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    Morality in Context
    Morality in Context
    Morality in Context
    Ebook753 pages10 hours

    Morality in Context

    By Elsevier Science

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    About this ebook

    Morality in context is a timely topic. A debate between philosophers and social scientists is a good way to approach it. Why is there such a booming interest in morality and why does it focus on context? One starting point is the change in the sociostructural and sociocultural conditions of modern societies. This involves change in the empirical conditions of moral action and in the social demand on morality.

    As these changes are accounted for and analyzed in the social sciences, new perspectives emerge that give rise to new ways of framing issues and problems. These problems are best addressed by way of cooperation between philosophers and social scientists. As Habermas (1990) has pointed out in a much cited paper, philosophers depend on social science to fill in the data they require to answer the questions raised by philosophy in its "placeholder" function. The reverse also holds true: Social science needs the conceptual clarifications that philosophy can provide. With respect to morality, such mutual interchanges are of particular importance the contributions to this book show convincingly.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherElsevier Science
    Release dateJul 25, 2005
    ISBN9780080456973
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      Book preview

      Morality in Context - Elsevier Science

      Morality in Context

      First Edition

      Wolfgang Edelstein

      Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin, Germany

      Gertmd Nunner-Winkler

      Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Munich, Germany

      2005

      ELSEVIER

      Amsterdam  –  Boston  –  Heidelberg  –  London  –  New York  –  Oxford

      Paris  –  San Diego  –  San Francisco  –  Singapore  –  Sydney  –  Tokyo

      Table of Contents

      Cover image

      Title page

      Copyright page

      Contributors

      1: Introduction

      1 Socio-Cultural Change

      2 Morality in Empirical Research and Philosophical Thinking

      3 The Debate Between Philosophers and Social Scientists

      4 The Design of This Book

      Part One

      Part Two

      Part Three

      Part Four

      Conclusion

      Part one: Constitutive aspects of morality (Philosophical issuel defining the moral domain)

      2: The Meaning of Moral Ought

      I

      II

      III

      3: Between Aristotle and Kant—Sketch of a Morality of Recognition

      I

      II

      III

      IV

      V

      Acknowledgments

      4: Contexts of Recognition—Comments on Axel Honneth’s Moral Perspective Beyond Aristotle and Kant

      5: Emotions and the Origins of Morality

      I The Shadow of the Object1

      II The Golden Age: Helplessness, Omnipotence, Basic Needs

      III Early Emotions: Holding, Love, Primitive Shame

      IV Disgust and the Borders of the Body

      V Playing Alone, the Ambivalence Crisis, and the Moral Defense

      VI Mature Interdependence and the Facilitating Environment

      VII The Neo-Stoic View Revised Again

      VIII Imagination and Narrative

      6: What Should Count as Moral Behavior? The Nature of Early Morality in Children’s Development

      Criteria of Morality in Everyday Understanding

      The Observations and the Early Morality Claim

      The Moral Interpretation of Toddlers’ Behavior

      Conclusion

      Part two: Issues of application

      7: Discourse in Context

      Norms and Context

      Discourses and Decisions

      Identity and Motivation

      Virtues and Roles

      Redirection of Discourse Ethics

      Acknowledgments

      8: Moral Intimacy and Moral Judgment—Tailoring General Theories to Personal Contexts

      1 Setting Up

      2 Philosophical Renovation

      3 Psychological Renovation

      Steps of Respect and Fairness

      Appendix A (Refresher-Outline of Kohlberg’s Stages)

      9: Moral Resilience—The Unhappy Moralist

      Moral Decision Making Under Pressure

      Forms of Moral Resilience

      Resilience in the Negotiation Process: Resistance to the Maximization Demand

      Explanations of Moral Resilience

      Resilience With Respect to Hiding Important Information

      Procedural Indignation: The Truth is Naked

      Resilient Negotiators: Unhappy Moralists

      Four Debatable Justifications For Not Having Been Resilient

      Moral Competence, Moral Performance, and the Question of Moral Resilience

      The Difficulty of Reconciling Success With Morality

      Moral Resilience and Claims for Universality

      10: Do Concepts Matter? The Impact of a Justice Framing on Responses to a Moral Dilemma—A Research Note

      1 Introduction—Morality and Justice

      2 Data: The Partnership Dilemma

      3 Theoretical Discussion

      4 Justice as Representative of the Political

      Part three: Morality in sociocultural context

      11: The Discontents and Contents in Cultural Practices—It Depends on Where You Sit

      Early Social Development and Social Conflicts

      Varying Perspectives on Cultural Practices

      Contexts for Concepts of Persons and Social Relationships

      Conclusion

      12: Changes in Moral Understanding—An Intergenerational Comparison

      Introduction: Moral-Philosophical Assumptions

      The Empirical Investigation

      Conclusion

      13: Is Community Compatible with Autonomy? Cultural Ideals Versus Empirical Realities

      The Integration of Community and Autonomy as an Ideal

      Community and Autonomy in the Morality of Caring

      Community and Autonomy in Cross-Cultural Perspective

      Conclusions and Implications

      14: Is Community Compatible with Autonomy? Some Comments to Joan Miller’s Research on Differing Moralities in India and the United States

      15: Reasoning About Moral Obligations and Interpersonal Responsibilities in Different Cultural Contexts

      Moral Obligations and Interpersonal Responsibilities

      The Development of Moral Obligations and Interpersonal Responsibilities

      Obligations and Responsibilities in Close Relationships: The Role of Context

      Obligations and Responsibilities in Close Relationships in a Cross-Cultural Perspective

      Moral Reasoning About a Friendship and a Parent-child Dilemma: An Empirical Study

      Reasoning About Obligations and Responsibilities in Friendship

      Reasoning About Obligations and Responsibilities in the Authority Dilemma

      Conclusion

      Part four Morality, autonomy, identity

      16: Partiality and Identity—Psychological Research on Preferential Behavior Toward Group Members

      1 Theoretical Background

      2 Perception of One’s Obligation to One’s Group

      3 Proposing and Testing Hypotheses Arising from the Theoretical Framework

      4 Partiality Reconsidered in Light of the Findings

      5 Conclusion

      Acknowledgments

      17: Culture, Context, and the Psychological Sources of Human Rights Concepts

      Studies of the Personal Domain

      Variations in the Rights to Freedom

      Conclusion

      18: To Forgive and Forget

      1 Introduction: On Contexts

      2 The Genealogy of Forgiving and Forgetting

      3 Forgiveness: Blotting Out the Sin or Covering It Up?

      4 Forgiveness as a Mental State, and the Duty to Forgive

      5 Forgiveness as a Gift or a Duty

      6 Returning

      7 Can Forgetting be Intentional?

      8 Forgiveness

      9 Second-Order Forgiveness

      10 The Final Twist

      Copyright

      Contributors

      1

      Introduction

      Gertrud Nunner-Winkler; Wolfgang Edelstein

      Morality in context is a timely topic. A debate between philosophers and social scientists is a good way to approach it.

      Why is there such a booming interest in morality and why does it focus on context? One starting point is the change in the sociostructural and sociocultural conditions of modern societies. This involves change in the empirical conditions of moral action and in the social demand on morality (1). As these changes are accounted for and analyzed in the social sciences, new perspectives emerge that give rise to new ways of framing issues and problems (2). These problems are best addressed by way of cooperation between philosophers and social scientists. As Habermas (1990) has pointed out in a much cited paper, philosophers depend on social science to fill in the data they require to answer the questions raised by philosophy in its placeholder function. The reverse also holds true: Social science needs the conceptual clarifications that philosophy can provide. With respect to morality, such mutual interchanges are of particular import (3)—as the contributions to this book show convincingly (4).

      1 Socio-Cultural Change

      In the wake of modernization, a number of social changes have emerged which increase the relevance of context for moral judgment. The following are core aspects of the process:

      Secularization.

      Confidence in a collectively shared interpretation of the world is eroding. With it vanishes a view of mankind as part of an encompassing unity that transcends the boundaries of individual lives and provides meaning and perspective to human striving, pain, and death. Increasingly, man is perceived as being left to himself—responsible for his actions and for their consequences. Kant’s maxim never to transgress a negative duty, not even to prevent greater harm, has lost its persuasive power. No longer can the faithful commit themselves to an omniscient God whatever the consequence of following one’s duties. Nietzsche proclaimed the death of the God who would provide for justice to reign in the long run. Thus, man is confronted with the consequences of his actions and feels compelled to take them into account when deciding upon a course of action. When rigid obedience to God’s commands no longer appears as a plausible course of action, contextualizing moral thinking is more strictly required. This presupposes an understanding of more abstract principles, such as impartiality, minimization of harm, and respect for the dignity of the person which guide the decision whether or not to allow for an exception from a specific rule. Such, in each situation the application of norms requires not only an analysis of the likelihood of possible consequences of an action but also of the interests, desires, and evaluations of all concerned.

      Technological and Scientific Progress.

      The potential for human action has increased immensely. This raises many new questions for which traditional moral understandings no longer offer clear-cut answers (cf. Böhme, 1997). To mention only a few examples: Should one keep comatose patients alive? For how long? Who—if anybody—is entitled to decide when lifesaving machinery may be turned off? Are we allowed to tinker with the human genome? Under what conditions? Is it justifiable to use cloning techniques in order to develop therapies for serious diseases? Is it permissible to use atomic energy given the unsolved problem of depositing atomic waste? Or is it even advisable given the negative effects on the climate of using coal, wood, and gas? To what extent should available technologies be used to observe and control humans? Such issues require contextualized information concerning probable or possible costs or benefits for concrete individuals, their families, society, future generations, and for mankind as a whole.

      Globalization.

      The expansion of world trade, communication, and business networks presupposes that people reach agreements in spite of great differences between their living conditions, and despite cultural differences in customs, religious or ideological persuasions, and the conceptualization of a good life. Rules must evolve that build a normative framework for international trade as well as for international conflict. This leads to more clear-cut distinctions between universally valid rules to be followed with respect to all human beings (negative duties, e.g., human rights), and culture-specific rules (positive duties) that regulate relations between persons involved in a common cooperative enterprise and that claim validity only for the interaction with members of one’s own group.

      Individualization.

      With the ongoing differentiation of social systems and facing migration and internationalization, a person’s position no longer permits inferences about his or her origin or predictions about his or her future. Thus, no one can anticipate which values a person will apply when deciding on the preferability of different courses of action.

      Pluralization.

      The problem of individualization is aggravated by the fact that no institutional consensus obtains concerning the hierarchy of values. A standard evaluation of likely costs and benefits can no longer be assumed to be shared by all. Rather, it has become necessary to take a concrete perspective in any situation.

      In sum, context has become increasingly relevant to morality with modernization. The main reason is that with secularization consequences must be considered. Further changes accompanying modernization increase the amount and kind of context information needed. This concerns probable consequences arising from risky actions. It further concerns value orientations prevailing in other cultures as well as value preferences of different individuals within a society which must be taken into account in order to reach consensus on moral decisions, or at least a fair compromise.

      2 Morality in Empirical Research and Philosophical Thinking

      Social changes affect philosophical and scientific thinking. Empirical approaches, research questions, the methodology and the interpretation of findings depend on global and frequently implicit assumptions about the nature of man, society, and science. These have undergone change concurrently with the sociocultural changes: Man is increasingly conceptualized not as passively subjected to social indoctrination and control, but as a competent actor who is able to shape his life freely. Thus, for example, moral research has highlighted norm conforming behavior, moral emotions and motives, and moral judgment, and focused on different learning mechanisms, such as conditioning; the development of superego controls or of need dispositions for conformity; an egosyntonic commitment to values. These mechanisms are based on widely differing beliefs concerning the existence of free will, the nature of values and human motives. In the following this will be illustrated briefly:

      To begin with behaviorism: In classical conditioning, norm conforming behavior is causally produced by immediately punishing deviant acts, thereby equating moral action with prudential behavior (If you wish to avoid punishment, avoid steeling; Skinner, 1971, p. 109). In contingent conditioning, behavioral tendencies are shaped by selectively rewarding spontaneously emitted reactions as they gradually approach desired ones, thus eliminating intentionality from moral behavior (If we can arrange the circumstances we can control behavior; Skinner, 1977, p. 277). However, there is also a learning theoretical model that allows for deliberate choice. It has been shown that children are guided not solely through punishments or rewards but also orient to exemplars. They imitate models that are powerful, interesting, or members of the same social category (e.g., same sex) based on curiosity or a competence motive (Bandura & Walters, 1963).

      Psychoanalytical theories explain conformity by learning mechanisms that can be read as internalized and generalized versions of classical and contingent conditioning. Thus, according to Freud’s account, the superego arises from an identification with paternal norms triggered by fear of castration. Henceforth, norms are followed to avoid negative consequences—not external punishment as in classical condition, but inner sanctions (pangs of conscience). According to Parsons’ theory, conformity develops very early as infants tend to comply (more or less unconsciously) with the expectations of their caretaker. Thereby, they avoid losing the love on which they have come to depend. Gradually, to act in conformity becomes a need disposition in the actor’s own personality structure (Parsons, 1964, p. 32) which is experienced as an almost natural and spontaneous desire—an outcome that is comparable to the effect of contingent conditioning experiences. More recent theorizing allows some freedom: In self-theory (e.g., Jacobson, 1964), adolescents are assumed to be able to work through early interaction experiences and thus to free themselves from the deterministic grip of their socialization history. In attachment theory (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Bell, 1978; Bowlby, 1972), children, from the very beginning, may follow rules set by a sensitive mother.

      In cognitive theories, learning has always been conceptualized as an active process of reconstructing rules that regulate cooperative efforts. According to Kohlberg, moral development follows a developmental logic. On the preconventional level, children assume that moral norms are valid because they are set by authorities and backed by sanctions, and will be obeyed in order to avoid punishment or to gain rewards. On the conventional level, norms are judged to be valid because they hold in one’s group or society, and they are followed to gain social acceptance or avoid a bad conscience. It is only at the postconventional level that moral principles are understood as intrinsically valid and followed because of their truth. However, recent research on children’s moral understanding has shown that even young children are able to differentiate moral rules (that hold universally, unalterably, and independent of God’s word) from conventional rules (that depend on authorities, hold only for specific groups and may be altered by agreement) as well as from religious rules (that hold for members only, depend on God’s word and, therefore, are not alterable by men; cf. Nucci &Turiel, 1993; Turiel, 1983). Moral motivation, on the other hand, develops in a second differential learning process during which children come to make morality a more or less important personal concern. Those who do care about morality wish to follow norms because they judge them to be right (Nunner-Winkler, 1998).

      In all three approaches, man was originally seen as largely determined by his conditioning or socialization experiences, norms were understood as ordained by authority, and conformity was taken to be motivated by inner or external sanctions. In more recent theories and research, this understanding has been replaced—or at least supplemented—by assumptions that leave some room for free will, for the intrinsic value of moral norms, and for noninstrumentalistic moral motives. Thus, the infant is seen as an active organism from the very start, constructivist learning processes are taken to be truth oriented, and man is conceptualized as capable of adopting value commitments and deciding about actions deliberately and consciously.

      In line with the claim of the coevolution of societal and personality structure as formulated by Norbert Elias (1978), these socialization-theoretical reconceptualizations can be seen to reflect real changes in the psychological makeup of individuals. Given extensive processes of urbanization and rising rates of mobility with a concomitant increase in anonymity, social controls loose grip: Self-control becomes a necessary prerequisite for the functioning of social systems. At the same time, given rapid changes in knowledge systems, increasing differentiation of social systems and specific contexts, self-control requires reflexive flexibility to an extent that is incompatible with conditioned response tendencies and strict internalization models.

      Moral philosophy has changed under the impact of secularization. In traditional societies, religious and moral commands were confounded. Only gradually has morality become differentiated from religion. This implied change in the way moral rules were justified. Norms no longer derived from God. For some time natural law functioned as a kind of secular substitute for the wisdom of the divine creator. But increasingly, the persuasive power of this concept was deconstructed as historical studies disclosed the circular argumentation that projected into the very nature of blacks or of women, those attributes (e.g., inferiority, reproductive responsibility) that legitimized their unequal treatment (Alder, 1992; Meuschel, 1981). Rather than deriving moral rules from givens, that is, from God’s will or natural law, morality is taken to be founded in our common will (Tugendhat, 1993). The Golden Rule is the earliest formulation of this idea (Don’t do to others what you don’t want to have done to you). Kant’s categorical imperative spells out that it is not any individual will, as chance would have it, but only rational will which counts (what you can wish to become a general law). Rawls’ (1972) criterion of consensus under the veil of ignorance makes it clear that moral rules are not chosen by single minds. Rather, choice results from a collective discourse in which everybody is granted a veto right. In this model, two aspects function to substitute for God or nature as lawgiver: one is the idea of a contract between equals that is based on shared interest in avoiding harm; the other is the definition of harm and its avoidance in terms of universal conditions of human life (e.g., the vulnerability of man and his dependence on social cooperation). Philosophical approaches vary with regard to the predominance granted to either of these aspects. In this volume, Habermas focuses on the contract aspect (operationalized as agreement in real discourses); Honneth and Nussbaum focus on universal features of human life and human development.

      Accordingly, different procedures are proposed for justifying morality in secular terms—the categorical imperative, consensus under the veil of ignorance, real discourse, appeal to universal conditions of human life. For all of these, the importance of context is greatly increased. In traditional societies, God or nature were seen as having issued specific rules and demanded strict compliance. In contrast, in a secular understanding, morality is based on abstract principles. Thus, in moral dilemmas, minimizing harm impartially may be considered more important than strict obedience to preordained rules. Detailed information about context is needed to judge how harm is best minimized in view of objective consequences of actions and their differing subjective evaluations.

      3 The Debate Between Philosophers and Social Scientists

      Empirical research and philosophical reflection on morality refer to each other and depend on each other. Empirical research requires theoretical clarification of underlying assumptions. Thus, researchers who wish to study moral judgment, moral feelings, moral behavior, or moral development must first know the boundaries of the moral realm—how morality is to be delimited in view of the realms of the religious or the law, customs and social conventions. Researchers may try to avoid the problem of defining morality by relying on the definitions offered by the subjects they study (bottom-up strategy). But they will encounter widely differing conceptions. Cultures, philosophers, and common people maintain different conceptions of the moral realm: Some include questions of the good life, others confine morality to the realm of the obligatory. Some individuals will include in morality duties to God, to the ancestors, to nature, to animals—others will restrict morality to interpersonal duties (cf. Edelstein & Nunner-Winkler, 1986). It follows that before meaningful questions can be asked and adequate operationalizations devised, one needs to settle philosophical questions about the very meaning of the core concepts. Conversely, moral philosophy is not satisfied by designing abstract theories, even when these fulfill formal criteria, such as stringency, elegance, and parsimony. Rather, moral philosophy must reflect, integrate, and systematize what Rawls (1972, p. 49) called considered judgements. A judgment is considered if a person uses his or her sense of justice in judging the formal correctness of a moral philosophical reconstruction—free from self-interested motives and in full awareness of the solutions proposed for the problem at hand in moral philosophical debates. The judgment thus resembles the way native speakers use their sense of grammar when they judge whether a sentence is well-formed. Inasmuch as considered judgments function as controls for the theoretical design, moral philosophy must be informed about everyday moral understanding and thus depends on empirical research. This is why, surprising to some, analyses of children’s judgments may play an important role even for the philosophical debate. Children read the moral rules that underlie social practices and institutions from their experiences in social interactions (cf. Nucci & Lee, 1993) and from the moral language game (cf. Wittgenstein, 1984). Thus, children may supply information about the actual workings of moral regulations more reliably than adults who may be misled by their ideological inclinations, or fall prey to a relativism more radical than is warranted by the lives they lead.

      The cooperation between social scientists in need of the philosophical clarification of core terms, and philosophers in need of controls in terms of everyday moral understanding is of even greater importance when the focus is on morality in context, that is, when the development of morality itself is at stake. This is due to the traditional division of labor between philosophy and the social sciences. Whereas the hermeneutically-oriented enterprise of philosophy adopts the first person participant perspective, objectivist practicians of the social sciences adopt the third person observer’s perspective. In everyday life, we can take both perspectives toward others: We can view them as objects and analyze how they function—either because as scientists we wish to explain their attitudes and behaviors in the context of their life histories and actual conditions, or because as actors we want to predict their behavior in order to maximize our benefits. Or else we can view the other on an equalitarian basis as an interaction partner who possesses some free will of his own, with whom we negotiate on the basis of shared understandings, and to whom we owe respect, that is, whom we must never treat solely as means but always also as an end in himself (cf. Strawson, 1962). Similarly, moral attitudes can be seen as causally produced by cultural traditions and individual socialization. However, they can also be understood as considered judgments which the subject believes can be justified.

      As philosophers insist on the first person perspective on morality, they compel social scientists to become aware of the reductionism and the performative self-contradictions that are implied in the observer position. And as research produces information about the contributions of context and social conditions to the content of moral judgments, philosophers become aware of possible ethnocentric biases in their thinking. The dialogue between perspectives discloses the socioculturally induced changes in the moral philosophical positions of our own cultures. At the same time, present persuasions may be seen as a stage reached in a directed learning process rather than as a result of causal determination. The criss-crossing of perspectives also helps us to view convictions held by others as an outgrowth of their persuasions which we need to deal with in dialogue as a refutation by argument or as acceptance as a legitimate correction of our own point of view. When Rawls (1985) acknowledged that the wars of religion in European history gave rise to the Western concept of religious tolerance, he demonstrated how both perspectives—the third person observer perspective applied in the analysis of historical determinants and the first person perspective from which persuasions are justified—can be integrated. The construct of a learning process permits to simultaneously accept historical contingency and universal justifiability. This model is quite familiar from the development of the natural sciences. We do not conceive of the earth as flat—after all, we were born after Ptolemy. Yet, we do not attribute our belief that the earth is a globe to this historical contingency, but to our well-tested scientific belief systems. At the same time, we consider our present state of knowledge as open for future learning. We are not accustomed to applying this conceptualization to our moral understanding. Instead, opposing camps have formed. Some claim universal validity even for details of positive (culture-specific) duties. Thus, in clear conflict with other cultures’ ways of organizing reproduction (cf. Bujo, 1991) the Declaration of Human Rights (1949) postulates monogamy and an exclusive right of parents to decide on the education of their children. Others take a stance of complete cultural relativism and deny any claim to universal validity of any rule. Morality in Context is an evolving debate between philosophy and social science which aims at disentangling aspects of morality that can be justified on universal grounds from aspects in which cultures or individuals may legitimately differ.

      4 The Design of This Book

      We now proceed to portray the design of the book. For a quick orientation, we first provide an overview over the main topics. In a second step, we will point out connections between the various contributions in greater detail.

      The first focus represents the debate about the general agenda of moral philosophy and its relevance for psychology:

      – the meaning of the categorical ought (Habermas),

      – the role of respect in morality (Honneth with comments by Brumlik),

      – the meaning of emotions for morality (Nussbaum),

      – the relation between everyday moral meanings and the behavioral definitions that underlie recent research on early morality (Blasi).

      The second focus deals with problems of norm applications:

      – applied ethics as a constructivist procedure (Puka),

      – everyday handling of conflicts between universal versus role-specific duties (Oser and Reichenbach),

      – framing of moral problems in justice terms (Döbert and Juranek).

      The third focus is dedicated to important questions of political philosophy:

      – legitimate procedures in public controversies about disputed values (Árnason),

      – the extent of justified particularistic obligations of citizens toward their country (Nisan),

      – the kinds of commitment to memory (or other duties and obligations) concerning the collective processing of crimes against humanity (Margalit).

      The fourth focus is directed to empirical studies concerning universality claims of certain central norms:

      – the universality of claims to individual autonomy and a personal domain (Nucci),

      – the universality of claims to equality that in hierarchical societies can translate into subversive strategies (Turiel),

      – sociohistorical changes in moral beliefs with claims to equality seen as a correlate of secularization (Nunner-Winkler),

      – cultural differences in the degree to which interpersonal responsibilities are considered binding (Keller, Krettenauer, and Edelstein; Miller with comments by Krappmann).

      In the following, the core claims of the individual contributions and the interrelations between them are described.

      Part One

      Part One is devoted to conceptual issues in defining morality. Jürgen Habermas embraces a cognitive understanding of morality that owes its structure to reason rather than to either subjective feelings or sociohistorical contingency. He starts from the modern situation in which rules are no longer derived from God’s commands or set by an unequivocal law of nature, but are seen to reside in man’s will. Habermas operationalizes this postmetaphysical intuition applying the model of ideal discourse which substitutes for the monologic reasoning expressed in Kant’s categorical imperative, and for the hypothetical discourse under the veil of ignorance proposed by Rawls. Core principles of modern moral understanding function as prerequisites for discourse: All men are to be treated as equals; discourse must include members of all cultures, that is, represent universal discourse; participants must be truthful and beware of rationalization and self-deception. Like Rawls, Habermas in requiring consensus treats equality as a procedural requirement. (The fact that equality is a substantive value remains hidden; cf. Dworkin, 1978.) Habermas differs from Rawls in the amount of information allowed participants in discourse. In the original position, Rawls does not grant participants any information about the particularities of their lives. He merely provides noncontroversial knowledge about universal features (such as man’s vulnerability, social dependence, the desire not to suffer direct or indirect harm). On the basis of this minimal knowledge and the impartiality procedure, Rawls derives universally valid natural duties as well as a generalized duty to fulfill culture-specific role-dependent obligations (valid in any well-ordered society). Habermas, in contrast, fully contextualizes the discourse: Participants are given concretely situated understandings which they bring to the negotiations in view of an agreement. There are no data before or beyond the discourse—only needs that are publicly articulated can be taken into account when deciding on norms we wish to be universally valid. Habermas thus claims universality for the procedural prerequisites that reflect the conditions that must be met for communication to take place at all, while simultaneously situating discourse concretely so that any agreement on norms will be contextually valid.

      In contrast to the proceduralism of Habermas, in Martha Nussbaum’s view, morality is based in universally shared anthropological givens. Morality arises from the emotions experienced early in life. The first emotions—joy, hope, fear—represent reactions to the fact that significant others have, or have not, met the child’s basic needs (for nourishment, comfort, or stimulation). Gradually, emotions come to be directed to the caretakers, and morality begins to enter the picture: Gratitude and love or anger respond not merely to gratification or frustration but to having one’s right to need fulfillment respected, rejected, or ignored. Finally, through a developmental crisis, the child’s emotions are turned back on the self. Children experience shame as they become aware of their lack of control, their imperfections and deficiencies, and they experience guilt when they become aware that their anger and their love are directed at the same object. The child may cope with the crisis by extending love to include recognition of, and respect for, the caretaker’s independence and dignity. Moreover, children discover a repair strategy that involves accepting legitimate boundaries to their demands. Morality provides a safety structure for the child: It enables the child to consent to a world where people make legitimate demands, and ego’s desires have appropriate boundaries. The moral safety structure serves to protect the child against internal aggression, and provides a road to forgiveness in face of imperfections. Healthy psychological development is made possible by a kind of morality that involves the capacity for reparation, respect for the humanity of others, and regard for their neediness. In contrast, a morality which insists on perfection will continue to generate shame and thus stifle development while keeping the child from respecting others as ends in their own right.

      Nussbaum grounds her ethical view in facts about constraints on human development: the dependence of the newborns; their propensity to react not merely to the benefit of being taken care of but also to the caretakers as persons (see also Parsons, 1964); their willingness to accept boundaries, provided that parents succeed in striking an adequate balance between reserve and intrusion and thus permit love to develop. Nussbaum thus holds a universalist moral theory inasmuch as the constitutive principles (respect for the person, justice, and compassion) are derived from basic facts that are taken to be true of everyone at all times and in all places. Contextual variations only concern individual development inasmuch as culturally prescribed or contingent differences in parental socialization styles are more or less conducive to a child’s desire to lead a moral life. On the philosophical level, Nussbaum’s analysis can be compared to the Habermasian proposal. For Habermas, morality can be justified only through and in discourse. Nussbaum, in contrast, assumes a basis for morality that is prior to discourse: Infants are born with basic needs and these give rise to universal moral obligations of caretakers and serve as objective constraints on moral discourse. On the psychological level, Nussbaum’s analysis demonstrates with exceptional clarity the interrelatedness of moral philosophy and empirical data. For her, the origins of morality are in the infant’s developing emotions of anger, love, and guilt, which under favorable conditions will give rise to moral commitment. However, the validity of these empirical conjectures is far from unequivocal.

      Augusto Blasi presents a critical review of recent theorizing and empirical research on the origin of children’s morality. His argument develops the case for a philosophically enlightened conceptual clarification. Blasi reviews studies on infants’ morality in a comprehensive and very informative manner and analyzes them with great theoretical acuity and insight. He contrasts our ordinary moral understanding with the implicit assumptions underlying the concepts and operationalizations used in psychological research on moral development. According to our ordinary intuitions, an act is considered moral only if it is intentional and if it is motivated by the right concern—namely, a desire to do what is right because it is understood to be right. In contrast, the early-morality-camp take the following measures as indicators or precursors of morality: knowledge of social standards (e.g., knowledge of behavioral rules—analogous to the epistemic domain where the recognition of a flawed object is taken as proof of the child’s understanding of the unimpaired object); compliance with parental commands (especially if shown in the absence of parents or other authority figures); emotions displayed (e.g., empathy with others in distress; guilt over misbehavior). Toddlers’ conforming or empathic behavior is intentional. Yet, according to Blasi, they have no real understanding of morality: In distinguishing between conventional and moral rules, they judge the universal badness of an act by features that are inherent in the very nature of the act (e.g., they understand that hitting hurts at all times and places), yet they do not understand the categorical ought of a rule that forbids hitting. Blasi’s interpretation is at variance with the reading Turiel and Nucci (Nucci & Turiel, 1993; Turiel, 1983) give to their findings. For them, the fact that even young children judge hitting to be universally and unconditionally bad indicates true moral understanding—an assertion that receives some support by Dworkin’s claim that it is a possible moral stance to believe that the immorality of an act does not depend upon its social effects or its effects on the character of the actor or its proscription by a deity or anything else but follows from the act itself (Dworkin in Beauchamp, 1982, p. 20). Also, one might argue that children from very early on may come to grasp the idea of a categorical ought by implicitly reading the rules of the moral language game in which the very meaning of the words denoting transgressions (such as lies, theft, murder) is irrevocably impregnated by moral condemnation (cf. Putnam, 1995). Yet even if the issue of children’s cognitive moral understanding has not been definitively settled so far, it is nevertheless true—as Blasi contends—that young children lack proper moral motivation inasmuch as they tend to empathize or conform only when this is in accordance with their spontaneous needs and desires and not because they feel obliged. Thus, in Blasi’s view, researchers are not justified to classify young children’s conformity to a norm as a true indication of morality.

      How does Nussbaum’s description of the origin of morality fit with Blasi’s analysis? Looking at the age level under consideration, Nussbaum belongs to the early morality camp (in fact, very early indeed!). Yet, her position concerning morality differs from the scholars’ whom Blasi discusses. Her description displays all the critical features Blasi calls for: Children are seen as developing intrinsic respect for others and to be motivated by the right concerns. Thus, their compliance is seen as based on insight and on voluntary acceptance of legitimate boundaries. In other words, there is agreement between Blasi and Nussbaum on the nature of morality. Yet, a discrepancy remains with respect to the empirical facts. Inasmuch as moral motivation is conceptualized as a second order desire (Frankfurt, 1988), it presupposes cognitive (Perner & Wimmer, 1985) and motivational (Mischel & Mischel, 1983) capabilities, which young children do not yet possess. (In fact, Nunner-Winkler’s [1998] research has shown that children begin to display moral motivation no earlier than age 5 to 6 years.) A distinction introduced by Blasi may help to bridge the gap. Blasi distinguishes between a competence that is a prerequisite for morality without being part of morality (such as self-control) and a competence that is intrinsically related to later moral capabilities. It may thus be the case—as Nussbaum assumes—that children begin very early to construct first intuitive concepts of persons and of respect that will support the later growth of true moral motivation. It may also be true that this process depends on the availability of caring parents who show respect for boundaries. Research based on the attachment paradigm has found a spontaneous willingness in young children to go along with rules in families with sensitive mothers. This confirms a speculation advanced years ago by Baumrind (1971). To test this hypothesis, longitudinal studies are needed that trace connections between early interaction experience and later growth of moral motivation. This leads to the following conclusion: Blasi and Nussbaum are in philosophical agreement on the meaning of morality; yet they differ markedly regarding empirical assumptions about children’s development of morality. However, these can be tested.

      Similar to Nussbaum and in contrast with Habermas, Axel Honneth seeks to ground morality in empirical facts. His aim is to integrate moral principles which various ethical traditions have focused on to the exclusion of others. He does so by deriving different types of duties from morality’s core function: to protect individuals from harm, and to warrant conditions that allow them to develop identity and personal integrity. A person is harmed by lack of recognition. This can occur in three ways that may be ordered as a developmental sequence: First, one’s physical needs must be recognized. This implies the duty to love and to care for those who are close to you. This is the focus of an ethics of care and responsibility. Second, there is the need to be respected as a person. The universal Kantian duty to never treat a person merely as a means toward an end corresponds to this need. Third, there is a need to be recognized as a unique individual with specific competencies and interests. The duty of solidarity, that is, the duty to be sympathetic with, and to support, other persons, their personal projects, and collectively shared visions of a good life follows from this need for individual recognition. This is the focus of the communitarian postulate of special obligations toward one’s fellow citizens. Given that all three types of duties are rooted in universal needs, universal validity is claimed for them. Contextual variations may at best affect the kind of care demanded or the content of the projects pursued. In everyday life, these duties may collide. Conflicts are solved by deliberation, but we must never violate the respect we owe to all humans.

      Micha Brumlik disputes Honneth’s claim to a new ethical approach achieved through the integration of different moral principles. Instead, he maintains, Honneth has substituted a functionalist explanation of morality for the justification of morality. Honneth—he concludes—presents an analysis of moral conflicts, not an ethical theory.

      In retrospect, the chapters assembled in Part I of this book contrast different ways of grounding morality and of balancing universalist claims against contextual contingencies. A brief summary of the main positions and how they relate to positions taken by authors of later chapters is in order. Habermas derives a small number of quasi-transcendental universal moral principles (equality, truth) from the prerequisites of communication. Agreements regarding concrete norms and solutions to concrete moral problems are achieved in situated discourses, in which full use is made of all the information available. In contrast, Nussbaum and Honneth seek to derive morality from anthropological universals and nest it in psychological development: Universal needs of persons impose universal duties on others. Thus, contextual variations do not affect the content of moral norms, but influence how conditions that are conducive to the flourishing of individual morality are met.

      There is a tension here between a substantive and a procedural account of morality. In the substantive account, universal moral rules are derived from universal facts of human existence, while the context-dependence of morality is a matter of degree. In the procedural account, moral norms are agreed on in concretely situated discourses, and the context concerns the content of morality. This tension also runs through other parts of the book. Árnason adopts the discourse theory of Habermas directly to discuss problems of applied ethics. Oser and Reichenbach present an applied case. Their study of advocatory mediation makes a convincing case for the requirement formulated by Habermas that the needs of individuals must be explicitly represented in negotiations about conflicting interest.

      In contrast, Nucci and Turiel, referring to universal requirements for healthy psychological functioning (e.g., autonomy, equality), pursue a line that appears more closely related to the Nussbaum-Honneth approach. Miller, Keller and Nunner Winkler perceive the unfolding and shaping of the very needs that Nucci and Turiel take to be universal as embedded in social and cultural contexts. In the final chapter, Margalit, using a philosophical framework, develops a detailed account of changes that touch the very meaning of core concepts of morality as secular understanding gradually replaces the religious foundation of morality.

      Part Two

      Whereas the chapters in Part One deal with the meaning of morality, in Part Two the authors turn to the problem of application: Whatever the moral theory, it must be applied to concrete contexts.

      Bill Puka presents a theoretical exposition of the problem of application. He critiques the traditional mode of framing the problem in a two-step procedure: First, a unified ethical theory is formulated that is centered on one basic principle; then a theory of its application is developed. To replace this procedure, Puka proposes to study the actual processes of decision making empirically. This will show that most often decision making is based on an eclectic understanding or a mixed ethical view: Individuals take the different principles (that theorists focus on and ethical theories justify) and probe the adequacy of the solutions derived from these principles for the problem at hand. They use substantive criteria and check for coherence, allowing for piecemeal solutions or preferential rank ordering as the context requires. Going back and forth between abstract principles and concretely situated requirements, gradually domain-specific rules, models and techniques emerge. Puka does not derive domain-specific norms of application. Rather, he identifies applied ethics with the very procedure of finding solutions and specifying the steps that need to be taken in such processes. As these steps are followed through, norm application comes to be understood as a constructivist procedure in stark contrast with a process of deduction according to which a specific norm and a set of circumstances permit to derive unequivocal solutions. In this procedure, the very perception of situational detail is informed by the (possibly) relevant norms and, vice versa, moral principles are selected in accordance with the contextualized understandings of the problem at hand.

      Like Puka, Vilhjalmur Árnason argues against opposing abstract moral principles and contextual sensitivities and focuses on the actual process of solving moral dilemmas. In contrast to Puka, he goes on to derive domain-specific principles of application. His starting point is the assumption that moral decision making is best carried out in real discourses, provided participants possess the required virtues. These are a sense of justice that is especially needed in public discourse; truthfulness that is especially needed in professional discourse; love and care that are especially needed in private discourse. In the discourses, application and justification of norms are intertwined: Decisions are justified in light of relevant facts, which in turn are determined by norms that are judged appropriate. Other traditional dichotomies, such as the contrasts between justice and care or between duty and the good life, are also bridged in real discourses. Procedural requirements warrant impartiality and fairness, while all types of harmful experience can emerge in the discourse to be examined in light of concrete situational constraints. The same is true of the needs and desires of concrete others (cf. Benhabib, 1987). Árnason’s model reflects Benhabib’s approach in combining universalistic procedural norms with concretely contextualized inputs to the moral problem-solving processes.

      Whereas Árnason and Puka discuss the problem of norm application theoretically, detailing adequate principles and procedures in view of optimal problem solving. Fritz Oser and Roland Reichenbach treat the problem of applying norms to cases of conflicting interest empirically. They asked participants in a conflict mediation seminar to take the role of a lawyer representing either the husband or the wife in a hypothetical divorce case in which both parties claim custody of the children. The advocates of the mother are given secret information to the effect that she is less suited to care for the children than her husband. Thus, in the advocates’ minds, a conflict arises whether to give priority in the negotiation to the children’s welfare, or to their particular role obligation to defend their client’s interests. The study analyzes real—albeit advocatory— moral discourses involving obligations to universal moral principles versus role-specific duties. The results disclose individual differences in the way the conflict is handled. Some of the wife’s advocates put the children’s well-being above their specific role obligations; these subjects, in spite of their more universalistic moral understanding, felt less satisfied with their own performance. At the same time, all advocates of the husband reacted with indignation when, after the settlement of the case, the secret information was disclosed. This testifies to a culturally shared understanding of a hierarchical order in which universal moral obligation ranks above specific role duties. (This leaves unsolved the problem that social reward structures may favor the successful over the moral player.)

      On a theoretical level, Rainer Döbert and Natalie Juranek, following Rawls, differentiate justice from morality proper. While according to this understanding justice concerns fair distributions of benefits and burdens, the redress of harm and procedural justice, morality addresses the issue of what constitutes goods and evils. Answers to this problem do not depend on comparing actors in similar positions, but involve the specification of universal natural duties and culture-specific obligations that are imposed upon all individual actors alike. Inasmuch as Kohlberg defined morality by a universalizing fair procedure, in the view of the authors, he confounded these separable domains and thereby eliminated a set of meaningful research questions. Döbert and Juranek report results from an empirical study. Subjects were presented a partnership dilemma in which a rewarding but time-consuming commitment to human rights work collides with the partner’s need for attention. The partner’s expectation is grounded on the fact that he or she had recently lost his/her job. About 10 percent of the subjects—all of them female—were found to frame this dilemma in justice terms: They presented the refusal to specifically attend the needs of the partner as a strategy to redress previous imbalance between the sexes. Although on Kohlbergian terms this framing may be considered to represent structural progress inasmuch as it appeals impartially to universalizable rights rather than to particularistic duties, in fact it generates impaired moral judgment: The partner’s claims are completely ignored. These claims, however, appear legitimate. While they are particularistic, they are nevertheless universalizable, as all partners in a similar situation would expect to be given special attention. The impairment is obvious once it is compared with postconventional individuals’ ability to integrate the conflicting concerns conceptually.

      Döbert and Juranek’s study illustrates the interconnections of private and public discourses as highlighted by Árnason’s analysis. It has been a core strategy of the feminist movement to view any concrete conflict between partners as an instance of the larger struggle between the sexes, in which women’s rights have traditionally been disregarded. In refusing to abide by the traditional expectations directed to women, namely sacrificing their own desires for the welfare of others, feminist subjects see themselves as contributing to the political task of changing culturally prescribed sex role norms. According to this understanding, the dilemma involves not merely justice concerns (e.g., it is unfair that women are always expected to give up their interests, while men are not) but also the question of loyalty. (Am I entitled to ignore the feminist cause just because I happen to love my husband?) The study illustrates nicely how social roles or structurally defined inequalities between categories of members influence the way in which moral problems are perceived, framed, and solved. This idea is pursued further in other contributions.

      Part Three

      Part One was designed to justify specific moral principles or procedures, and Part Two deals with the problem how such principles or procedures can, or should be, applied when solving concrete situated problems. Part Three presents evidence that the very conceptualization of morality depends on context: on culture, on status in a hierarchically ordered power structure, and on gender affiliation. Thus, it is Part Three which highlights the issue of universalism versus relativism most critically.

      Elliot Turiel starts his chapter by contrasting two different views of man. For Freud, culture implies discontent as it compels man to restrain his desire for instinctual gratification. For Durkheim, man has a natural propensity to be social—man could not exist without society. In fact, man by nature has egoistic as well as altruistic inclinations, and man needs society, while simultaneously feeling constrained by society. Within this general framework, Turiel analyzes one source of social constraint: Social structures distribute rights and power unequally and thus produce conflicting perspectives. What is seen as entitlement by those in superior positions will be experienced as a potentially unfair burden by those in subordinate positions. Where equality is denied, subversive acts may arise that are motivated not only by the need to alleviate one’s burdens but also to respond to a sense of justice. Turiel supports this claim by data collected in Druze communities in Israel. In his studies, women in the harem were found to invent various ways to secretly circumvent strict prohibitions issued by men in power, and to feel fully justified to do so. Turiel sees this behavior as based on a universally shared minimal understanding of what constitutes personal rights, justice, and fairness. This—to Turiel—is the basis of a universal claim for equality.

      Gertrud Nunner-Winkler takes a different track. She treats equality as a specifically modern value that arises with secularization along with a commitment to avoid harm and an expectation to be sensitive to context. A comparison of three birth cohorts (old, middle-aged, young adults) is designed to test this hypothesis. Results show that younger generations have a more contextualized moral understanding and are more critical of ascriptive categorical inequalities, such as unequal treatment of women or unjustified infractions of children’s rights. Between generations, a change has occurred that has modified the demarcation of the personal and the moral domains, with sexual behavior shifting from the moral to the personal, whereas the reverse is true for political behavior. These changes in moral understanding also lead to confusion about the semantic extension of the term morality and even about some of its core characteristics (such as prescriptivity). Differences in moral understanding between generations resemble those found by Miller and Luthar (1989) between modern and traditional cultures. For example, there is agreement between senior German and traditional Hindu-Indian subjects about viewing care as a culturally prescribed duty.

      In her chapter, Joan Miller critiques as utopian attempts to integrate community orientation and an ethics of care with individual autonomy and justice orientations. She bases her argument on empirical grounds. Comparing helping behavior in India and in the US, she finds differences which, in her view, prove that there is a trade-off between individualistic and collectivist orientations. Western subjects delimit interpersonal obligations more narrowly and thus leave more room for personal autonomy, yet hold individuals more strictly responsible for keeping contracts. Indians, on the other hand, attribute obligatoriness to positive duties toward a wider range of recipeents, yet find more excuses for transgression of a negative duty (such as breaking a contract). Miller’s chapter is relevant to the issue of gender. Caring is not an expression of women’s natural inclinations (Gilligan, 1982) nor of their relational self (Gilligan & Wiggins, 1988). Rather, culture is the decisive context variable which determines whether self-reliance or helping is expected. According to Miller’s description, Indians experience little conflict between cultural role expectations and personal desires. This finding is in line with recent theorizing on traditional cultures’ collectivist orientation (Triandis, 1989) and in agreement with the results reported in the contribution by Keller et al.

      In his comments on Miller’s paper, Lothar Krappmann pleads for a different view of cultural differences regarding the obligation to help. He suggests that the differences reported by Miller relate to social structure rather than to moral norms. In Western societies, insurance systems, welfare regulations, and pension schemes ascertain that people survive. In contrast to such socially organized assistance systems, Indians depend on private support and therefore provide help mainly to ensure future reciprocity. Thus, the differences may reflect nonmoral conditions of welfare societies as compared with exchange societies. Krappmann challenges Miller’s basic assumption of a trade-off between autonomy and community orientation by reference to observations of children’s spontaneous helping behavior (see Krappmann & Oswald, 1995): The authors found that children tended to engage in moral reflection rather than helping on an impulse motivated by internalized social expectations. Children tended to decide autonomously whether to help or not to help in view of long-term welfare consequences for the recipient. In consequence, there may be an agreement rather than a trade-off between autonomy and community orientation.

      Monika Keller, Tobias Krettenauer and Wolfgang Edelstein begin their chapter with a conceptual clarification of the difference between moral obligation and interpersonal responsibility. They present a careful review of research on the development of both kinds of moral expectations, accounting for contextual variations relative to type of culture and type of relationship. In their study, they presented hypothetical conflicts concerning authority versus peer (friendship) relationships to children and adolescents from 7 through 15 years in Iceland (a modern Western culture) and mainland China (a traditional non-Western society). They found that younger Chinese children tended to read the scenario that was presented to them as a moral dilemma in which an explicit norm to take care of a new child collided with the norm to keep a promise

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