| OCR Text |
Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 273 interests of different selves; i.e. it solves a Prisoner's Dilemma-type situation.10 So it is not surprising that Kantians insist that this ability is definitive of the moral point of view, and that it enters into the conception and practical application of every moral virtue. Without strict impartiality, personal interactions would consist solely in manipulative self-absorption or dependent vicarious possession. Feelings of injustice, violation, neglect or betrayal are moral reactions that rightly alert us to the operation of these vices in our social relationships. That the functioning of moral virtues such as compassion or friendship presupposes empathic modal imagination of another's suffering which is strictly impartial with respect to the relation between one's own inner state and others' explains why commitment to an impartial moral theory engenders rather than precludes such virtues. I have argued in Chapter V.5.2 that a moral theory is an ideal descriptive theory that enables us to make sense of our moral experience: to identify another's condition as one of suffering, for example; or our own behavior as that of rendering aid. I also argued in Volume I, Chapter VIII.3.2.2., as well as above in Section 1, that if it is a genuine theory, a moral theory is by definition (strictly) impartial, since it contains neither definite descriptions nor arbitrary attributive bias. In this discussion we see how a strictly impartial moral theory might function both to constitute and to regulate our empathic imaginative responses to another's condition in a morally appropriate way. Moral theory constitutes our imaginative responses by providing us with concepts of morally virtuous - i.e. strictly impartial - character. We use these concepts to identify, understand and evaluate our experiences of our own inner states, as well as those of others' as we modally imagine them. Moral theory also regulates our imaginative responses, in that these strictly impartial concepts of virtuous character serve to guide their cultivation. By describing ideals of character and action against which we compare our own, the strictly impartial concepts of normative moral theory provide criteria of selfevaluation the application of which itself contributes to our moral growth. In applying these criteria we come to understand the difference between, for example, a balanced, sensitive response to another's suffering, versus one that uses another's suffering to meet various unmet psychological needs of one's own. We thereby come to see that what distinguishes compassion from vicarious possession and self-absorption is not the agent's good will toward the sufferer, and not his desire to minimize unhappiness as completely as possible. A person whose responses to another's suffering fail to satisfy the strict impartiality requirement of compassion is not necessarily an immoral person. But we rightly say of such a person that he is infantile, self-indulgent, Although to point this out is not necessarily to justify the theory, or to account for its origins. 10 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
