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The Problem of Moralizing Non-Humans: An Ethical Naturalist Inquiry into the Social Construction of Moral Agency through Foreign Aid
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The Problem of Moralizing Non-Humans:
An Ethical Naturalist Inquiry into the Social Construction of Moral Agency through Foreign Aid
Tomohisa Hattori
Department of Political Science
Lehman College, City University of New York, Bronx, NY 10468, U.S.A.
E-Mail Address: tomohisa.## email not listed ##
Presented at the Annual Conference of the International Studies Association
Chicago, March 1, 2007
This is a preliminary draft. Please do not quote without an express permission of the author.
Abstract
This paper examines how aid practices moralize non-human donor states and organizations, while helping represent them as friendly. A good thing about humanizing foreigners and foreign societies in an anarchical world is that there will be a possibility for cooperation and peace. The problem with anthropomorphizing non-human agents is that they are not humans. The problem with moralizing non-humans is that human beings will become one among many moral agents who are deemed to be able to judge right from wrong, good from bad. This paper identifies the attempt to extend moral agency to non-human agents as a symptom of the limit of liberal ethics in examining social practices in international relations. The root of this limit lies in the key question liberal ethics asks: what should I (or you, or we as a nation) do? This paper provides a caution for prematurely proceeding with this question. Instead, this paper elaborates how aid practices give rise to the social construction of moral agency of non-humans and how this socially constructed moral agency must be examined in its relation to the capitalist social structure. Such a structural understanding of moral agency provides a good starting point for the ethical evaluation of agents as well as the institutions and social structure which have made aid practices possible.
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| | Authors: Hattori, Tomohisa. |
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The Problem of Moralizing Non-Humans:
An Ethical Naturalist Inquiry into the Social Construction of Moral Agency through Foreign Aid
Tomohisa Hattori
Department of Political Science
Lehman College, City University of New York, Bronx, NY 10468, U.S.A.
E-Mail Address: tomohisa.## email not listed ##
Presented at the Annual Conference of the International Studies Association
Chicago, March 1, 2007
This is a preliminary draft. Please do not quote without an express permission of the author.
Abstract
This paper examines how aid practices moralize non-human donor states and organizations, while helping represent
them as friendly. A good thing about humanizing foreigners and foreign societies in an anarchical world is that
there will be a possibility for cooperation and peace. The problem with anthropomorphizing non-human agents is
that they are not humans. The problem with moralizing non-humans is that human beings will become one among
many moral agents who are deemed to be able to judge right from wrong, good from bad. This paper identifies the
attempt to extend moral agency to non-human agents as a symptom of the limit of liberal ethics in examining social
practices in international relations. The root of this limit lies in the key question liberal ethics asks: what should I
(or you, or we as a nation) do? This paper provides a caution for prematurely proceeding with this question. Instead,
this paper elaborates how aid practices give rise to the social construction of moral agency of non-humans and how
this socially constructed moral agency must be examined in its relation to the capitalist social structure. Such a
structural understanding of moral agency provides a good starting point for the ethical evaluation of agents as well
as the institutions and social structure which have made aid practices possible.
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