I like to say nice things

about other people, in their presence and also behind their backs. Yet

I try not to say overly nice things about myself. Praising others makes

me feel good (and often comes naturally); praising myself makes me feel

guilty. I used to be able to follow both principles consistently—until

I had kids. Now, I often want to say nice things about my children, even

when they are not around. But many people see praising one’s own offspring

as a way of bragging about oneself. This is especially true of other parents,

for we moms and dads are a very competitive lot (even the nicest ones).

Indeed, when I praise my own children behind their backs, I feel a tinge

of guilty pride that resembles the feeling I would have if I had just

bragged about myself, even though I honestly do not see myself as responsible

for the good things that my children do. (Then again, I’m not sure that

I’m responsible for any good things I may do.) Is this feeling

of pride a sign that it is wrong—immodest—to praise one’s children

when they are not present? Or is it right to praise them, as long as one

does not feel pride when doing so? (After all, they are individuals in

their own right, so why should anyone think about their parents when they

are discussed?) Or is it right to praise them and to feel proud

about their good qualities, even though it is wrong to praise oneself?

Here’s a question prompted by a seminar discussion today. (The speaker

was my colleague Robert Sprinkle.) Would it be possible to consider the

moral status of a human fetus without analogizing it to something

else? The standard way to think about the morality of abortion is to ask

what fetuses are most like—babies, organisms (fairly simple

ones at first), or tumors. We know that babies cannot be killed, that

simple organisms can be killed for important reasons, and that tumors

can be removed and destroyed without regret. So an analogy can help us

to answer the fundamantal moral question about abortion. (It’s not necessarily

the end of the matter. Judith Jarvis Thomson, and many others, have argued

that you may kill a fetus even if it is like a person, because

it is inside another person.) But a fetus isn’t something else; it’s a

fetus. So could you simply consider it and reach moral conclusions?

One might reply: "There is no way of reasoning about this entity;

there is nothing to say to oneself about its moral status—unless

one compares it to another object whose moral status one already knows."

But how do we know the moral status of (for example) human beings? Presumably,

experience and reason have rightly driven us to the conclusion that human

beings have a right to life. Similarly, most of us have decided that insects

do not have rights. Couldn’t we reach conclusions about the moral status

of fetuses without analogizing them to anything else?

(Some religious readers may say: "Experience and reason are not

the basis of our belief in human rights—we get this belief from

divine revelation." But there is no explicit divine revelation about

fetuses, so the question arises even for religious people: Could we think

morally—and perhaps prayerfully—about fetuses, without analogizing

them to other things?)

My Dante book (in progress) is really an essay

on the limitations of moral theory. But what is that? I’m playing

with the following definition: Moral theories are collections of descriptive

terms, each of which has a known moral valence. For example, "unjust"

is a descriptive term with moral significance. We might argue that anything

that is "unjust" is wrong—at least all else being equal.

In that case, the moral valence of the term "unjust" is negative;

calling something "unjust" pushes us toward rejecting that action

(or institution, or character).

Knowing the moral valence of a descriptive term does not always tell

us what to do, because a single act can be described in multiple ways.

A given action may be "unjust" but also "loving."

(For example, a parent might favor her own children over others.) In such

cases, the negative moral valence of injustice is countered by the positive

moral valence of love, and we have a difficult decision to make. In another

kind of situation, an action may be "unjust" but also "necessary";

and if something is necessary, then we may have to ignore moral considerations

altogether.

Few (if any) philosophers have ever believed that moral theories could

be sufficient to determine action; we also need judgment to tell us which

moral terms to apply in particular cases, and how to balance conflicting

terms. Nevertheless, philosophers generally think it is useful to have

a moral theory composed of terms with known moral valences.

A moral theory can simply be a list of such terms (this was W.D. Ross’

view); but preferably it is an organized structure. For example, a theorist

may argue that some moral terms underlie and explain others, or trump

others, or negate others. The more the full list can be organized and/or

shortened, the more the theory has achieved.

The President’s surprise proposal to abolish dividend taxes is big news.

There are many ways to evaluate the idea, including consideration of the

effects on short- and long-term economic growth, equity, and the federal

budget. The Administration also emphasizes that a dividend tax is unfair,

since the income that was used to buy the shares was already taxed once.

(The response from commentators like Paul Krugman is that there are many

double taxes, including all sales taxes.) Another consideration seems

to be overlooked. I believe we should retain a distinction between earned

and unearned income, and we should be less hesitant to tax the latter.

There is nothing wrong with investment income. But work—purposeful

human effort—is much more closely linked to human dignity and value.

As Pope John Paul II wrote in Laborem Exercens (1981), "Work is a

good thing for man-a good thing for his humanity-because through work

man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also

achieves fulfillment as a human being and indeed in a sense becomes ‘more

a human being.’"

Robert Nozick, the great libertarian philosopher, denied that there was

any moral difference between work and other activities (such as investing)

that produce value. He was reacting to the old leftist idea that labor

alone creates value, and therefore laborers deserve the full price of

their products. It is a scandal of capitalism that some of the reward

goes instead to capitalists, who do not work. In the words of Ralph Chaplin’s

old Wobbly anthem, "Solidarity Forever" (1915):

It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they

trade;

Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid

* * *

All the world that’s owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.

We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.

It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.

This song implies that we should recoup the money that capitalists have

taken from the workers who really made everything. Dividend taxes would

then be a good idea, and the higher the better. Unfortunately, the song

is pretty clearly wrong: investors, managers, and inventors create value,

just as workers do. However, we can still understand labor as morally

different from other economic activities. Compare two people, one of whom

makes a living by digging ditches, while the other profits from inherited

stocks even though she is comatose after an accident. The first labors;

the second does not. An intermediate case is someone who actively invests,

mixing knowledge, intellectual labor, and accumulated capital to generate

wealth. I think that the work aspect of wealth-creation is virtuous, onerous,

and not sufficiently rewarded by the market. This is an argument for policies

(such as dividends taxes) that favor work.

(All this is "auto-plagiarized" from a law

review article I wrote some time ago.

My wife and I went to an event at my 3-year-old’s nursery school today.

She saw me still in my pajamas just before she left for the day, and said

"Daddy, you will get dressed before you come to my school, won’t

you?" This is the beginning of at least 18 years of her worrying

about whether I am about to embarrass her in public.