POL320 - lecture - January 26, 2009

Intentions vs. Reactions

  • reactions are different
  • accidents are different from actions
  • accident and rational capacity
  • children may do things, even on purpose, but they can not be held responsible
  • there is a link between reason and responsibility

abstract right

  • what should be the goal of my actions
  • you must be concerned with the goals of others
  • the unity of right and welfare is the good
  • but it is not, there is always a question
  • one of the characteristics of modern freedom

what we think is right matters

  • you shouldn't be forced to act against your conscience
  • the question is what is good
  • the danger is to set conscience as a standard of good
  • I want to do the right thing
  • but what is the right thing?
  • I only want to do what is right
  • but who do I know what i know is right is actually right?
  • abstract - a determination of what is good and right without the use of the subjective will

paragraph 105

  • transitional point
  • stand point of morality
  • making the person into the subject
  • you are now thinking about what it is you should will
  • should I want this, is this what I want
  • what is the object of your willing
  • sub-consiously choosing what you are willing
  • you recognize your will does not just flow out of being a human being, an animal
  • freedom - we can say no to anything - we have choices not instincts

the principle of the will

  • in abstract right, the will is external
  • putting your will into itself
  • becoming more aware of yourself

paragraph 107

  • the will aware of its freedom
  • you start with the concept of freedom
  • the right of the accepted will
  • you can be responsible only for things that you put your will into
  • every action has ripple of consequences that flow outward
  • socially you can only be responsible for things you can comprehend and reasonably be expected to follow
  • if we were responsible for all of our actions we would have no scope for action

three aspects of the right of the subjective will

  • the right of the moral will, the purpose of the subjective will comes from me
  1. will the good
  2. the particular aspec
  3. subjective and objective content of will

purpose and responsibility

  • for what things can someone be responsible
  • Why are you responsible for some things and not others
  • one dimension of freedom is responsibility
  • freedom makes sense only in a context of responsibility
  • if you weren't free to choose how can you be responsible

Casual Outcomes do not Dictate Responsibility

  • the finatude or limits
  • acting in the world, lots of ripple effects
  • when you act things happen
  • my will has responsibility for its deeds
  • you have to put your will into an action for you to be accountable for it
  • driving a car, hit black ice, kill someone = not responsible
  • driving a car, speeding, hit black ice, kill someone = responsible
  • causally both chains of event are identical - the ends are the same

paragraph 116

  • what does it mean to say something is mine
  • it is not my own doing
  • the damage is chargeable to me because they are mine
  • if you have a cow, and don't maintain the fence
  • if the cow gets outs you are responsible
  • adequate precautions
  • control and vigilance
  • negligence
  • you must anticipate that your property may do things that have consequences
  • at least to some degree
  • it goes back to the notion of putting your will into things
  • there are degrees of negligence

paragraph 117 - second part

  • you act in the world and have sense of the actions and their impact
  • this awareness is finite and you can't know everything
  • the right to know - a crucial dimension of freedom
  • deliberate action
  • edipus - he didn't know he was sleeping with his mother

paragraph 118

  • the multitude of consequences that can emerge
  • you are responsible for the consequences you can forsee
  • you are also responsible for the consequences you ought reasonably have forseen
  • if you didn't do it deliberately

Intention

  • paragraph 119 - second part
  • purpose comprises the intention
  • he uses two examples
  • when you set a building on fire you can't say I only planned to burn a small piece of wood
  • Shakespeare - Shylock is entitled to his pound of flesh but cannot collect unless the ower dies because he can't have the whole body
  • right of intention
  • it should not be implicit
  • the agent must not only be responsible but have the rational capacity to understand
  • you know if you light a room on fire the whole house will burn down
  • there is something morally wrong about putting a five year old in jail or in the electric chair - because he didn't know

limits to rationality

  • inside the subject itself there is only so much that can reasonably be expected
  • rational capacity is one thing - small children and mental health
  • but there is a continuum
  • some people are smarter and better able to comprehend
  • stress and environmental barriers to comprehension must also be considered
  • battered wife syndrome - mental state is effected out of fear of their lives
  • if you deprive people of their freedom and agency it is worse than persecuting a few innocent
  • persecuting people for actions after an arbitrary cut off point
  • it is a prerequisite for freedom that there be some degree of responsibility for actions - even it is only a useful illusion

paragraph 124

  • small print not the large print
  • the right of the subject's perceptibility
  • the right to be satisfied
  • what I want matters
  • what I choose matters
  • this is reflected in all our modern institutions
  • if you were a peasant it didn't matter what you wanted,
  • if you were a daughter it didn't matter what you wanted

love and romanticism

  • marriage and social organization will be determined by feelings
  • it is taken for granted today - it is not self evident
  • for most of human history it didn't matter
  • people had these feelings but there was no obligation on society to pay attention
  • feelings had not influence on the social organization of society now it is central to our social organization
  • individual right
  • desire will and choices matter

I matters and Protestantism

  • christianity - the personal relationship with god
  • god cares about you as an individual - Martin Luther
  • that makes sense only with a whole package that say I matters
  • when I matters, rationality becomes the glue that holds a community of individuals together
  • most of human history is presumptuous that the god is for the community

I matters is a theme woven into all our major institutions

  • we should consider what the individual wants
  • this is an essential prerequisite for freedom
  • people get to choose their jobs
  • what you want is given attention and space,
  • it is not the absolute or most important factor but it is considered in our social organization

welfare - paragraph 128

  • we aim at our own well being
  • subjective right, i get to pursue what is right for me
  • the idea that we build a structure that gives space
  • what I want matters and this is a universal principle
  • what each "I" wants matters
  • what I want is important and what everyone else as individuals wants is also important
  • the fact that I care about what happens to me is intimately connected to the universality of human will
  • like that of others,
  • the notion of what I want matters makes sense only because I am free

freedom has its basis in right

  • in attempts to secure my welfare or the welfare of others
  • the pursuit of mine and others welfare is constrained by what is right
  • Hegel rejects the robin hood method - it violates the right -
  • the welfare you aim at must be in line with the right
  • but in danger, mortal danger, an infinite injury to a human's existence
  • if you are at risk of dying you get to break the law to survive

the fundemental right

  • right sets limits on welfare and welfare sets limits on rights
  • right's make no sense in the absence of life
  • welfare trumps rights

good

  • paragraph 129
  • the good is freedom realized
  • good embodies the welfare of all - paragraph 130
  • it is not your good, particular will, that matters
  • welfare without right is not a good
  • right without welfare is not the good
  • justice be done until the world parishes - Hegel says this is nonsense

Object of Action

  • the object of any action is ones own good
  • but why should your good matter? - because i am entitled
  • the object of the will is the good
  • this is what we seek and what we should seek
  • the idea of thinking about what is good
  • it is not just what you think that matters
  • on good and conscience
  • Paragraph 130

three dimensions of abstract right

  1. property

property

  • a prerequisite for freedom
  • intimately linked with realizing ones freedom
  • the idea behind it is you translate your freedom into the external world
  • you appropriate, use and alienate things
  • paragraph 41, 42, 43

Locke and Rousseau

  • paragraph and 42
  • what is distinct about their definitions of property
  • with Rousseau, when you have property you start to lose natural freedom
  • For Hagel property is positive not negative
  • the relationship between property and subsistence for hagel is
  • Lock's conception of property is - self preservation
  • Locke - you need property in order to survive

Deeper Embodiment of Existence= superceding needs

  • not in the satisfcation of needs but the supersition proving your existence to yourself
  • Hegel says property is more important than just self preservation
  • what does Hagel think about self preservation and property
  • how much property does one need to be free

Mill and Freedom

  • like Mill he argues that you can't be free if you are struggling to get on - it deprives you of choice
  • However, you can express some degrees of freedom from even those minute quantities of freedom
  • Marx has issues with this definition of property
  • what does Hagel have to say about communism
  • why can't you realize your freedom with communal property
  • paragraph 46 - R? - communal property, cooperative property, contractually based
  • Plato's suggests communism - you don't have a share - all property is communal
  • if you don't have a share in anything you can't externalize your will
  • you need to claim certain things

freedom

  • forget about reason what is important is freedom
  • the institutionalization of freedom

immediacy

  • realizing parts of your subjectivity in appropriating property
  • speaking of legal persons as immediate
  • abstract right is about the person in its immediacy
  • right is in its first sense immediate
  • mediating - going between two different things
  • the negation of mediation
  • mediation establish a relationship between two things
  • immediacy - cancels mediation
  • with abstract right - you are
  • immediate - without context, or in ideal sense
  • your private property is your actuality
  • legality - rationales for how we are treated as entities in modern institutions
  • wrong and punishment is a sphere of legality
  • in order for the concept to be actual you must give it form and then the concept becomes an idea
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