Tuesday, October 21, 2008
I have a dilemma and im not sure how Hurka would answer it, i might find myself quite in agreement with Hurka or quite the opposite depending how he would asnswer my concern. When he is talking about loyalties he says that in order to ground loyalties they must be from something good. his example is that nazi soldiers guarding a concentration camp would not have a loyalty to each other because they did horrific acts together. Now my question is "can a persons self delisions cause them to have loyalties which are real but falsely placed." For example of those two nazis were convinced that what they were doing was going to make the world a better place would they feel a sense of pride by guarding the final solution? another example is couldnt a jew living in america, who has never left the country feel a connection with isreal, however she would not actually go there and connect with those people for fear of being hurt. i feel as though this would be a real connection to something which is not considered real for one reason or another. I think that both these cases would have a real loyalty, in the firse case the nazis would have loyalty to each other and see each other as crusaders in a war to make the world better. This is based on twisted logic and wrong opinions however but the loyatly would remain the same. In the second case the jew would have a real connection to her people and to isreal despite that she has never been. She would have jews as friends in the united states but they are a completely different kind of people because they grew up in the united states and not isreal. So she would have a true connection to a group because they share the same religion but nothing else. I feel as though Hurka would claim that the first case is not true loyatly because it is based on something that is false, however the case of the jew would be true because that loyalty is based on shared values.
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3 comments:
I think you are right about how Hurka would respond to those cases. As I read him, the agent-relativity does not mean simply someone believes she has worked on something good or suffered through something bad with others and thus it is valuable. Hurka says the agent-relative account "does not explain the agent-relativity..in non-agent-relative terms but assumes relativity, saying that each person should give preference to the good of those who participated with her in a certain history"(203). This seems to suggest there is an objective fact of the matter about what each person should prefer, but the degree to which every individual should give preference will be agent-relative because everyone has a different history. Hurka also says "the value of an attitude depends, as always on the value of its object" (201). So it seems as though it is not just an attitude, but an attitude in relation to an objective fact of the matter that is important for Hurka in determining what should happen regarding your cases.
I thought Hurka made it pretty clear that loyalty and preservation of the past are only good when the object of that loyalty is good. Even when the Nazi sees himself as a crusader fighting to save the world from Jews, it doesn't seem to matter to Hurka because the object of that loyalty is not good, but, in fact, quite, quite evil. I would argue that the natural state for a Nazi is actually delusional, so for Hurka to argue that the loyalty of Nazi's to their cause is evil is for him to argue that the loyalty of any delusional person to any evil cause is evil.
I think in the case of the Jew, as long as he/she truly likes the country, Hurka would view this connection as a good thing, but simply not an optimized thing. For true loyalty, Hurka would probably advocate the visiting of Israel and the establishment of connections and camaraderie with the Israelis.
I think this is a very interesting pair of questions to put against Hurka's stipulations for loyalty. I think what Hurka would say, regarding the Nazis and their sense of loyalty, is that despite the Nazis' self-deception that their values were good, they do not have true loyalty.
Hurka states, just prior to mentioning the Nazis, that politically one can have loyalty to one's country by caring about the survival of one's people and their culture; he calls these holistic states. According to Hurka, then, if the Nazi guards were concerned only about the welfare of the German people and the preservation of German culture (apart from the destruction of another people and their respective culture), this would be a true loyalty, since the values aimed for are virtuous. However, according to Hurka the Nazis would not have a true loyalty to their work at a concentration camp, for several reasons.
Hurka states that loyalty is a "virtue of proportion," and that there are "contrary vices of caring too much about specially related individuals." This could be related to include the vice of caring too much about one's own people and disregarding others, which Hurka calls a "disproportionate concern." The attempt to promote a culture and people by attempting to completely eliminate another people is entirely disproportionate and unnecessary to the first aim, and it also shows the completely disproportionate love of the German people over all others, most especially the Jews. I believe that Hurka would use such a lack of proportion, to state that any loyalty the concentration camp guards would have is therefore false, since it does not rest on proportionate, holistic values. Despite the fact that the guards would think they were working towards a good cause, the fact that they actually are not (due to the lack of proportion) means the Nazi guards do not, and in fact cannot, have a loyalty to their occupations.
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