Schopenhauer on the Rights of Animals

Puryear, Stephen

doi:10.1111/ejop.12237

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Moral distress is defined as "knowing the right thing to do but being unable to do so due to various constraints" (Jameton 1984;O'Byrne et al 2021;Garrett 2020;Dzau et al 2020;Lin 2020;Morley 2019;Wiggins & Wilbanks 2019;Bursztajn 1998). Although studies on this issue also use terms such as 'moral injury' (e.g., Borges et al 2020;Williamson et al 2020), 'moral suffering,' 'moral anguish' (Godshall 2021), and 'moral harm' equivalently here, the scope of the latter experiences goes beyond professional (particularly medical and judicial) and even human contexts (e.g., Puryear 2017). In this article, we ponder moral distress, and it is precisely what we have been investigating.…”

Section: Theorising Moral Distressmentioning

confidence: 96%

Another Pandemic

Nowak

Barciszewska²,

Kriaučiūnienė³

et al. 2023

Ethica

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The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has transgressed biomedical categories. According to Horton, it turned out to be a 'syndrome' that infected virtually all spheres of social life. The pandemic has created toxic social atmosphere highly unfavorable to clinical and clinic-ethical decision making. Constraints and pressures related to micro-, meso-, exo- and macro-environments framing doctors, nurses, and medical students in training were identified. These factors exacerbated moral distress (moral injury) amongst clinicians. In a joint Polish-Lithuanian project (IDUB 2020-2022) we examined predictors of moral distress in pandemic clinical contexts. A survey-based, real-time, correlational and comparative study was conducted in Poland and Lithuania after the first year of pandemic with N=227 participants. Unexpected differences on regular and pandemic-type moral distress levels were found between the two national samples. Polish participants showed significantly higher moral distress levels than their Lithuanian counterparts. The following article discusses these findings and recommends the reinforcement of resilient medical decision making.

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Section: Theorising Moral Distressmentioning

confidence: 96%

Another Pandemic

Nowak

Barciszewska²,

Kriaučiūnienė³

et al. 2023

Ethica

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“…For example, he states that the Neminem Principle identifies which actions have moral worth (moralischen Werth) (BM, 139), which would blur the first distinction from the previous section. Similarly, Schopenhauer elsewhere says that wrongness hinges on an agent's aim in acting (WWR 1, 364), which contradicts his definition of wrongness in terms of harm or the boundaries of another's will (though see Puryear 2017). Even on a charitable reading, therefore, we must grant that Schopenhauer's presentation of his normative ethics is messy.…”

Section: Moral Dimensionsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Schopenhauer's Five-dimensional Normative Ethics

Marshall,

Mehl

2023

The Schopenhauerian Mind

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In this chapter, we argue that Schopenhauer's normative ethics involves more complexity than is often recognized. To be sure, Schopenhauer did not write anything comparable to Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, which provides a detailed moral taxonomy that is explicitly applied to a range of issues. Nonetheless, a closer reading of Schopenhauer's published work shows that he engages in fairly detailed normative ethical theorizing, offering much more than a "simple-minded dichotomy" or "simple common sense." In fact, we believe, if we approach his writings with a moderately strong principle of interpretive charity, we can find a more complex evaluative approach to actions than in many contemporary ethical systems.We proceed as follows. In Section 1, we identify five distinct evaluative rankings of actions in Schopenhauer's writings. The distinctness of these rankings generates an interpretive choice. Either Schopenhauer's normative ethics is massively inconsistent, or else the five rankings are meant to assess distinct aspects or dimensions of actions. In Section 2, we explore the latter interpretive option. Taking a cue from Timothy Scanlon's two-dimensional ethics, we argue that Schopenhauer can be read as having a consistent five-dimensional ethics. We also argue that properly understanding the role of moral principles for Schopenhauer helps preempt interpretive conclusions like Young's. In Section 3, we aim to shed further light on Schopenhauer's normative ethics by exploring one crucial case: actions arising from misplaced compassion within oppressive societies. When considered through the five dimensions, this case reveals some disturbing implications of Schopenhauer's normative ethics.To keep our discussion manageable, we will largely set aside Schopenhauer's views on three topics closely related to ethics: political justice, freedom of the will, and asceticism. 6 We also focus our attention on Schopenhauer's main discussions of ethics in the final editions of On the Basis of Morals and the first volume of The World as Will and Representation, though we occasionally draw from other works.

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“…This first criticism thus falls flat. 5 4 I discuss various aspects of his positive account in Puryear (2017) and Puryear (forthcoming). 5 Schopenhauer's critique in On the Basis of Morality focuses specifically on the Groundwork (BM §3, 119); it is therefore beside the point whether in the second Critique Kant effectively renounces the argument from Groundwork III and instead merely posits the moral law as a "fact of reason" (CPrR 5:31,47).…”

Section: Kant's Petitio Principiimentioning

confidence: 99%

Schopenhauer's Rejection of the Moral Ought

Puryear¹

2021

Schopenhauer's Moral Philosophy

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In a practical philosophy, […] we have to do not with assuming grounds for what happens but rather laws of what ought to happen even if it never does, that is, objective practical laws."(Kant, G 4:427) 1 "We will not talk about 'oughts' at all: that is how you talk to children, or to nations in their infancy, not to those who have acquired all the culture of a mature age." (Schopenhauer, WWR 1, §53, 320)Kant's statement expresses the still widely accepted view that morality takes a prescriptive form: it concerns what in some sense ought to happen, even if it never does happen. An ought, Kant tells us earlier in the Groundwork, is that through which an imperative is expressed, and an imperative is the formula of a command or law (of reason) (G 4:413). Morality is thus from this perspective a system of oughts, imperatives, commands, laws. And on the common view, as on Kant's, these oughts or imperatives of morality are thought to bind us in a particularly strong fashion, that is, categorically or absolutely. In short, they tell us what we must do, or must not do, come what may. This conception of morality as a system of categorically binding oughts or imperatives has more recently come under fire, perhaps most notably at the hands of Elizabeth Anscombe (1958) andPhilippa Foot (1972). 2 To my mind, however, the most forceful and most interesting critique of the prescriptive conception of morality, though one not so well known today, was advanced more than a century earlier by Arthur Schopenhauer, first in his The World as Will and Representation (1818) and more fully in his unsuccessful prize-essay On the Basis of Morality (1839). My aim here will be to reconstruct and sharpen his critique, and to argue that it does in fact cast serious doubt on the prescriptivist conception of morality.I understand Schopenhauer's critique to consist of four main objections. According to the first, which I consider in Section 1, Kant begs the question by merely assuming that ethics has a prescriptive or legislative-imperative form, when a purely descriptive conception such as Schopenhauer's also presents itself as a possibility. In Section 2, I set the stage for the remaining objections by elucidating, sharpening, and 1 See also CPR A802/B830; MM 6:216. 2 See also Slote (1982); Williams (1985: 174-96); Taylor (2000: 139-77); Taylor (2002: 77-84); see Capaldi (1966) for an argument that Hume means to reject "ought" as a moral category. defending a principle of Schopenhauer's on which they all depend: namely, that a binding ought must be understood to presuppose, and be conditioned by, a threat of punishment or promise of reward. In Section 3, I turn to Schopenhauer's second objection, which anticipates Anscombe's point that the notion of a moral ought loses all intelligibility outside the framework of a divine law conception of ethics. I then note that, whereas Anscombe settles for arguing that we should jettison the moral ought (to the extent that we can) merely because, as a matter of historical fact, we have largely abandoned it...

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Schopenhauer on the Rights of Animals

Cited by 8 publications

References 31 publications

Another Pandemic

Another Pandemic

Schopenhauer's Five-dimensional Normative Ethics

Schopenhauer's Rejection of the Moral Ought

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