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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 407 was incapable of being a wonderful colleague and memorable school chum to Smith. A third criterion of adequacy for a practicable moral theory might therefore run as follows: (3) Recognition of Insight: A practically adequate moral theory K recognizes fully the moral importance of the insight into an agent's character a patient gains as the recipient of the type of act in question. (3) can work to the benefit of the agent as well as to that of the patient of the blameworthy action. To extend the example: Jones, a cantankerous, foulmouthed, misanthropic senior colleague of Washington's, known far and wide for his vitriol against all things politically correct, may surprise Washington and everyone else by taking her part, mentoring her, encouraging her work, or by resolving the issue under moral mediation that Smith may feel too implicated to address. For of course there is no inherent incompatibility between being cantankerous, foulmouthed and misanthropic on the one hand, and fair, supportive and impartial on the other. To be sure: in such a case, Washington, or any such recipient of Jones' beneficent actions, would have to do a fair amount of higher-order theorizing about Jones' true character, in order to square those initiatives with his misanthropic public behavior. Indeed, this is the sort of superficially anomalous behavior that should stimulate higher-order theorizing among inquiring minds. The outcome of that intellectual labor would be special insight into Jones' character that only someone who, like Washington, had experienced both sides could obtain. But in the example as originally presented, in which Washington uncovers the rotten underside of an angelic public persona rather than vice versa, (3) blocks the pseudorational tactic of denying the facts of moral responsibility by denying the epistemic validity of the victim's knowledge of the transgressor. Hence just as (2) safeguards the moral importance of the pain a victim suffers at the hands of her transgressor, (3) safeguards the moral importance of the information about the transgressor a victim obtains at the hands of that transgressor. Just as we are sometimes tempted to discount a victim's pain because we devalue its circumstances of origin, so are we similarly tempted to discount a victim's perception of wrongdoing because we devalue her status as a victim, or her social relation to the transgressor, or to the system of social practices that may bestow legitimacy and status on that transgressor. So, for example, a woman who suffers physical abuse at her husband's hands must battle the skepticism and resistance of law enforcement agencies governed by men, most of whom are also husbands, and some of whom also abuse their wives. An African American who suffers employment discrimination at the hands of a European American employer who, because © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
