Scarry’s Two Perspectives

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Here are three arguments.

After I have presented them, I will ask you what the three arguments were.

‘The Difficulty of Imagining Other People’

It is difficult. Why is this relevant?

You want to say that nationality is morally irrelevant,

but ‘the work accomplished by a structure of laws

cannot be accomplished by

a structure of sentiment.

Constitutions are needed to uphold cosmopolitan values’

\citep[p.~110]{scarry:1996_difficulty}.

Scarry, 1996 p. 110

You want to say that nationality is morally irrelevant,

but people, individually and collectively,

are typically in a position of choosing between

national identities (e.g. Indian vs Hindu nationalism).

They are not chosing whether or not to adopt a national identity.

And some identities leave people more open to including others in the domain of concern than others.

Taylor, 1996

You want to say that nationality is morally irrelevant,

but activists who have transformed societies

have done so by working through national traditions (Burke, King).

‘solutions are not to be found in abstractions like cosmopolitan, but in renewal of our various intact moral communities’

McConnel, 1996 p. 84

‘To count people as moral equals is to treat nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, race and gender as ‘morally irrelevant’---as irrelevant to that equal standing.

Of course, these factors properly enter into our deliberations in many contexts.

But the accident of being born a Sri Lankan, or a Jew, or a female, of an African-American, or a poor person, is just that---an accident of birth.

It is not ... a determinant of moral worth.

We should view the equal worth of all human beings as a regulative constraint on our political actions and aspirations’

Nussbaum, 1996 p. 133

1. What are the three arguments just considered?

2. Do any of the three arguments show that your nationality is morally relevant?

two perspectives

Q1 : If nationality is morally irrelevant to how people of different nationalities should be treated or valued, what follows?

Q2 : Given how people actually are, given their moral psychology, given ‘the limits on imagining other people’, given the mechanisms through which change can be effected, how could we provide an ‘authorizing base for the ethical principle one wants to see enforced’?

Note that the caveats are not relevant to Q1.

These must be sharply distinguished. Q1 doesn't say I want to enforce my view on anyone else ... On the contrary, I recognise that others have different moral principles.

As long as we focus on the first question, the others are not relevant for us.

‘To count people as moral equals is to treat nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, race and gender as ‘morally irrelevant’---as irrelevant to that equal standing.

Of course, these factors properly enter into our deliberations in many contexts.

But the accident of being born a Sri Lankan, or a Jew, or a female, of an African-American, or a poor person, is just that---an accident of birth.

It is not ... a determinant of moral worth.

We should view the equal worth of all human beings as a regulative constraint on our political actions and aspirations’

Nussbaum, 1996 p. 133

So now we see that the issue as Nussbaum frames it is closer to Q1. My crude framing in terms of Is nationality morally irrelevant? is a distortion. We are better asking a different question.

Old Question (Bad)

Is nationality a ‘morally irrelevant characteristic’?

New Question (Better)

Is nationality morally irrelevant to how people of different nationalities should be treated or valued?

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