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Show Chapter X. The Criterion of Inclusiveness 410 6. Nonrecognition of Bully Systems Finally, consider 5.2.(c), which dissociates Washington's pain as unimportant relative to Smith's constellation of significant moral priorities, one of which is to preserve collegial equilibrium. This response not only ranks maintaining the collegial status quo more highly than alleviating Washington's emotional distress. It ranks more highly a status quo that licenses Vogeler's unjustifiably inflicting pain on Washington. On the face of it, it certainly would seem morally unjustifiable to discount the mental distress of a moral agent for the sake of preserving in equilibrium a social and professional network that deliberately and unjustifiably inflicts such emotional harm. But there are moral costs involved in reforming it that must be figured into the equation. Is alleviating Washington's pain worth the pain, inconvenience and disturbance it would cause Smith, Vogeler, and others in the department to change the status quo and reform their behavior? Is it worth the resentments, embarrassments, incriminating revelations, betrayed loyalties, ruined friendships, and destroyed professional equilibrium that now exists? And what about the daily work of running the department, tasks ably discharged by the very same individuals who fill Washington's life with undeserved misery? Millian liberalism might formulate this issue as one of whether the rule of the majority or the rights of individuals should prevail, and there is much to be said for such an analysis.14 But examination of the social relationships that knit the majority together as a majority in this case suggests an alternative formulation. The issue can also be framed as a crucial point of opposition between Rationalist moral theories and Anti-Rationalist views that postulate the priority of personal loyalties and emotional attachments over impartial duties to others. In Chapter I, I argued that this conflict - essentially a conflict between rationality and power - is most centrally definitive of the two alternatives with which the professional practice of philosophy itself is confronted. On this analysis, the fundamental question is whether it is worth unraveling an entire network of personal and professional attachments in order to rectify the injustice done to a single, unassimilated individual. To this question, Anti-Rationalist claims about the importance of sympathy, caring, friendship, and so forth can provide no satisfactory answer, since these are the relational attributes that, in the case at hand, generate the problem. Of course an Anti-Rationalist might just bluntly disavow the importance of Washington's anguish when compared to that which would be incurred by shifting the status quo in order to ameliorate it. Alternately, the Anti-Rationalist might solve the dilemma by assigning a higher priority to whatever personal or professional attachments he may have to Washington. However, to weight these relational attributes in this instance in favor of Cf. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), Chapter 7. 14 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
