The Munich Lectures in Ethics series presents biennial lectures delivered by prominent philosophers at the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in order to make their ideas accessible to a wider audience. The lectures are hosted by the Munich Center for Ethics, and they are edited as a series by Monika Betzler, who holds the Chair for Practical Philosophy and Ethics at LMU.
Volumes Published in the Series
Philip Kitcher, Moral Progress
With Commentaries by Amia Srinivasan, Susan Neiman, and Rahel Jaeggi
Edited and Introduced by Jan-Christoph Heilinger
Moral Progress
PHILIP KITCHER
With Commentaries by AMIA SRINIVASAN
SUSAN NEIMAN RAHEL JAEGGI
Edited and Introduced by
JAN- CHRISTOPH HEILINGER
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kitcher, Philip, 1947– author. | Heilinger, Jan-Christoph, editor. Title: Moral progress / Philip Kitcher ; with commentaries by Amia Srinivasan, Susan Neiman, Rahel Jaeggi ; edited and introduced by Jan-Christoph Heilinger. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. | Series: Munich lectures in ethics | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020055362 (print) | LCCN 2020055363 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197549155 (hb) | ISBN 9780197549179 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Ethics, Evolutionary. | Ethics—Methodology. | Pragmatism. Classification: LCC B J1311 .K535 2021 (print) | LCC B J1311 (ebook) | DDC 171/.7—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055362
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055363
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197549155.001.0001
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For Leo and Eva with love
Series Editor Foreword
With the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees at Munich Central Station in the late summer of 2015, Munich found itself at the heart of one of the most profound challenges facing society today. The issue of migration was suddenly no longer remote and distant: answers to practical and often ethically complex questions were urgently needed. Of course, migration is just one of many challenges that this German city and the world are facing: climate change; the Covid-19 pandemic; digitalization and its impact on how we work, communicate, and lead relationships; and the development of CRISPR–Cas9 genome editing are no less pressing problems which require ethical reflection. Apart from such societal and technological changes, there are also many further ethical questions that confront us in our everyday lives. Is there such a thing as moral progress? Are human rights enough to address social and economic inequality? How can we capture and confront new societal injustices? What do we owe those with whom we have a close relationship? How can we provide ethical guidance on the area of aging? Can we go too far in the name of morality?
The aim of the Munich Lectures in Ethics is to address these morally relevant and pressing challenges, to advance our understanding of them, and to offer philosophically informed reflections and possible solutions to these issues. These lectures are held at the Munich Center for Ethics and Practical Philosophy, an interdisciplinary research center under the auspices of the Faculty of Philosophy of Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) of Munich, the main goals of which are to enhance research in ethics and public debate on morally relevant themes and to foster collaboration with other subjects, most notably the sciences, medicine, business, and law. They thus contribute to creating a responsible research environment: they encourage individuals to be responsible actors and to work toward creating a
more sustainable world. Located at LMU, one of Europe’s leading academic and research institutions, the Munich Center for Ethics and Practical Philosophy is ideally placed to host the Munich Lectures, thereby helping to promote public debate on ethical themes of general interest and attracting the attention of a wide audience interested in ethically informed answers to the problems facing society today.
Inaugurated in 2019, the Munich Lectures in Ethics is a biennial lecture series, which takes place over the course of three days. Each of the lectures is followed by a comment given by a distinguished philosopher. The first lectures, which are published in this series, were delivered by Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University, from June 5 to June 7, 2019, on the topic of “Moral Progress.” Professor Rahel Jaeggi of the Humboldt University of Berlin; Dr. Susan Neiman, director of the Einstein Forum, Potsdam; and Professor Amia Srinivasan of St John’s College, University of Oxford, commented on the lectures.
As the spokesperson of the Munich Center for Ethics and Practical Philosophy and as one of the initiators of the Munich Lectures in Ethics, I am extremely grateful to Philip Kitcher for having presented the first Munich Lectures in Ethics.
I am also indebted to Oxford University Press for having agreed to publish the Munich Lectures in Ethics as a series. These publications will make the lectures available to a broader international readership, thus giving philosophical scholarship the opportunity to influence matters of practical importance and provide much-needed orientation. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Peter Ohlin for his diligence and help with editing this series.
Monika Betzler Ludwig Maximilian University of
Munich
Author’s Preface
Nearly a decade ago, in Preludes to Pragmatism, I expressed the hope that I should one day be able to provide a more systematic treatment of the pragmatist themes presented in that collection. As so often in philosophical explorations, eventual outcomes don’t correspond exactly to anticipations. The present volume begins a partial fulfillment of my tentative promise. It will be the first of a trilogy, attempting to offer a more synthetic and unified account of ideas scattered among my earlier essays. Although each book is free-standing, they are intended to combine in developing a twenty-first-century version of Deweyan pragmatism.
Dewey insisted, throughout his mature writings, on the need for each generation to rethink the philosophical agenda in light of the circumstances of the age. I follow him in this. Hence this book, and its two successors, will attempt to reorient philosophical discussion by modifying the questions taken to be central. Central to philosophy, as I see it, is the concept of human progress. Like Dewey, I recognize the difficulties of that concept—and of making genuine progress—while emphasizing its importance. At the core of our shared vision is a sense of human lives and societies, extended over hundreds of thousands of years, in which each generation strives to improve the world it will bequeath to its successors. Nothing in Dewey’s writings is more eloquent than the close of A Common Faith, where he writes: “Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have received it.” Here he specifies a general human task, one carried out in different ways by those who grow the food, make the artifacts, administer the laws, teach the young, heal the sick, engage in scientific research, offer entertainment and aesthetic delight, preserve the legacy of the past, sustain communities, foster peace and
amity, and contribute in a host of other ways. Philosophy’s peculiar duty is to try to make sense of the whole—to clarify, interpret, relate, and connect. In discharging this duty, it must seek to understand the progress made in different domains of human existence, and the unfortunate possibilities for interference (“institutional friction”)— as when the drive for economic progress results in degradation of the environment, distorted educational programs, and the loss of community.
This short book focuses on one particular domain—moral life. It seeks an account of moral progress capable of helping individuals and societies fashion methods to make such progress more surely and more systematically. Of course, it seeks more than it delivers. What I claim to provide is a new approach to understanding moral progress, and some first steps toward characterizing a moral methodology. I see it as the beginning of a new—and more vital—way of addressing the uncertainties that give rise to moral philosophy.
My discussions here relate to work I have done before, most obviously to my earlier book, The Ethical Project. There I attempted to show how genuinely moral practices might grow out of pre-moral human life (to solve the problem of integrating ethics with evolution), to defend on this basis a naturalistic metaethics, and, as an afterthought, to mention some possible moral methods. In the present book, the emphases are quite different. The link to the evolutionary past is taken for granted, although I do outline a revised (and improved) account of the connection. Metaethics fades into the background. Center stage is occupied by the twin problems of understanding moral progress and moral methodology.
Change is naturally resisted. The most perceptive and probing questions I have received, from readers and audiences alike, have returned, predictably, to standard metaethics. Am I a peculiar type of moral realist? Is my position genuinely naturalistic? From my Deweyan perspective, those questions are (at best) secondary. The history of our moral progress has been chancy, blind, bloody, and constantly vulnerable to backslidings and reversals. Through an examination of that history, philosophy should seek to understand how to do better. If this book has anything important to say, it will lie in taking seriously the idea of method in moral practice, and in putting forward
some preliminary—and surely only preliminary—suggestions for developing moral methodology.
Anyone who envisages turning an academic discussion in a new direction must acknowledge the possibility that it is all folly. At the times when I have wondered whether my orthodox interlocutors who (in kindness) want me to return to the proper issues of metaethics were right after all, I have been reassured by the reactions of some of my students. During my two decades of teaching at Columbia, one of its schools, the College of General Studies—often known as “the school of second chances”—has established a special place in undergraduate life. Under the guidance of an extraordinary dean, the late Peter Awn, it has attracted a wide range of students, whose varied backgrounds and whose diverse gifts have enriched our classroom discussions. Many of these students have grown up in hardship and have been deprived of significant educational opportunities; some are returning veterans; others have spent time in prison. When I have presented this material in classes, or have given my students early drafts to read, those who have been most embroiled in the hardships of the contemporary world have often told me how much they had been affected by my approach. “It speaks to me,” they say, “in ways philosophy usually doesn’t.” Words like that have (maybe wrongly) encouraged me.
For, like Dewey, I firmly believe that philosophy should engage with the problems of life.
My debts to others are varied and numerous. First and foremost I want to thank Jan-Christoph Heilinger for his idea that I give the Munich Lectures in Ethics, for his splendid work in organizing the occasion, and for his warm support throughout my stay. Thanks also to Monika Betzler, who joined in issuing the invitation to me. I am also extremely grateful to Monika and the other members of the Centre, including the research assistants and the philosophical community at LMU, for their warm hospitality.
The lively intellectual atmosphere Jan and others have created at the Munich Center for Ethics was apparent in the quality of the discussions. Some of the points raised are duly credited in my footnotes. Many other people (whose names I unfortunately do not know) posed excellent questions, and I learned much from the unusually large number of
comments and suggestions I received. They have had an impact on the material of this book and in shaping my future work.
My good fortune in having three brilliant philosophers as commentators is much appreciated. Some years ago, Amia Srinivasan’s penetrating review of The Ethical Project prompted me to rethink the ways in which I had framed my proposals about moral life, leading me to focus more directly on moral methodology, and thus inspiring the approach taken in these lectures. I have been in dialogue with Susan Neiman for well over a decade, learning enormously from her deep knowledge of the Enlightenment and its legacy, as well as from her skill at connecting central philosophical ideas and theses to the problems of our times. For several years now, I have benefited from exchanges with Rahel Jaeggi, recognizing the intellectual kinship between our interests and some of our views, and benefiting from her insights as she develops kindred themes within a different tradition from my own. All three of my commentators are welcome reminders that deep, creative, and engaged philosophy remains possible today. I am grateful for their generosity of spirit and their constructive challenges.
It is entirely appropriate that my ideas about moral progress should have been presented in Germany, since that is the country in which they germinated and also where they have often grown. In 2011–2012, I enjoyed a fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, deliberately intending not to spend my time writing a book, but to read and think. My ruminations have led to my synthetic philosophical project—the elaboration of a Deweyan pragmatic naturalism for the twenty-first century. As anyone who has spent time at Wiko knows, the opportunities it provides are extraordinary. Besides the time to read and reflect, I was able to participate in a wide range of helpful discussions. Although my cohort of fellows was short on philosophers, I learned much from conversations, especially with Jeremy Adler, Alfred Brendel, Ayse Bugra, and Hollis Taylor.
In the autumn of 2015, I benefited greatly from another stay in Berlin, this time at the American Academy. Again, the support provided was superb, and I was able to develop my ideas further. Here, too, discussions were valuable, and I am indebted to Moishe Postone for helping me to overcome some of the limits of my methodological individualism; I suspect however that, were he still among us, he
would continue to chide me gently. Three years later, in September 2018, I returned to Berlin to spend two months as a visiting senior scholar in Lorraine Daston’s Abteilung of the Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte. That enabled me to write the lectures out of which this book has grown. As always, I am profoundly grateful to Raine, not only for her warm friendship but also for our many conversations; for several decades, she has been among my very favorite interlocutors.
Another significant influence on my thinking about the issues discussed here has stemmed from my participation in the meetings of the Society for Progress. With the help of Michael Fuerstein, Subramanian Rangan has assembled an extraordinary group of economists, business leaders, and philosophers to consider the possible shape of a more progressive capitalism. I have learned much from our lively discussions, and from the contributions of David Autor, Julie Batillana, and Robert Frank, in particular. Amartya Sen has had a great impact on me, both through his writings and through conversations; I hope he will approve my expression of the opposition to teleology we share. Five philosophers—Elizabeth Anderson, Anthony Appiah, Michael Fuerstein, Susan Neiman, and Valerie Tiberius—have helped me greatly, in our discussions at the meetings, in their written work, and in a variety of conversations. Thanks to you all!
I have been extremely fortunate to spend the final years of my academic career in a wonderfully diverse, intellectually vibrant, and mutually supportive department. Several Columbia colleagues have helped me with the development of my thoughts about moral progress. I have learned much from Robert Gooding-Williams, Axel Honneth, Michele Moody-Adams, and Fred Neuhouser. It has been delightful and invigorating to recognize some of the affinities between my own pragmatism and critical theory as Axel practices it. Bob GoodingWilliams was extremely helpful in his suggestions for reading about the history of slavery and abolitionism; he has also generously provided me with excellent comments on a late draft of the lectures. Alice Kessler-Harris and Susan Pedersen offered me guidance in studying the history of the long movement for women’s emancipation. I am also grateful to Tory Higgins for many conversations, and for the opportunity to read the manuscript of his book Shared Reality, in advance of
its publication. To two distinguished economists—Ronald Findlay and Dan O’Flaherty—I owe a special debt; through our repeated ventures in joint teaching, my horizons have expanded and I have learned new ways of seeing.
For nearly forty years, I have benefited from regular exchanges with some exceptional graduate students. While these ideas were gestating I was particularly fortunate to be able to try out my embryonic thoughts on a group as talented as any I have ever taught. I am deeply grateful to Anuk Arudpragasam, Max Khan Hayward, Robbie Kubala, and Natalia Rogach Alexander for the many hours we have spent in conversations I have found not only valuable but also exhilarating.
Perhaps the greatest thanks are owed to a former member of the Columbia intellectual community to whom I can no longer express my gratitude. For nearly twenty years, Isaac Levi and I talked regularly. Although we were often in accord, we sometimes disagreed. I suspect (and hope) that Isaac enjoyed as much as I did our attempts to persuade one another. Unfortunately, he did not live to witness his greatest victory: my recognition that ontological debates are significant only insofar as they have methodological implications.
Besides presenting this material in Munich, I have been able to try out some of my ideas on other audiences. Early versions of parts of the lectures were presented as one of my Chaire Mercier Lectures at the Université de Louvain, at the Technical University of Delft, and in my visit to Berkeley as Howison Lecturer. Peter Verdée and Jeroen van der Hoeven raised many interesting questions (in Louvain and Delft, respectively). Discussions in Berkeley taught me much, and influenced especially Chapter 3. I would like to thank Shamik Dasgupta, Hannah Ginsborg, Wesley Holliday, Niko Kolodny, John MacFarlane, and Jay Wallace for their perceptive questions. John Campbell’s comments on my Howison lecture have also prompted me to reconsider some aspects of my broader project. Finally, as ever, Barry Stroud offered me insightful advice; it saddens me to realize that I shall no longer be able to benefit from his wise counsel.
It has been, as always, a great pleasure to work with OUP’s outstanding New York Philosophy Editor, Peter Ohlin. I am immensely grateful to Peter for his wise counsel and for his kind support.
At its best, philosophy is a cooperative enterprise. I want to thank all the people mentioned, and I apologize to anyone whom I have inadvertently forgotten.
And, of course, not least, I wish to thank Patricia Kitcher, who has influenced my thought (and my life) for nearly half a century.
Contributors
Jan-Christoph Heilinger is Researcher and Lecturer in Philosophy at RWTH Aachen University and permanent visiting professor at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Port-au-Prince. He works in moral and political philosophy with a particular interest in applied ethics.
Rahel Jaeggi is Professor of Practical Philosophy with an emphasis on Social and Political Philosophy and director of the Center for Humanities and Social Change Berlin at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research focuses on social philosophy, political philosophy, ethics, philosophical anthropology, social ontology, and critical theory.
Susan Neiman is Director of the Einstein Forum, Potsdam. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Neiman studied philosophy at Harvard University and the Freie Universität Berlin, and was professor of philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on moral and political philosophy and the history of modern philosophy.
Amia Srinivasan is the Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford. She writes on epistemology, metaphilosophy, political philosophy, and the history and theory of feminism. She is a contributing editor of the London Review of Books.
Moral Progress
Introduction Democratic Contractualism: Philip Kitcher’s Pragmatic Account of Moral Progress
Jan-Christoph Heilinger
The present small volume contains a large project: Based on the assumption that a better understanding of past instances of progressive moral change is crucial for making urgently needed current and future advances in morality “more systematic and more sure-footed,” Philip Kitcher develops a novel understanding of moral progress as change in belief and conduct, change that solves problems and overcomes limitations in living together. Kitcher analyzes the dynamics of progressive change, including its main impediments, and proposes a complex methodology of moral inquiry, guiding how individuals and communities should go about realizing more such progress. Challenged by constructive criticism from Amia Srinivasan, Rahel Jaeggi, and Susan Neiman, also included in the present volume, Kitcher concludes with a spirited defense of his vision of a society shaped by institutions that invite and promote progressive change.
The discussions on moral progress are part of Kitcher’s ambitious project of a “reconstruction of philosophy” in a pragmatist spirit that he has initiated in a number of articles, several of which can be found in the collection Preludes to Pragmatism 1 Furthermore, his
1 Philip Kitcher, Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). The subtitle is an obvious acknowledgment of John Dewey’s Reconstruction in Philosophy (The Middle Works, Volume 12, 1920 [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982]). Here Dewey argued for redirecting philosophical attention from the perennial philosophical questions and the quest to identify eternal truths, and to connect instead with the realities of human life and address the challenges that currently emerge (cf. also John Dewey, The Quest for
important book, The Ethical Project, has further set the scene with a first presentation of “pragmatic naturalism” to approach questions of moral philosophy with implications for adjacent social and political philosophy: ethics and the moral rules that guide human actions and interactions are to be understood as a human invention, a social technology developed to confront problems in living together.2 Revisiting these themes in the present book, Kitcher advances and enriches his earlier work in different ways. If the preludes are over now, the present book, the first in a planned series of three, could be seen as the first movement of a full symphony.3
Starting from a phenomenologically careful analysis of past instances of progressive moral change—the abolition of chattel slavery, the expansion of opportunities for women, and increasing respect for loving relationships between people of the same sex—Kitcher covers a wide philosophical terrain: he touches upon the development of morality as a social technology over time; offers a pragmatic answer to the metaethical question about the nature of moral truth; develops in detail a method to pursue moral inquiry; and describes how such a methodology could be practically implemented in society to seek and realize progressive change.
In doing so, Kitcher aspires to work toward a “twenty-first-century version of Deweyan pragmatism.” In the following pages, this aspiration culminates in nothing less than a first outline of a “Deweyan” society. Such a society would harbor a distinctive “new cluster of social institutions” to address the current and future appearances of the moral “ur-problem,” which, according to Kitcher, consists in the limited psychological ability of humans to genuinely understand the perspective of others and to then shape their actions in the light of this understanding. A (qualified) optimist by nature, Kitcher argues that
Certainty, in The Later Works, Volume 4: 1929 [Carbondale, Southern Illinois Press, 1984], 204).
2 Philip Kitcher, The Ethical Project (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 3, 221, et passim.
3 The other two, to be expected soon, will complement the work on ethics by a discussion of education, on the one hand, and of philosophy of science and value theory, on the other.
intelligent interventions and reform, to which also philosophy can and should contribute, can trigger an entire “virtuous spiral” so that seizing some opportunities to realize progress can become increasingly transformative. In this short introduction, I offer some initial orientation to readers by highlighting three important dimensions of Kitcher’s rich study on moral progress.
1. Moral Truth, Progress, and Methodology
The question about moral truth and the reality of moral facts and properties in the world has dominated metaethical debates for millennia. Moral progress, on the influential realist account, is understood as the discovery of objective truths leading to an ongoing epistemic approximation of full moral knowledge. Kitcher rejects this view and proposes, as a pragmatic alternative to a realist understanding of progress, to redirect philosophical attention: instead of looking for timeless, mind-independent objective moral truths, philosophy should aspire to identify problems that occur in living together and to propose intelligent solutions for addressing them. Insight in moral truth lies, on this pragmatist understanding, not at the origin of moral progress. Instead, progressive change in moral beliefs and practice allows that some novel moral commitments will be called “true,” if they are able to lastingly convince people they are appropriate solutions to some perceived challenges in living together.
On this account, moral progress consists in a community progressing from a problematic situation to a novel arrangement in which the problem is adequately addressed, even though other problems might persist or novel challenges might appear. It does not consist in the claim of humankind altogether progressing toward some fixed end point of perfect morality. By acknowledging the complexity of the many dimensions of human social life, Kitcher’s pragmatic account of moral progress saves the notion from the charge of being overly simplistic and too general, which has led to talk of moral progress falling somewhat out of fashion since its heydays in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
