Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Deontology and utilitarianism are both abstract conceptions of ethics, and therefore, partial and defective. Their plausibility derives from two factors: 1) They each get at part of the truth: it is true, as deontologists insist, that principles are an important part of ethics. And it is true, as utilitarians contend, that the consequences of one’s actions are an important part of ethics. 2) Each approach is able to benefit from the defective nature of the other: so long as rationalism is understood as the only possible approach to ethics, then, to the rationalist, deontology appears to be the only alternative to utilitarianism, and vice-versa. So deontologists can strengthen their appeal by pointing out the obvious defects in utilitarianism (it ignores principles), while utilitarians do the same by noting the obvious defects in deontology (it ignores consequences). It is like a war between one’s right leg and left leg over which is the essential limb in walking: each leg can c...

It is not difficult to explain both the lasting appeal of these two theories of ethics, and at the same time why the dispute between them will never be resolved on the field where the moral philosophers of the two camps attempt to fight their way to victory. Our ethical life is practical life, and to think through an ethical problem is an exercise in practical, and not theoretical, reason. As Hegel might have put it , it is a matter of Sittlichkeit , of pursuing the intimations of a concrete tradition of moral activity, and not of abstract moral reasoning. Both deontological and utilitarian ethics are exercises in just such abstract reasoning. Each have (correctly) espied an aspect of our moral lives. This is what makes them plausible. But each have placed a one-sided emphasis on that aspect, at the expense of ignoring the concrete reality of how our moral lives are actually lived. Each sees what the other school is missing, and that is why, so long as these theorists fail to rec...