Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence

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Summary: Extremely beautiful book
Review: An INCREDIBLE book!! This book powerfully reveals the humor, the conflicts, and irony, but most of all the enormous POSSIBILITY inherent in the way we apply our values! Never having read any book like this before, my eyes were opened wide by the "Puzzles" in this book. These Puzzles are amazing scenarios of life and death situations, and are all about giving us the fuel to BREAK down mental blocks and barriers that stand in the way of us carrying out our values. This book opens us up to our true POTENTIAL as human beings. It spurs us to re-examine what we do everyday, and helps us make simple, beneficial changes. In the wake of September 11th, this book is a perfect fit for people looking to reinforce HOPE and responsibility for our fellow human beings.

----An incredibly beautiful vision of our futures-not the distant future, but our TOMORROW, our days-after-tomorrow, and ONWARD.
----This book is indispensible for Americans of all beliefs and backgrounds-it speaks universally!

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Summary: Unger not necessarily Utilitarian
Review: Contrary to a couple of previous reviews posted here, both favorable and unfavorable, Unger neither argues for nor presupposes Utilitarianism or consequentialism. Nor does he need to. It is true that his conclusions bear a superficial similarity to utilitarianism in being quite demanding, but he argues this on the basis of fairly fundamental intuitions that nearly all of us accept already. His strategy is such that ANY moral theory (whether deontological, consequentialist or other) must take a stance on which aspects of the hypotheticals he presents are morally relevant. If we are to avoid such implausible conclusions as that physical proximity or salience of others' needs are morally relevant factors, I think we cannot avoid his primary conclusion that nearly all of us act wrongly by not giving much more to certain charities than we currently do.

Anyone who knows enough about this book to have read this far ought to read and grapple with the arguments presented in this book. Some of the more radical positions he defends may in the end turn out to be wrong but I think they certainly cannot be dismissed out of hand. This book will prove to be valuable to anyone concerned with doing the right thing as well as to intellectuals interested in the place of moral intuitions in moral inquiry (and as Unger points out, the dangers of relying too heavily on certain of those intuitions).

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Summary: Unger and Utilitarianism -- again
Review: Here's Unger himself on his relation to Utilitarianism:

"It's unfortunate how much writing on ethics greatly concerns itself with a few readily labeled moral views, and with which works might be characterized as advocating which labeled positions. Some of this writing may serve the good purpose of seeing how various authors may be variously influenced historically. But, as it seems, most is just some pigeonholing through which an unsettled writer seeks to discredit work she finds so unpleasantly unsettling. Apparently unsettled by my suggestion that we aren't helping enough for us to lead morally decent lives, already two writers [sc. Colin McGinn and Martha Nussbaum] have conveniently classified my book, in the popular press of the intelligentsia, as a *utilitarian* work, hoping to discredit the book by placing it in such notoriously familiar pigeonhole. For two quite different reasons, one more general than the other, it's badly inaccurate, at all events, to suggest this book is a utilitarian volume." (Symposium on 'Living High and Letting Die', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LIX, No. 1, March 1999, p. 212)

The author of the present review, indeed, has had the opportunity of witnessing how so many of his fellow philosophers, when compelled to draw some conclusion they didn't seem to like, labeled the argument from which it logically followed 'utilitarian', as if (a) that handy name did fit our discussed Ungerian reasoning, and (b) the said ethical tradition was so indisputably wrong that it didn't even merit further treatment. If people realized the fallacious nature of this procedure, they would perhaps begin to acknowledge the significance of (to quote him again) Unger's "contribution to moral philosophy and, maybe, to what might be even more important than any philosophy." (ibid., p. 203)

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Summary: Confusions In Other Reviews
Review: If a child is drowning in a shallow pool, and you are nearby in a crowd of unresponsive adults, then you ought to wade in and rescue the child. As there is nothing to distinguish your obligations from that of others in the crowd, it follows that each person in the crowd ought to wade in and rescue the child. But it does not follow from this that EVERYONE ought to wade in and rescue the child. As soon as some people in the crowd show signs of response, the situation changes and each can re-evaluate the situation.

Similarly, Unger's conclusion that EACH well-to-do person ought to surrender the bulk of his wealth does not entail that ALL well-to-do persons ought to surrender the bulk of their wealth.

Unger's argument allows for the possibility that somewhere along the way it would be counter-productive to transfer wealth (for any number of reasons). What's at stake is the here and now, when the child's drowning and nobody's budging.

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Summary: Eating the seed corn is not a clever plan.
Review: Peter Unger is a clever but naughty schoolboy. If you want to see what I mean, check out his other famous book: "Ignorance," which argues cleverly against, well, everything.

Unger's fallacy in this book concerns his utter disregard for capital accumulation. If everybody really took Unger seriously, and followed his advice, the world would, within a few decades, be plunged back into absolute poverty: a kind of Dark Age, or Stone Age, existence which would wipe out most of the human race. Why? Because there would be no more accumulation or even bare maintenance of the world's capital. The capital would all be consumed (used up, worn out, not repaired/replaced), as is happening in Africa today.

Ungerians need to tear away the veil of money from their view of the economy, and see the real world behind the money. The wealth of a rich man, or a developed country, isn't a pile of green pieces of paper. It isn't even land, or gold coins. Real wealth is capital. But what is capital? Capital means tractors, sewing machines, water pumps, drill-presses, grain silos, conveyor belts, trucks, planes, ships and factories, all the things a rich country has, and a poor country needs and lacks. All the TOOLS of production, upon which the unprecedentedly high standard of living in any developed nation utterly depends.

The sharpest struggle in political economics is not the class struggle. It's the perennial conflict between present and future well-being. In every kind of society, socialist, capitalist, or interventionist, there is an unavoidable conflict of interest between the needs of the masses today, and the needs of the masses of the future. If the average clerk today lives at a level beyond the wildest dreams of Bob Crachitt, you can thank misers like Ebeneezer Scrooge. What was saved and invested by other misers of the past is cranking out a wealth of goods upon you, now, today.

As Ludwig von Mises puts it: "we are the spoiled scions of past saving." In his words, "a factor of production is by definition a thing that is able to contribute to the success of a process of production. Its market price reflects entirely the value that people attach to this contribution. The services expected from the employment of a factor of production (i.e., its contribution to productivity) are in market transactions paid according to the full value people attach to them. These factors are considered valuable only on account of these services. These services are the only reason prices are paid for them."

"None of the passionate tirades of Marx, Keynes and a host of less well known authors could show a weak point in the statement that there is only one means to raise [real] wage rates permanently, and for the benefit of all those eager to earn wages---namely, to accelerate the increase in capital available as against population. If this be unjust, then the blame rests with nature, and not with man."

Marx says that for the bourgeois capitalists, the idea is: "Accumulate accumulate, that is Moses and the Prophets!" Yes, that's right. Let capital accumulate. Don't eat the seed corn. Even Marx, in his Critique of the Gotha Plan, admitted this. If you want to see an economy that is failing to accumulate capital as rapidly as it could, look at floundering Europe. If you want to see an economy that is barely maintaining the amount of capital it has, look at Latin America. If you want to see a place that has actually consumed some of the capital it once had, look at Africa. If you want to see a place that has failed to accumulate much capital in the first place, look at Haiti.

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Summary: Peter Unger's Delusions of Reality
Review: This is an amazingly brilliant and hopelessly flawed work by philosopher Peter Unger. I read this book for my political philosophy class after reading Nozick's "Anarchy, State & Utopia." Although an interesting work in moral philosophy, I believe Unger seriously misunderstands important truths about the extended order of societies, which leads him to moral conclusions that would have consequences far beyond his comprehension.

First, a slight philosophical objection: Although not explicit, and denied by my professor, I believe there is a hidden consequentialist premise in this book. Although Unger never admits it, it is obvious to anyone who reads the book that some conception of the greater good for the greatest number guides Unger's thinking. Unger gives plently of examples in the cases he constructs in the book, with one being the contrast in chapter 2 between "The Envelope" and "The Vintage Sedan:" In the former, you receive an envelope from UNICEF and come to believe that if you do not send in $100, 30 more children will die soon. You don't send the money and they die. In the Sedan case, you come across a man who has cut himself on barbed wire and is in danger of losing his leg. Not wanting to get blood all over your leather back seat, which would land you a bill for $5000, you drive away and he loses his leg.

Most people respond that your behavior in the Envelope was acceptable, but in the Sedan case it was seriously morally wrong. Unger wishes to argue that, in fact, it is not only wrong in both cases, but MORE wrong in the Envelope: $100 saves 30 lives, as opposed to $5000 saving one. Although not explicitly stated, it seems intuitive that Unger is a utilitarian of some sort, and that this theory underlies his book. But utilitarianism cannot be assumed; it must be argued for. Otherwise one can reject Unger's conclusions simply because he fails to expend even one line of text arguing for untilitarianism as opposed to moral theories (like deontology) which are at odds with his reasoning. He does make an effort to distinguish between "preservationism," which preserves our common moral intuitions, and "liberationsim," which liberates us so we can embrace our true Values.

What is interesting about this distinction is that, not only is it disingenuous (Unger is going to "liberate" us from our illusions of innocence), but it allows Unger to sneak in his utilitarianism without actually arguing for it. The connotations of liberate and preserve are sneaky psychological devices designed to circumvent actual argument for Unger's consequentialism. Unger the Liberator? Please.

I do not write this as someone opposed to consequentialist theories, only as a point to those who read this book that Unger's underlying moral views upon which this book is predicated are not only not stated, they are not even argued for. That blatant omission distracts from an otherwise fascinating work in moral philosophy.

Another criticism is that Unger clearly fails to appreciate the spontaneous order of civilization and how opposed to that his conclusions are. Indeed, Unger writes as if he has never left his office and stepped into the real world of the extended order of civilization. A hefty dose of Hayek is in order; as an antidote to this book, I recommend "The Fatal Conceit."

In it Hayek argues that the fatal conceit is the thought that people can consciously design spontaneously ordering evolutionary systems such as law, language, and markets. Recent advances in computer technology have led to the development of ingenious simulations which have confirmed Hayek's theory of spontaneous order beyond all but the most ignorant doubt.

Yet a political philosophy based on Unger's book not only goes entirely against such brilliant insight, but also would lead to consequences which are far worse than the suffering Unger hopes to alleviate. To be fair to Unger, this is not a book discussing what Unger thinks the State should do. But Unger is a strong supporter of massive tranfers of wealth, so much so that I highly doubt he would object to a State mandated distribution scheme based on this book. Indeed, I suspect he actively encourages it.

Another criticism from Hayek is that traditions which are beneficial tend to contribute to the prosperity of the culture that practices them, yet such traditions may fail rational justification. Although better spelled out in the aforementioned work, the tradition of respecting several property helped lead to the formation of the extended order of prosperous civilization. Unger's almost *total* disregard for several property would have disastrous consequences: there would be no incentive to produce anything, and certainly no reason to contribute to the alleviation of suffering Unger claims is morally required.

But traditions (such as respecting property) do not meet Unger's standard of justification, as will be obvious to a reader of this book. Just because Unger can find no obvious moral reason we should (for example) respect property does not mean that we should not respect it. The beneficial long term consequences of respecting property rights are well documented by economists and should be intuitively obvious to most people (sans Unger).

It is an inability of Unger to take his views to their logical conclusions (or even to imply that he understands long term consequences at all) which damage this book. Also, he fails to even consider opposing arguments by people such as Hayek, who, although not all philosophers, have offered powerful consequentialist defences of the rights of several property. I only use property rights as an example; Unger simply fails to consider any implication of his views, or arguments against what would be disasterous consequences, yet he appears to be a consequentialist.

When debating a critic of the long run consequences of his economic ideas, John Maynard Keynes exclaimed, "In the long run we are all dead." Hopefully, like Keynes, the ideas in this book will pass away.

As a final note, Unger makes a strong case for charitable giving. If anything good can come from this book, it will be that. If my political philosophy professor is reading this review, I am just kidding.

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Summary: A convincing argument for Utilitarianism
Review: Unger's book revolves around whether our moral intuitions about our conduct are acceptable, and whether they can stand up to scrutiny - the conclusion is both convincing and disturbing - they cannot be. Specifically, Unger argues that we ought to do a lot more than we do to help starving people in the third world.

Unger's method of reaching his conclusion is by challenging such commonplace opinions such as the idea that our physical proximity to someone suffering makes a difference to our obligations; and asking whether it matters that we're not the only ones placed to help, whether it matters that the problem is so big that we can only make a small difference, and so on.

Convincing arguments show that none of this matters - we can make a difference, without sacrificing anything very important, and we ought to do so. Our intuitions to the contrary are mistaken. Unger's conclusion is therefore that each of us should adopt a Utilitarian outlook, where the needs of the many may well make important demands on ourselves.