Contact Information : Institut Für Allgemeine Erziehungswissenschaft (I), Westfälische

Title: The co-primacy of justice and empathy in the moral point of view and its meaning for practical ethics education Author: Bruce Maxwell Contact information: Institut für Allgemeine Erziehungswissenschaft (I), Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Georgskommende 26, 48143 Münster, Deutschland, Tel.: 49. (0)251.83.24255, Fax.: 49.(0)251.83.24184, [email protected].

Paper presented at the annual conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, New College, Oxford, 1-3 April 2005

Abstract (short): This paper considers the moral-psychological thesis that justice and empathy are co-primary in any defensible conceptualisation of the moral point of view with an eye to questioning what critical implications, if any, it might have for mainstream approaches to practical ethics education. Using Gibbs’ recent work on the co-primacy of justice and caring in the moral domain as a foil, we adumbrate two broad views on the role of empathy in moral reasoning—namely, the later Kohlbergian view that the moral point of view involves balancing the interests of justice and benevolence and the stronger moral sense theorists’ idea that the very interest in justice itself supposes empathic engagement. We conclude that rather than straightforwardly signalling a need to explicitly promote empathic development in practical ethics, these views, if correct, suggest that even the notoriously judgment-centred approaches to practical ethics education even now further this aim in unrecognised ways.

Abstract (long): This discussion of the relationship between justice and empathy in the conceptualisation of the moral point of view attempts to respond to the frequently-voiced suggestion that the familiar judgement-centred approach to practical ethics education fails to appreciate the contribution empathy makes to moral reflection. Using Gibbs’ recent work on justice and caring in the moral domain as a foil, we adumbrate two broad views on the role of empathy in moral reasoning—namely, the later Kohlbergian (1990) view that the moral point of view involves balancing the interests of justice and benevolence and Hoffman’s (2000) idea, derived from moral sense theory, that an interest in morality supposes empathic engagement. In Moral development and reality (2003), Gibbs develops an integrative component conceptualisation of the moral point of view. He argues that neither an interest in justice nor caring alone is capable of capturing the moral domain and that, accordingly, any balanced comprehension of moral maturity must account for both sub-components. The Kohlbergian theory of cognitive moral development captures the justice component, he argues, by articulating the growth of a more differentiated understanding of the meaning of fairness whereas Hoffman’s theory of empathic moral development renders the same service to the empathy component by articulating the emergence of feelings connected with the avoidance of others’ suffering. A closer look at Hoffman’s and Kohlberg’s own views on this issue, however, suggests that neither thinker would agree with Gibbs’ compromise. Hoffman (2000) makes it explicit that his theory of empathic development was never intended to sit passively alongside Kohlberg’s. Instead, it is best understood as a rectification of its underdeveloped answer to the crucial question of why people are ever interested in morality, a theoretical inadequacy Hoffman attributes to the Kohlbergian theory’s exaggerated focus on rational, cognitive processes. In essence, Hoffman fills in this gap with the claim that human beings’ interest in morality presupposes an active interest in others’ well-being, a staple of moral sense theory. For Kohlberg’s part, in a late publication he seems to endorse an interpretation of the moral point of view that leans towards this thesis as well. He argues that the fundamental moral notion “respect for persons” idealized in Stage 6 presupposes the co-primacy of justice and benevolence. In this conception, justice constrains benevolence by 2 ensuring that the interest in promoting the good for some respects the rights of others while benevolence constrains justice by ensuring that the interest in promoting individuals’ rights is consistent with the best for all. Hoffman’s, Kohlberg’s and indeed Gibbs’ interpretations of the moral point of view all suggest that the educational question of what kinds of experiences help to foster the development of caring for others’ well-being and interests is just as crucial as that of the conditions propitious to cognitive moral development. In connection with practical ethics education in particular, the implication unique to Hoffman and Kohlberg’s idea that an interest in benevolence or empathy is a precondition of moral performance writ large is that even the frequently maligned judgment-centred approaches to practical ethics education—if we can concede that the model of practical wisdom promoted there captures at least something of the moral point of view—must already have some hand in the promotion of empathic development. Rather than a vindication of the explicit neglect of empathic development in practical ethics education, however, this argument underscores that the right approach to practical ethics education is the one that it is consistent with the actual relationship between the interest of justice and the interest of benevolence in the way people think about moral problems.

This paper discusses the relationship between justice and empathy in the conceptualisation of the moral point of view, a philosophical issue central to a key chapter in a larger doctoral thesis which attempts first to interpret and then to respond to the frequently-voiced proposal to make empathic development an explicit aim of practical ethics education along side the development of skills in practical reasoning (e.g., Annis, 1992; Beauchamp & Childress, 1994; Bevis & Watson, 1989; Scholz & Groarke, 1996; Tong, 1997). Using Gibbs’ (2003) recent work on the co-primacy of justice and caring in the moral domain as a foil, we adumbrate two broad views on the role of empathy in moral reasoning. In contrast to Gibbs’ view, both the later Kohlbergian view that the moral point of view involves balancing the interests of justice and benevolence, the first view we consider, and the stronger moral sense theorists’ idea that the very interest in justice itself supposes empathic engagement, the second, suppose the more general idea that an active regard for the weal and woe of others is not just as one dimension of moral experience but instead as a precondition of moral deliberation writ large. We conclude that rather than straightforwardly signalling a need to explicitly promote empathic development in practical ethics, these views, if correct, suggest that even the notoriously judgment-centred approaches to practical ethics education may even now further this aim in unrecognised ways.

In his recent Moral development and reality (2003) John Gibbs’ adds his voice to the chorus calling for theoretical reconciliation between the perennially dichotomised moral concepts of right and good, justice and caring, cognition and feeling. His suggestion, in particular, is that a healthy appreciation that neither justice nor caring alone is capable of capturing the “core of the moral domain” (p. 6) might bring an end to the endless jostling in both moral psychology and philosophical ethics over the question of which set of concepts is conceptually prior to the other one. In this regard, his position resembles a view defended in one version or another by, for instance, Frankena (1973), Beauchamp & Childress (2001) and O’Neil (1996) that “both justice and beneficence collectively comprise the substance of the moral point of view” (Gibbs, 2003, p. 6). In Gibbs’ (2003) hands, the debate is played out between two rival theories of moral development whose incompatibility, as he sees it, is more apparent than real: Kohlberg’s (1981; 1984) theory of cognitive moral development and Martin Hoffman’s (2000) theory of moral development based on the growth of empathic, rather than on 3 primarily cognitive, capacities. Far from being at odds, Gibbs (2003) argues, these two theories are in fact integral to any balanced comprehension of moral maturation and moral maturity. Gibbs (2003) attempts to capture the spirit of the process of moral maturation with the phrase “growth beyond the superficial” (p. 8). The Kohlbergian theory articulates the growth of a “deeper” or more differentiated understanding of the meaning of fairness and reciprocity—thus capturing the justice dimension of the moral domain—whereas Hoffman’s theory articulates the emergence of feelings of benevolence and interest in the avoidance of others’ suffering as a fundamental aspect of moral experience, or the empathy dimension of the moral domain (p.78). The specific relationship he posits between justice and caring in the moral point of view appears to be that they are, if you will, equal but separate. That is to say, the moral domain is divided into two distinct realms: 1. the realm of empathy which is concerned with the most important aspects of human weal and woe; and, 2. the realm of reciprocity whose interests—impartiality, equality and universality—seem not to be explainable in terms of empathy. In Gibbs’s view, then, justice and empathy are mutually complementary but not mutually dependent. As he puts it, “ideal and ‘necessary’ moral reciprocity […] has a place in moral motivation that affective primacy fails to capture” and “if reciprocity is akin to logic—‘the morality of thought’ in Piaget’s famous phrase—then reciprocity and its violation generate a motive power in its own right” (2003, p. 108).

True to his roots in moral sense theory, Hoffman himself would seem unwilling to settle for Gibbs’ happy compromise. As Hoffman (2000) has indicated, his theory of empathic development was never intended to sit comfortably alongside theories of cognitive moral development. Accroding to Hoffman, the Piagetan tradition in moral development theory suffers from a rather gross inadequacy in connection with the problem of explaining moral motives and moral engagement. All sides agree that the underlying process of cognitive moral development is something along the lines of “decentration”. This term, which incidentally Gibbs (1991) himself coined, captures the developmental shift from moral judgement based on the child’s own egocentric perspective through judgements that begin to consider the perspectives of others to a possibly ideal end-state where the perspectives of all are progressively coordinated (cf. Hoffman, 2000, p. 129; Gibbs, 1991). However, what Hoffman (2000) considers to be its “exaggerated focus on rational, cognitive processes” (p. 131) of the Kohlbergian schema rides roughshod over a crucial moral phenomenon that badly needs explaining. That is to say, to quote Hoffman (2000) directly:

Why [should] the knowledge of others’ perspectives that is gained in the context of conflicting claims […] lead children to take others’ claims seriously and be willing to negotiate and compromise their own claims, rather than use the knowledge to manipulate the other? That is, why should perspective-taking serve pro-social rather than egoistic ends? (p. 131)

In essence, Hoffman’s (2000) theory of empathic development can be understood as an attempt to address this very problem. Drawing on an impressive array of empirical evidence and theoretical considerations Hoffman (2000) arrives at the conclusion that: (i) human beings have a biologically rooted adaptive disposition towards concern for others or “empathy” (cf. Hoffman, 1984); (ii) the process of empathic moral development consists in the transformation of this basic disposition into the feelings of guilt and states of moral internalisation which regulate children’s egocentric motives, thereby enabling the decentration process; and (iii) in direct opposition to the ethical naturalist assumptions of cognitive developmentalism, this process depends on successful moral socialization. In other words, an interest in fairness is not spontaneously constructed in the course of free peer 4 interaction, as the Piagetan tradition tends to hold, but requires support in the form of adult intervention.

With the possible exception of point three, all of this has a familiar ring. Indeed, the claim that the very fact that human beings ever are interested in morality presupposes an active interest in others’ well-being is arguably the core thesis of a philosophical persuasion opposed to ethical rationalism as (putatively) epitomized by Kant. From the perspective of moral sense theory, a particular affective disposition or moral emotion which has been labelled variously empathy (Hoffman, 2000; Vetlesen, 1994), sympathy (Smith, 1790/1976; Hume, 1751/1957), and altruism (Blum, 1980) is the foundation of moral experience writ large. Understood in this sense, empathy’s relevance is not restricted to situations where another’s suffering is at stake (as Gibbs (2003) seems to hold) nor it its main moral interest connected with the motivational support it can give to the cold deliberations of duty (as Kant (e.g., 1797/1996), according to Allison’s (1990) interpretation, seemed to hold) but it is, in Vetlesen’s (1994) phrase, a core “precondition of moral performance”.

It is worth attending to as well that it is not just Hoffman who would likely be dissatisfied with Gibbs’s attempt to neatly analyse the moral domain and moral development into two discrete components corresponding to justice and empathy. If one of his last statements on the question is anything to go by, neither would Kohlberg. Kohlberg (1990), in fact, seems to have come around to viewing, and publicly endorsing, an interpretation of the moral point of view that is not altogether inconsistent with that brought to us by moral sense theory. Briefly put, the idea is that the fundamental moral notion “respect for persons” idealized in Kohlberg’s stage 6 presupposes the co-primacy of justice and benevolence or empathy. In Kolhberg, Boyd and Levine’s (1990) words:

From a Stage 6 standpoint the autonomous moral actor has to consciously co- ordinate the two attitudes of justice and benevolence in dealing with real moral problems in order to maintain respect for persons. […] We wish to emphasize that although these two attitudes are in tension with each other, they are at the same time mutually supportive and co-ordinated within a Stage 6 conception of respect for persons. (p 157)

As the authors go on to explain, benevolence views situations through the lens of attachment —i.e., with a view to promoting goodness and preventing harm—whereas the viewpoint of justice is that of detachment—i.e., with an eye to respecting the rights of individuals conceived as autonomous agents, an interest which, in situations where incompatible claims compete, may lead to harm of the interest of some in order to satisfy the rights of others. The two principles can be understood as being in tension in virtue of being mutually constraining. Justice constrains benevolence by ensuring that the interest in promoting the good for some respects the rights of others. Benevolence constrains justice by ensuring that the interest in promoting the rights of individuals is consistent with the best for all (cf. pp. 157-158). Bracketing for the moment the question of whether heads or tails can be made of this position, if it is defensible, the idea that benevolence and justice are co-primary in the moral point of view would seem to have the implication that an active regard for the weal and woe of others neither peripheral to moral experience (as in some versions of Kantian ethics) nor one distinct department of it (as Gibbs seems to hold) but, much as moral sense theorists have long argued, a sine qua non thereof.

As Peters (1981) suggested some time ago, if the idealized standpoint of moral impartiality, or the moral point of view, is the end point of a developmental process comprising the 5 emergence of certain faculties of thought as well as certain faculties of feeling the educational question of what kinds of experiences help to foster the development of caring for others’ well-being and interests is just as crucial as the question of the conditions propitious to cognitive moral development (pp. 171-175). However, the claim that such feelings be the target of moral educational intervention is frequently confronted with one prima facie decisive objection. As Snow (2000) has recently put it, whatever role empathy might play in moral reasoning and moral motivation, it seems beyond doubt that empathy is neither necessary nor sufficient for moral motivation. It is not sufficient because empathy seems to be easily misdirected. One may through empathy do something that is clearly wrong, such as assisting a criminal relative to evade the authorities. Nor is empathy necessary for moral motivation because it seems quite obvious that one can be motivated to do a morally justifiable action out of some other motivation such as duty. If this is the case then it would seem that empathy is one among many traits and dispositions such as open- mindedness, insightfulness and persistence which seem to have some positive contribution to make to the moral reasoning process as long as their operation is checked by sound moral judgment (cf. also similar arguments in Sloan & Wilson, 1998; Verducci, 1999; Blasi, 1999; Eisenberg & Miller, 1987).

That empathy may be misdirected seems to be undeniable. However, this does not seem to detract from the claim that empathy may be in part constitutive of the moral point of view under either of the two interpretations discussed above if we accept that it is possible for it to be not misdirected—and this claim that does not seem to be terribly controversial. The more serious threat is the suggestion that it is possible to be motivated to act morally through duty alone. With regards to this (large) question, the only remark we wish to make is that the idea that the moral point of view involves either the co-primacy of justice and benevolence or the moral sense theorist’s stronger claim about the connection between empathy and moral reasoning does not seem to be inconsistent with the possibility of acting from duty on the condition that “acting from duty” is interpreted in terms of this position. To try to spell this out a bit, the idea of acting from duty is compatible with the notion that empathy is a precondition of moral reasoning and moral motivation as long as one accepts a view of emotions which avoids, most notably, equating emotions with passions. Agnes Heller’s (1979) conceptualisation of the emotions is particularly helpful in this connection. She defines an emotion generally as a state of “involvement” (p. 7) in some object and then goes on to suggest that particular emotions can be characterized in terms of the object and orientation of this involvement. On this view, a passion could be interpreted as one particular type of emotion characterised by an unmistakeable physiological feeling tone. Typical passions therefore are fear, infatuation and joy. The main conceptual problem with the claim that acting from duty supposes emotional involvement—or to be specific the particular type of involvement in others’ well being characteristic of empathy or benevolence—is the belief that if any motivation is cold, detached and deliberate (i.e., that is unemotional) then surely duty is. But this claim presupposes that all emotions are passions (i.e., as being physiologically felt) which is far from being obvious. In any case, the main point is that equipped with Heller’s or some other theory of emotion which views emotions first and foremost as a kind of involvement rather than one that takes as a typical emotional experience one that comprehends strong physiological feelings then the way becomes clear for an analysis of the motivation of duty being in whole or in part constituted by an interest of concern for others’ well-being, or empathy.

What, if anything, might this mean for practical ethics education? More specifically, if either the Kohlbergian view or the moral sense theorists are on the right track and an active concern for others’ well being is a precondition of addressing practical problems from the moral point 6 of view, what would this imply vis-à-vis contemporary approaches of practical ethics education which, as critics repeat, tend to target the cognitive dimensions of moral judgement at the expense of the affective (e.g., Barnbaum, 2001; Scholz & Groarke, 1996)? Because the limits of this forum do not permit more than the most cursory treatment of this question, our remarks will be restricted to the crucial and prior methodological question of where to start looking for an answer to it. The hasty educational reaction to the idea that justice and benevolence are co-primary in the moral point is that teachers of practical ethics education need to tone down the casuistic, judgement-centred approaches on which they are frequently accused of being over-reliant and start seriously exploring ways in which they might “foster empathic responsiveness” among students (e.g., Annis, 1992; Barnbaum, 2001; Scholz & Groarke, 1996; Verducci, 2000). A view of moral deliberation and moral development that takes full account of empathy does indeed, it seems, suggest that the development of capacities of empathy and benevolence as a disposition towards caring about the weal and woe of others is not just an added extra to be bolted onto the more serious business in practical ethics education of exercising the cognitive skills supposedly comprehending the competent exercise of practical judgement. However, it just as clearly implies that to some (unclear) degree even the most judgment-centred approaches must also have a hand in promoting the development of empathy. If the exercise of practical wisdom as it is currently modelled and encouraged in practical ethics education indeed does capture in some important sense what it means to view practical problems from the moral point of view and if, by definition, rational deliberation about moral problems is in part an expression of caring for others, then in many unrecognised respects practical ethics education even in its most flagrant judgment-centred forms is even now very much in the business of supporting the development of moral feeling. This statement is by no means intended as a vindication of the generalized neglect of the role of affect in practical ethics education. It is, rather, an invitation to consider that whatever approach to practical ethics education is adopted, the most important thing is that it is consistent with the actual relationship between the interest of justice and the interest of benevolence in the way people actually think about moral problems. And that, more than anything, is what makes understanding this relationship important indeed.

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