(Page 15 of 21) - Young People, Relativism, and Natural Law authored by Alford, C..

To Maya the answer was obvious. “Because most people aren’t good,

they have to be taught to feel shame at the right things. People don’t have to be
good. They just have to be taught.”

Should people feel shame for not caring, I asked.

“Absolutely, that’s number one.”

A number of years ago now, Carol Gilligan (1982) wrote In a Different

Voice, which argued that women think about morality in terms different from men:
men think in terms of principles and cases, women in terms of details and caring.
Whether or not one agrees with Gilligan, the care that several informants talked
about (two were men) seems roughly to fit Gilligan’s model. The two versions of
the social contract (metaphysical biology and the strict social contract), held by
almost eighty percent of informants, represent principled thinking, or at least
that’s the way most seem to talk about it. Care represents a concern for
particular others, such as the homeless whom Maya sees almost everyday.

Yet, this doesn’t seem quite right, and not just because two of those who

cared were men. For one could almost as readily argue that those who care
serve the principle of family, whereas the social contract theorists (including the
metaphysical biologists) see themselves as responding to the imperatives of
vulnerable individuals like themselves. What seems to distinguish those who
care from the social contract theorists, especially the metaphysical biologists, is
the quality of their inner worlds.

The absence of apparent inwardness among most informants is my most

subtle and striking finding. By an absence of “inwardness” I mean difficulty in
thinking in the moral subjunctive. For example, many informants, even those
who were otherwise quite articulate about their beliefs, were disoriented by the
first question, which quotes from Article 3 of the United Nations Declaration of
Human Rights, which states “Everyone has a right to life, liberty and security of
person.” Do you think that’s true, I asked? How would you answer someone
who said no?

Many informants were confused. The distinction between having a right,

and being able to freely exercise it, was puzzling, as though the right doesn’t
exist unless it is recognized. In other words, the abstract category of “a right to
life, liberty, and security” had no meaning apart from its practice.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said one informant, echoing several more.

“How can someone have a right to something that doesn’t exist, say in Saudi
Arabia? It just doesn’t make sense, either you have it or you don’t.”

Does that mean that in Saudi Arabia no one has a right to life, liberty, and

security, I asked?

“No, they have the right, but since it doesn’t really exist, especially for

women, then I guess they don’t. No, I’d say the statement is false.”

It’s important to distinguish this confused informant from two informants

who saw the disjunction between is and ought, practice and ideal, as a challenge
to be overcome. “Sure, these rights exist, said Larry, but that doesn’t really
mean anything. To make them real you have to fight for them. No one is going
to give them to you.”