Transcript Existentialism, Ethics and Gender

Chapter 7: Ethics
Nietzsche and Existentialism;
Sartre; Ethics and Gender
Introducing Philosophy, 10th edition
Robert C. Solomon, Kathleen Higgins, and
Clancy Martin
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
• German philosopher who declared himself
the archenemy of traditional morality and
Christianity and spent much of his life
writing polemics against them; most vicious
attack is in his book, Antichrist (1888)
• Although he is generally known as an
immoralist (a name he chose for himself),
Nietzsche’s moral philosophy is an attack on
one conception of morality in order to replace
it with another
• The morality he attacks is the morality of
traditional Christianity as defined by Kant
• The morality he seeks to defend is the ancient
morality of personal excellence, as defined by
Aristotle
• Nietzsche refers to the former as “slave
morality,” suggesting that it is suitable only
for the weak and servile, and to the latter as
“master morality,” suggesting that it is the
morality of the strong and independent few
• According to Nietzsche, the concept of moral
duty is fit for servants and slaves, but such a
morality is wholly inadequate to motivate us
to personal excellence and achievement
• An unabashed elitist: only a few people are
capable of “higher” morality; for the rest, the
“slave morality” of duty would have to suffice
• One should develop one’s own virtues and
become excellent in as many ways as
possible, but the excellence of the individual
is part of and contributes to the excellence of
mankind as a whole
• Nietzsche does not believe that every human
“nature” is the same; different individuals
will find and follow different values, different
moralities
• “Follow yourself, don’t follow me”
What does your conscience say? “You should
become him who you are”
—Nietzsche
Nietzsche on
Master and Slave Morality
• Categories of Nietzsche’s philosophy are
strength and weakness, and he considers the
Greek tradition of personal excellence a
source of strength, the modern conception of
morality a facade for weakness
• Accordingly, he calls the first a “master
morality,” the second a “slave morality” or,
with reference to modern mass movements, a
“herd instinct”
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
• Contemporary French philosopher who
began as a literary writer and a
phenomenologist, in the style of Edmund
Husserl, but who converted that austere
philosophy to his own radical ends
• Generally regarded as the main proponent of
the philosophy of existentialism
• Sartre’s existentialism is a moral philosophy
as well as a philosophy of freedom
• Sartre’s existentialism denies that there is
any such thing as “human nature” and
therefore insists that “man makes himself”
• Through our various choices and moral
commitments we deem what we want
humanity to be
• According to Sartre, we do not simply find
moral principles upon which we should act,
but rather we choose those moral principles
through our acting
• Thus, Sartre’s moral philosophy places most
of its emphasis on action
• It minimizes the importance of moral
deliberation and all that sort of moralizing in
which we simply talk about what is good
rather than simply a “good will,” as in Kant
• In his novels and plays, Sartre’s characters
are always torn by alternative identities
• They suffer just because they cannot make up
their minds
• In his greatest work, Being and Nothingness
(1943), Sartre argues that everyone “is who
he is not, and is not who he is”
• The paradoxical phrase means that our
identity is never simply the totality of facts
(“facticity”) that is true of us
• We always identify ourselves with our plans
and intentions for the future (our
“transcendence”) as well, which means that
so long as we are alive, we have no fixed
“identity” at all
• Our values are a question of creation,
personal choice, and commitment. Why be
moral? “Because I choose to accept these
values”
• But Sartre, sounding like Kant, also insists on
the need to choose principles for all mankind,
not just oneself. The difference is that Sartre,
unlike Kant, makes no claims about the
singular correctness of these principles
• “Man makes himself”
• It is through my actions that I commit myself
to values, not through principles I accept
a priori or through rules that are imposed on
me by God or society
• Sartre argues that morality is simply our
choice of actions and values together with
their consequences, whatever those are
• But this does not mean that we need not
choose or that it is all “arbitrary”
Ethics and Gender
• In recent decades, the view of morality as
essentially rational, principled, and impersonal
has been challenged
• Some argue that women think about moral
issues differently than men
• Virginia Held spells out some of these
differences
• John Corvino also attacks the claim that
homosexuality is “unnatural”
Virginia Held
• American philosopher, specializing in feminist
epistemology
• Currently teaches at the City University of New
York Graduate Center
• Examines the concept of mothering as a moral
ideal
John Corvino
• Teaches philosophy at Wayne State University in
Detroit
• Author of Same Sex