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Show Chapter V. A Refutation of Anscombe's Thesis 224 describe attitudes and psychological dispositions that individuals may or may not have. And these attitudes and dispositions may or may not infect the expression of one's moral convictions. But these convictions themselves are logically independent of both the personality problems and character traits of the individuals who hold them, and of the consequentialist/ deontological taxonomy. So neither these convictions nor the personal traits that supposedly accompany them reflect the supposed difference in moral sensibility that Anscombeans claim. Now there are certain criticisms of deontological and consequentialist theories often made by members of the opposing camp that have a common ring to them. Consequentialists often claim that deontological theories are guilty of "rule worship," and are essentially unconcerned with people; for they inflexibly prescribe certain actions without regard to how others are affected. They fail to recognize the importance of human well-being as an intrinsic value.37 Deontologists then typically retort that it is the consequentialist who exhibits an essential lack of concern for people. For consistent consequentialist theories require the sacrifice of the innocent for the sake of some "greater good," 38 subordinate human rationality and autonomy to the pursuit of this good,39 and fail to respect personal integrity.40 Note that, as usual, the criticisms could be reversed. One could just as easily fault consequentialist theories for paying insufficient attention to human welfare on the grounds that they subordinate individual well-being to the general welfare. One might then go on to argue that a theory that places individual welfare in jeopardy threatens and thereby diminishes the welfare of each individual in the community, hence diminishes general welfare. One could similarly criticize deontological theories on the grounds that a thoroughgoing commitment to general principles of moral obligation undermines the opportunity to exercise individual rationality and autonomy in decision-making on particular occasions, since individual inclinations are in each case subordinated to the principle of conformity to these general normative prescriptions.41 J. J. C. Smart makes this objection in "An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics," in J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 5-6, 72. Also see Jonathan Bennett, "Whatever the Consequences," Analysis 26 (1966), pp. 83-102. 38 H. M. McCloskey, "A Note on Utilitarian Punishment," Mind 72 (1963), p. 599. 39 Thomas Nagel, "Subjective and Objective," in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 40 Bernard Williams, "A Critique of Utilitarianism," in Smart and Williams, op. cit Note 37; also see Rawls, op. cit. Note 4, Sections 5 and 30. 41 W. D. Falk makes essentially this criticism in "Morality, Self, and Others," in Judith J. Thomson and Gerald Dworkin, Eds., Ethics (New York: Harper and Row, 1968); 37 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
