Against Reducing Morality to Benevolence
Actually written FEBRUARY 4, 2010
Noddings on page 126 is summarized, her stance on moral rationalism again.
It inspires the following objection from me:
Noddings attempts to take morality away from Kantian “rationalism” (deontological-ness) and reduce morality to sentiment – to benevolence. She is like Alonzo Fyfe here. And my objection against Alonzo also holds against Nel (Nel Noddings).
No. It is a mistake to redefine morality as benevolence (or compassion) as per Noddings, or reduce it to benevolence (desire) as per Fyfe. Kant actually has it right – the right account of morality is strictly deontological/rational. It must be so that it can overrule malevolent desire. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have morality overrule desire in one instance, yet reduce morality to desire in the other instance. It cannot both overrule desire and be desire.
One can attempt to resolve this conflict by claiming that morality only overrules malevolent desire, and therefore can be reduced to benevolent desire without contradiction. But this distinction violates the common understanding of morality, which is that it overrules all desire, because we refuse to justify our actions on mere subjective, selfish desire. My essential objection to reducing morality to benevolence is that it violates this common understanding, which has a lot of intellectual inertia and sway. Benevolence reduction just can’t compete with it.
We cannot just reductively redefine morality as benevolence. The common understanding just won’t permit it. No. In order to promote benevolence we must dispense with the entire realm of morality and use the actual word “benevolence” when we mean it.
Noddings on page 126 is summarized, her stance on moral rationalism again.
Moreover, rationality alone can lead to suppression of the emotion of compassion, the motivation to reach out to the world of the one suffering. Such logical extension can then result in noncaring or apathy; one becomes detached, free, untouched by suffering. Noddings (1984, 8) associates such a detached state with the ethics of principles and justifications, versus an ethic of caring and responsibility.
(Jean Watson, “Human Caring and Suffering: A Subjective Model for Health Sciences” in They Shall Not Hurt, P126.)
It inspires the following objection from me:
Noddings attempts to take morality away from Kantian “rationalism” (deontological-ness) and reduce morality to sentiment – to benevolence. She is like Alonzo Fyfe here. And my objection against Alonzo also holds against Nel (Nel Noddings).
No. It is a mistake to redefine morality as benevolence (or compassion) as per Noddings, or reduce it to benevolence (desire) as per Fyfe. Kant actually has it right – the right account of morality is strictly deontological/rational. It must be so that it can overrule malevolent desire. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have morality overrule desire in one instance, yet reduce morality to desire in the other instance. It cannot both overrule desire and be desire.
One can attempt to resolve this conflict by claiming that morality only overrules malevolent desire, and therefore can be reduced to benevolent desire without contradiction. But this distinction violates the common understanding of morality, which is that it overrules all desire, because we refuse to justify our actions on mere subjective, selfish desire. My essential objection to reducing morality to benevolence is that it violates this common understanding, which has a lot of intellectual inertia and sway. Benevolence reduction just can’t compete with it.
We cannot just reductively redefine morality as benevolence. The common understanding just won’t permit it. No. In order to promote benevolence we must dispense with the entire realm of morality and use the actual word “benevolence” when we mean it.
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