The Immorality of Anti-Human Philosophy

Many philosophers still suffer from the afflictions of their Hellenistic forebears in wanting to impress upon the masses their version of the good life and a “better” understanding of happiness.  I bring this up due to a recent podcast on EthicsBites from the Open University in which James Garvey was interviewed to discuss the ethics of climate change.  Rather than address just climate change the feeling expressed by Garvey can be further applied to other aspects of our lives.  Philosophers such as Garvey believe in a principle of distributive justice outlined exhaustively by John Rawls.  Essentially you, as an independent individual, do an injustice upon the weaker members of society due to the very fact you draw breath and seek to live your version of the good life because the way in which you live robs the poor or lesser members of society of their ability to live the good life.  The solution to this would be for those of us who are living the good life to give up much of what gives us happiness in order to provide opportunity for those unable to pursue happiness.  This focus only deals with what is enabling one to pursue the good life when in fact it is that struggle or series of choices that create the good life.  For instance if tomorrow everyone had their checking account balances doubled would human happiness and prosperity really increase?  If we were all given a large sum of money tomorrow would it really enable us to achieve the good life?  This would certainly be nice but here is why philosophers fail to realize the dangers of distributive justice or this notion of the lack of opportunity as a function of socio-economic status, they have no understanding of economics.

Not all poor are unhappy and wretched, the fact that our checking accounts may be doubled, or the fact that large sums of money may pop up unexpectedly does not translate to increased happiness.  In fact it may contribute to a further destruction of happiness and an impediment to living the good life.  Money is earned in order to satisfy needs which lead to happiness.  Therefore, we incur a disutility in acquiring money in order to enjoy the utility of various goods and services.  If this disutility is not incurred we lack the ability to allocate our monetary incomes to their most urgent needs on our value scale.  Furthermore, it is not understood by many philosophers that although we have various classes of people market economies force us all to engage in mutually beneficial exchanges which serve to distribute resources across the world and if this continues allows for savings and investment to occur which lead to prosperity.  However, such a process may take decades to reveal itself and currently many of our leaders and philosophers do not wish to wait.  Let us go back to the examples of our checking accounts being increased or a large sum of many being dropped on our doorstep.  This would be nice to begin with but the market economy would adjust the price structure so as to account for this money which is inflationary thus negating any positive effects it could have rendered.  It would further only benefit the ones who managed to spend the money first before the market has a chance to correct thus only increasing the burden on various members of society.  Realistically however, is the notion of distributive justice or the lowering of the socio-economic of one group in order to bring up another group thus equalizing or station or essentially creating an egalitarian society, which if you have an understanding of economic theory is the ultimate evil.  This is highly immoral and the philosophers that argue for such measures may be viewed as anti-human.  It is not moral for one group to rob another by force of their ability to live the good life through the exercise of their own faculties and human volition.  I fail to see how the allocation of resources from one realm to another increases prosperity and happiness.  As I said before happiness and the ability to make life choices or what I like to call the spice of life does not stem from our socio-economic status but from our ability to make choices and engage with others in society.  It is my view the current trend of philosophy is very shallow and places too much emphasis on the material aspect of our existence.

The anti-human aspect of it is that some philosophers view the human as chattel or better yet a piece of clay to be molded, broken apart, and reformed in their own vision.  However, humans are independent beings who cooperate with other humans within a society to achieve the common goals of prosperity and peace.  Garvey was asked in his interview as mentioned earlier if he would go so far as to place limits on populations because we use too many resources.  In response he said it could be considered and would be carried out through legislation.  What madness is this!  To him the lives of humans do not matter what matters is the warped sense of justice that says because of our current level of global development we must be punished because it harms the environment.  Such a policy is extreme on many counts and given the information in my other posts on climate change should not be carried out when the science that we as humans are causing the problem is inconclusive.  What he advocates is real injustice in the limiting of human potential and happiness and restricting our ability to live the good life simply because, based on his judgment, our version of happiness is not correct and the things we consider as living the good life are indeed not the good life.  Justice is only the punishment of wrongs and the fact there are classes of people that arise or that certain things we do in our daily lives may cause another not to be able to enjoy certain things does not qualify as an injustice because it is not an act against anyone.  We simply seek to enjoy our lives in the best way we can and there is nothing unjust in that.