Thanks for the comment and the link. Just read it and it seems to hit roughly the same notes as my summary or would you disagree? The main thing I saw differently is how she thinks that we should judge decisions on. You said that it is just "run of the mill utilitarianism", while I read those paragraphs as a rejection of utilitarianism. I understood her argument such that you simply cannot make general judgements, but that you have to look at each situation independently. And the factor that determines if you are doing something ethically is that you have to accept your responsibility for the judgement call to make.
Yeah, I think we're in agreement in our interpretations for the most part. It's been a while since I've read TEoA, but I remember being frustrated trying to figure out how SdB was defending her idea that freedom-for-all is an important thing to fight for even at tremendous cost or the cost of victimizing others (this freedom-for-all was the utility that she seemed to me to be willing to maximize in an ends-justify-the-means way that reminded me of utilitarianism) without turning that freedom-for-all into a "serious" value or falling victim to those other temptations she outlined. It seems intuitively appealing that freedom-for-all really does count and maybe is one serious value we can rely on, but when I tried to see where she'd put all the links in the chain, I couldn't find some of them.
And sometimes it seemed like she wavered between that view and the one you attribute to her, which seems more consistent with the rest of her argument but which frustratingly leaves room for people to fulfill their existential authenticity by e.g. enslaving and abusing someone, as long as they're happily taking responsibility for their choice to do so.
Yeah, it is true that responsibility itself is not enough. You also have to use your actions to enhance the freedom of others. And I think she singles out freedom as her cornerstone, because it is the only value which does not allow you to suppress others. For any other value you can still enslave people to make it happen, but if you want to do this via freedom, it does not really make any sense.
And when it comes to the question, how this can be squared with killing others when they are oppressors I think her point is that this is kind of like the paradox of tolerance. You cannot be tolerant to anyone, without risking that non-tolerant people use this to take over your tolerate society. And in the same vain, you cannot give freedom for the people who want to destroy freedom, as this will result in freedom for nobody. The hard part is to figure out when this is the case, but there her answer seems to be that this is on you to find out, because every situation is to unique to give you any advice beforehand.
FWIW, here's my own attempt to understand The Ethics of Ambiguity: https://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=17Apr16
Thanks for the comment and the link. Just read it and it seems to hit roughly the same notes as my summary or would you disagree? The main thing I saw differently is how she thinks that we should judge decisions on. You said that it is just "run of the mill utilitarianism", while I read those paragraphs as a rejection of utilitarianism. I understood her argument such that you simply cannot make general judgements, but that you have to look at each situation independently. And the factor that determines if you are doing something ethically is that you have to accept your responsibility for the judgement call to make.
Yeah, I think we're in agreement in our interpretations for the most part. It's been a while since I've read TEoA, but I remember being frustrated trying to figure out how SdB was defending her idea that freedom-for-all is an important thing to fight for even at tremendous cost or the cost of victimizing others (this freedom-for-all was the utility that she seemed to me to be willing to maximize in an ends-justify-the-means way that reminded me of utilitarianism) without turning that freedom-for-all into a "serious" value or falling victim to those other temptations she outlined. It seems intuitively appealing that freedom-for-all really does count and maybe is one serious value we can rely on, but when I tried to see where she'd put all the links in the chain, I couldn't find some of them.
And sometimes it seemed like she wavered between that view and the one you attribute to her, which seems more consistent with the rest of her argument but which frustratingly leaves room for people to fulfill their existential authenticity by e.g. enslaving and abusing someone, as long as they're happily taking responsibility for their choice to do so.
Yeah, it is true that responsibility itself is not enough. You also have to use your actions to enhance the freedom of others. And I think she singles out freedom as her cornerstone, because it is the only value which does not allow you to suppress others. For any other value you can still enslave people to make it happen, but if you want to do this via freedom, it does not really make any sense.
And when it comes to the question, how this can be squared with killing others when they are oppressors I think her point is that this is kind of like the paradox of tolerance. You cannot be tolerant to anyone, without risking that non-tolerant people use this to take over your tolerate society. And in the same vain, you cannot give freedom for the people who want to destroy freedom, as this will result in freedom for nobody. The hard part is to figure out when this is the case, but there her answer seems to be that this is on you to find out, because every situation is to unique to give you any advice beforehand.