Abstract
No one should doubt the need for close study of ethics in public life, but the particular quirks and preoccupations of this book require some explanation. This book is neither a general survey of the field, nor an in-depth examination of a single, defined problem. It is a set of case studies, relating and reflecting on the stories of specific practitioners, in identified Asian contexts, struggling to act purposefully and conscientiously within their spheres of work, to meet their professional duties as they understand them. Through careful examination of these selected cases, we can learn a great deal about the kinds of moral competence practitioners require in order to act effectively and well in public life. Or, at the very least, we have occasions for drawing lessons from moral failure. Learning comes from paying close attention to practical decision making as it is lived, to achieve a depth of understanding otherwise typically missed or ignored by students of ethics.
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Notes
Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 286. Adam Swift and Stuart White assert: “Theorists should not allow political constraints, or the results of social science, to corrupt their reflection on ultimate principles.” “Political Theory, Social Science, and Real Politics,” Political Theory: Methods and Approaches, ed. David Leopold and Marc Stears (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 67.
For a parallel argument regarding jurisprudence, in contrast to legal philosophy, see Roger Cotterrell, “Why Jurisprudence Is Not Legal Philosophy,” Jurisprudence 5:1 (2014), pp. 41–55.
John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 46.
Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli (Berkeley: University of California, 1984), p. 164.
Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 128–141.
My view of universal moral standards parallels Rawls’s approach in his last major work, deriving them from the history and usages of international law and practice, not from any comprehensive philosophical or religious doctrine. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 41, 68. For a sharp critique of the more typical philosopher’s quest for decontextualized principles, see Samuel Moyn, “Human Rights in Heaven” (circulated draft, 2014).
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 42.
Philip Heymann, The Politics of Public Management (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987).
For more explicit use of the strategic triangle as an analytical tool, see Mark H. Moore, Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995) and Recognizing Public Value (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014). Moore discusses US cases exclusively and does not deploy the strategic triangle to illuminate ethical quandaries.
Mark H. Moore, “On Creating Public Value” (circulated draft, September 2003), p. 5 n.11. Thus, the possible is not determined by the actual; at the same time, judgments of feasibility are inevitably based on conjecture.
For an account of practical considerations in setting rules for police officers’ use of deadly force, see Kenneth Winston, “Teaching With Cases,” in Teaching Criminal Justice Ethics: Strategic Issues, ed., John Kleinig and Margaret Leland Smith (Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing, 1997), pp. 161–181.
Lon L. Fuller, Principles of Social Order, rev. ed. (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2001), p. 286.
For further discussion, see Kenneth Winston, “Moral Competence in the Practice of Democratic Governance,” For the People: Can We Fix Public Service?, ed. John D. Donahue and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2003), pp. 169–187.
I draw these points from the excellent discussion in Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), especially Chapter One.
Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 116.
H. L. A. Hart, Law, Liberty, and Morality (New York: Random House, 1963), p. 71.
John Forester, The Deliberative Practitioner: Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), 236.
Forester borrows the term improvisation from Martha Nussbaum, “The Discernment of Perception: An Aristotelian Conception of Private and Public Rationality,” Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 54–105. Nussbaum, in turn, borrows the term from Thucydides and Aristotle.
John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt, 1938), p. 499.
Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 149–156.
Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley: University of California, 1992), p. 183n.
Alasdair MacIntyre, “Questions for Confucians,” in Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community, ed., Kwong-loi Shun and David B. Wong (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 203.
William James, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” The Writings of William James, ed. John J. McDermott (New York: Modern Library, 1967), pp. 621–624.
Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51:2 (1986), p. 273.
Jonathan Spence, To Change China: Western Advisers in China (New York: Penguin, 1980 [1969]).
John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 81.
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© 2015 Kenneth Winston
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Winston, K. (2015). Introduction. In: Ethics in Public Life. Asia Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137492050_1
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