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International Deontology1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Russell Hardin
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Abstract

In a critique of international deontology, Hardin discusses the forms that moral reasoning might take—from rationalist actor theory to Kantian proceduralism to ad hoc Kantianism—and the relation of Kant's dictum to the institutional nature of much of international affairs. He then relates this discussion to three quite different general policy issues: nuclear deterrence, intervention, and international redistribution.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 9 , March 1995 , pp. 133 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1995

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References

2 Nagel, Thomas, “Ruthlessness in Public Life,” in Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 75–90Google Scholar.

3 Schneewind, Jerome, “The Misfortunes of Virtue,” Ethics 101 (October 1990), 42–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hardin, Russell, “Altruism and Mutual Advantage,” Social Service Review 67 (September 1993), 358–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Communitarian views have especially been applied to environmental issues. Environmental problems are clearly collective rather than individual in both their origin and the concern with them. Unfortunately, they also commonly transcend any community that a communitarian could love.Google Scholar

5 Hardin, Russell, “Institutional Morality,” in Brennan, Geoffrey and Goodin, Robert E., eds., The Theory of Institutional Design (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

6 See, for example, Lynch, Cecelia, “Kant, the Republican Peace, and Moral Guidance in International Law,” Ethics & International Affairs 8 (1994), 39–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lynch cites much of the recent literature.

7 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, the State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974Google Scholar).

8 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar Rawls attempts instead to deduce institutional-level principles that would permit the Kantian justification or criticism of a state. This is inherently a consequentialist move, although it need not be utilitarian. Of course, his theory is exclusively about justice within a state or society, not the morality of state actions toward other states or toward individuals not in the state itself.

9 Hardin, Russell, Morality within the Limits of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988Google Scholar).

10 Kant, Immanuel, “On a Supposed Right To Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives,” in Abbott, Thomas Kingsmill, ed. and trans., Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics (1797), 6th ed. (London: Longman's, 1909), 361–65Google Scholar.

11 Matson, W.I., “Kant As Casuist,” in Wolff, Robert Paul, ed., Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City: Anchor, 1967), 331–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 336.

12 See, for example, several contributions to the special issue of Ethics 95 (April 1985), on “Ethics and Nuclear Deterrence.”.Google Scholar

13 Hardin, Russell, “Deterrence and Moral Theory,” in Copp, David, ed., Reasoning about War and Strategy in the Nuclear Age: The Philosophers' Point of View, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12 [Supplementary; 1986], 161–93.Google Scholar; reprinted in Kipnis, Kenneth and Meyers, Diana T., eds., Political Realism and International Morality: International Ethics in the Nuclear Age (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987), 35–60Google Scholar.

14 Nozick argues against what he calls the utilitarianism of rights, which is the urge to minimize rights violations, even at the cost of intentional rights violations. Nozick, , Anarchy, the State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 30Google Scholar.

15 Virtue theory had already come under attack from the quasi-institutionalist theories of Machiavelli and Hobbes and Protestant claims against human goodness.Google Scholar