Browsing by Subject "Ethics"

The philosophical problem explored in this thesis concerns the metaethical demand of impartiality as a condition for ethics. The thesis holds its focus on impartiality while approaching it through an ethico-political set-up concerning the ethics of nationality and its demands. In order to provide a framing for the exploration, the thesis adopts a restricted view to the issue by way of studying leadership that could be called ethical. Moreover, a case study pertaining to the current U.S. Presidential Administration binds the questions together and provides material for conclusions regarding the issue of impartiality as a metaethical demand. In sum, the thesis adopts multiple levels of exploration albeit in the final analysis remaining to be focused in the philosophical question pertaining to the conditions of ethics itself. The thesis is executed in four stages. Chapter one studies some relevant theories of nationality, the relating demands of impartiality, and pins these questions on ethical leadership. The argument is that David Miller’s claim about the plausibility of the ethics of nationality can be challenged due to a tension that remains in stances espousing universalist particularism. This results in the challenge for ethically concerned (national) leaders to not adopt a mistaken cognitive stance in moral reasoning regarding the justified scope of moral worth as theorized by Terry L. Price. On this basis, chapter two outlines a case study in order to concretize the particular challenges that can be met in terms of the reviewed theories. Drawing from Walter Fluker, environmental concern should be an integral aspect of any conception of ethical leadership that itself, however, appears in the same analysis more as a quest rather than a readily executable stance of moral reasoning. Counter to Fluker’s insight, the current U.S. Presidential Administration has wilfully executed policies that aggravate the environmental impacts of climate change. This observation results in the need to clarify the administration’s stance. By way of attempting to comprehend the undercurrents of the case study, chapter three probes into the potential moral and intellectual justifications that would grant some legitimation for the hard-line nationalistic policy-stances as exposed by the case study. The theories by Thomas Malthus and Samuel Huntington as well as the matching applicative ideologization by Steve Bannon provides a framing that would justify the current U.S. Presidential Administration’s nationalistic “America First” program that also covers the field of environmental policymaking. Finally, chapter four ties the analyses together by re-examining un/ethical leadership, the aporia of im/partiality, and the viability of nationalist universalism. As a result, the thesis observes that David Miller’s and Yael Tamir’s respective attempts at defending nationalism fail as in the end they are not able to overcome the evident tension regarding the scope of moral obligations pertaining to im/partiality. Such failures point out an inherent difficulty for any ethical thought in that insofar as there seems not to be an uncontestable justification for defining a restricted scope of moral demands, then all models of normative ethics but pure universalism have been left without proper legitimatization.