Review of "Cloaked in Doubt," a novel by attorney Michael J. Diamonstein, published in The News of Delaware County, 5-16-07

In “Cloaked in Doubt,” local attorney Michael J. Diamondstein heeds the beginner’s advice and writes what he knows best. A former Philadelphia prosecutor, he clearly conveys the dilemmas and pressures facing a young district attorney assigned to a high-profile case, these further compounded by the political landscape and unique character of the City of Brotherly Love.

Cloaked opens on the young and hard-charging Assistant District Attorney Jimmy DiAnno, enjoying the short-lived fame of a successfully prosecuted murder case. His world quickly crumbles when DiAnno learns that his new girlfriend is dead, the Mayor of Philadelphia’s skin lies under her fingernails, and the District Attorney plans to wash her own hands of the matter by passing the case off to him. Around this central plot line, Diamondstein constructs a tightly woven and highly suspenseful narrative, filled with familiar faces and locales, hinging at each point upon the difficult choices faced by his young narrator.

The first of these: Dianno’s been intimately involved with the murder victim. As a result, he can either reveal his connection to the case, which would instantly disqualify him from prosecuting; or he can use his position to seek revenge for his lover’s death, risking the case if the investigation ever uncovers their short relationship. Ignoring professional duty in favor of a vengeful humanity, this choice becomes a dark secret he must keep forever, and is only one in a series of powerful moral dilemmas that propel the plot while jarring the reader.

Unfortunately, Diamondstein trips up his well-constructed plot by making many of the mistakes common to a first time writer. Lacking a clear sense of voice, DiAnno narrates the book in clichés and well-worn phrases, with much of the writing consisting of long series of declarative statements that tell rather than show what occurs.

In this, Diamondstein’s writing only attains a naturalness and clarity in a few passages—during the investigative process and the trial scenes, both familiar territory. Here he writes courtroom scenes that command the reader’s attention enough to feel like a jury member, with a riveting hold that eagerly awaits the defense’s argument, wondering how and if they will remove the prosecution’s certainty of the Mayor’s guilt.

However, the most glaring omission is the sense of any inner life on the part of DiAnno, which becomes especially problematic in an unshown character evolution that must surprise him as much as the reader. Moreover, Diamondstein frames this evolution in a pair of Nietzsche quotes about not staring too long into the abyss (it might stare back), and the advice that when fighting monsters, to take care not to become one. But rather than developing DiAnno along either line, Cloaked shows only the outward decay of alcoholism and isolation, unmirrored by any reflective inner life.

Thankfully enough, none of these stylistic and literary shortcomings impede the flow of Cloaked’s gripping plot. Questions and doubts surround the case, the search for the Mayor’s possible motive exhilarates, and the continually evolving moral status of both DiAnno and his investigation all keep the suspense high and the ending just one more shocking twist to unhinge the reader. In the hands of a seasoned writer like Turow or Grisham, this would’ve been a blockbuster. Diamondstein’s plot is worthy of these two, and hopefully he will keep writing until his prose catches up with his clever imagination.

Online Lecture: Kant and The Categorical Imperative; developed for Business Ethics (Philosophy 352) at Widener University

Kant and the Categorical Imperative:

Aside from Utilitarianism, no single theory in Modern times has changed the way we view morality or has had a bigger impact on moral thought than the moral theories of Immanuel Kant. Kant created a deontological theory of ethics, a “how we ought to act” in all situations, regardless of the consequences, that he thought every rational person would not only endorse, but discover for themselves if they sought it out. His theory endorsed a set of absolute moral laws that he argued any rational person could correctly formulate by use of a special device he called The Categorical Imperative.

This will appear as if I take the long way about to get to his theoretical implications, but I find it necessary to do so in order to explain properly what he said. Kant believed that the key difference between humans and animals was the ability of human beings to use reason to guide them in their decision making process. Now this difference becomes more important once you realize what Kant had in mind. Kant believed that there were such things as Absolute Moral Laws, that not only existed, but also were as real, valid, and universal as the laws of mathematics.

Kant knew and understood the process by which the laws of mathematics were discovered, from the time of Pythagoras in ancient Greece, to the time of his contemporary Isaac Newton. All of those involved in the discovery of mathematical laws used reason as their guide. He argued that what is true of mathematical laws must also be true of the absolute moral laws as well.

Now, you may at this point, want to wrangle a little bit about his contention that we only discover what is right or wrong using reason. You may find yourself saying, “I know what is right or wrong by gut instinct,” or “my moral thought finds guidance in my emotions,” or “I just know the right thing to do.” At each of these points, where you argue that one or the other of these is the better means by which to “know right from wrong,” you are already using the faculty of reason to decide. This is how Kant proves his point; that by engaging in a debate over which is the proper way to know what is morally correct, you are already using your reason to answer that question. The mere bits of wrangling you do is only to argue for what you think is the proper means by which to know what is morally right. However, in the end, it is your reason which serves as the judge to tell you what you can accurately depend upon to know right from wrong.

Kant argued that all of us use our reason as the judge by which to know what is morally right from wrong, and that only humans possess the faculty that enables us to do so. Furthermore, he stated, to be rational is to be moral. That is, if we all engage our reason properly, we should all act in the same morally right fashion. To be immoral then is to be irrational in a certain sense. In this respect, Kant argued is that there is one proper way by which we can know in every circumstance, independent of any consequence, just by thinking about it, what is Morally Right, and what is Morally Wrong, and that he had formulated the means by which we could do so.

Let me switch gears here for a moment to get into something relevant (even if seemingly out of order). Kant wanted to specify exactly what we meant when people used the word “should.” In some cases, he noticed, we use the word should in a more conditional, or hypothetical sense. For example, we say, “If you want to get an ‘A’ in this class, then you should study diligently.” Or moreover, “if you want to stay out of jail, you shouldn’t break the law” (or not get caught, or have money for O.J.’s lawyer, etc.). The way we understand these sentences, is to consider our personal or shared goals, or what we desire for ourselves or others. The binding force upon any of these “should’s” is our desire to do them, otherwise, in order to change the “should” or to change what we hypothetically ought to do, all we need to change is our goals or wants.

However, Kant noticed that this isn’t the way people talk, or what we mean, when discussing what is morally right or wrong, at least not in the sense of what is absolutely right or wrong. When we speak of what is morally right or wrong, we tend to speak in the following manner: You ought to do such and such, period. For example, when we speak of murder, we don’t say “if you don’t want to go to jail, you shouldn’t kill,” or more interestingly, we don’t say, “if you don’t like that person, then you should kill them.” What we do say is, “murder is wrong, period.”

Kant said that statements of this type are “categorical,” because they apply to all instances of that particular action. In the case of murder, we say that “murder” is categorically wrong; there are never circumstances under which murder is permissible[1]. As such, Kant knew that we needed a way to determine the merely hypothetical uses of the word “should” from the uses of the word “should” that were of the categorical type. To do this, he formulated the Categorical Imperative.

Remember, I remarked earlier that Kant believed that absolute moral laws existed, and were as real as the laws of geometry, algebra, calculus, and all of mathematics. Another quality that Kant noticed about mathematics was that all mathematical laws had three distinct properties. One, they were all known a priori, which is to say, they were all known “before the fact” (literal translation). In the case of mathematics, this is quite easy to see—no right triangle ever had to exist anywhere in nature in order for Pythagoras’ theorem to hold true of any right triangle, if any ever did happen to exist. Likewise for Kant and morality—he believed that if there were moral laws, we could know them without having to act first to determine what exactly were the consequences of our actions. In a certain sense, he argued that there never need have been humans for these moral laws to exist, but that they would still be knowable to a being that possessed the faculty of reason. (Likewise, most, if not all of you understand this. For instance, the Ten Commandments in the Bible were God’s laws for how he said humans should live, i.e., “thou shalt not kill.” As an all-knowing God, God would have known what these laws were even before God created humans.)

Two, the laws would all possess the property of consistency. Not only would these laws never contradict each other, but also, these laws, when applied, would never produce a situation in which you could no longer apply them, nor would they, once applied, lead to a situation in which they resulted in a contradiction in terms. In math this is quite clear. The laws of algebra, calculus, trig, geometry, never lead into a situation in which they are in conflict with each other (quite the contrary actually, as all of the theorems, postulates, and the results of the proofs all hinge together systematically). Kant thought this was also true of the laws of morality. Just as consistently applying the notion that “vertical angles are equal” (for example) would never lead to a case in which you could no longer apply that understanding; so too would the laws of morality, once discovered, ever lead to a situation in which you could no longer apply them, or a situation in which they resulted in a contradiction in terms. If they did, then they truly weren’t absolute moral laws (because they would not apply in all circumstances consistently).

Three, the laws would possess the property of universality. In mathematics, my application of the theorems of geometry will never interfere with your application of those same laws, and vice-versa. Likewise, any human who wants, and possesses the proper amount of understanding and the faculty of reason can also apply them; to such an extent, we can confidently assert that all humans could follow the laws of mathematics. Likewise, for a law of morality to qualify as an absolute moral law, there would be no human exceptions to these rules (they would apply to Kings and subjects alike). Moreover, every human could follow these laws without making it so that other humans could no longer follow these laws.

All right, we’ve finally arrived at the point where I can tell you exactly how Kant discovered what these laws were. Just as each branch of mathematics tells us the mechanisms by which we can arrive at further corollaries, further proofs (in geometry), precise calculations (in calculus), etc., so to does there exist a means by which we can know if a particular “should” statement is actually an absolute moral law. As I mentioned before, Kant called this mechanism (treat it quite literally as a type of computer), the Categorical Imperative. Here’s what it is and says:

Act only according to that maxim that you can at the same time will to be

Universal Law.

“Huh?” Right. By maxim, Kant means take any statement that you want to know if it is or isn’t a universal law. Consider the following case, you’re talking to one of your professors, about why an assignment is late, and you want to know, “is it O.K. for me to lie to this professor?” Kant says that what you really mean in this case is “is it morally right to lie?” To determine the answer, Kant says to first treat your question as if it were already a true statement. To this effect, you would then say of your situation, “it is morally right to lie.”

But we want to know then, if that maxim (“It is morally right to lie”) can actually count as an absolute moral law. To determine this, Kant says that you should apply the categorical imperative to that particular statement by asking yourself “What if everyone did that?” Or in other words, consider the statement, “It is morally right for everyone to lie.” In order to determine if this is true, all we must figure out is if the universal law “It is o.k. for everyone to lie” possesses the three qualities that Kant says every and any universal law must possess.

O.K., so you say, “it is morally right for everyone to lie.” What happens once you say this? Well Kant noticed something about lying—it only works if people generally tend to trust each other. If a stranger approached you in a bar and asked you the time, they generally tend to think that you will tell them the time truthfully. The same is true for your professor listening to the reasons an assignment is late. However, if you were to argue (as a universal law) the notion that lying is morally acceptable, then everyone would know that it is morally right to lie, and the background of trust upon which lies were possible would eventually disappear. Once that occurred, no one could even possibly lie anymore, because all people would view every statement with suspicion, the necessary communicational level of trust required for a successful application of the law would erode, and no one could any longer lie at all. Hence, you would have a situation in which the law could no longer be applied, and as such, it would not possess the criterion of consistency. As such, we can say of the statement, “it is morally right to lie,” is not a universal law.

Now, consider the maxim, “it is morally right to tell the truth.” We run that through the categorical imperative, and ask the question, “what if everyone did that?” at which point you would say, “It is morally right for everyone to tell the truth.” Then we see if that universal law possesses the three qualities that any absolute moral law would need to have if it were truly an absolute moral law.

We can know before hand by using the categorical imperative whether or not any given maxim is a universal law (that is to say, we can work it out in our heads). As such, any universal law possesses the criteria of being a priori.

Also, we can see that everyone can apply this law equally, as there are no problems of universality involved with the application of “it is morally right for everyone to tell the truth.” If everyone understands that it is morally right to tell the truth, everyone can still always tell the truth; unlike the case in lying.

Finally, consider consistency. By stressing categorically that everyone tell the truth in all situations, we may find ourselves with some angry people occasionally (“no, actually I hated that gift.”), but we would never find ourselves in a situation in which the law could no longer be applied, nor would it ever create a contradiction with other moral laws. As such, the statement, “It is morally right for everyone to tell the truth” is actually an absolute moral law that any person, by using their reason, would discover, and by being rational, would then follow, hence making them a moral person.

Kant also thought that he had discovered three other Absolute moral laws, that in tandem with one another, could produce moral instruction enough for every rational person to handle themselves morally in life. The three others were: one, a prohibition against murder; two, a prohibition against stealing; and three, a law that says that we should help those in need. Others have suggested a few more, such as the law that says that, "we should strive to preserve innocent human life" (fits all three criteria). You can work out for yourselves how the other three possess all the properties, and thereby satisfy the requirements to be absolute laws of morality.

Interestingly enough, Kant’s theory has applications to Business Ethics as well, as you could probably discover on your own. For example, take the prohibition against lying—we have an absolute moral law that tells us categorically always to tell the truth. Think of every situation in the business world where you can understand this to apply. Honesty on your resume, telling the truth in sales presentations, not cheating on your taxes, truth in advertising (what “counts” as a lie, is debatable of course), and the need to faithfully follow environmental regulations, etc. Many more situations exist, some of which you may have already encountered on your internships or current jobs—or as Kant would argue, that cheating your company is wrong, as is using the internet for personal reasons (which he would argue is a form of theft).

People are attracted to Kant’s way of thinking because it provides crystal clear, straightforward, and most importantly, a logical way by which we can know (without a doubt!) what is right and what is wrong. People are also attracted to it because Kant suggests that because we are rational creatures, we are duty bound to follow the dictates of reason, to adhere to the universal laws. This understanding provides a great deal of moral force to any moral argument.

Likewise, people have also suggested (other philosophers mostly), that from Kant’s absolute laws of morality, you can also derive certain other morally desirable categories. For instance, if there is a law that says “we should never lie,” and one that says, “we should always tell the truth,” then it follows from these laws that we have both a duty to be honest, and also, that we have a right to be told the truth. (As a contrast, the basis for the Constitutional Rights that you and I possess derive from arguments given in John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, which we will read a selection from later.)

From this derivation of rights and duties from the moral laws, we can gain other rights too. For instance, if we have a duty not to steal (since the moral law says, “don’t steal”) then we also have a right to property—a very useful thing in the real world of Business Ethics, especially concerning information piracy, patents, copyrights, what is and what isn’t the intellectual property of the corporation when someone develops it while working there and then leaves the company, etc. All of these rights and duties, and most importantly, if we are commanded by the absolute law “not to kill” then each of us has that most important of rights, the Right to Life. (Note, you can figure out via your own arguments if this applies to fetuses—one does not have to be both a Kantian and a Pro-Lifer—email me if you care to hear about this).

One last thing: Kant had a second formulation of the categorical imperative that he put in the following terms:

Act always to treat humanity, whether in yourself or in others, as an ends

only, and never as a means to an end.

Kant thought that using the categorical imperative in this form would produce the same set of laws, by having us ask “does following this maxim have us treat people as a means, or as an ends-in-themselves.” Consider stealing, if we steal from someone, say to take money to pay our bills, then we are treating that person as a means to serve our own ends, and not as a person with ends in themselves, with their own equally valid uses for that money. The same goes for murder for whatever reason, the same goes for honesty—lying to someone manipulates them, treating them as a means to your end, and for Kant, is never permissible.

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[1] To treat Kant fairly, he did understand the difference between killing in self-defense, obviously not murder, and he believed strongly in capital punishment, which he also did not consider as murder.

Review of Michel Houellebecq's novel, "Whatever"

The Next Camus?

During my last week of a long stay in London, I made my weekly purchase of Time Out London, went to check the theatre listings, but stopped short at the table of contents when an interesting book review caught my attention. The reviewer heralded the by-line of his weekly column with the staggering claim, "the next Camus." Having read The Stranger in college and all of Camus' prose works since, I quickly flipped the pages to the critic's account of first-time novelist's Michel Houellebecq's Whatever (the very rough English translation of his title). Drawn in by the review, I rushed out of the West End flat where I was living, and hurried off to WaterStones (England's answer to Barnes and Nobles), to find numerous copies prominently displayed on the front table. The inside of the dust jacket heralded resplendent praise for Whatever, including numerous awards (the Prix Flore among them), and general acclaim for Houellebecq as the Camus heir ascendant. One critic went so far as to call Whatever "The Stranger for the info generation." The volume itself was slim, and turning over the jacket, I discovered the price, nearly nine pounds—about eighteen dollars at the time, and a good bit to pay for a first novel, even if Camus himself had written it. I passed up the purchase, thinking that I'd pick the book up in the states in a week.

The anticipation I experienced while waiting to read this book found that patience is sometimes unrewarded. The novel carries itself under the voice of a single unnamed narrator, who in addition to his own anticipation approaching thirty, displays the bitter attitude of a person filled with disgust at the world around him. In this, he despairs over seeing his glorious French culture reduced to a commercialized nightmare of sex phone lines, meaningless indulgence in crass materialism and unbridled technology, and the emptiness of unfulfilling jobs. At one point, while gazing into a sunset from the platform of a train station, he thinks, "there could be five or six red suns out there and it wouldn't make a jot of difference to the course of my meditations. I don't like this world. The society in which I live disgusts me; advertising sickens me; computers make me puke."

Houellebecq's narrator, in addition to his job as a systems administrator, divests his leisure time in the writing of illuminating discussions between various animals. In one of these, entitled, "Dialogues Between a Dachshund and a Poodle," Houellebecq reaches a level of unanticipated clarity, doling out to the reader such truffles of wisdom as "Sexuality is a system of social hierarchy," which he subsequently refers to as a "noble truth." Such perceptive discourse allows the narrator to then compare, in a story-within-a-story contrivance, complete sexual liberalism with complete market-economy liberalism, dispassionately observing that each system makes paupers of some while allowing others to accumulate huge fortunes and numerous conquests. This of course, more than implying that the failure of an individual's attractiveness and lack of sexual activity can be attributed to an obvious defect of the unrestrained economics of the sexual "system" in play (and one thought Foucault, and not Marx was the fashion in Paris today)

The French philosophers, famous in this century for giving the world the notion of "the other" finally begin praising the infusion of their own self-imbued ideologies in the arts. In Houellebecq's case, and the ultra-chauvinism of the French all-around, this manifests itself as the all-too-American extremist claim of blaming social dysfunction on technology, consumerism, and a capitalist economy (who remembers reading the Unabomber's manifesto on the very same?). Leaving aside the obvious mistake of understanding the economy of France as an unrestrained free-market capitalism (forty percent of the French people are employed by the French government), Houellebecq's narrator becomes the outsider to this system, unable to participate in the simple joys of modem life that occupy the attention and emotions of those around him.

The difference here, between Houellebecq's narrator and Camus’ Mersault is striking: the latter's indifference and isolation stemmed from a severe existential response ("what does it matter if I do X or Y or Z...that same cool wind blows in from the future" for all of us), and Camus never allowed his characters (true to the rigorous individualism of existentialism) to place the blame for their isolation on any source less abstract than the fact of facing one's personal existence itself.

Houellebecq's success lies in giving us characters suffering their angst a decade after their teens—he presents the young as floating through a world filled with energy and joy, a world against which his narrator stands as the other to them, imagining that his misery, isolation, and re­directed self-loathing naturally result from leaving that carefree world behind.

Furthermore, where Camus, in The Stranger provided a beginning in Mersault's eventual attitude towards death—the facing of that certainty, Houellebecq's unnamed protagonist provides nothing more than a dead end, a parable, if anything, of where feigned self-pitying and deflected bitterness can lead. Where other critics were kinder, seeing his character's attempts at generalizing about the "human condition" (something one would expect current French critics and writers to deride in severe humor), as the results of nearly universal isolation in the information age, it is quite clear that the dispassionate state of Houellebecq's narrator is self-inflicted, and he only attempts to drag the other characters of the novel down with him. While most of the anti-technology literati tailor such an interpretation to suit their already cynical-nostalgic view of the modem world, the last lines of the book make my understanding painfully clear. Lying in a daffodil covered pastoral meadow, Houellebecq's narrator's last thoughts finally run (at thirty, no less) existential: "I feel my skin again as a frontier; and the external world as a crushing weight. The impression of separation is total; from now on I am imprisoned within myself. It will not take place, the sublime fusion; the goal of life is missed. It is two in the afternoon."

The comparison of Houellebecq's novel to Camus' quickly becomes a study in contrasts. Mersault presented us with the even-tempered, not-of-this-world portrayal of the well-known myths of Christ or Buddha; the narrator of Whatever gives us only a representation of bitterness, and a bitterness poorly portrayed. I cannot deny that I laughed out loud quite a bit during the earlier parts of the book, where the introduction to the character and the state of his social world is first cynically depicted, but pressing on, I began to realize that I've seen this kind of humor before. But barring that, the barbed tone of the narrator's voice never changes, and like a comedian's over-used shtick, it loses its humor quickly. The French, two-steps behind America this whole century, are now astonishing themselves with the misanthropic humor that stand-up comedians and novelists like Vonnegut, DeLillo, and Salinger have been producing for decades. More so, when the book finally turned violent (the main character hatches a plan to murder a beautiful young woman and the man she leaves a club with, "because" of this system of social hierarchy that he resents), it occurred to me that I've more recently seen this particular brand of humor, and the references to the effects of consumerism more effectively done in Ellis's American Psycho. The comparison's to even that book must end here, simply because, in giving us such a powerful figure derived from the various myths of Don Juan, Ellis did a far better job representing the isolating and dehumanizing effects (if any) of an acquisition-based consumerist culture. But Houellebecq as the next Camus? Whatever.

"How to Write a Case Study Analysis" Developed for Business Ethics (Philosophy 352) at Widener University

PHIL 352 Business Ethics Prof. Rutter

Widener University Fall 2001

Handout: How to do a Case Study Analysis

The case study analysis will appear differently than most other papers you have previously written. This assignment requires a very methodical format, and adherence to the layout will constitute a significant part of your grade. Let me state that in clearer terms: If you do not follow the exact format presented here, the highest grade you will receive is a B. Where style is concerned, consider a case study as part story, part moral consideration, part science/technical writing (especially the latter in the strict analysis of the issues involved), and all argument. The syllabus calls for 3-5 pages in order to do a decent job. I don’t think that anything less than 3 pages will suffice; in the past, students have submitted case studies that took up 10 pages double-spaced—the complexity of the issues involved will in part determine the length of the paper. Having said that, realize that the complexity of the issues involved will also make up a part of your grade as well. A straightforward, simple, and obvious “moral dilemma” will receive a lower grade than a more complex case that includes a greater analysis of the issues (even if the latter is not as well constructed).

Case Study Format:

1. Briefly state the case you plan to discuss (in story form if you like, see the last pages of each chapter of the textbook for examples in their “decision scenarios”). Take care to specify the principal moral agents involved, and the moral dilemma presented.
   For example, the case “Is it right for the CEO of Company X to bribe foreign officials in order to secure contracts for a failing company?”
   Please also understand that this is a very good example because it presents a very straightforward, yet complex moral problem, thereby offering varying levels for analysis. It does this by first involving the practices of a foreign country, thereby engaging ethical conflict between the legal duty to follow U.S. law versus the duty to adhere to the customs of the host country. Second, the case centers around the decision of a CEO, whose responsibilities to the company and shareholders place duties upon her that differ from the duties of other workers. Third, the case includes the notion of “drastic measures” that companies sometimes use to justify decisions.
   If you use an actual historical case (you cannot use one that the book discusses), then you must include all of the relevant names, dates, and in certain occasions, the laws that provide the framework for the analysis. At the same time, you should recognize that the legal issues here are not what you are to discuss in the paper. This paper is solely about solving the moral dilemma at stake.
   By the end of this section, one thing must appear clearly—the exact action that you will judge as either moral or immoral.
2. State and briefly discuss what would count as possible alternatives to the moral dilemma or ethical issue that you plan to resolve in your paper. Use your imagination here to consider and explain various alternatives. (In many cases, qualifying conditions present more alternatives to what at first appears a simple “yes or no” type problem.)
3. Determine all those affected by the action in question, and argue for their inclusion in the consideration of the moral problem at hand. That means, justify why you think they should be included (if not moral agents directly involved in the decision). However, don’t detail this for more than a paragraph or two, as it is possible to use the same justification for the inclusion of many or all affected by the action, and you don’t need to discuss each one separately. Additionally, if there is some group or party that you do not think deserves consideration in your argument, but which commonly would receive inclusion (for example, think of the discussion about whether or not children are affected by the marketing of the “Death Row Marv” toy) then please also explain why you exclude this group or groups (meaning, justify your exclusion of them on philosophical grounds).
4. Determine whether the issue at hand more clearly requires a utilitarian justification or a justification based on rights, duties, and/or conceptions of justice. If a rights-based analysis applies, state which rights and duties you believe apply to this case and why. If you plan to use utilitarian calculations, explain briefly why that type of consideration outweighs a consideration of what rights, if any, seem to pertain to those in the case you examine.
5. Using your answers to steps three and four, decide and rank the status of all those affected—if an obviously dominant moral consideration of one or more of the affected parties exists, please state it and briefly explain the reasons why that counts as the dominant moral consideration.
6. Using your answer to numbers three, four, and five, outline, detail, and justify your moral decision in the case involved. This should take up the largest part of the paper--at least several paragraphs. In this section, you should attempt to justify the consequences of your decision in terms of utility or rights (based on your answer to step four) for all the parties affected. Clearly state and explain (argue) your moral reasoning process—including relevant aspects of business, the law, and social considerations that apply. Additionally, any practical solution you can envisage for the problem (such as the mediation in the Napster case, or Napster’s proposed one billion dollar payoff), should appear in this section.
7. Consider how someone who disagreed with your analysis might argue for either a different ranking of the parties involved, or argue that others are more adversely affected than you had determined, or how someone who disagreed might argue for a different decision in the matter, or even how someone might come up with a different practical solution. But use discretion here, and avoid setting up your opponent's position as a straw man. Then explain why your solution works better to solve the problem at hand. This should cover two paragraphs or so.
8. Finally, state whether or not you would personally handle the matter in this way, if faced with the same or relatively similar situation your business affairs. If you would act accordingly, briefly state why your specific considerations (role responsibilities, duties, or rights, or your specific moral perspective) would contribute to that decision. If you would not act as you had decided in steps one through seven, determine why and how you could reconcile that reluctance with the analysis you have just provided. (Here, the answer “I wouldn’t act accordingly because “morality doesn’t carry over terribly well to practical matters and is mostly academic” is a claim I sympathize with, but cannot accept, due to my own role-based professional responsibilities.)

Some Brief Notes on Cultural Relativism, used in Philosophy 352 (Business Ethics) and Philosophy 350 (Ethics) at Widener University

Philosophy 352

Business Ethics

Widener University

Jim Rutter

Some Brief Notes on Cultural Relativism:

To give you some insight into Relativism as a theory, and her theoretical implications, I’ll start with a brief historical perspective. Herodotus, in his “Histories,” writes down one story concerning the court of King Darius of Persia, one of the largest empires at the time. King Darius was a man devoted to learning, and understanding the world around him, so one day he called before his court representatives from the Callatians, and representatives from Greece. It was well known at the time that the Callatians, when someone would die, would eat the bodies of their dead fathers. In differing fashion, the Greeks would hold a funeral pyre and cremate the bodies of their dead.

Darius called the Callatians before him and asked what it would take for them to burn the bodies of their dead fathers. They, of course, were shocked and horrified, and refused to answer, offering that no amount of money or reward could persuade them to treat the bodies of their fathers in this manner. Then Darius brought the Greek representatives before him and asked them if there was any way in which they could be convinced to eat the bodies of their dead. The Greeks likewise appeared shocked, and refused to treat the dead in such a fashion.

This brief story appears often in the realm of social science, and illustrates a common moral theme: That different cultures have different moral codes (Rachels, p.16). Plenty of other examples abound: in India, it used to be customary (and in some parts still is), to offer to share one’s wife with an overnight guest. In Japan, insider trading is still a common practice, and the bribing of high officials to secure contracts counts as a standard business operating procedure. (In similar fashion to the Callatians and Greeks above, when this practice was discovered as standard operating practice by American companies in Japan, the outrage was so great that President Carter decided to pass the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 1976.) In Italy, the practice of filing corporate taxes involves the hiring of a commercialista, who negotiates a company’s yearly revenue with the Italian Tax official, including as his “fee” a bucharista, some of which is a bribe to the tax official to secure favorable “income reportage” for the company he or she represents in this process.

The upshot of all of this turns into a theory proposed by late 19^th and early 20^th Century social scientists and philosophers that we now know and understand as Cultural Relativism. These thinkers observe the variety of ethical norms between different cultures and conclude from those observations that morality itself is not something absolute, but something that is dependent upon culture, history, economics, and circumstance. Their argument is summed up in what philosophers refer to as the “Cultural Differences Argument.” The argument goes as follows:

Different Cultures have different moral codes;

Therefore, there is no objective truth in morality.

You can see how this pans out more clearly if you use something specific, such as:

The Callatians believe that eating your dead is the morally correct/right thing to;

The Greeks, however, believe that this is immoral;

Therefore, eating your dead is neither objectively right or objectively wrong. It is

merely a matter of cultural opinion, and this type of opinion varies from culture to

culture.

Now, to many people this seems like a very sound argument, and before we examine the validity of the inference (deriving the conclusion from the premise), we’ll take a look at some of the other beliefs held by Cultural Relativists. (The following table appears in Rachels, p.18.)

Beliefs/Claims made by or held by Cultural Relativists:

1. Different Societies have different moral codes.
2. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code as better (or worse, mind you) than any other.
3. The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many.
4. There is no “universal truth” in ethics—that is, there are no moral truths that hold for all peoples at all times.
5. The moral code of a society determines what is right or wrong within that society—that is, if the moral code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least for member of, or within, that society.
6. It is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the conduct of other peoples. We should adopt an attitude of tolerance towards the practices of other cultures.

You should note here that no particular relativist must believe all of these at once. None of them are deducible from the others in a strict logical sense although they all cohere relatively well (no pun intended) with each of the other statements. (Basically, any one of them might still hold true even if any of the others are proven false.)

Justification:

When I speak of how a moral theory is justified, I am referring to the argument that attempts to prove the theory true, or prove that the theory or principles of the theory are morally correct. For example, the “cultural differences” argument is one of the ways in which some relativists attempt to show that their belief that “there is no objective morality” is true, and that argument also lends support to any and all of the six beliefs listed above. You should note, at this point, that the main upshot of cultural relativism concerns the possibility of objectivity in our moral beliefs.

All that said, I think I should say a few brief words about “objectivity” as it applies to moral thinking. When philosophers and moralists speak of the objectivity of their beliefs, they mean two things. One, they mean that it is possible for moral beliefs or principles to attain objective status (they actually assume this most of the time, it is implied). Two, by objective, they mean that what they hold as true, or morally right, or morally just is true, right, or just, for all people, at all times, even before there were people. So that, if something is right for me to do (say, protecting innocent life), then it is right for all people at all times, in all cultures, in every society, even before there were people or cultures. Certainly, exceptions apply in some of the cases, especially where Absolute Moral Rules conflict with one another. However, on the main, people who believe in Absolute, or Objective Moral Theories, believe that they are true, and the exceptions, if existing at all, are tremendously rare.

Relativists attempt to justify their position through an appeal to what they call the “Cultural Differences Argument.” The argument runs as follows:

Different Cultures have different moral codes;

Therefore, there can be no objective truth about morality.

I’ll explain this a bit more. Relativists have noticed that any possible code of morals, or any set of moral beliefs is tied to a set of historical, or social, or cultural phenomena. As such, those people who believe that morality can be objective are mistaken, because each culture has come up with its own code over time, and as such, the possibility of the existence of an objective code is zero.

For example, consider the Ten Commandments. If ever there existed a moral code that seemed to have a universal status, it would be those, right? After all, God Himself is the ultimate backing for such a code of morality, being both all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful; certainly, He could have created a code by which everyone at all times could have lived, right? The relativists will tell you “no.” The way the Hebrews believed about God, was there way of believing, the Ten Commandments were there specific, relative moral code, relative to their society, and their times. For instance, it can’t possibly be the case that God expected non-Hebrews to not work on the Sabbath, can it? Certainly those people who didn’t believe in one God wouldn’t be forbidden to create other false images, right? Those two commandments easily illustrate the cultural and contextual nature of the alleged universal laws handed down to humans from God. (Furthermore, who in this culture thinks we should honor our parents and accept their values and judgments as our own? And adultery? Forget about it, right?)

The argument has several flaws, but there’s a test question on that, and I will let you figure it out on your own. Suffice it to say, the argument starts off talking about “what is the case,” and then ends up talking about the possibility of something existing at all. Go look at the test question and I’m sure you’ll see at least one of the more logical errors committed by the “cultural differences argument.”

Some consequences of taking cultural Relativism seriously:

All told, Relativism appeals to many. The argument, while flawed, still strikes a convincing tone. On its surface, relativism provides the sort of “enlightened” or relaxed approach to many practices we realize our culture doesn’t condone (take for instance, at Charles De Gaulle’s funeral, his wife was photographed hand-in-hand with his life-long mistress). Additionally, relativism promotes tolerance towards the views and practices of others, and we’re all constantly told how great it is to be tolerant of others. (Right?)

However, some consequences of relativism become more serious upon examination.

One, we lose the ability to judge other cultures by an independent or objective standard. If no such standard exists in truth, and we cannot convincingly say that any standard achieves objectivity, then we can’t look at other cultures and condemn the more malignant activities that take place there. Relativists cannot hold trials at Nuremberg or The Hague (where Nazi SS troopers and currently, Milosevic are being tried, respectively). In fact, a relativist cannot say to Hitler and the Nazi’s, that what they did “was wrong,” because in order to say that, you would need a standard outside of both the standards of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, etc. in order to make such a condemnation. But, for a relativist, no such standard exists.

Two, if you want to know if a certain practice is right or wrong, you merely need to look around at your culture. This becomes problematic because very few of us think that our culture is 100% perfect in all of its moral or legal practices. This also creates difficulty when you apply it to the cultures we deplore. For instance, in 1863, a relativist living in Georgia, wanting to know whether slavery was right or wrong, would only have to look at what was going on in Georgia, namely, slavery. As such, a relativist living in pre-Civil War South, would have to accept slavery as what was morally right or morally correct. Few of us seem willing to do this, but this is precisely what a relativist would have to accept.

Three, the notion of moral progress disappears. If you lack an independent or objective standard for deciding what is right and wrong, then you similarly lack the ability to say confidently (after all, you could kid yourself) that a change in views or practices was a step forward. What would it mean for a relativist to make such a claim? Without an objective standard, how could a relativist claim that the change in belief or custom was a positive step forward, how could they say that the change made them morally better? The short answer is that they couldn’t. (Email me if you really want to hear the long answer).

Four, and along a similar pattern as number three, we also lose the idea of a moral hero, or a moral villain. Hitler becomes someone we simply disagreed with, or whose practices, because of our own preferences, we simply don’t like. Abraham Lincoln, by contrast, in freeing the slaves, didn’t do any thing that was morally heroic, because a relativist no longer possesses a morally objective standard by which to judge his actions as great or heroic.

You can still decide that relativism is the moral theory of choice for you, but in order to be consistent, you would have to accept those four consequences as your own. Relativism does provide much in terms of descriptive ethics (a kind of sociological approach to ethics, see textbook for more details), and as a moral theory that tells us how we should act, relativism scores for many readers.

Some of the consequences for Business Ethics would be the reversal of standard U.S. law, and allowing corporations to do business with host countries on their own terms, rather than following the limitations proscribed to them by the United States. For example, in 1976 Carter passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which, among other things, made it illegal for anyone working as a representative or agent of a U.S. corporation to engage in the act of bribery of an official of any foreign government. However, in many countries, such bribes are not only routine, but are considered part of the standard practice of their culture and economy. A relativist approach allows us to engage in these practices with both tolerance and a greater freedom in the business world.

Works Cited:

Rachels, James. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. Prentice Hall, New York: 1992.