Abstract
I start this chapter with a short account of what I mean by ‘morality’ (as contrasted with ‘the ethical’) and then outline the notion of ‘primary recognition’, which notion explains why we think morally at all—because when we recognise another as a human being we necessarily and without inference also recognise them as one due consideration and concern. This helps to establish that we are not just trained egoists but are morally concerned to the core. The notion of primary recognition is one of the main new contributions to knowledge in the book.
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Notes
- 1.
I will argue that primary recognition shares the essential characteristics of basic moral certainty , especially indubitability. For detailed discussion of the relationship between these notions see Sect. 2.8 below.
- 2.
Hans Fink puts it more strongly saying ‘[s]ome moral philosophers use the terms ‘ethical ’ and ‘moral’ interchangeably. Others use only one term… The philosophers who use [both] and try to differentiate between them can muster very little agreement on how the terms should be used (and little consistency in their actual usage)… I find it difficult to discern much order in all of this.’ (in Andersen and Niekerk 2007, 22–3) I think this lack of terminological consensus sometimes leads also to conceptual confusion. I will discuss this more below at Sect. 3.1.1 (and also with reference to Alasdair MacIntyre at 6.3.2).
- 3.
On the other hand, whether an activity is ethically valuable might effect some moral questions. For instance, we might plausibly censure a talented novelist who neglects their art to spend their life playing video games. The relative ethical worth of the projects might give grounds for moral censure along the lines of ‘It is morally wrong to waste a talent’. Though I think such censure must be underpinned by consideration of the effect of this neglect on others (see the following chapter on the other-regarding nature of morality).
- 4.
I use the word ‘others’ somewhat against the grain, in that I intend it in the sense of ‘Others like me’, ‘Other mes’, rather than in the sense that highlights the radically different or radically unknowable as philosophers like Buber and Levinas sometimes use it.
- 5.
Though non-human animals may count as others (to what extent they are would be an interesting and useful investigation to pursue) I will be arguing that there is something particular about the way we relate to human others. And in any case, I want to start by discussing the least controversial, paradigm example of ‘others’, that is human beings.
- 6.
Even if someone pushes us aside carelessly, it is not in the just the same way that one moves a bin or a traffic cone.
- 7.
I go into the physiological nature of our responses to others at greater depth at Sect. 6.2.
- 8.
As Weil , again, puts it ‘The idea of a person being a thing is a logical contradiction’ (1965, 9, italics mine).
- 9.
I am not implying that there is anything philosophically suspect in this tactic. I mention it only to support my contention that seeing what look like human beings automatically elicits a moral response.
- 10.
This is also why experiencing primary recognition when seeing a foetus is not decisive in the abortion debate.
- 11.
Incidentally, conceiving of morality as grounded in this immediate response to the other might help us make sense of the problem of moral distance. The problem is well described by Adam Smith where he says
Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life… [but] when all this fine philosophy was over… he would pursue his business or his pleasure… as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren. (2009 [1790], III.3.4)
Our concern for others tends to diminish in proportion with the level of direct contact we have with them, so that people starving in another country, whom we have never met, will elicit less of a sense of concern than say, the needs of a friend or colleague with whom we interact daily, but whose needs might be less pressing. If primary recognition at least initiates, or forms the source of, our moral responses, then this would help explain why our moral emotions are less readily evoked by the needs of those we don’t see.
- 12.
We might suspect that Løgstrup is here open to the objection that trusting does not always mean being entrusted. So for example, I may trust someone I don’t know, like a celebrity or a politician, but as we never meet I am not entrusted to them. This would mean we have trust without being put into the other’s hands, and so without the ethical demand arising. But Løgstrup is here speaking of trust in the context of an actual meeting between two or more parties (even if they are meeting in some remote way like over the phone). The parties must be within ‘harming distance’ of each other for the mutual trust, and hence the demand Løgstrup speaks of to come into effect.
- 13.
This non-acknowledgement is not to actively deny their presence, and so do away with primary recognition , but just to consciously refrain from engaging. My action is still predicated on the fact of primary recognition.
- 14.
Though some of these examples deal with issues of politeness rather than serious moral obligations (e.g. to help an injured person), we can sensibly speak of all of them as having a moral dimension. They differ markedly in seriousness (rudeness is not a very serious moral wrong) but not in kind.
- 15.
I will also argue, at Sect. 6.2, that primary recognition is not something we learn but that it is a natural part of our humanity . Yes, we learn moral behaviours but the initial impulse to moral concern is not learned.
- 16.
Thanks to Daniele Moyal-Sharrock for this phrase.
- 17.
Treating a person in this way, having such a basic attitude towards them, involves both how we act and how we ‘see’ them. Like for example, the way my attitude towards my pet rabbit involves both seeing him in a certain way (as an animal , as my animal , as an animal I like etc.) and reacting towards him in a certain way (not as I react to a piece of furniture, not running from it as I might from other, wild animals etc.).
- 18.
A perhaps more positive rendering of this notion can be seen in Dante ’s Divine Comedy (1899) where he speaks of the ‘vinco d’amor chef a natura’ or ‘chain of love that nature made’ (Inferno 11:56) (or the ‘naturale amistade’, ‘natural friendship’ mentioned in his Convivio 3:11:7). This chain of love is seen as a natural relationship of active amity that exists more or less strongly between all human beings (and even between humans and supernatural beings like angels or God).
- 19.
I will go into the relation between morality and self-interest in more depth below at Sect. 3.1.3.
- 20.
Levinas ’ talk of the suspension of ‘my natural right to survival’ seems to be motivated by his notion that we live at the expense of the other. ‘What is an individual, if not a usurper?’ and ‘[w]hat is signified by the advent of conscience… if not the discovery of corpses beside me and my horror of existing by assassination?’ (Levinas 1997, 100) For Levinas it is this living ‘through assassination’ that cancels my right to survival.
- 21.
I am arguing that primary recognition is the source of morality, not that we act morally only towards those we recognise as human.
- 22.
This term should not be understood as implying ‘moral health’, but only as opposed to morally insane.
- 23.
Cf. Patricia Heberer (2011): ‘In the late summer of 1941, Heinrich Himmler, noting the psychological burden that mass shootings produced on his soldiers, requested that a more convenient mode of killing be developed. The result was the gas van, a mobile gas chamber’ (ibid., 82).
- 24.
I will argue against the Hobbesian account of humans as amoral in the state of nature at Sect. 6.2.
- 25.
This is a fact Stephan Rummens seems to miss in his criticism of the notion of basic moral certainty (2013, esp. 144). Nigel Pleasants responds to this criticism along similar lines to those offered here in his paper ‘If killing isn’t wrong then nothing is: A naturalistic defence of basic moral certainty’ (2015, esp. 203–4).
- 26.
I will discuss this further at Sect. 4.2.1 when discussing attempts to doubt that ‘some killings are wrong’.
- 27.
I don’t want to deny the importance of the Socratic question about whether we can knowingly do wrong, but it is beyond my remit to pursue it here.
- 28.
And there are some instances where public emergency seems to positively encourage concern for one’s neighbour and bring about greater solidarity in a community, like during the bombings of London in WWII and the so-called ‘Blitz Spirit’.
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O’Hara, N. (2018). Primary Recognition and Morality. In: Moral Certainty and the Foundations of Morality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75444-4_2
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