Yostivanich

Tonight I attended a lec­ture by Stephen Dar­wall, a Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan. He gave a lec­ture this evening cov­er­ing respon­si­bil­ity within rela­tion­ships, specif­i­cally as to how we inter­act and respond to each other and what our moral basis for our actions toward the other per­son are inside of this rela­tion­ship. First off, under mod­ern philo­soph­i­cal thought it is not enough to if con­fronted with the choice to save a stranger and your sig­nif­i­cant other it is not enough to sim­ply think, well that is my sig­nif­i­cant other and for that rea­son I will save them. This is the idea of there being “One idea too many.” The idea here is that the con­cern should be to a par­tic­u­lar per­son rather than hav­ing to put your con­cern within the con­text of a rela­tion­ship, the rela­tion­ship is a mutal rela­tion­ship and there­fore there is no rea­son to add that you will save the per­son because of your rela­tion­ship with that per­son. So the end goal of what Pro­fes­sor Dar­wall is try­ing to get is a moral basis under which respon­si­bil­ity inside and within rela­tion­ships is explained along with the under­stand of how it relates to peo­ple with whom you have no rela­tion­ship, ie. the stranger.

First, let us define what con­text under which we are dis­cussing a rela­tion­ship. A rela­tion­ship as Dar­wall puts for­ward is one where there is an implicit under­stand­ing that you two are together, you both accept the rela­tion­ship, and you both are free to vol­un­tary leave the rela­tion­ship. An exam­ple of this, is going for a walk with a per­son, if you are walk­ing with some­one, you expect to walk with that per­son, where they go, you go as well. Also when that per­son if at some point chooses to veer off and away from you, they acknowl­edge that they will do so and you accept them leav­ing. If you are not walk­ing with a per­son you do not have any rea­son to tell the other per­son that you are veer­ing off in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. There is a basic under­stand­ing of mutual com­mu­ni­ca­tion about the aspects of what the two of you are doing in the rela­tion­ship or in the course of your walk. Now, these rela­tion­ships can be roman­tic, or they can be strictly pla­tonic, the impor­tance is in the acknowl­edg­ment of what hap­pens when one per­son leaves or steps away from the other person.

So we have a basic under­stand­ing of what a rela­tion­ship is, next, we will define what occurs on the moral level within the rela­tion­ship. The basic human moral instinct towards any sin­gle per­son is to care for that per­son. Care is defined in this con­text as want­ing what ben­e­fits that per­son for the best. You do not par­tic­u­larly care about their actual wishes, their wishes are irrel­e­vant because you do not have a rela­tion­ship upon which to decide or know what their wishes may be. Rather you have a gen­eral con­cern for their well-being and wish for them to have what is best for them. I am not going to get into a full blown out argu­ment as to why this is a basic moral idea of all humans, but I will make an easy exam­ple. Smok­ing is some­thing that peo­ple do, and the major­ity of peo­ple acknowl­edge is dan­ger­ous and for this rea­son we wish for peo­ple to not smoke. Another exam­ple is when peo­ple are injured in a ter­ror­ist attack or nat­ural dis­as­ter even though we in all likely hood do not know any­one even remotely effected by these events we are moved with feel­ings of con­cern and a gen­uine desire to help our fel­low per­son. This is care for the basic human, whether we are in a rela­tion­ship with that per­son or not.

When we come into a rela­tion­ship with a per­son, we add a sec­ond level of con­cern to the rela­tion­ship, while still keep­ing the first. It is at this point that we acknowl­edge and wish to pro­mote the other person’s desires and wishes, this is respect. Respect is made up of what the other per­son desires. Now as to what this actu­ally is, Prof. Dar­wall makes no claims to being able to fully define the other person’s desires sim­ply because they can be widely var­ied from per­son to per­son. Respect cre­ates a moral account­abil­ity where we accept the other person’s view of our­selves and wish to be kept in their good graces. This is due to the fact that the rela­tion­ship is entered into mutu­ally thus the oblig­a­tion is mutual. The moral oblig­a­tion is based on care but more impor­tantly on respect. This respect rever­ber­ates among the two peo­ple, because one per­son cares for the other, the other cares for that per­son, and mutu­ally they want not only what is best for each of them but they also desire for the other per­son what the other per­son desires.

Going back to our idea of a basic rela­tion­ship with the walk, when you engage in a rela­tion­ship you acknowl­edge that the other per­son is to be informed of your actions and desires. This also flows that each per­son is held account­able to each other. Here we come to the idea that Prof. Dar­wall is pro­mot­ing, that there exists a Second-person author­ity and this author­ity should be the guide for our moral and also our immoral actions in a rela­tion­ship. The idea of Second-person author­ity is that it is nec­es­sary to have within a rela­tion­ship or else there is no rela­tion­ship. No respect for the other per­son, no rela­tion­ship and thus no Second-person author­ity. But what is meant by a Second-person author­ity, this author­ity is the idea that each per­son is held account­able to the other and there exists an implicit under­stand­ing that respect exists and is to be upheld inside of the rela­tion­ship. In other words Second-person author­ity is the moral author­ity upon which a rela­tion­ship is formed. It does not have to be expressly stated, and in most cases should nei­ther have to be or need to be stated. Rather it is under­stood implic­itly the same way that you under­stand that you and some­one else are walk­ing together, gen­er­ally you don’t ask to take a walk together it just happens.

With this Second-person author­ity comes the under­stand­ing that all actions are if they are to pro­mote the rela­tion­ship should be with that per­son. For exam­ple, con­tempt for some­one else is a Third-person action, an action that is not inter­act­ing with each other but rather with some­one else or pos­si­bly no one else. When you roll your eyes at some­one, rather than telling the per­son that their idea is stu­pid you are stat­ing to every­one else around you that their idea is stu­pid. How­ever when you glare at some­one the under­stand­ing there is that the per­son did some­thing wrong and they should cor­rect their actions. There exists a basic under­stand­ing that the per­son should not only cor­rect their actions but that they are account­able to you. If you have no rela­tion­ship with the per­son, then you really don’t care what they do, because their actions have no real effect on you.

The main point of his argu­ment with Second-person author­ity is that the biggest cause of rela­tion­ships, inti­mate or not is a lack of respect for the other per­son. When you express con­tempt with some­one rather than con­fronting the per­son about the prob­lem, you show a lack of respect towards that per­son. You are not acknowl­edg­ing the mutual under­stand­ing you two have to hold each other account­able to the the other within the con­text of the rela­tion­ship. Because of the vul­ner­a­bil­ity inher­ent in rela­tion­ships we have to accept that we are held to a level of mutual respect for each other. Second-person author­ity says that within a rela­tion­ship we have a spe­cial respon­si­bil­ity to the other per­son unique to that per­son and thus we will make actions within the con­text of that responsibility.

So rather than say­ing oh that is my sig­nif­i­cant other, so for that rea­son I will save them, we instead don’t think about our actions because the moral deci­sion has already been decided before hand, because that per­son would pre­sum­ably wish to be save so we in turn do as they would wish and save them.

Note: I may be mis­in­ter­pret­ing sev­eral of his argu­ments but I do not believe so and I defi­antly didn’t put it as well as he did, if you are inter­ested in this, Prof. Dar­wall is releas­ing a book enti­tled The Sec­ond Per­son Stand­point that more fully will explain this idea. Also, if you have any ques­tions about this idea do not hes­i­tate to leave a com­ment and I will answer your ques­tions as best as I pos­si­bly can, how­ever I do acknowl­edge that I do not study phi­los­o­phy except as a hobby and defi­antly this is not my own per­sonal phi­los­o­phy that I thought up of, so some ques­tions I may not be able to answer. Also sorry about the long post, but try fit­ting a an hour and half long lec­ture on mod­ern phi­los­o­phy into some­thing man­age­able, it just isn’t going to happen.

Edit:  Minor gram­mar mis­take cor­rected, on Sept. 15, 2006 at 12:28 am.