Page History

SCANNED PDF

Modern defenders of universal human rights typically reject both metaphysics and a teleological ethics. This they do because, to their way of thinking, a teleological ethics grounded in metaphysics, makes asserting any universal human rights impossible. In support of this objection, they argue as follows:

...

To the first argument it may be replied that it carries conviction only because it assumes fallaciously that assertion of a comprehensive telos implies that all moral norms other than the supreme teleological obligation are merely prima facie, whence its conflict with our deepest moral intuitions. The fallacy of this assumption can be brought out by attending to the second argument that makes no appeal to our moral intuitions, but purports to show why every teleological ethics must be self-defeating, because adherence to it makes maximizing the good impossible. But to this claim one may readily reply that any conception of maximizing the good that would have this result can on!y be a misconception requiring to be replaced by another correct conception, according to which the supreme teleological principle admits of and requires indirect as well as direct applications, which is to say, applications through some system of norms or a social practice that is itself validated teleologically. Thus, if, in some circumstances, keeping a promise may be proscribed if pursuit of the comprehensive good is directly applied, it may, on the contrary, be prescribed in the same circumstances as conformity to the norms of a social pattern or practice that is itself validated teleologically because or insofar as it is required to maximize the good. But, then--and then—and with this we can reply to the first argument--if argument—if a principle that prescribes maximizing the good may be thus applied indirectly through social practices, there is no need to assume that a teleological ethics has to imply the merely prima facie character of such practices and the norms governing them. On the contrary, it is free to maintain that each individual has some perfect duties with respect to the treatment of all others, i.e., specific moral obligations that cannot be overridden by any obligation to maximize the good. And this contention will be more or less reasonable depending on the conception of the comprehensive good in question.

As for the third argument, that the difference between direct and indirect application of the comprehensive telos is really only the familiar distinction between act-and rule-teleology all over again, and that the second, no more than the first, allows for strictly universal human rights that cannot be overridden by consideration of consequences, the reply is that the argument, again, rests on a fallacious assumption---namelyassumption—namely, that a teleological validation of perfect duties must be empirical. In point of fact, a teleological ethics that exploits the resources of a neoclassical metaphysics can mainatin maintain that there is a universal social practice whose governing principle is nonempirical or a priori. This contention can be supported by showing that the meta-ethical character of every claim to moral validity includes a principle of social action by which a community of universal human rights is constituted, and that no moral theory can be valid if its is inconsistent with these rights.

...