| OCR Text |
Show Chapter XIII. Baier's Hume 528 flaws by arguing that we must revise downward the values expressed in 5 normative moral theory so as to accommodate them. Baier's consistently indexical approach to the problem leads her simply to present us with the facts. This should not be taken to imply that no moral ideals or convictions stand behind her approach; quite the contrary. But these ideals and convictions function more as pragmatic and pluralistic goals to be achieved through action of which we are realistically capable, than as impossibly abstract and removed standards for the dispensation of praise and blame. When Baier makes recommendations - she almost never prescribes - about how we should address a particular moral dereliction or issue, one senses that she tests their viability against the capabilities and limits of her own moral agency. The self-knowledge, humility, and moral engagement these recommendations display have far greater authority than the commands, coercion, and threats she repeatedly deplores. But we shall see that the question of who actually issues such commands, coercion or threats surfaces repeatedly. Baier's most far-reaching recommendation is that we need to replace the prevailing Social Contract-Theoretic model of moral interaction between agents who are conceived as free, equal, and autonomous with a familial model of moral interaction between agents who are mutually dependent, unequal in power, and connected by material, social, and biological necessity (MP 120). Her critique of the Contract-Theoretic model dismantles its most basic constitutive concepts, namely those of obligation, the nature of individuality, and the presuppositions of equality, freedom of choice, rationality, and rights. She begins by attacking the notion of obligation as the central concept of ethics. Her objections to this notion are threefold. First, take the foundational obligation of promise-keeping. This presupposes that one has been raised to take promises seriously; and this, in turn, that we have the obligation to raise our children to be morally competent promisors. But this requires that we raise our children lovingly, and "an obligation to love, in the strong sense needed, would be an embarrassment to the theorist, given most accepted versions of 'ought implies can'" (MP 5). For the most part, traditional moral theories of the modern era have nothing to say about proper child-raising, 5 See, for example, Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985); Samuel Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); and Susan Wolf, "Moral Saints," The Journal of Philosophy LXXIX, 8 (August 1982), 419-438. I do not think it plausible to interpret these and other similarly inclined authors at face value, as arguing against moral theory altogether, for reasons I have touched in Chapter I and develop at length in Volume II. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
