Furthering Philippa Foot

Ethics
234

Sure, but Foot really does think the consequentialist has defaulted on the ethical, and she begins wrestling with Kant even from her early years. For example, she eventually came to believe that her “etiquette” arguments against Kant had failed. The moral virtues had always been fairly easy for her to incorporate, with the exception of the virtue of justice.

Here is the exact quote about “disinterested justice” that I was referring to:

To be sure, in ‘Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives’ I had (rather inconsistently with my doubts about the rational status of morals) allowed considerations of self-interest an independent ‘rea­son-giving’ force. But this didn’t help with the rationality of disin­terested justice, which rationality I was, rather scandalously, inclined to restrict to those whose desires were such as to allow them to be described as lovers of justice. I have therefore, rightly, been accused by my critics of reintroducing subjectivity at the level of rationality while insisting on objectivity in the criteria of moral right and wrong.

Philippa Foot, Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake?, 4

This actually goes back to the point I made to you in the thread on moral nihilism. The fact/value distinction is not the same as the is/ought distinction, and therefore overcoming the former is not the same as overcoming the latter, at least if we include things like ‘disinterested justice’ in the category of ‘ought’. Foot was aware of the complication from an early date, and this is because of the syllogism:

  1. All evaluative moves can be subsumed under the notion of self-interest
  2. Not all ‘ought’ moves can be subsumed under the notion of self-interest
  3. Therefore, not all ‘ought’ moves are reducible to evaluative moves

For Foot (2) is proved by the virtue of justice, which requires a disinterest that is not fully compatible with self-interest. Note that this virtue of justice is not restricted to Kant. Aristotle affirms it too (although just yesterday I was listening to a Kantian who quipped that Aristotle was not entitled to it).

For early Foot (and also early Anscombe) I would phrase it like this:

    1. Act X is unjust
  • 2a. Injustice is bad
  • 2b. Unjust acts are wrong
    1. Therefore, X should not be done

Whether one wants to use 2a or 2b, (2) represents the difficult premise for Foot and Anscombe.

Foot: Morality As A System Of Hypothetical Imperatives