In this significant new addition to moral theory, George Harris challenges a view of the dignity and worth of persons that goes back through Kant and Christianity to the Stoics. He argues that we do not, in fact, believe this view, which traces any breakdowns of character to failures of strength. When it comes to what we actually value in ourselves and others, he says, we are far more Greek than Christian. At the most profound level, we value ourselves as (...) natural organisms, as animals, rather than as godlike beings who transcend nature. The Kantian-Christian-Stoic tradition holds that if we were fully able to realize our dignity as Kantians, Christians, or Stoics, we would be better, stronger people, and therefore less vulnerable to character breakdown. _Dignity and Vulnerability_ offers an opposing view, that sometimes character breaks down not because of some shortcoming in it but because of what is good about it, because of the very virtues and features of character that give us our dignity. If dignity can make us fragile and vulnerable to breakdown, then breakdown can be benign as well as harmful, and thus the conceptions of human dignity embedded in the tradition leading up to Kant are deeply mistaken. Harris proposes a foundation for our belief in human dignity in what we can actually know about ourselves, rather than in metaphysical or theological fantasy. Having gained this knowledge, we can understand the source of real strength. (shrink)

I began this project with a few thoughts on one topic, and they grew into many on a larger one. I wanted to say something about vulnerability and discovered that there was much to say about human dignity. Once a rather die-hard Kantian, I have made over the last decade or so a fairly radical transition to a basically Aristotelian way of thinking. Persistent thoughts over the status of personal ties in the moral life first led me away from Kant (...) and toward Aristotle. Though I think some of the criticisms of Kant regarding friendship, for example, are misguided, in the end I do not think Kant gives us a very satisfactory way of thinking about what is most important to us in personal relationships. What Kant is supposed to give us, however, is an insightful way of thinking about human dignity and the worth of persons. I do not believe he does. In fact, I think that Kant and his predecessors, the Christians and the Stoics, deeply mislead us about our dignity. In this sense, this book is an attack on a certain tradition and what is thought to be its greatest strength. I hope, however, that what emerges is more positive than negative, that what I say provides some insight into what we actually do value in ourselves and others. (shrink)

"A very fine piece of work, essential reading for anyone concerned with Kant, Aristotelian ethics, practical reason, and more generally, the foundations of moral value and justification.... The examples are a real strength, insightful and very well-chosen."--Anthony Cunningham, St. John's University "The issues Harris has taken on are among the most important in contemporary moral thinking, and he has handled them systematically, innovatively, wisely, with wit and good sense."--J. K. Swindler, Wittenberg University.

13. The Normative Thoughts of Neighborly Love, Part 1.

The problem of pessimism is the secular analogue to the evidential problem of evil facing traditional theism. The traditional theist must argue two things: that the evidence shows that this is on balance a good world and that it is the best possible world. Though the secular optimist who advocates any form of secular moral theory need not argue that the current and future world will likely be the best possible world, she nonetheless must argue that were there a clean (...) solution to the problem of current and future suffering in which all sentient life could be instantly and painlessly eliminated, we would have reasons not to employ the clean solution because the future promises to bring on balance a good world in which the evil of human and animal suffering is outweighed by whatever is good in the world. Pessimism is the view that the evidence argues against secular optimism. It is argued here that it is anything but clear that secular optimism is warranted when viewed from an impersonal point of view. The problem is then evaluated from the personal point of view in which a form of personal optimism is defended even in the face of impersonal pessimism. (shrink)

Reason's Grief takes W. B. Yeats's comment that we begin to live only when we have conceived life as tragedy as a call for a tragic ethics, something the modern West has yet to produce. Harris argues that we must turn away from religious understandings of tragedy and the human condition and realize that our species will occupy a very brief period of history, at some point to disappear without a trace. We must accept an ethical perspective that avoids pernicious (...) fantasies about ultimate redemption but that sees tragic loss as a permanent and pervasive aspect of our daily lives, yet finds a way to think, feel and act with both passion and hope. Reason's Grief takes us back through the history of our thinking about value to find our way. The call is for nothing less than a paradigm shift for understanding both tragedy and ethics. (shrink)

(a review of “I Am a Strange Loop,” by Douglas Hofstadter), Scientific American, March 2007.

Philosophers who have a conception of morality that allows for an ultimate conflict between duty and self-interest inherit a most difficult problem: the problem of the unity of practical reason. As long as duty is thought of as an extension of self-interest, as apparently both Plato and Hobbes thought, no theoretical difficulty arises; practical reason is unified simply because duty and interest have the same goal. But once this kind of conceptual connection between duty and self-interest is severed, the task (...) is to avoid the philosophical nemesis of dualism, a conception of practical reason in which an individual’s choice between doing his duty and securing his interests is necessarily arbitrary as a matter of practical justification. Moreover, the difficulty is compounded when morality is conceived in such a way that a person has a morality only if his moral concerns have justificatory priority among his practical concerns. When built into the concept of morality, this sort of justificatory priority might initially appear to restore the unity lost by practical reason with the severance of duty and interest. But so achieved, the unity bears all the marks of having been gained arbitrarily, for it can just as plausibly be said that a person is an egoist only if his own interests take justificatory priority among his practical concerns. Faced then with a decision about what he ought to do in a situation in which duty and interest are in conflict, the practical reasoner confronts a dilemma. In trying to decide what he ought to do, practical reason, in the form of morality, advises him to do one thing, yet in the form of self-interest, it advises him to do another. Therefore, like Humpty Dumpty, once practical reason is shattered by the separation of duty and interest, the practical reasoner’s problem is how to put things back together again. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Halfway down one wall of the Wren Chapel at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is a plaque in honor of Bishop James Madison, who is often confused with his more famous cousin, James Madison, author of the U.S. Constitution, co-author of the Federalist Papers, and the fourth President of the United States. Though they pursued separate careers—Bishop Madison as an Anglican minister, a leading scientist, and an extraordinary academic administrator, and Founder Madison as a secular reformer, (...) a superb statesman, and one of the most sophisticated democratic theorists in history—the plaque could hardly honor one without the other, so interlinked were both their legacies to the College, religious freedom, and American democracy. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of the original artefact. Generally these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way the author intended. Since the original versions are generally quite old, there may occasionally be certain imperfections within these reproductions. We're happy to make these classics available again for future generations to enjoy!