Are Justice and Care two different things?

I really have to wonder whether Justice and Care (reduced to simple labels) are really two separate things, or whether they might be two aspects of the same thing. That is, the use of the term “Justice” when contrasted to “Care” seems narrower than in other applications of the term “Justice”. Now there seems to be a bit of a paradox in reasoning about the differences between Justice and...

Kant, Okin, and Universals

Considering Kant’s morality brings up the question of what is universal, and the implications that result from whether something is or isn’t universal. Kant was strongly oriented towards the universal, and in his Groundwork for the Metaphic of Morals sought to establish a universal principle. Susan Moller Okin claims he has invalidated himself (see my last two postings), ostensibly by the neglect of one factor...

More thoughts on Okin’s “Reason and Fe...

Another thing occurs to me as I consider Okin’s paper. Okin may be idealizing the family relationship and before using that idealized relationship as the basis for criticizing both Kant and Rawls. For example, I described in an earlier posting how the mother love bond may be a fundamental form of love, but it is not the only type of love. Why should this type of love, and only this type of love, invalidate Kant? Okin...

Susan Moller Okin and Empathy vs Reason in Justice

Okin makes a very interesting point when she criticizes John Rawls through Kant for neglecting empathy in determining morality and justice. “The Kantian connection, I suggest, made it extremely difficult for Rawls to acknowledge any role for empathy or benevolence in the formulation of his principles of justice, instead, impelled him in the direction of rational choice” (Okin 231). She sees the root of the...

Kant and Okin

I want to examine the question Susan Moller Okin raises in "Reason and Feeling in Thinking about Justice" of whether Kant made a fundamental error. In terms of Okin’s theory, “The love of parents for their children, coming to be reciprocated in turn by the child, is important in [John Rawls’] account of the development of a sense of self-worth.” (236) But what if a child is deprived of his...

Reflections on Kant and John Stewart Mill

It’s interesting to read John Stewart Mill. He is very direct and very clear, a refreshing contrast to Kant. Mill had the advantage of writing well after Kant, and being familiar with his work. Mill appears philosophically and temperamentally opposed to Kant. Where Kant wanted to discard all practical and outer considerations and reason his way directly to morality, Mill quickly discards the very approach and goes at...

Why is Steiner so hard to read?

To answer this question it is helpful to distinguish between Steiner’s written works and his lectures, and among the lectures between those given to a general audience, and those given to Theosophists. The public lectures are actually the easiest to read. The books are difficult because of the philospical language (think Hegel or Kant, both of whom Steiner read extensively). The Theosophical lectures have their own...

How do we know what Steiner said?

The historical sources for analyzing the development of Rudolf Steiner’s thought have been collected by the Rudolf Steiner Archive in Dornach, Switzerland, and have been published in the 330 volumes of complete works. Additional documents continue to be issued every year, and several important volumes from this time period were first published as recently as 2006. From accounts we have from his listeners, Rudolf...

Can animals possess individual virtue?

I really don’t think virtue can be applied to individual dogs, the key reason being their lack of self-consciousness. While non-human species may have certain rights (a question I don’t really want to get too far into here) I will agree with most traditional thinkers that virtue and morality are not possible to them (Aristotle took this as almost self-evident, going past it rapidly in Book 1, Chapter 13 of his Nicomachean...

Stenography and Steiner

As source material the stenographic records of Rudolf Steiner’s early lectures are both invaluable and problematic. Stenographic notes are a system of shorthand markings that allow the stenographer to write as fast as people speak. These stenographic notes must then be reconstructed into conventional written sentences. For many of Rudolf Steiner’s early works we have the reconstruction but not the original...