The Chronicle: Colloquy: Responses

I think Singer makes many people angry for the same sorts of reasons that Socrates did. (This is intended as a methodological remark, not a hagiography of Peter!) He presents you with cases from which you can easily infer a general principle. For example, I wouldn't just stand by and let the run-away train hit the little girl, I'd sacrifice my new sports car to save her. Then the general principle turns out to dictate results inconsistent with your pre-reflective judgements about what is morally required or permitted. After all, you didn't initially think that you were morally required to sell your sports car in order to save some little girl, though it be from starvation rather than a run-away train. And when challenged to say what the alleged difference is in these cases, people generally can't. As Socrates found out this tends to provoke several different responses. Some may simply want to shut you up by any means available. They may accuse you of saying and doing things that you are manifestly not doing (e.g. introducing new gods or advocating the extermination of disabled adults). The more thoughtful types -- and there are clearly some participating in this discussion -- become 'misologists' or haters of reasoned argument (cf. Phaedo 89d,ff). Not liking the conclusion and seeing no way to refute it, they blame reason itself. Sometimes, alas, 'misology' is spelled 'post-modernism'. Other times misology takes refuge in a kind of special insight that only certified members of some group can have (only the wise physician who knows that euthanasia is contrary to God's will can see the spiritual benefits available to his terminal patients through suffering). Finally there is the misology that regards it as hubris to attempt to apply reasoned argument to matters impinging on 'the sanctity of human life.'

It would be shame if the relation between philosophic and more broadly public discourse hadn't improved in 2500 years, but sometimes you get the impression it hasn't.

: -- Dirk Baltzly, Senior Lecturer, Monash University (posted 3/7, 12:45 p.m., E.S.T.)

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