Me, You, Us: Essays by George Sher

Abstract

Reviewed by: Me, You, Us: Essays by George Sher Brendan Sweetman SHER, George. Me, You, Us: Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. viii + 202 pp. Cloth. $82.00 This book brings together the author’s writings concerning topics in metaethics, moral psychology, the nature of the self, and related issues connected to economic inequality, punishment, autonomy, and dominance. Eight of the essays have been previously published and are here supplemented with an additional four, all revolving around central moral issues considered both from the point of view of the individual person and in terms of society (hence, the odd title!). Sher’s starting point is the subjective nature of the individual who exists in a social world of other individuals, each with their own center of subjectivity. The author tells us that he is going against the dominant outlook today in analytic philosophy, which is to conceptualize normative issues in ethics and political and social thinking in terms of collectivities, relationships, and social meanings rather than from the perspective of the interests of individual persons. This dominant trend also emphasizes ideas current in analytic philosophy: autonomy and the attempt to place nondomination at the center of political thought, reflecting an increasing desire to approach many moral issues by means of social and political considerations. These considerations gave rise to the field of social epistemology. In opposition to these trends, Sher argues that humans are in fact primarily isolated creatures, and he suggests that the fundamental moral units are individual centers of embodied subjectivity. Morality must start from here, and it follows, according to Sher, that our good cannot be relational—that an isolated subject cannot be an essentially political or [End Page 638] social animal. Of course it does not follow that social goods such as love, friendship, social justice, and other relational interests are of no value, but only that they get their value from some fact about individual centers of consciousness. Several of the early essays address the question of how much weight we should attach to our own interests when they (inevitably) conflict with those of others. More specifically, how might we justify taking others’ interests into account, while still according more weight to our own interests, an initial concern that naturally arises out of Sher’s general approach. This raises a further key question: Why do we think that all people have equal moral standing? Sher acknowledges the difficulty of justifying the value of equality in recent analytic philosophy (especially, we should add, given its reductionist and nihilist trends, which accord a defining role for physicalism and chance in explaining what comes to exist). He argues that it is the fact that each of us has a complete center of consciousness or subjectivity that is not a matter of degree nor discoverable by empirical observation that is the basis for our justification of moral equality. This argument is preferable, he believes, to the more common view that it is some feature or property that human beings all have to an equal degree (such as rationality) that can become the basis for equality. We should note that this latter view has run into all sorts of difficulties in modern ethics and is the reason analytic philosophers have struggled with trying to place any limits to their defenses of practices such as physician-assisted suicide and abortion, and with regard to the moral status of animals. Nevertheless, it is not clear that Sher’s view is robust enough to help us here and is perhaps yet another reminder that a purely naturalistic view inevitably struggles with the question of how to justify human equality (rather than simply assuming it as a foundational moral truth). Other essays turn to the popular view that what is wrong with inequalities in society is not that the poor have limited options or are forced to live miserable, constricted lives but that their lack of economic power and social status prevents them from interacting with others on equal terms. Sher argues that none of the potentially relevant normative considerations (that is, the badness of being dominated, the requirement that our political arrangements be justifiable to all who live under them) can justify...