> > maybe we should use the legal system (e.g., to > defend anti-war demonstrators > or "suspect Arabs" persecuted by the Bushmasters) > but we can't _rely_ on it > or trust it.
I agree. > > But I wasn't advocating the taking of moral stands > > by individual judges. > > him: > >You shouldn't. Advocate it that is. Think about is > another matter.< > > Call me an academic (I'm sure that He Who Should Not > Be Named would), but I > reject this kind of appeal to authority. What appeal to authority? What authority? I was just giving you advice. _Why_ is it > verboten for judges to > take moral stands? Because in a society that claims to be democratic, it's not their job. They're supposed to interpret the law. The moral judgments are made by the legislators. Of course, as we have noth said, even if they try to do their job their views will come into play. But we don't want Scalia saying, I think abortion is immoral, so I'll vote to allow states to make it illegal. We want him to say: the Constitution, as interpreted by this Court, unfortunately protects a woman's right to choose, and I, unfortunately, have to vote to uphold Roe and Casey. I can imagine that it would be > better if they were to do > so openly rather than doing it covertly, as they > typically do now. But > again, I haven't thought about this issue. I'd > rather hear an argument > against it than mere assertion. I have a 60 page paper on the subject looking for a home, some of the argument is summarized above, shall I email it to you? > I never was focusing on the "role of the judge." How > did the focus become > only on the role of the judge? In this thread, I was > _always_ talking about > the legal _system_. Because you used the expression "judicial system." ANd we weretalking about the Court's upcoming review of aff action, i.e., the behavior of judges. > > > as a an ethicist friend of mine says, one of the > > strongest (and easiest) > > moral cases one can make is by pointing to the > > contradiction between moral > > theory and actual practice (i.e., hypocrisy), > > because there's no need to > > develop basic moral principles > > JKS:>I think that's cheap, actually, not strong. < > > again, an appeal to authority! No, it's not. Unless you take me to be saying that you should believe what I said because I think so and I'm holding myself out to be an Authority, which I don't, except on the content of the law, where I actually am an authority at least hereabouts. > > In a world where there is no moral consensus, I see > nothing wrong with a > "cheap" criticism of hypocrisy. Noam Chomsky, for > example. uses that kind of > critique regularly, and with good effect. I don't think it has particularly good effect. It diverts attention from the underlying badness of the actions to the formal inconsistency between the pronounced justification and the action. It's essentially a liberal critique, not in the good sense of liberal, but in the wishy washy sense. The problem with, e.g., the phony defense of color blindness as promoting merit is not that people don't act consistently with it, but that in a racist society, colot blindness leads to oppression. > > >(which some say is > > impossible). > > JKS:>But no one except philosophers really believes > that.< > > Should we ignore philosophers and go with what the > non-philosophers say, > even when the latter could be wrong? As a sometime philosopher, I'd say, definitely. There is no proposition so absurd that some philosopher has not maintained it. When philosophers generate silly puzzles about thinks that no one really doubts, e.g., whether the real world is real, whether we can make moral judgments at all, whether there are other minds, the proper response, if one cares enough about it, is to diagnise where they went wrong and what false presuppositions led them to doubt things where no real grounds for doubt exists. > > >(According to > > Cornell West's dissertation, Marx's ethics ended > up > > focussing precisely on > > this contraecitions.) > > JKS:>Not West's strongest argument in my view.< > > _why_ is it weak? just because you say so? No, because I think that's not Marx's approach, such as it is, to ethics. He's not an exposer of hypocrisy, except incidentally. > > My impression is that West doesn't present enough > evidence for his case. But > once you think of the mature work of Marx in these > terms, it makes more > sense. Marx clearly is morally committed, but does > not argue in terms of > "capitalism is immoral." That is obviously true, although Marx clearly is outraged by capitalism. Instead, he does stuff like > comparing the realm of > "Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham" (the > official capitalist morality > of his day) and the reality he sees in production > and in capitalist society > as a whole of Capitalist Supremacy, Inequality, > Exploitation, and Rule by > Profit. But this isn't an expose of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue (Wilde); the hypocrite knows he's being a phony. Marx's theory of ideology deoends on the system convincing people they really are acting one set of principles while they are in fact being moved by other forces. Someone so convinced is not a hypocrite, rather, he's ideologically blinded. jks __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
