Abstract
Despite its prominence in traditional societies and its apparent commonsense appeal, the moral tradition of Role Ethics has been largely neglected in mainstream normative theory. Role Ethics is the view that the duties and/or virtues of social life are determined largely by the social roles we incur in the communities we inhabit. This essay aims to address two of the main challenges that hinder Role Ethics from garnering more serious consideration as a legitimate normative theory, namely that it is ill-suited to support a theory of right action that can enhance moral reasoning, and that it countenances certain unjust roles such as that of slave or slave-owner. Taking inspiration from contemporary social science, we argue that proponents of Role Ethics can adopt a view that reduces the apparent diversity of role obligations to four prototypical types of role duties. We propose a contemporary version of Role Ethics that coheres with human moral psychology, and which lends itself to a relatively pragmatic theory of right action that precludes the possibility of unjust roles.
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Notes
One can find early examples of this Enlightenment conception of reason in Descartes’ and Hobbes’ shared assertion of the universal accessibility of reason to all of humankind, barring infancy or infirmity (see Descartes 1999; Hobbes 1994). Kant, of course, made this a semi-permanent feature of our moral discourse by identifying universalizability as a necessary condition for a moral maxim (see Kant 2012). There are, admittedly, exceptions to this broad historical trajectory from ancient emphasis of social roles to Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment prioritization of impartiality and universality. One can find several examples in Jewish and Christian scripture of a call to subordinate traditional social roles to the love of God and, through God, all of humankind (see, for example, Lk. 14:26; Dt. 33:9; Mt. 10:37, and Dt. 13:6–8). Nonetheless, as we will see, it was not at all uncommon in ancient ethics to reserve a central place for social roles in determining moral obligation and virtue while this has become vanishingly uncommon in modern and contemporary philosophical ethics.
We should certainly expect to find that, at the periphery of this definition, Role Ethics may begin to bleed into other normative traditions. Similarly, some versions of role-utilitarianism arguably blend into deontology; virtue consequentialism blends into virtue ethics, and so forth.
The Care Ethics tradition is an example of relational ethics, one which typically grounds duties in empathetic connections between consociates. But even Care Ethics tends to focus on specific persisting relationships, such as the parent-child relation.
It is certainly not our intention to claim, anachronistically, that these traditions are somehow simply and straightforwardly role ethics. Rather, we will examine several ways in which these traditions embody views that are also central to Role Ethics in order to show the prominence of these views among major strains of ancient thought.
See Gyekye 1995. While humanity suggests universality, brotherhood seems to imply human beings with whom one has specific, concrete relations.
Roger Ames claims that Confucian ethics tends to describe human nature as intrinsically relational, but it also differentiates this relational nature in terms of several categories of social roles (see especially, Ames 2012). On Ames’ view, the Confucian tradition is role-ethical in the communitarian sense, in that it conceives “human beings as relational persons constituted by the roles they live rather than as individual selves” (Ames 2012 pg. 24). Filial piety in particular seems to present us with a type of ethical obligation based upon specific roles that is not subsumed by universal considerations. See especially the infamous example of Analects 13:18, in which Confucius claims that it is right for fathers and sons to conceal one another’s wrongdoings. This stands in stark contrast to the equally famous parody of Socrates teaching children to prosecute their parents in Aristophanes’ Clouds, though the satirical (and slanderous) nature of this portrayal of Socrates might well underscore that there is at least something right about the Confucian view (as Socrates himself seems to imply in Plato’s Euthyphro).
See Politics, I, 1153a19ff. Aristotle also maintains the naturally social character of human nature by noting that a human being in the “state of nature” (i.e., isolated) is actually in an unnatural state for a human being.
Aristotle 1999, pg. 69 (1129b-1130a). Bibliographical categorization notwithstanding, Aristotle does not conceive of ethics and political philosophy as strictly separate domains of human knowledge, but instead claims them to be two parts of the same overarching science (see Nicomachean Ethics, I, 2). One might object that this prioritization of social relations seems to be incompatible with eudaimonian virtue ethics, the focus of which appears to emphasize one’s own happiness first, thus rendering relational virtues and obligations derivative. Aristotle, however, complicates the relation between self- and other-directed love/care when he claims that a friend is another oneself (Nicomachean Ethics, IX, 9). Moreover, Aristotle’s initial emphasis on individual happiness in his ethical writings might well be an example of his general tendency of proceeding from “what is more intelligible and clear to us and move from there to what is clearer and more intelligible in itself” (Aristotle 2008, pg. 9 (184a)). A more detailed treatment of this question deserves its own analysis.
Kant 1996, pg. 584 (6:468–469). Admittedly, Kant does think that his a priori analysis of morality must be schematized (made concrete) in order to make it “ready for morally practical use,” a process through which we would take into consideration the specific circumstances (including social roles) of individuals. While this might permit us to exercise what has come to be called first-order partiality, Kant nonetheless insists upon second-order impartiality—i.e., impartiality, and hence abstraction from such concrete particulars, on the far more important level of moral principles and rule-making
In particular, care ethics is a normative theory that describes how the duties of our relationships promote the well-being of the constituent caregivers and care-receivers (Noddings 1984; Gilligan 1982; Held 2006). While similar in this regard, role ethics is nonetheless distinct from care ethics in at least two important respects. First, at least many main forms of care ethics are forms of moral sentimentalism, which place a premium on empathy as a source of moral awareness. Role Ethics need not endorse that moral epistemology. Second, care ethics maintains that the primary relationship we encounter developmentally is the parent-child relation (though care ethics does also allow for different types of relations and obligations as we develop—e.g., counselor-patient, teacher-student, partner or spouse). Role ethics does not emphasize this developmental aspect, arguably enabling it to be less reductive towards one paradigmatic form of relation. As it is conceived here, Role Ethics is an extension of relational ethics that aims to make more concrete the source, strength, and nature of the duties of our persisting social relationships.
Again, this tradition does not necessarily include the further claim that our roles are central sources of our duties and/or virtues.
Prichard (1949) potentially comes closest to endorsing a full-fledged role ethics, for on his view every right action specifies a state of affairs and a “definite relation.” But Prichard is silent about the nature of these definite relations, such that it appears agents stand in a morally relevant relation with all individuals with whom we have any meaningful contact.
“In addition to a universalist duty, we have special obligations to those who “stand to me in the relation of promisee to promiser, of creditor to debtor, of wife to husband, of child to parent, of friend to friend, of fellow countryman to fellow countryman, and the like” (Ross 1930, pg. 19).
This essay does not attempt to defend the plausibility of moral partiality. We agree with Samuel Scheffler who has compellingly argued that the universalist tradition rejects reasons of partiality that are nearly inevitable outcomes of certain of basic forms of human valuing, and thus these traditions implausibly require a standard of moral action that sets itself “against our natures as valuing creatures” (2010 pg. 100).
Some contemporary philosophers seem to take the view that a theory of right action need not offer any practical guidance, but those who do think normative theories aspire to this goal follow a long tradition that includes Aristotle, Kant, and Bentham, among others.
Fiske’s theory is motivated by the observation that human beings from vastly distinct societies appear to parse the social world into just four distinct social-relational categories that serve as mental schemas that we use to coordinate almost all social interactions (Fiske 1992, 1993; Haslam and Fiske 1999). In a wide variety of human cultures, if you ask people to categorize or evaluate the similarities between relationships, regression analysis suggests that they all utilize the same four social-relational categories, and they share surprisingly similar expectations for how each type of relationship ought to be regulated. If these findings are indicative of innate features of human moral psychology, it may help explain the prevalence of Role Ethics in ancient traditions.
For example, it is plausible that we have duties to certain works of art or features of nature, even if no human is in a position to value them.
To be sure, different individuals many inhabit several roles concurrently. But in particular spheres of activity, we tend to wear specific hats. For example, at work you may be my superior, but outside the office, we may interact as friends instead. Different roles are appropriate to the different spheres of activity.
Importantly, legitimate status hierarchies involve genuine asymmetries in the relevant sphere of activity. It is appropriate that first-year residents have lower status in the hospital than senior physicians because, with regard to the sphere of activity, they typically do have inferior capacities.
For example, parents give their children an allowance, but the children may wind up giving one to their elderly parents. This exemplifies how goods in a sphere of activity get distributed/pursued in accordance with status.
So while the teams meet other teams as social equals (via the duty of equality), internally the team member endorse a duty of unity with one another.
Unlike a democratic/egalitarian vote where it is permissible that the outcome satisfy only the majority’s preferences, consensus requires that the entire group converge or unify around an outcome that satisfies shared preferences.
This kind of reasonable moral pluralism infuses political debates, as well. For example, many Americans on the left think that medical care should be distributed as a human right in accordance with the duty of equality, while those on the right think it should be distributed as a market commodity in accordance with proportionality.
As another example, I once made a failing attempt to hire a fellow graduate student to do some work on my house. He was offended and later explained that he would have happily done the work for free as a favor, but he was put off that I wanted to make our relationship transactional. In short, I had failed to see him, and thus treat him, as a genuine friend.
Indeed, this might well be precisely why Aristotle conceives of ethics as part of political science, and hence essentially connected to the study of our place within the communities we inhabit
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Evans, J., Smith, M. Toward a Role Ethical Theory of Right Action. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 21, 599–614 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-018-9903-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-018-9903-9