James Robert Flynn - How to Defend Humane Ideals: Substitutes for Objectivity

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title	:	How to Defend Humane Ideals : Substitutes for Objectivity
author	:	Flynn, James Robert.
publisher	:	University of Nebraska Press
isbn10 | asin	:	0803219946
print isbn13	:	9780803219946
ebook isbn13	:	9780585311357
language	:	English
subject	Humanistic ethics, Social sciences and ethics.
publication date	:	2000
lcc	:	BJ1360.F58 2000eb
ddc	:	171/.2
subject	:	Humanistic ethics, Social sciences and ethics.

Page iii How to Defend Humane Ideals Substitutes for Objectivity James R. Flynn

Page iv Acknowledgments for the use of previously published material appear on page ix. 2000 by the University of Nebraska Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data How to defend humane ideals: substitutes for objectivity / James R. Flynn. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8032-1994-6 (cl.: alk. paper) I. Humanistic ethics. 2. Social sciences and ethics. I. Flynn, James Robert, 1934 II. Title. BJ1360 .F58 2000 171'.2 -dc21 99-045984

Page v To Emily

Page vii CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Problem 1. Truth-Tests and What We Have Lost 3 Part 1: The Limitations Of Philosophy 2. Plato and Thrasymachus 23 3. Truth-Tests and Proofs 47 4. Kant and Sister Simplice 68 Transition: An Agenda 5. Morality and Moral Debate 91 Part 2: The Potency Of Social Science 6. Race and Class 103 7. Superpeople and Supermen 120 8. Justice and Meritocracy 142 9. Humanism and Postmodernism 163 Conclusion: Unsolved Problems 10. The Personal and the Conventional 185 References 195 Subject Index 205 Author Index 211

Page ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks are due to many. To those at the Hoover Institution for hosting a scholar with views so opposed to their own; Lewis B. Stuart for funding the visit; Thomas and Mary Sowell for their company; Milton Friedman and Gary Becker for discussions over tea. To the Psychology and Philosophy Departments at Liverpool for office space and seminars. To Nicholas Mascie-Taylor and Nicholas Mackintosh of Cambridge for the opportunity to address the 1995 Galton Institute Symposium. To Charles Pigden, Kai Nielsen, Bill Dickens, Steve Ceci, and Jeremy Waldron for comments on the manuscript, above all, Jeremy Waldron. To Denis Dutton for bringing me to the attention of the University of Nebraska Press. To the University of Otago students who took Political Studies 401, on which this book is based, particularly Debbie Clapshaw, Stephen Dougherty, and Angela Warburton, who wrote honors essays that helped clarify my thinking and their thinking about Plato, Sumner, and Nietzsche, respectively. Earlier versions of chapters 1, 4, 5, and 9, now much revised, appeared in Philosophical Quarterly, Kant-Studien, the American Philosophical Quarterly, and Political Theory Newsletter. Chapter 8 is largely from "Group Differences: Is the Good Society Impossible?" by James R. Flynn (1996), Journal of Biosocial Science, 28, 573 585. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.

Page 1 INTRODUCTION THE PROBLEM

Page 3 1 Truth-Tests and What We Have Lost This book was written by someone committed to humane-egalitarian ideals who thought he wanted a truth-test to defend them; now, after fifty years of reflection, he believes that there is something better. The struggle to fabricate ethical truth was abandoned not without pain: the notion of a higher court of appeal that would force antihumane people to choose between humane ideals and reason exercised a powerful attraction, and evidence of withdrawal symptoms will not be hard to find. Several perceptions about ethical truth-tests dictated their demise: that they must satisfy conditions that appear contradictory; that they have a darker side; that alternative uses of reason in moral debate are possible. The journey this book records is very much a personal odyssey, but despite that, it may have some larger significance. Ever since the sixteenth century, thinkers have been walking away from ethical truth, and the prevailing mood was captured by Max Weber when he pleaded with youth not to lose all their ideals along the way. Whether I am a good guide to an alternative defense of humane-egalitarian ideals, one that justifies them without corrupting them, is for the reader to judge.

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