‘Working out the terms of moral justification is an unending task’

A theory of ethics which I have ignored up until now, but has changed my life for the better.

NBC’s ‘The Good Place’ has left me with a few thinking points which have really stuck in my mind ever since I watched the series. A couple of quotes have sat in the notes app on my phone, and I have occasionally come across them and thought about them more and more. The one that stuck with me the most is a quote from What We Owe To Each Other by TM Scanlon who says, “Working out the terms of moral justification is an unending task”. The statement shuts down the rules of reciprocity which we commonly know at ‘the golden rule’, as well as dismissing any form of Kantian ethics. There are no universal maxims which we must abide by in terms of morality, nor is it sufficient to say that we should treat others how we wish to be treated - the argument here is one which I respect highly, and until now I haven’t even considered past my brief knowledge of teleological and deontological arguments of ethics. The rule stated by Scanlon is this - treat others how they wish to be treated.

"The reasons we have to treat others only in ways that could be justified to them underlie the central core of morality, and are presupposed by all the most important forms of human relationship. These reasons require us to strive to find terms of justification that others could not reasonably reject. But we are not in a position to say, once and for all, what these terms should be. Working out the terms of moral justification is an unending task."

Working out the terms of moral justification would not be an unending task if there was a universal code over what was right and wrong, or good or bad, nor would it be if we could apply our own personal terms to the way in which we treat others. The simple task of treating others how they wish to be treated is an unending one, and quite rightly so. We are not in a position to dictate how others wish to be treated, and what others believe to be right or wrong. Once this dawned on me, I realised that this idea makes perfect sense, and all other theories on ethics have become trivial or over complicated to me. It is ironic, however, that what I believe to be the most simple answer to ethics, is the answer which requires the most hard work and the most time to apply it to one’s life. It would not be time badly spent, however.

Thinking about this task, I can’t help but to be drawn to the idea of consent in political philosophy. In my opinion it is one of the most important things to be brought into question when discussing any kind of political theory; one’s consent to be governed, one’s consent to pay tax and so on - one of the core elements of discussion when talking about the self possession which the likes of John Locke and Robert Nozick have exalted so highly. It is clear to me now that if you were to agree with the idea that one should be an owner of themselves, a ‘captain of your own soul’ if you will, and thus the idea of consent in its philosophical context, then one must agree with the argument stated by Scanlon that we should treat others in accordance to their own personal morals and beliefs of what is right or wrong, or good or bad.

To incorporate this into your life, a certain degree of empathy and understanding of others is required, otherwise you will be unable to respect and fulfil what others believe to be what is right in their eyes. From this, I infer that it is impossible to have any kind authentic human connection or relationship without empathy and human understanding, otherwise how are you supposed to treat others how they wish to be treated? Now that I write this summation down, this idea is probably quite obvious, of course we need human understanding to develop human relationships. Writing this has not been a waste of time however, it is nice to make sense of something which I have always been aware of, and breaking it down makes it seem more real to me, and more applicable to the way I will now choose to live my life.