Before I make my point, I would hope
to have a discussion of what the main points of Strawson at the beginning of
tomorrow’s class. The paper is a little confusing to me. I am not entirely sure
if I understand correctly.
When reading Smith, I was thinking
that everyone should be responsible to their behaviors. I think that education
would be a good method to teach people who are not capable of sympathizing or retrospection
on past behaviors. I believe that most people innately have this capability,
but they need training and education to make sure how to use the capability. I
do not realize why education would be useful even though I have this intuition.
Strawson, in his paper, actually answers my question by raising the idea of
objective attitude and participant attitude in dealing with people’s mistake. Strawson
argues that, for a capable adult, it is ok for spectators or victims to use
participant attitude, but for a child or mentally ill person, they should use
objective attitude. And “[their] objectivity of attitude, [their] suspension of
ordinary moral reactive attitudes, is profoundly modified by the fact that the
aim of the enterprise is to make such suspension unnecessary or less necessary”
(88). I believe that this is actually the meaning of education. More capable of
people teach less capable people through patience so that less capable become
more capable. This is true to most of the classrooms around the world.
One thing that confuses me is that I
am not sure what the incentive for the most capable people to teach the young
people because it takes a great effort and capability for people to know when
to use objective attitude and participant attitude. For the most capable ones, they
might have to to suffer the most, endure the most, be the most objective one. It
is definitely not something that adds up their satisfaction. The only reason to
answer my confusion that I can think of now is that even though it takes energy
for the most capable ones to teach the less capable ones for some time, but in
the long run, the more capable ones would have a more mature society than the
one the more capable people would have if they do not tolerate and teach the less
capable people.
Hey Sebastian,
ReplyDeleteAwesome post! I'm definitely confused by parts of the reading as well. I think your final explanation is spot-on. I think Strawson would say that the most morally capable would be interested in teaching those less morally capable because if they do, then they can count on their newly enlightened pupils to act morally, thus lifting some of the burden off of the previously-most capable's shoulders.