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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 409 which even the moral victims among them must be guided, include Classical Intuitionism, understood as the view that we discover what to do by consulting a special, mysterious moral faculty which not everyone may have;12 Classical Utilitarianism as propounded by Sidgwick, according to which knowledgeable Utilitarians are obligated by a set of moral rules different from and superior to those that enjoin the common run of people;13 and those brands of Marxism that ascribe special, revolutionary knowledge either to the intelligentsia or to the proletariat, in accordance with whose dictates the classless society is to be realized. Cognoscenti moral theories violate the criterion of inclusiveness by denying to some moral agents the epistemic authority and credibility necessary for contributing substantively to moral consensus, while supplying it to others. They thus obstruct the moral agency of those so deprived, and encourage abuses of power by those thereby empowered. (3) rules out such cognoscenti moral theories because they implicitly presume that membership in the relevant cognoscenti involves the highest condition of moral knowledge - superior, in particular, to that any nonmember moral victim might gain from being the recipient of moral vice. Unlike a Kantian moral theory, which supplies metaethical principles of derivation from which commonsense moral precepts available to all and compatible with many such theories can be derived, cognoscenti moral theories implicitly presume a connection between moral rectitude and epistemic familiarity with those theories themselves. Because devaluation of a nonmember victim's knowledge of moral transgression relative to a member's is built into the very structure of these theories, they violate the criterion of inclusiveness. Of course, like any practical principle, (3) may be abused, by constructing a cognoscenti of moral victims. Theories that ascribe a privileged status to suffering, as some forms of Christianity do, may be particularly susceptible to this. Nevertheless (3) does provide a counterweight to the empirically more prevalent impulse to discount as false, mistaken, or misguided the insights into moral character to be gained through being on the receiving end of moral vice. It would be consistent with conformity to (3) for Smith to weigh Vogeler's collegiality and shared history with Smith more heavily than his moral turpitude, and more heavily than Washington would in deciding what should be done about it. But it would not be consistent with (3) to deny the legitimacy of Washington's insights into Vogeler's character altogether. Sir David Ross develops this idea in The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 29-33. 13 Cf. Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), Book 4, Chapter 5, Section 3. I examine Sidgwick's view in Volume I, Chapter XII. 12 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
