action of everyone. If each individual measures a proposed act by this categorical imperative, he will be able to say without question whether it is right or wrong.
The Views of Fichte and Schopenhauer :-
FICHTE based his entire philosophic theory upon Kant’s idea of a moral nature in man which has the right to make certain definite demands. Starting with the moral nature of man, he built a philosophy which would satisfy the demands of this nature.
This moral law, likewise, implies, Fichte taught, the existence of a moral world order in which man can trust having the moral law within himself, man is justified in assuming that the world is such that the demands of this law can be met.
Therefore, man must become intelligent, must know what is right and do it because it is right. The ignorant man cannot be good. Being free, not forced by some outside authority, man must know the moral law and its implications, and must at all times govern himself accordingly. Mere respect for the moral law is not enough. Man must act. Therefore morality, goodness, is not a state to be attained once and for all, a condition of eternal blessedness, but is a continuous struggle of the intelligent individual to act in every situation so as to meet the requirements of the moral law. Knowledge is a necessary part of morality for Fichte
SCHOPENHAUER begins with an affirmation of the will as fundamental to the universe. Kant’s thing-in-itself, die source of all our impressions, is will, Schopenhauer says. This will to be, will to live, is the cause of all the struggle in the world and thus of all evil and suffering.
A world where blind wills are struggling with each other to live, where the more powerful kill and devour the less powerful that they may live, is a world of evil. Will to live begets selfishness. Each individual will struggle to preserve himself despite what happens to others.
Thus, for Schopenhauer, sympathy or pity is basic to morality. To the degree that one has sympathy for others, he will act not for himself but for them, and thus be good. The way to this good life is through denial of the individual will; self-sacrifice brings happiness and peace. And this can be attained if we stop to realize that every individual is actually part of the whole, the universal will. The one against whom we struggle is actually part of the whole of which we are also members. When we reach this understanding, we will stop struggling and will develop sympathetic understanding.
To be continued in Part 4
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The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.