{"title":"A Relational Moral Theory","authors":"Thaddeus Metz","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 7, which completes Part II, appeals to the conception of harmony/communality from the previous chapter to articulate a new deontological moral theory, which prescribes respect for beings insofar as they are by nature capable of communing as a subject or being communed with as an object. What typically makes actions wrong is, roughly, that they are not friendly towards or harmonious with innocent parties, where particularly wrongful behaviour is unfriendly or discordant in respect of them. The chapter draws out several corollaries from an ethic of rightness as friendliness, such as that one normally should not promote harmony using a very discordant means, and that having befriended someone provides extra reason to help him compared to a stranger. The chapter demonstrates that this moral theory, in the light of its corollaries, accounts better for the African and global intuitions than the welfarist and vitalist approaches considered earlier in Part II.","PeriodicalId":138611,"journal":{"name":"A Relational Moral Theory","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131210047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Environmental Ethics","authors":"Thaddeus Metz","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter begins Part III, which argues that the relational moral theory of rightness as friendliness is a strong competitor to Western principles in many applied ethical contexts. Chapter 8 articulates and defends a novel, relational account of moral status, according to which an entity is owed moral consideration roughly to the degree that it is capable of being party to a communal relationship. One of its implications is that many animals have a moral status but not one as high as ours, which many readers will find attractive, but which utilitarianism and Kantianism cannot easily accommodate. Relational moral status also grounds a promising response to the ‘argument from marginal cases’ that animals have the same moral status as incapacitated humans: even if two beings have identical intrinsic properties, they can differ in the extent to which they can relate and hence differ in their degree of moral status.","PeriodicalId":138611,"journal":{"name":"A Relational Moral Theory","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123418406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Research Ethics","authors":"Thaddeus Metz","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 10 addresses the duties of researchers, particularly those in the medical field, again contending that the relational moral theory is revealing relative to Western competitors. It first proffers a new account of the obligation to obtain free and informed consent to participate in a study, as something to be upheld not so much as a way to promote health (utilitarianism) or to avoid degrading autonomy (Kantianism), but more as a way to respect people as capable of communal or friendly relationship. Rightness as friendliness is next shown to entail duties of confidentiality, albeit, plausibly, ones not as stringent as what is common in Western ethical thought. Lastly, the chapter argues that the communal ethic grounds a powerful account of ancillary care obligations—duties to compensate for harms that have befallen study participants that the study did not cause—by giving an account that challenges an influential autonomy-based theory of them.","PeriodicalId":138611,"journal":{"name":"A Relational Moral Theory","volume":" 9","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120933566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Communal Relationship","authors":"Thaddeus Metz","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"The previous two chapters addressed African moral theories according to which relationality has a merely instrumental status, viz., is good solely as a means to the advancement of either the common good or vital force. Chapter 6 begins to make the case for taking harmonious or communal relationship to be what should be pursued as an end for the African tradition. Drawing particularly on ideas from Desmond Tutu, it provides a detailed reconstruction of sub-Saharan understandings of harmony or communality, and points out that, as the combination of sharing a way of life with others and caring for their quality of life, it is similar to what English-speakers label ‘friendliness’. It also provides reason to reject extant, consequentialist principles according to which such a relationship is a final good (or goal) that is to be promoted, roughly because they cannot ground human rights.","PeriodicalId":138611,"journal":{"name":"A Relational Moral Theory","volume":"82 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134397966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reconsidering Ontology’s Relevance","authors":"Thaddeus Metz","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter and the next are methodological, focused on how to justify a moral theory. Many African philosophers believe that ethical claims follow immediately from ‘external’, metaphysical ones about human nature that must be established first. For example, Kwame Nkrumah maintains that an egalitarian ethic follows directly from a prior physicalist ontology, and Kwame Gyekye contends that his ‘moderate communitarian’ morality is derived from a certain conception of the self. Chapter 2 shows how these and similar rationales fail to clear the ‘is/ought gap’, as it is known in Western meta-ethics, and also how strategies one might use to bridge the gap do not work. It concludes that a more suitable way to defend a moral theory is to argue ‘internally’ to morality by appealing to intuitions, i.e., by determining which comparatively more controversial general principle of right action easily entails and best explains less controversial particular moral claims.","PeriodicalId":138611,"journal":{"name":"A Relational Moral Theory","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121526287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Business Ethics","authors":"Thaddeus Metz","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 12, the last applied ethics chapter, considers some controversies in business. How should a firm’s owners, and related agents such as managers or state bank directors, engage with others, particularly workers and consumers? The chapter argues that the communal ethic does a better job of accounting for intuitions about who counts as a stakeholder and how to prioritize amongst competing stakeholder interests than does utilitarianism or Kantianism. Roughly, rightness as friendliness entails that not all duties of beneficence are a function of need or voluntary assumption of obligation to aid; a firm can also have pro tanto moral reason to help parties because it has related on friendly terms with them in the past. The chapter also takes up the question of how the production process ought to be structured, arguing that while the Western moral theories could well allow an unconstrained managerialism, the communal ethic probably does not.","PeriodicalId":138611,"journal":{"name":"A Relational Moral Theory","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123374492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Common Good","authors":"Thaddeus Metz","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 4, which begins Part II, addresses the moral theory from the African tradition according to which one is obligated to promote the common good without violating individual rights. This principle has been advanced by Kwame Gyekye, one of the most widely discussed African moral philosophers of the past twenty-five years. His ‘moderate communitarian’ ethic, although focused on promoting well-being, differs from Western utilitarianism, such that one cannot argue against the former by invoking well-known criticisms of the latter. The chapter advances fresh reasons for rejecting Gyekye’s welfarist approach to morality, principally on the ground that it does a poor job of capturing several intuitions salient in the African tradition. Sometimes permitting great inequalities of wealth, being competitive in the economic sphere, and undermining cultures can best improve well-being without violating individual rights, yet many African philosophers would judge these actions to be wrong to some degree.","PeriodicalId":138611,"journal":{"name":"A Relational Moral Theory","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125196894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Biomedical Ethics","authors":"Thaddeus Metz","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 9 addresses the duties of medical practitioners such as doctors and nurses, mostly in relation to patients, but also in respect of each other and their society. It argues that the relational moral theory is at least no worse than, and is often to be preferred over, more Western principles when it comes to how to understand several biomedical obligations. For example, the chapter maintains that the communal ethic makes good sense of whom a medical professional has moral reason to treat and for which purposes. It further contends that rightness as friendliness grounds moderate positions on abortion and euthanasia that many will find convincing but that utilitarianism and Kantianism have difficulty entailing and explaining. For example, if utilitarianism and Kantianism permit abortion, it is hard for them to avoid also permitting infanticide, but the relational ethic can more easily avoid that implication.","PeriodicalId":138611,"journal":{"name":"A Relational Moral Theory","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126600471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Education Ethics","authors":"Thaddeus Metz","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 11 reflects on what educators owe students in higher education institutions and the broader society when it comes to which knowledge to teach. It points out how utilitarianism and Kantianism naturally ground a cosmopolitan approach to instructing matters of culture, whereas the communal ethic does not. Rightness as friendliness instead supports prioritizing local cultures, an implication that is defended. The chapter also notes how the relational moral theory probably entails that it is right to strive to develop students’ virtue, a view that is not salient in the works of those who adhere to the Western ethical principles. Finally, the chapter considers the question of whether it can be right to instruct some knowledge for its own sake. Doing so seems ruled out by utilitarianism and Kantianism, but the relational moral theory is shown to admit of an interpretation that would permit it.","PeriodicalId":138611,"journal":{"name":"A Relational Moral Theory","volume":"171 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132470908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vital Force","authors":"Thaddeus Metz","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 5 addresses the moral theory suggested by the African tradition according to which one is obligated to promote (or honour) liveliness in oneself and others. This sort of principle has been advanced by philosophers such as Noah Dzobo, Bénézet Bujo, and Laurenti Magesa. Vitalism is a globally under-explored approach to right action that deserves much more consideration. However, the chapter concludes that it cannot account for some comparatively uncontroversial moral claims salient in the African tradition. Sometimes settling for majoritarian rule and avoiding reconciliation in respect of criminal justice would best promote (or honour) liveliness, and yet most African philosophers would judge these actions to be wrong to some degree. The chapter also argues that vitalism cannot account for certain intuitions with a global scope; forbidding interracial marriage and deceiving people might best promote (or honour) liveliness, but ethicists around the world would judge these actions to be pro tanto immoral.","PeriodicalId":138611,"journal":{"name":"A Relational Moral Theory","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122855812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：