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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 551 So does Baier's. Her approach is mosaic, through the series of essays in which Moral Prejudices consists. It is true that her account is less tight and systematic than the above summaries would make it seem. As is clear, I have, in this exposition, extrapolated claims and arguments from a large variety of her essays and reorganized them according to my own requirements of system. Nevertheless, the elements of coherence and comprehensiveness of the area of morality she covers, and even the "keystone supporting all the rest" are there for any reader to see. The keystone is, of course, her analysis of trust, and the moral norms it generates by way of her analyses of pathological trust, betrayals of trust, rational trust and morally decent trust. There are even what I described in Chapter V.1.2 as practical decision-making principles in her account of how to protect our ability to trust. Moreover, Baier makes a forceful case for the comprehensiveness of her account by arguing, first, that the concept of trust is presupposed by those of virtues and obligations; second, that its pervasiveness trumps ContractTheoretic attempts to ground social equilibrium in coercing the fulfillment of obligation, by capping a threatened infinite regress of coercers; and third, that it can explain important moral phenomena, namely moral transactions among agents unequal in power, that Social Contract Theory cannot explain. One does not have to agree with these arguments to see that she has made the case. Baier offers further criteria that a genuine moral theory of trust should meet when she claims that "[a] moral theory which made proper trust its central concern could have its own categorical imperative, could replace obedience to self-made laws and freely chosen restraints on freedom with security-increasing sacrifice of security, distrust in the promoters of a climate of distrust, and so on" (MP 15). These are criteria her own account of trust does, in fact, satisfy. Its categorical imperative may be identified as "trust in sustained trust and trustworthiness to sustain it" (MP 185, 187). Now Baier withdraws this suggestion on the next page with the disclaimer that she is "not really concerned to elevate any virtue to supremacy. Even if we could effect some sort of unification of the virtues by relating them all to due trust and due trustworthiness" - and she then proceeds to point out several of the frequently neglected virtues such as tact, discretion, resilience, and alertness to the oppression of the silenced, that would become more salient relative to trust relationships - "we will still need a whole host of virtues, more or less democratically ruling in our souls, (New York: Atherton Press, 1963); "Distributive Justice," in Philosophy, Politics and Society, Third Series, Ed. Peter Laslett and W.G. Runciman (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967); "Distributive Justice: Some Addenda," Natural Law Forum 13 (1968); and "The Justification of Civil Disobedience," in Civil Disobedience, Ed. H. A. Bedau (New York: Pegasus, 1969). © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
