Bernard Gert was a
moral philosopher known primarily for his work in
normative ethics, as well as in
medical ethics, especially pertaining to psychology died he was 77..
(October 16, 1934 – December 24, 2011)
His work has been called "among the clearest and most comprehensive
on the contemporary scene", "far more detailed and more concretely
worked out" and "systematic" than competing comprehensive ethical
theories.
[1] Because it avoids pitfalls associated with other dominant ethical theoretical approaches (such as
deontology,
utilitarianism,
contractarianism, and
virtue ethics), Gert's moral theory "provides what many people are looking for".
[1]
Life
Born in
Cincinnati, Ohio, Gert studied
philosophy at
Cornell University. He was a professor at
Dartmouth College for fifty years, from 1959-2009. Upon his death in 2011, he was the
Stone Professor
of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, Emeritus at Dartmouth. He also
had other adjunct and visiting appointments, including being a fellow of
the
Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution. He died in 2011 in North Carolina.
[2][3]
A source of notoriety among his contemporaries was that his family
became a family of philosophers: his two children, Joshua and Heather,
both became philosophers, and both married two other philosophers.
[4]
Metaethics
Definition of morality
Gert advocates the following definition of morality:
- Morality is an informal public system applying to all rational
persons, governing behavior that affects others, and includes what are
commonly known as the moral rules, ideals, and virtues and has the
lessening of evil or harm as its goal.[5]
Morality as known to all
According to Gert, his theory counts as a
natural law
theory because he holds that all moral agents must be able to
understand it in order to count as moral agents. In other words, "moral
judgments can only be made about those who know what kind of behavior
morality prohibits, requires, discourages, encourages, and allows."
[6]
Harm as the central moral concept
According to Gert,
harm (or "
evil") is the central moral concept.
[7][8] Gert believes harm is what all rational creatures seek to avoid. He advances the following five-concept account of harm:
- death
- pain
- disability
- loss of freedom
- loss of pleasure.[9]
He maintains that commonsense morality is far more concerned with
prohibiting (and discouraging) evil than with requiring (or encouraging)
people to enhance goods or benefits.
[9]
Rationality and impartiality
On Gert's view, the bases for morality are
rationality and
impartiality.
On Gert's conception of rationality, it is irrational to fail to be
averse to harm. Everyone avoids harm insofar as they are rational.
Rationality does require that we avoid harming ourselves without an
adequate reason. A rational person would not cause his own pain unless
it were for an adequate reason, for example, to cure a disease. Even a
masochist
causes pain in himself for a reason, presumably for pleasure. This
helps show that no rational being seeks to harm himself for its own
sake.
The sort of
adequate reason in question involves avoiding any of the five basic evils or obtaining of any of the following
basic goods:
- pleasure
- freedom
- ability
- consciousness
According to Gert, acting rationally does not always require acting morally.
[10] For example, it is not irrational to set a trap for someone who is wearing an
Armani
suit so that they fall into a swimming pool in front of a video camera,
since the pleasure one can get out of watching the video constitutes an
adequate reason for harming the other person. It would also be rational
for a sadist to torture other people for fun provided the sadist could
get away with it.
There are five sorts of irrational desire according to Gert: seeking
death, pain, disability, loss of freedom, or loss of pleasure.
[9]
We arrive at moral rules by extending these objects of irrational
desire to others. Rationality, alone, does not require this. However, if
we adopt the principle of
impartiality,
whereby we apply the rules without regard to who gains or loses, we
extend these prohibitions to others. This results in rules such as
do not kill,
do not cause pain,
do not disable, and so forth.
Why be moral?
On Gert's view, there are several reasons to act morally.
[10] The primary one is i) that someone else will be harmed.
[8][10] While it is rational not to care about others, the fact that they will be harmed is enough of a reason itself.
Other reasons to act morally include ii) that acting immorally will
corrupt one's own character, and iii) that some forms of immoral action
can make the world inhospitable to oneself, such that in some cases it
is irrational to act immorally toward others.
[10]
Normative ethics
Ten moral rules
In his book
Common Morality: Deciding What to Do, Gert proposes ten moral rules which, if followed, create a moral system. The rules are as follows:
[9]
- Do not kill
- Do not cause pain
- Do not disable
- Do not deprive of freedom
- Do not deprive of pleasure
- Do not deceive
- Keep your promises
- Do not cheat
- Obey the law
- Do your duty.
The first five of these rules directly prohibit harming other people.
Thus, they can be summarized with the slogan, 'do not harm'. The second
five rules get their force from the fact that if it were generally
allowed that those rules be broken, many harms (and losses of benefits)
would result. They can be summarized with the slogan, 'do not violate
trust'.
Exceptions to the rules: the two-step procedure
Gert holds that the moral rules are not absolute, but admit of exceptions.
[11]
To determine whether a moral rule applies in a certain case or whether
there is an exception, Gert advises people to follow what he calls the
"two step procedure."
[9]
The first step is to ascertain all morally relevant information about
the scenario at hand in order to make a justified evaluation. The second
step is to consider the consequences of other people knowing that they
can violate the moral rule in similar circumstances.
[9]
An example of this would be if you were to consider violating rule #9
(breaking the law) in order to run a red light. You evaluate the
scenario and notice that there are no cars around and running the red
light will not cause any harm, however, you do not want other people to
know that they can run red lights too, because that would lead to more
car accidents, which is indirectly causing pain and death. Another
example of violating the moral rules would be killing in self-defense.
If you evaluate the situation, you find that if you do not kill the
other person, they will violate one of the moral rules and kill you.
Also, it would be acceptable in this scenario for other people to know
that killing in self-defense is allowable.
Moral ideals
Moral ideals, according to Gert, are objectives to lessen the
amount of harm or evil in the world. These differ from moral rules,
which are requirements that people avoid performing certain kinds of
actions which produce harms to others. Morality encourages, but does not
require, people to live up to moral ideals. Examples of moral ideals
are the objectives of reducing the incidence of domestic violence or of
breast cancer.
What Gert calls
utilitarian ideals are objectives to increase
the amount of good in the world. For example, the objective of giving
poor children extra presents for Christmas.
Categorizing Gert's moral theory
Although his moral system shares similarities to
deontology,
rule utilitarianism, and
contractarianism, Gert does not ally himself with any of those positions.
[1][12][13] He writes, "I think that my view is best characterized as a
natural law theory . . . in the tradition of
Hobbes".
[14] He also writes, "my view has been characterized as
Kant with consequences, as
Mill with publicity, and as
Ross with a theory."
[12]
However, when Walter Sinnott-Armstrong once labeled the theory as "a
sophisticated form of negative objective universal public rule
consequentialism",
[15] Gert replied that "there may be no point in denying that I am some form of consequentialist".
[16]
Sources
By Bernard Gert
- The Morality Monographs
- The Moral Rules: A New Rational Foundation for Morality, Harper and Row, 1970.
- Morality: A New Justification of the Moral Rules, Oxford University Press, 1988.
- Morality: Its Nature and Justification, Oxford University Press, 1998.
- Morality: Its Nature and Justification, Revised Edition, Oxford University Press, 2005.
- Common Morality: Deciding What to Do, Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Bioethics: A Systematic Approach, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press, 2006
- Hobbes: Prince of Peace, Polity Press, 2010.
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