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The Power of Example

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Onora O'Neill
Onora O'Neill
Affiliation:
University of Essex
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The examples of which he complained were trivial in either or both of two ways. Some were examples of the minor perplexities of life, such as returning library books or annoying the neighbours with one's music; some were examples described only in outline rather than in depth; and some examples were both minor and schematic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 61 , Issue 235 , January 1986 , pp. 5 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1986

References

1 Peter, Winch, ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgments’, in Ethics and Action (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 154–155.Google Scholar

2 A basic source for this writing is Wittgenstein's 1929 ‘Lecture on Ethics’, which was published together with reports of conversations Wittgenstein later had with Waismann, F. and Rush, Rhees, Philosophical Review LXXIV (1965), 3–12, 12–26.Google Scholar Wittgenstein's discussions of examples in nonethical contexts are also influential. In addition to the papers in Winch, op. cit., Wittgensteinian approaches to ethics include: Rush, Rhees, Without Answers (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969);Google ScholarPhillips, D. Z. and Mounce, H. O., Moral Practices (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970);Google ScholarBeardsmore, R., Moral Reasoning (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969);Google ScholarRodger, Beehler, Moral Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978);Google Scholar various articles in Philosophical Investigations, including C. Diamond, ‘Anything but Argument?’ (1978), 23–41; some papers in Holland, R. F., Against Empiricism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980)Google Scholar and some in Phillips, D. Z., Through a Darkening Glass (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982).Google Scholar

3 William, Ruddick, ‘Philosophy and Public Affairs’, Social Research 47 (1980), 734–748. This article surveys the movement in problem-centred ethics in the United States. It lists the main journals, charts institutional bases and affiliations and identifies both some successes and some dangers of the movement. Since the literature is vast no short list of sources can be offered; Ruddick's article provides a sketch of the terrain.Google Scholar

4 A sample of lurid examples includes: abortion by craniotomy; drowning a child in a bath; organizing judicial murder; inviting a visitor to be a guest executioner; adjudicating mutiny; having a child to grow a kidney transplant for the father. Philippa, Foot apologizes for her sensational examples, ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect’, Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 31; most writers now seem quite at home with harrowing examples.Google Scholar

5 These are two of the well-known ‘four examples’ of which Kant makes repeated use in the Grundlegung, trans. H. J. Paton as The Moral Law (London: Hutchinson, 1953). Further Kant citations will be given parenthetically, using the following abbreviations: G for the Grundlegung; CPR for The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1961); R for Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. T. Greene and H. Hudson (New York: Harper and Row, 1960); DV for The Doctrine of Virtue, trans. M. Gregor (New York: Harper and Row, 1964); A for Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. M. Gregor (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974); L for Logic, trans. Robert Hartmann and Wolfgang Schwartz (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1974); CJ for The Critique of Judgment, trans. James Meredith (Oxford University Press, 1978); FI for The First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, trans. J. Haden (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1965). The standard pagination will be used for CPR; otherwise the Prussian Academy pagination if the edition cited includes it, and if it does not the pagination of that edition.

6 Kant draws but does not always observe the distinction made here between hypothetical and ostensive examples (Beispiel, Exempel); see DV, 479 n.

7 Sartre, J.-P., ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’, in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, Kaufmann, W. (ed.) (Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing, 1956).Google Scholar

8 Rush, Rhees, ‘Some Developments in Wittgenstein's View of Ethics’, Philosophical Review LXXIV (1965), 17–26, esp. 21.Google Scholar

9 Peter, Winch, ‘Moral Integrity’, Ethics and Action, 182.Google Scholar

10 Literary works can provide ostensive examples of a sort, for a literary figure may be presented or taken as a model or exemplar of certain virtues or failings. Such figures may be important in moral education. Some are discussed in Schneewind, J., ‘Moral Problems and Moral Philosophy in the Victorian Period’, English Literature and British Philosophy, Rosenbaum, S. P. (ed.), (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). There are interesting parallels between the contrasts Schneewind finds between Intuitionist and Utilitarian writing in the nineteenth century and some of the contrasts between Wittgensteinian and problem-centred writing discussed here.Google Scholar

11 Peter, Winch, ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgments’, Ethics and Action, 154ff.Google Scholar

12 Writing which discusses Wittgensteinian approaches to political philosophy seems more concerned with how this might change one's conception of politics than with questions of Rechtslehre. See Pitkin, H., Wittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972);Google ScholarJohn, Danford, Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978);Google ScholarAlan, Wertheimer, ‘Is Ordinary Language Analysis Conservative?’, Political Theory 4 (1976), 405–422.Google Scholar

13 L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Nos. 241–242. This passage is much discussed by the Wittgensteinian writers referred to above. See Moral Practices, 62–72; Moral Life, 92–97; Moral Reasoning, 120ff.

14 Impertinent and hilarious. See James, Thurber, ‘The MacBeth Murder Mystery’, The Thurber Carnival (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1945), 60–63.Google Scholar

15 See, for example, Rush, Rhees, ‘Natural Law and Reasons in Ethics’ and ‘Knowing the Difference Between Right and Wrong’, both in Without Answers, 94–96, 101.Google Scholar

16 Wittgensteinian proposals for dealing with apparent disagreements which reflect incommensurable practices can be found in Moral Life, esp. 162–174; C. Diamond, op. cit., 27ff.; Phillips, D. Z., ‘In Search of the Moral “Must”: Mrs Foot's Fugitive Thought’, Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1977), 140–157,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. 152–153; Moral Reasoning, 117–119, and in Clark, S., The Moral Status of Animals (Oxford University Press, 1977), 22–23; 186–187. The latter work is only selectively Wittgensteinian, but is on the matter of resolving obstinate moral disagreement, cf. C. Diamond, op. cit., 117–119.Google Scholar

17 Anthony, Burgess, The Long Day Wanes: a Malayan Trilogy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972).Google Scholar

18 Many Wittgensteinian writers insist that deep moral conflicts cannot be resolved, so that there are ineliminable and tragic clashes of moral outlook. See Moral Reasoning, Chaps. 9 and 10; Through a Darkening Glass, esp. the first three essays. But one does not have to hold all moral disagreement tragic and irresolvable because some is. Even if some disputes are irresolvable and tragedy is unavoidable, there may still be more than local justification by which other disputes can be resolved.

19 L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Nos 241–242.

20 Peter, Winch, ‘Can a Good Man be Harmed?’, Ethics and Action, 200.Google Scholar

21 Peter, Winch, ‘Nature and Convention’, Ethics and Action, 58.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 55.

23 Holland, R. F., ‘Absolute Ethics'’, Against Empiricism, 135–142. Holland draws a stark dichotomy between ‘absolute ethics’, which must be an ethic of forgoing and non-intervention, and ‘consequentialist ethics’ which is prepared to do evil for the sake of greater good, and so to engage in ‘polities’. ‘Polities’, he claims, ‘belongs for overdetermined reasons to the pursuits that have to be forgone’ (137). Mere forgoing is not likely to leave us uncompromised.Google Scholar

24 Peter, Winch, ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgments’, Ethics and Action, 154.Google Scholar

25 See, for example, Roger, Straughan, ‘Hypothetical Moral Situations’, Journal of Moral Education 4 (1975), 183–189;Google ScholarRoger, Montague, ‘Winch on Agents’, Analysis 34 (1973–1974), 161–166;Google ScholarMichael, Levin, ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgments Revisited’, Mind 88 (1979), 115–119.Google Scholar

26 Peter, Winch, ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgments’, Ethics and Action, 154.Google Scholar

27 This point is quite independent of Wittgensteinian considerations. See, for example, Christopher, Butler, ‘Literature and Moral Education’, Moral Education 1 (1969), 39–46;Google Scholar A. D. C. Peterson, ‘A Vanishing Tradition in Moral Education’, Ibid., 47–51; T. Beardsworth, ‘The Place of Literature in Moral Education’, Ibid., 52–62; Ward, L. O., ‘History–Humanity's Teacher’, Journal of Moral Education 4 (1974–1975), 101–104;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Clive Jones, ‘The Contribution of Historv and Literature to Moral Education’, ibid. 5 (1976), 127–138.

28 William Ruddick, op. cit., 734.

29 Thomson, J. J., ‘Some Ruminations on Rights’, Reading, Nozick, J., Paul, (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982).Google Scholar

30 Thomson, J. J., ‘A Defence of Abortion’, The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion, Marshall Cohen et al. (eds) (Princeton University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

31 Smart, J. J. C. and Williams, B., Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge University Press, 1973). Williams uses the example only to raise doubts about Utilitarianism–a fair enough move since the theory is claimed to be competent for any case. The implausibility of this example is well brought out in R. F. Holland, op. cit., 138–142.Google Scholar

32 Robert, Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 34–35.Google Scholar

33 William Ruddick, op. cit., 744ff.

34 Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Ross, W. D., 1099b22, in The Basic Works of Aristotle Richard, McKeon (ed.) (New York: Random House, 1941).Google Scholar

35 Simone, Weil, ‘Attention and Will’, Gravity and Grace, trans. Emma, Crauford (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 105–111;Google Scholar also ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies’, The Simone Weil Reader, Paniches, G. (ed.) (New York: David MacKay, 1977), 44–45. Several Wittgensteinian writers comment on this point.Google Scholar

36 David, Wiggins, ‘Deliberation and Practical Reason’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society LXXVI (1975–1976), 29–51.Google Scholar

37 Earlier versions of this paper were read at the Universities of Birmingham, Essex and Glasgow and at the Polytechnic of North London. The present version has benefited greatly from these occasions. I am particularly grateful for suggestions made by Leon Pompa, Frank Cioffi, Michael Weston, Colin Phillips, Michael Podro, Sophie Botros, Eva Schaper, David Bell and Stephen Clark, as well as by Amelie Rorty and William Ruddick.