Frontiers of justice: disability, nationality, species membership

Abstract

rather "as a nexus of distinctive sensibilities, cares, and concerns that are expressed in distinctive patterns of emotional and practical response" (p.236).Drawing on Philippa Foot and Simone Weil, Wiggins draws out the moral significance of solidarity and recognition."In recognizing another person, we recognize not merely a subject of consciousness but a being who will seek to interpret us even as we seek to interpret him or her" (p.243).The priority of primitive aversions, with which Wiggins began, is then linked to acts that violate solidarity and deny recognition.What if we must violate basic deontological rules to prevent catastrophe?Wiggins responds with a fifth moral category "subsuming the ordinary passably virtuous agent's concern to preserve the very conditions under which human civilization will survive and/or ordinary morality can make its characteristic demands on normal human life" (p.259).It is a mistake, as consequentialists do, to model the whole of morality on these emergency cases.Wiggins resolutely defends a "piecemeal" approach to morality."[T]hose who despise the piecemeal . . .cut themselves off from all sorts of truths that bear closely on the questions they ask. . . .In so far as the case for morality can be stated briefly, all that can be said is that, in a way already illustrated, it is the most enterprising and durable expression that a human being will find for the benevolent dispositions he or she can discover within himself or herself " (p.265).This intriguing book is not aimed at teenage undergraduates, who will find Wiggins a very difficult and frustrating read.Ethics would certainly not be a suitable text for introductory ethics classes.Its target audience is rather those who, while beginners in philosophy, are not beginners in life.Such readers will still find Wiggins challenging (and, at times, opaque and old-fashioned), but they may also find him an intriguing and provocative guide as they seek to apply moral philosophy to moral life.