THE MORAL REASONS FOR AND AGAINST SUICIDE[Assuming that .docx

THE MORAL REASONS FOR AND AGAINST
SUICIDE
[Assuming that there is suicide if and only if there
is intentional termination of one's own life,]
persons who say suicide is morally wrong must be
asked which of two positions they are affirming:
Are they saying that every act of suicide is wrong,
everything considered; or are they merely saying
that there is always some moral obligationdoubtless
of serious weight-not to commit suicide, so that
very often suicide is wrong, although it is possible
that there are countervailing considerations which
in particular situations make it right or even a moral
duty? It is quite evident that the first position is
absurd; only the second has a chance of being
defensible.
In order to make clear what is wrong, with the
first view, we may begin with an example. Suppose
an army pilot's singleseater plane goes out of
control over a heavily populated area; he has the
choice of staying in the plane and bringing it down
where it will do little damage but at the cost of
certain death for himself, and of bailing out and
letting the plane fall where it will, very possibly
killing a good many civilians. Suppose he chooses
to do the former, and so, by our definition, commits
suicide. Does anyone want to say that his action is
morally wrong? Even Immanuel Kant, who
opposed suicide in all circumstances, apparently
would not wish to say that it is; he would, in fact,

judge that this act is not one of suicide, for he says,
"It is no suicide to risk one's life against one's
enemies, and even to sacrifice it, in order to
preserve one's duties toward oneself * "1 St.
Thomas Aquinas, in his discussion of suicide, may
seem to take the position that such an act would be
wrong, for he says, "It is altogether unlawful to kill
oneself," admitting as an exception only the case of
being under special command of God. But I believe
St. Thomas would, in fact, have concluded that the
act is
From A Handbook for the Study of Suicide,
edited by Seymour Perlin. Copyright 1975 by
Oxford University Press. Inc. Reprinted by
permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
right because the basic intention of the pilot was to
save the lives of civilians, and whether an act is
right or wrong is a matter of basic intention.2
In general, we have to admit that there are
things with some moral obligation to avoid which,
on account of other morally relevant considerations,
it is sometimes right or even morally obligatory to
do. There may be some obligation to tell the truth
on every occasion, but surely in many cases the
consequences of telling the truth would be so dire
that one is obligated to lie. The same goes for
promises. There is some moral obligation to do
what one has promised (with a few exceptions); but,
if one can keep a trivial promise only at serious cost
to another person (i.e., keep an appointment only by
failing to give aid to someone injured in an
accident), it is surely obligatory to break the
promise.

The most that the moral critic of suicide could
hold, then, is that there is some moral obligation not
to do what one knows will cause one's death; but he
surely cannot deny that circumstances exist in
which there are obligations to do things which, in
fact, will result in one's death. If so, then in
principle it would be possible to argue, for instance,
that in order to meet my obligation to my family, it
might be right for me to take my own life as the
only way to avoid catastrophic hospital expenses in
a terminal illness. Possibly the main point that
critics of suicide on moral grounds would wish to
make is that it is never right to take one's own life
for reasons of one's own personal welfare, of any
kind whatsoever. Some of the arguments used to
support the immorality of suicide, however, are so
framed that if they were supportable at all, they
would prove that suicide is never moral.
One wellknown type of argument against
suicide may be classified as theological. St.
Augustine and others urged that the Sixth
Commandment ("Thou shalt not kill") prohibits
suicide, and that we are bound to obey a divine
commandment. To this reasoning one might first
reply that it is arbitrary exegesis of the Sixth
Commandment to assert that it was intended to
prohibit suicide. The second reply
is that if there is not some consideration which shows
on the merits of the case that suicide is morally
wrong, God had no business prohibiting it. It is true
that some will object to this point, and I must refer

them elsewhere for my detailed comments on the
divinewill theory of morality.3
Another theological argument with wide support
was accepted by John Locke, who wrote:
Men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent
and infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one
sovereign Master, sent into the world by His order
and about His business; they are His property, whose
workmanship they are made to last during His, not
one another's pleasure ... Every one ... is bound to
preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully
…4 And Kant: "We have been placed in this world
under certain conditions and for specific purposes.
But a suicide opposes the purpose of his Creator; he
arrives in the other world as one who has deserted his
post; he must be looked upon as a rebel against God.
So long as we remember the truth that it is God's
intention to preserve life, we are bound to regulate
our activities in conformity with it. This duty is upon
us until the time comes when God expressly
commands us to leave this life. Human beings are
sentinels on earth and may not leave their posts until
relieved by another beneficent hand ."5
Unfortunately, however, even if we grant that it is the
duty of human beings to do what God commands or
intends them to do, more argument is required to
show that God does not permit human beings to quit
this life when their own personal welfare would be
maximized by so doing. How does one draw the
requisite inference about the intentions of God? The
difficulties and contradictions in arguments to reach
such a conclusion are discussed at length and
perspicaciously by David Hume in his essay "On
Suicide," and in view of the unlikelihood that readers
will need to be persuaded about these, I shall merely

refer those interested to that essay.6
A second group of arguments may be classed as
arguments from natural law. St. Thomas says: "It is
altogether unlawful to kill oneself, for three reasons.
First, because everything naturally loves itself, the
result being that everything naturally keeps itself in
being, and resists corruptions so far as it can.
Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of
nature, and to charity whereby every man should
love himself. Hence suicide is always a mortal sin,
as being contrary to the natural law and to charity."7
Here St. Thomas ignores two obvious points. First, it
is not obvious why a human being is morally bound
to do what he or she has some inclination to do. (St.
Thomas did not criticize chastity.) Second, while it is
true that most human beings do feel a strong urge to
live, the human being who commits suicide
obviously feels a stronger inclination to do
something else. It is as natural for a human being to
dislike, and to take steps to avoid, say, great pain, as
it is to cling to life.
A somewhat similar argument by Immanuel
Kant may seem better. In a famous passage Kant
writes that the maxim of a person who commits
suicide is "From selflove I make it my principle to
shorten my life if its continuance threatens more evil
than it promises pleasure. The only further question
to ask is whether this principle of selflove can
become a universal law of nature. It is then seen at
once that a system of nature by whose law the very
same feeling whose function is to stimulate the
furtherance of life should actually destroy life would
contradict itself and consequently could not subsist

as a system of nature. Hence this maxim cannot
possibly hold as a universal law of nature and is
therefore entirely opposed to the supreme principle
of all duty."8 What Kant finds contradictory is that
the motive of selflove (interest in one's own
longrange welfare) should sometimes lead one to
struggle to preserve one's life, but at other times to
end it. But where is the contradiction? One's
circumstances change, and, if the argument of the
following section in this [paper] is correct, one
sometimes maximizes
one's own longrange welfare by trying to stay alive,
but at other times by bringing about one's demise.
A third group of arguments, a form of which
goes back at least to Aristotle, has a more modern
and convincing ring. These are arguments to show
that, in one way or another, a suicide necessarily
does harm to other persons, or to society at large.
Aristotle says that the suicide treats the state
unjustly.' Partly following Aristotle, St. Thomas
says: "Every man is part of the community, and so,
as such, he belongs to the community. Hence by
killing, himself he injures the community."10
Blackstone held that a suicide is an offense against
the king "who bath an interest in the preservation of
all his subjects," perhaps following Judge Brown in
1563, who argued that suicide cost the king a
subject"he being the head has lost one of his
mystical members."11 The premise of such
arguments is, as Hume pointed out, obviously
mistaken in many instances. It is true that Freud
would perhaps have injured society had he, instead

of finishing his last book, committed suicide to
escape the pain of throat cancer. But surely there
have been many suicides whose demise was not a
noticeable loss to society; an honest man could only
say that in some instances society was better off
without them.
It need not be denied that suicide is often
injurious to other persons, especially the family of a
suicide. Clearly it sometimes is. But, we should
notice what this fact establishes. Suppose we admit,
as generally would be done, that there is some
obligation not to perform any action which will
probably or certainly be injurious to other people,
the strength of the obligation being dependent on
various factors, notably the seriousness of the
expected injury. Then there is some obligation not to
commit suicide, when that act would probably or
certainly be injurious to other people. But, as we
have already seen, many cases of some obligation to
do something nevertheless are not cases of a duty to
do that thing, everything considered. So it could
sometimes be morally justified to commit suicide,
even if the act will harm someone. Must a man with
a terminal illness undergo excruciating pain because
his death will cause his wife sorrowwhen she will
be caused sorrow a month later anyway, when he is
dead of natural causes? Moreover, to repeat, the fact
that an individual has some obligation not to
commit suicide when that act will probably injure
other persons does not imply that, everything
considered, it is wrong for him to do it, namely, that
in all circumstances suicide as such is something
there is some obligation to avoid.
Is there any sound argument, convincing to the

modern mind, to establish that there is (or is not)
some moral obligation to avoid suicide as such, an
obligation, of course, which might be overridden by
other obligations in some or many cases? (Captain
Oates may have had a moral obligation not to
commit suicide as such, but his obligation not to
stand in
the way of his comrades getting to safety might
have been so strong that, everything considered, he
was justified in leaving the polar camp and allowing
himself to freeze to death.)
To present all the arguments necessary to
answer this question convincingly would take a
great deal of space. I shall, therefore, simply state
one answer to it which seems plausible to some
contemporary philosophers. Suppose it could be
shown that it would maximize the longrun welfare
of everybody affected if people were taught that
there is a moral obligation to avoid suicideso that
people would be motivated to avoid suicide just
because they thought it wrong (would have
anticipatory guilt feelings at the very idea), and so
that other people would be inclined to disapprove of
persons who commit suicide unless there were some
excuse. One might ask: how could it maximize
utility to mold the conceptual and motivational
structure of persons in this way? To which the
answer might be: feeling in this way might make
persons who are impulsively inclined to commit
suicide in a bad mood. or a fit of anger or jealousy,
take more time to deliberate; hence, some suicides
that have bad effects generally might be prevented.
In other words, it might be a good thing in its effects
for people to feel about suicide in the way they feel

about breach of promise or injuring others, just as it
might be a good thing for people to feel a moral
obligation not to smoke, or to wear seat belts.
However, it might be that negative moral feelings
about suicide as such would stand in the way of
action by those persons whose welfare really is best
served by suicide and whose suicide is the best thing
for everybody concerned.
WHEN A DECISION TO COMMIT
SUICIDE IS RATIONAL FROM THE
PERSON'S POINT OF VIEW
The person who is contemplating suicide is
obviously making a choice between future
worldcourses; the worldcourse that includes his
demise, say, an hour from now, and several possible
ones that contain his demise at a later point. One
cannot have precise knowledge about many features
of the latter group of worldcourses, but it is certain
that they will all end with death some (possibly
short) finite time from now.
Why do I say the choice is between
worldcourses and not just a choice between future
lifecourses of the prospective suicide, the one
shorter than the other? The reason is that one's
suicide has some impact on the world (and one's
continued life has some impact on the world), and
that conditions in the rest of the world will often
make a difference in one's evaluation of the
possibilities. One is interested in things in the world
other than just oneself and one's own happiness.
The basic question a person must answer, in

order to determine which worldcourse is best or
rational for him to choose, is which he would choose
under conditions of optimal use of information,
when all of his desires are taken into account. It is
not just a question of what we prefer now, with some
clarification of all the possibilities being considered.
Our preferences change, and the preferences of
tomorrow (assuming we can know something about
them) are just as legitimately taken into account in
deciding what to do now as the preferences of today.
Since any reason that can be given today for
weighting heavily today's preference can be given
tomorrow for weighting heavily tomorrow's
preference, the preferences of any timestretch have a
rational claim to an equal vote. Now the importance
of that fact is this: we often know quite well that our
desires, aversions, and preferences may change after
a short while. When a person is in a state of
despairperhaps brought about by a rejection in love
or discharge from a longheld positionnothing but the
thing he cannot have seems desirable; everything
else is turned to ashes. Yet we know quite well that
the passage of time is likely to reverse all this;
replacements may be found or other types of things
that are available to us may begin to look attractive.
So, if we were to act on the preferences of today
alone, when the emotion of despair seems more than
we can stand, we might find death preferable to life;
but, if we allow for the preferences of the weeks and
years ahead, when many goals will be enjoyable and
attractive, we might find life much preferable to
death. So, if a choice of what is best is to be
determined by what we want not only now but later
(and later desires on an equal basis with the present
ones)as it should bethen what is the best or
preferable world

course will often be quite different from what it
would be if the choice, or what is best for one, were
fixed by one's desires and preferences now.
Of course, if one commits suicide there are no
future desires or aversions that may be compared
with present ones and that should be allowed an
equal vote in deciding what is best. In that respect
the course of action that results in death is different
from any other course of action we may undertake.
I do not wish to suggest the rosy possibility that it is
often or always reasonable to believe that next
week "I shall be more interested in living than I am
today, if today I take a dim view of continued
existence." On the contrary, when a person is
seriously ill, for instance, he may have no reason to
think that the preferenceorder will be reversedit
may be that tomorrow he will prefer death to life
more strongly.
The argument is often used that one can never
be certain what is going to happen, and hence one
is never rationally justified in doing anything as
drastic as committing suicide. But we always have
to live by probabilities and make our estimates as
best we can. As soon as it is clear beyond
reasonable doubt not only that death is now
preferable to life, but also that it will be every day
from now until the end, the rational thing is to act
promptly.
Let us not pursue the question of whether it is
rational for a person with a painful terminal illness
to commit suicide; it is. However, the issue seldom
arises, and few terminally ill patients do commit

suicide. With such patients matters usually get
worse slowly so that no particular time seems to
call for action. They are often so heavily sedated
that it is impossible for the mental processes of
decision leading to action to occur; or else they are
incapacitated in a hospital and the very physical
possibility of ending their lives is not available. Let
us leave this grim topic and turn to a practically
more important problem: whether it is rational for
persons to commit suicide for some reason other
than painful terminal physical illness. Most persons
who commit suicide do so, apparently, because they
face a nonphysical problem that depresses them
beyond their ability to bear.
Among the problems that have been regarded
as good and sufficient reasons for ending life, we
find (in addition to serious illness) the following:
some event that has made a person feel ashamed or
lose his prestige and status; reduction from
affluence to poverty; the loss of a limb or of
physical beauty; the loss of sexual capacity; some
event that makes it seem impossible to achieve
things by which one sets store; loss of a loved one;
disappointment in love; the infirmities of increasing
age. It is not to be denied that such things can be
serious blows to a person's prospects of happiness.
Whatever the nature of an individual's
problem, there are various plain errors to be
avoidederrors to which a person is especially prone
when he is depressed-in deciding whether,
everything considered, he prefers a worldcourse

containing his early demise to one in which his life
continues to its natural terminus. Let us forget for a
moment the relevance to the decision of
preferences that he may have tomorrow, and
concentrate on some errors that may infect his
preference as of today, and for which correction or
allowance must be made.
In the first place, depression, like any severe
emotional experience, tends to primitivize one's
intellectual processes. It restricts the range of one's
survey of the possibilities. One thing that a rational
person would do is compare the worldcourse
containing his suicide with his best alternative. But
his best alternative is precisely a possibility he may
overlook if, in a depressed mood, he thinks only of
how badly off he is and cannot imagine any way of
improving his situation. If a person is disappointed
in love, it is possible to adopt a vigorous plan of
action that carries a good chance of acquainting
him with someone he likes at least as well; and if
old age prevents a person from continuing the
tennis game with his favorite partner, it is possible
to learn some other game that provides the joys of
competition without the physical demands.
Depression has another insidious influence on
one's planning; it seriously affects one's judgment
about probabilities. A person disappointed in love is
very likely to take a dim view of himself, his
prospects, and his attractiveness; he thinks that
because he has been rejected by one person he will
probably be rejected by anyone who looks desirable
to him. In a less gloomy frame of mind he would
make different estimates. Part of the reason for
such gloomy probability estimates is that

depression
tends to repress one's memory of evidence that
supports a nongloomy prediction. Thus, a
rejected ]over tends to forget any cases in which he
has elicited enthusiastic response from ladies in
relation to whom he has been the one who has done
the rejecting. Thus his pessimistic selfimage is
based upon a highly selected, and pessimistically
selected, set of data. Even when he is reminded of
the data, moreover, he is apt to resist an optimistic
inference.
Another kind of distortion of the look of future
prospects is not a result of depression, but is quite
normal. Events distant in the future feel small, just
as objects distant in space look small. Their
prospect does not have the effect on motivational
processes that it would have if it were of an event in
the immediate future. Psychologists call this the
"goalgradient" phenomenon; a rat, for instance, will
run faster toward a perceived food box than a
distant unseen one. In the case of a person who has
suffered some misfortune, and whose situation now
is an unpleasant one, this reduction of the
motivational influence of events distant in time has
the effect that present unpleasant states weigh far
more heavily than probable future pleasant ones in
any choice of worldcourses.
If we are trying to determine whether we now
prefer, or shall later prefer, the outcome of one
worldcourse to that of another (and this is leaving
aside the questions of the weight of the votes of
preferences at a later date), we must take into
account these and other infirmities of our "sensing"

machinery. Since knowing that the machinery is out
of order will not tell us what results it would give if
it were working, the best recourse might be to
refrain from making, any decision in a stressful
frame of mind. If decisions have to be made, one
must recall past reactions, in a normal frame of
mind, to outcomes like those under assessment. But
many suicides seem to occur in moments of despair.
What should be clear from the above is that a
moment of despair, if one is seriously
contemplating, suicide, ought to be a moment of
reassessment of one's goals and values. a
reassessment which the individual must realize is
very difficult to make objectively, because of the
very quality of his depressed frame of mind.
A decision to commit suicide may in certain
circumstances be a rational one. But a person who
wants to act rationally must take into account the
various possible "errors" and make appropriate
rectification of his initial evaluations.
THE ROLE OF OTHER PERSONS
What is the moral obligation of other persons
toward those who are contemplating suicide? The
question of their moral blameworthiness may be
ignored and what is rational for them to do from the
point of view of personal welfare may be
considered as being of secondary concern. Laws
make it dangerous to aid or encourage a suicide.
The risk of running afoul of the law may partly
determine moral obligation, since moral obligation
to do something may be reduced by the fact that it
is personally dangerous.

The moral obligation of other persons toward
one who is contemplating suicide is an instance of a
general obligation to render aid to those in serious
distress, at least when this can be done at no great
cost to one's self. I do not think this general
principle is seriously questioned by anyone,
whatever his moral theory; so I feel free to assume
it as a premise. Obviously the person contemplating
suicide is in great distress of some sort; if he were
not, he would not be seriously considering
terminating his life.
How great a person's obligation is to one in
distress depends on a number of factors. Obviously
family and friends have special obligations to
devote time to helping the prospective suicide
which others do not have. But anyone in this kind
of distress has a moral claim on the time of any
person who knows the situation (unless there are
others more responsible who are already doing
what should be done).
What is the obligation? It depends, of course,
on the situation, and how much the second person
knows about the situation. If the individual has
decided to terminate his life if he can, and it is clear
that he is right in this decision, then, if he needs
help in executing the decision, there is a moral
obligation to give him help. On this matter a
patient's physician has a special obligation, from
which any talk
about the Hippocratic oath does not absolve him. It
is true that there are some damages one cannot be
expected to absorb, and some risks which one

cannot be expected to take, on account of the
obligation to render aid.
On the other hand, if it is clear that the
individual should not commit suicide, from the
point of view of his own welfare, or if there is a
presumption that he should not (when the only
evidence is that a person is discovered unconscious,
with the gas turned on), it would seem to be the
individual's obligation to intervene, prevent the
successful execution of the decision, and see to the
availability of competent psychiatric advice and
temporary hospitalization, if necessary. Whether
one has a right to take such steps when a clearly
sane person, after careful reflection over a period of
time, comes to the conclusion that an end to his life
is what is best for him and what he wants, is very
doubtful, even when one thinks his conclusion a
mistaken one; it would seem that a man's own
considered decision about whether he wants to live
must command respect, although one must concede
that this could be debated.
The more interesting role in which a person
may be cast, however, is that of adviser. It is often
important to one who is contemplating suicide to
go over his thinking with another, and to feel that a
conclusion, one way or the other, has the support of
a respected mind. One thin,, one can obviously do,
in rendering the service of advice, is to discuss with
the person the various types of issues discussed
above, made more specific by the concrete
circumstances of his case, and help him find
whether, in view, say, of the damage his suicide
would do to others, he has a moral obligation to
refrain, and whether it is rational or best for him,

from the point of view of his own welfare, to take
this step or adopt some other plan instead.
To get a person to see what is the rational thing
to do is no small job. Even to get a person, in a
frame of mind when he is seriously contemplating
(or perhaps has already unsuccessfully attempted)
suicide, to recognize a plain truth of fact may be a
major . or operation. If a man insists, "I am a
complete failure," when it is obvious that by any
reasonable standard he is far from that, it may be
tremendously
difficult to get him to see the fact. But there is
another job beyond that of getting a person to see
what is the rational thing to do; that is to help him
act rationally, or be rational, when he has conceded
what would be the rational thing.
How either of these tasks may be accomplished
effectively may be discussed more competently by
an experienced psychiatrist than by a philosopher.
Loneliness and the absence of human affection are
states which exacerbate any other problems;
disappointment, reduction to poverty, and so forth,
seem less impossible to bear in the presence of the
affection of another. Hence simply to be a friend, or
to find someone a friend, may be the largest
contribution one can make either to helping a
person be rational or see clearly what is rational for
him to do; this service may make one who was
contemplating suicide feel that there is a future for
him which it is possible to face.

NOTES
1
Immanuel Kant. Lectures on Ethics, New York:
Harper
Torchbook (1963), p. 150.
2
See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica,
Second Part of
the Second Part, Q. 64, Art 5. In Article 7,. he
says:
"Nothing hinders one act from having two effects,
only one of which is intended, while the other is
beside the intention. Now moral acts take their
species according to what is
intended. and not according to what is beside the
intention, since this is accidental as explained
above" (Q. 43, Art. 3:
111, Q. 1, Art. 3, as 3). Mr. Norman St. JohnStevas,
the
most articulate contemporary defender of the
Catholic
view, writes as follows: "Christian thought allows
certain
exceptions to its general condemnation of suicide.
That covered by a particular divine inspiration has
already been noted. Another exception arises
where suicide is the method imposed by the state
for the execution of a just death penalty. A third
exception is altruistic suicide, of which the best
known example is Captain Oates. Such suicides
are justified by invoking the principles of double
effect. The act from which death results must be
good or at least morally indifferent; some other

good effect must result: The death must not be
directly intended or the real means to the good
effect. and a grave reason must exist for adopting
the course of action" Life, Death and the Law
Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press
(1961), pp. 2505 11. Presumably the Catholic
doctrine is intended to allow suicide when this is
required for meeting strong moral obligations;
whether it can do so consistently depends partly on
the interpretation given to "real means to the good
effect." Readers interested in pursuing further the
Catholic doctrine of double effect and its
implications for our problem should read Philippa
Foot, "The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine
of Double Effect," The Oxford Review, 5:515
(Trinity 1967).
3
R. B. Brandt, Ethical Theory, Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.:
PrenticeHall (1959), pp. 6182,
4
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government Ch.
2.
5
Kant, Lectures on Ethics, p. 154.
6
This essay appears in collections of Hume's
works.
7
For an argument similar to Kant's, see also St.
Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 11, 11, Q. 64, Art.
5.
8

Immanuel Kant, The Fundamental Principles of
the
Metaphysic of Morals, trans H. J. Paton, London:
The Hutchinson Group (1948,), Ch. 2.
9
Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, Bk. 5. Ch. 10.,
p. 1138a.
10 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 11,
11, Q. 64, Art. 5.
11 Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries 4:189;
Brown in
Holes v. Petit, I Plow. 253, 75 E.R. 387 (C. B.
1563). Both
cited by Norman St. JohnStevas, Life, Death
and the Law
p. 235.
Canadian Journal of Philosophy
Racist Acts and Racist Humor
Author(s): Michael Philips
Source: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Mar.,
1984), pp. 75-96
Published by: Canadian Journal of Philosophy
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40231354
Accessed: 18-05-2017 00:15 UTC

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Volume XIV, Number 1, March 1984
MICHAEL PHILIPS, Portland State University
I
Racist jokes are often funny. And part of this has to do with

their racism.
Many Polish jokes, for example, may easily be converted into
moron
jokes but are not at all funny when delivered as such. Consider
two
answers to What has an I.Q. of 100?': (a) a nation of morons; or
(b)
Poland. Similarly, jokes portraying Jews as cheap, Italians as
cowards,
and Greeks as dishonest may be told as jokes about how
skinflints,
cowards, or dishonest people get on in the world. But they are
less funny
as such (at least if one is not Jewish, Greek, or Italian). As this
suggests,
racist humor is 'put down' humor. We laugh, in part, because
we find
put-downs funny, sometimes even if they are about us. In many
con-
texts, this tendency is relatively harmless; indeed, within
reason, it may
be therapeutic to join others in a good laugh at oneself. Why,
then, all
the commotion about racist humor?
'Racist' is a moral pejorative. To say that an act is racist is to
say that
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Michael Philips
it is prima facie wrong. Thus, if humorous put-downs of ethnic
groups
are racist, such put-downs must be prima facie wrong. Does it
follow
from this that there must be overriding moral considerations in
favor of
joking about the foibles, failures, and idiosyncracies of an
ethnic group
before we are entitled morally to do so? What if members of
that group
really have or tend statistically to have an unflattering
characteristic a
joke attributes to them? Surely we are allowed to notice this
and to com-
municate this information to one another. Is truth a defense
against the
charge of racism? Also, what of the good-natured interplay
between
friends of different ethnic groups in which such jokes may play
an impor-
tant part? And what of exchanges of such jokes between
members of
ethnic groups about whom they are told?
This paper will present an account of racist humor in relation
to
which we can answer these and related questions. What is said
here
about racist humor will also apply to sexist humor and to
humor about
national groups.
II

Not all humor that takes an ethnic group as its subject matter is
racist.
Some such humor is morally unobjectionable. Our first task,
then, is to
distinguish this sort of humor from racist humor. In other
words, we
need to determine why some humor about ethnic groups is
morally
unobjectionable while other humor is not.
Let me begin with a popular theory; or, in any case, a theory
that is
presupposed by a very common defense against the charge of
having
made a racist joke. This defense denies, in effect, that joking
remarks are
racist so long as they are made by persons whose souls are
pure. Accord-
ing to this view, a racist act presupposes a racist actor, and a
racist ac-
tor is a person who acts from racist beliefs and/or racist
feelings. I call
this the Agent-Centered Account. Although a complete account
of this
view requires an account of the nature of racist beliefs and
feelings, my
purposes do not require this here. For now, suffice it to say that
on this
account one may innocently entertain one's fellow Rotarians
with jokes
like 'After shaking hands with a Greek, count your fingers/ so
long as
one harbors no racist beliefs or feelings about Greeks. If one's
soul is
pure, such jokes are all in good fun and ought to be accepted as
such.

Before attacking this theory, I want to contrast it with my own
ac-
count. The term 'racist' is used of books, attitudes, societies,
epithets, ac-
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tions, persons, feelings, policies, laws, etc., as well as of
humor. Any ac-
count of 'racist' will explain some of these uses in relation to
others. The
Agent-Centered theory explains racist humor in relation to
racist per-
sons, and racist persons in relation to racist beliefs and
attitudes. And, to
the extent that it can be generalized, moreover, it explains all
other uses
of 'racist' in this way as well. On my own view, 'racist' is used
in its
logically primary sense when it is attributed to actions. All
other uses of
'racist,' I believe, must be understood directly or indirectly in
relation to
this one. Accordingly, racist beliefs are (roughly) beliefs about
an ethnic
group used to 'justify' racist acts, racist feelings are feelings
about an

ethnic group that typically give rise to such acts, and racist
epithets are
the stings and arrows by means of which certain such acts are
carried
out. Books and films are said to be racist, on the other hand, if
they
perpetuate and stimulate racist beliefs or feelings (which are in
turn
understood in relation to racist acts).
More precisely, on my view, 'racist' is used in its logically
primary
sense when it is used of what I shall call Basic Racist Acts.
Roughly, P
performs a Basic Racist Act by doing A when: (a) P does A in
order to
harm Q because Q is a member of a certain ethnic group; or (b)
(regardless of Ps intentions or purposes) Fs doing A can
reasonably be
expected to mistreat Q as a consequence of Q's being a member
of a cer-
tain ethnic group.1 Note that, on this account, Fs motives,
beliefs, feel-
ings, or intentions need not be taken into account in
determining that P
performed a racist act. If you refer to someone as 'a stinking
little kike' in
my company, I am harmed by your action because I am Jewish,
whether
you intended this result or not. If this harm counts as
mistreatment, then,
in my account, your remark is racist. And, I shall argue, this is
so even if
you have nothing at all against Jews, e.g., you are merely
attempting to
discredit a competitor in the eyes of an anti-Semite. I call my

view the
Act-Centered Theory.
1 I am using 'mistreatment' in (b) to include any morally
objectionable injury to
someone's interests. Note that liarm' is not sufficient here.
Affirmative Action,
for example, may harm White males in virtue of their race, but
is not 'reverse
racism' unless it can be established that it mistreats them. I use
liarm' instead of
'mistreatment' in condition (a) to avoid counter-examples in
which A acts within
his rights by harming B, but would not harm B were B's race
different (e.g. White
landlord A evicts Black tenant B for delinquency in paying the
rent, but would
not do so were B White). Although I would argue that this
constitutes mistreat-
ment, I do not want my criteria to depend on the arguable point
that one may
mistreat someone by choosing to exercise one's rights.
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Michael Philips
Before arguing for the superiority of this view to the Agent-

Centered
view, two observations are in order. To begin with, condition
(a), in ef-
fect, acknowledges an element of truth in the Agent-Centered
Theory.
For if P does A in order to harm Q simply because Q is
Hispanic, P must
have racist beliefs or feelings against Hispanics. And it follows
from this
that Fs acting on such beliefs or feelings - i.e., Ps acting as a
racist by
doing A - is a sufficient condition of A's being a racist act.
Nonetheless,
it is mistaken to focus on Fs beliefs or feelings in our account
of why Ps
act is wrong. Rather, we ought focus on what Ps act means for
its vic-
tims. For roughly, it is not the fact that racists act on mistaken
beliefs or
irrational feelings that make their actions wrong, i.e., it is not
the state of
mind of the actor that corrupts the act.2 Rather, it is the
meaning of the
act for the victims that makes us condemn both the act and the
state of
2 Moreover, there are cases in which we cannot justifiably
condemn the racist for
his feelings and beliefs. For the feelings may be consequences
of the beliefs and
the beliefs may be those that any normal person in her position
would adopt.
Consider, for example, the adolescent who grows up in a highly
racist communi-
ty. It may well be that everyone she respects in that community
holds racist

beliefs. And it may also be that the limited experience she has
in relation to the
victimized group tends to confirm these beliefs (suppose, e.g.,
she works in a li-
qour store that sells largely to poor Blacks). Now that the mass
media has
developed some degree of racial consciousness, of course, it is
very likely that
most such persons will also be exposed to countervailing
views. But her
authorities in the relevant community may have ways of
discounting the media
(e.g., by claiming that it is run by Communists and Jews). And
if the adolescent
in question does not read very well - indeed, if she lacks the
proper research
skills - she really hasn't the resources to determine whom to
trust. In this case it
is difficult to see how she could be blamed for holding the
beliefs she holds. On
the other hand, the greater her exposure to 'recalcitrant data'
the more we have a
right to expect her to reevaluate her beliefs. Racist societies
typically discourage
such reevaluations by formally or informally punishing those
who undertake
them; and, as a consequence of this, many people have a strong
tendency to
overlook data that conflicts with their racist beliefs when they
encounter them
(and a tendency to weigh confirming instances relatively more
heavily than
disconfirming instances). Given the consequences of these
beliefs for action,
however, these tendencies are morally objectionable. Where
there is the oppor-

tunity for knowledge on such serious matters, ignorance is
blameworthy. In any
case, it is important to emphasize that whether or not we regard
Ps possession of
such beliefs as blameworthy, we are entitled to condemn the
actions that flow
from them as racist, and therefore, as prima facie wrong.
Again, our reason for
this is that these actions victimize or are intended to victimize
members of the
relevant ethnic group.
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mind that prompted it. Indeed, if condition (b) is correct, P's
being a
racist - or even acting as a racist on some particular occasion -
is not
a necessary condition of P's act being a racist act. It is
sufficient that his
act can reasonably be expected to mistreat in the appropriate
way. This
is not, of course, to say that an act must succeed in mistreating
someone
in order to be racist. Were this the case, condition (a) would be
un-
necessary. But, in general, because we are entitled to assume a
certain

competence on the part of wrong-doers, it makes sense for us
morally to
condemn acts that would mistreat or victimize were their
intention
realized. Accordingly, we condemn lies that fail to deceive,
assaults that
fail to harm, and robberies that yield no stolen goods. We do
not con-
demn these acts because they spring from some intention or
state of mind
that can be identified as morally corrupt independently of its
likelihood
of giving rise to some form of mistreatment. On the contrary, it
is
precisely in virtue of this liklihood that we condemn the
intention.
In the second place, it is worth pointing out that the Act-
Centered
theory and the Agent-Centered theory each reflect a certain
point of
view. Roughly, the Agent-Centered theory reflects the
perspective of the
morally troubled member of a persecuting group. Such persons
are
loathe to acknowledge their contributions to what they agree to
be a
morally indefensible system. The Agent-Centered account
permits them
to escape unblemished so long as they are able to purge
themselves of
racist beliefs and feelings. Once purged, they may do what is
'necessary'
to get on in a racist society without fear of moral censure. For
example,

they may prohibit their daughter to date a Black classmate on
the ground
that this will jeopardize her future; or they may ask her not to
invite her
Black friends to her wedding on the grounds that this will be
unsettling to
old family friends. On the Agent-Centered theory, if these are
in fact
their motives, they needn't think of their actions as racist, and
they
needn't think of themselves as complicit in a racist system.
Indeed, this
permits them to feel morally superior to those who discriminate
out of
feeling or conviction.
The Act-Centered conception, on the other hand, adopts the
perspec-
tive of the victim, the accuser. The victim experiences racism
as so many
forms of mistreatment. If she is not invited to a friend's
wedding because
she is Black, she takes this to be a racist act. Since racist acts
are wrong
only prima facie, this does not necessarily mean that she
condemns the
act as wrong, or even that she considers her friend a racist (the
relation-
ship between racist acts and racist persons is more complex
than this).
Still, she is deprived of an invitation to which she is entitled as
a friend
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Michael Philips
because of her ethnicity. Accordingly, even if the act is
justified, she is
wronged.3 And since this is so, the act is racist.
I do not mean to suggest by this talk of two perspectives that
there are
two systematically different uses of 'racist' in English; one
typical of vic-
tims, the other of morally anguished victimizers. It seems to me
that
there is only one use, and that the Agent-Centered theory fails
accurately
to account for a number of important cases. Even if I am wrong
about
this, however, I believe that a compelling case can be made of
abandon-
ing Agent-Centered uses in favor of the Act-Centered ones. For
the point
of the moral category 'racist/ to begin with, is to allow us to
identify and
to condemn certain pervasive forms of mistreatment (both for
the sake of
the victim and for the sake of justice). Accordingly, we ought
to adopt
that use of 'racist' that best serves this end. And we ought to
insist that
this is the correct use despite the fact that some members of the
com-
munity may habitually use that term in a different way. As I

shall show,
Act-Centered uses serve this purpose far better than Agent-
Centered
uses.
Ill
To begin with, the Agent-Centered theory has difficulty making
sense of
certain important uses of 'racist.' Consider racial epithets
('nigger,' Icike,'
'wop,' etc.). On the Agent-Centered theory, use of such epithets
to insult
or to assert undeserved power are racist only if the users have
racist
beliefs or feelings. But suppose that a white man calls a Black
travelling-
companion 'nigger' to remind him of his social status, e.g., as
an insult or
as a power move ('Look nigger, if push comes to shove,
nobody's going
to take your side here.'). In determining whether this use is
racist, do we
3 To deny this is to fail to take wrongs seriously. Philosophers
and bureaucrats
sometimes do this. So long as an action is judged right, all
things considered,
there is a tendency on the part of some to deny that anyone is
wronged by it. But
this is mistaken. Suppose that we must jail an innocent person
for two weeks to
prevent a vendetta very likely to kill scores. Most of us, I
think, would take this
to be the right action. But isn't it also clear that the jailed party
has been wronged?

To deny this is to deny: (a) that we owe this person some
recompense, and
(b) that we have a reason to regret the jailing of this person
that we would not
have were he guilty of some offense. It seems to me, however,
that not to accept
(a) and (b) is to endorse ruthlessness.
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need to consider what the White man believes or feels about
Blacks in
general? Suppose that he harbors no beliefs or feelings to the
effect that
Blacks are inferior or deserve inferior treatment, and that he is
'putting
his companion in his place' merely to have his own way. Still,
he has
used this epithet unfairly to threaten, insult, or assume
unwarranted
power over another person; and, obviously, his act has this
consequence
because of his companions' race. Accordingly, I believe, we
would call
such acts 'racist/ In any case, we should speak this way. For we
want
morally to condemn forms of victimization that are made

possible by the
victims' ethnic identity and this seems an unobjectionable way
to do so.
The Agent-Centered theory, moreover, prevents us from saying
that
certain paradigm cases of racist acts are racist. Consider the
German
soldier who volunteers to march Jewish victims to the gas
ovens out of
simple patriotism, or the Klansman who ties nooses at
lynchings for
business reasons. Each may (in principle) act with heart and
mind uncor-
rupted by racist beliefs or feelings (though obviously this is
unlikely).
Does this mean that they have not acted in a racist manner?
Suppose that
all the German soldiers at Dachau acted out of patriotism and
all the
Klansmen at the lynching were there for business reasons.
Would this
mean that none of those who participated in such events were
guilty of
racist acts?
Note that I am not arguing that participants in such events are
racists;
only that they act in a racist manner. Indeed, there may be good
reason
to deny they are racist since we want to distinguish those who
participate
in victimization out of patriotism, or self-interest from those
who par-
ticipate in victimization out of race hate or authentic
conviction. Still, it

is the victimization, not the persons, we are primarily
concerned to con-
demn and eliminate, and if we refuse to condemn acts of
victimization as
racist, it is unclear what moral category we could invoke to this
end.
Racist societies encourage racist victimization by a system of
rewards
and punishments. Sometimes these are formal and explicit
(e.g., apar-
theid laws), sometimes they are informal and subtle (e.g.,
subtle forms of
social exclusion). In any case, this system creates a set of
prudential
reasons for all members of the victimizing race to participate in
vic-
timization, i.e., to be complicit in the mistreatment of the
victimized
group. By calling these forms of complicity 'racist,' we make
them a mat-
ter of moral concern whatever their motivation, i.e., whether
they are
motivated by race hate or by prudence. It is important that we
do this.
Were we morally to condemn only those forms of victimization
motivated by race hate or racist beliefs, we would leave equally
impor-
tant forms of victimization outside the realm of moral concern;
or, at
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Michael Philips
best, subject to moral evaluation only on utilitarian grounds.
Suppose,
for example, that Alice excludes a Black friend from her
wedding list in
order to not to upset one of Daddy's business associates. And
suppose
that this action produces just a little more happiness than
unhappiness. If
we do not describe this sort of complicity in the general pattern
of vic-
timization of Blacks as prima facie wrong, in itself, her action
will be im-
mune from moral criticism. Moreover, to the extent that we
discount
utilitarian considerations in our ethics such acts of complicity
will be
regarded simply as questions of prudence.
It could be replied that we could condemn the complicity in
question
without condemning it as racist. On this account, we would
reserve
'racist' for those acts of victimization performed out of racist
belief and
feeling and coin some other term for the forms of complicity in
question.
This suggestion, however, seems weak. To begin with, the
point of the
category 'racist' is to eliminate a pervasive form of injustice.
And to do
this effectively, it is important that we focus attention on the

actions that
promote or are constituitive of it. It is clear, however, that
most victimiz-
ing actions contribute equally to victimization whether
motivated by
self-interest or motivated by race hate. Thus, for the purposes
of
evaluating the action, there appears to be no good reason for
introducing
a distinction based on motive (assuming that the acts in
question are in-
tentional). Considerations of motive may be relevant to our
moral
assessment of the actor. But in this case, at least, they ought to
be irrele-
vant to our moral consideration of the act.
In the second place, moreover, the suggestion that we introduce
a se-
cond category of moral condemnation for self-interested
victimization is
impractical. Even were we capable of coining a term for this
category
that gained currency, it would take quite some time for this
category to
gain the familiarity and pejorative force the term 'racist' now
enjoys. If
our purpose is to combat victimization now, this strategy would
cost us
considerable time and effort.
IV
That the Agent-Centered theory is false does not imply that the
Act-
Centered theory is true. For it might be that racist acts can be

defined in
some other way. It would not be useful to explore all the
possibilities
here. Most are wildly implausible. One alternative, however, is
likely to
appeal intuitively to some philosophers, viz., the view that
racist acts are
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acts which presuppose racist beliefs for their justification. On
this view,
to say that act A is racist is to say that A is justified if and only
if certain
racist beliefs are true. I shall call this the Belief-Centered
Theory.
The problem with the Belief-Centered theory emerges clearly
when
we consider what could be meant by a racist belief here. Note
that a
Belief-Centered theorist cannot characterize a racist belief as a
belief that
justifies racist acts, for then his account of each is circular in a
way that
renders both unilluminating. To define a racist act as an act
justified by

some racist belief and a racist belief as a belief that justifies
racist acts is
to say nothing that enables us better to understand either. There
are, of
course, two ways out of this circle. One is to define racist acts
in-
dependently of racist beliefs (as I have done), and the other is
to define
racist beliefs independently of their role in justifying racist
acts. But
where could this second strategy lead?
One plausible way to characterize racist beliefs independently
of their
role in justifying racist acts is to describe them as beliefs to the
effect that
members of certain ethnic groups are inferior or subhuman.
Here, of
course, not just any form of inferiority will do. We are
concerned,
roughly, with those forms that are thought to justify
restrictions or
deprivations of rights or deserts. We can distinguish between
two sorts of
beliefs to the effect that groups are inferior in this way. They
are: (a)
beliefs which, if true, would justify such deprivations (e.g.,
Antebellum
views to the effect that Blacks were much more like beasts of
burden than
human beings); and (b) beliefs which would not justify such
deprivations
whether they were true or false (e.g., beliefs that Jews are
ambitious,
pushy, and cheap).

The first thing to notice about all this, however, is that were we
to ac-
cept the latter category as a category of racist beliefs, we must
change the
Belief -Centered theory. A racist act can no longer be defined
as an act
that would be justified were some racist belief true, since
beliefs of this
type (b) do not in fact justify the acts they may be invoked to
defend. On
the other hand, it is clear that beliefs in this category are often
used in
defense of racist acts, and that they are important aspects of
any racist
ideology. Accordingly, we must include them in any reasonable
account
of racist beliefs. If we do so, however, we must amend the
Belief-
Centered theory to read: 'A is a racist act if and only if it is
believed that
A is justified by some racist belief/ The obvious question to
which this
information gives rise is: 'Believed by whom?' And - if we are
to avoid a
return to the Agent-Centered theory - the only remotely
plausible
answer to this is: 'Believed by members of the society in which
A occurs/
Accordingly, the Belief -Centered definition of a racist act
must further be
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Michael Philips
amended to read: 'A is a racist act if and only if (some)
members of socie-
ty in which A occurs believe that A is justified by some racist
belief that
they take to be true/
The need for such an amendment is also clear from the fact that
on
the unamended version, every wrong to another person turns
out to be a
racist act. Since everyone belongs to some ethnic group, every
mistreat-
ment of a person, P, could be justified were the appropriate
racist belief
about Ps ethnic group true. The amended version avoids this
conse-
quence by restricting racist beliefs to those beliefs actually
held in the
relevant society.
The amended version, however, has two fatal difficulties. To
begin,
it remains a consequence of the amended version that every
wrong
against a member of an ethnic group that could be justified by a
racist
belief in his society is racist. But surely we want to allow that
members of
a persecuted group may be wronged in ways that have nothing

to do
with racism at all, despite the fact that such wrongs could be
justified by
some such racist belief. One might wrongfully harm a Black
man, for ex-
ample, because one is angry at him. So long as the attack is
wholly per-
sonal, and so long as he is not attacked as a Black man (e.g.,
called a nig-
ger), there may be no question of racism at all here. Note that
if we fur-
ther ammend the Belief -Centered theory to meet this objection
by requir-
ing that the racist belief belong to the perpetrator of the act, we
have
returned to the Agent-Centered theory.
The second problem with the amended version is that if we
loosen the
connection between racist acts and racist beliefs from
'presupposes' to
'believed to be justified by,' it is impossible to identify racist
beliefs by at-
tending to their content. This is particularly clear in the case of
beliefs in
category (b). For these are beliefs that are mistakenly held to
imply a cer-
tain conclusion and there is no way of deciding on the basis of
the con-
tent of any belief what can mistakenly be inferred from it.
Indeed, 'in-
ferences' from the sorts of characteristics named in category (b)
beliefs
are notoriously inconsistent. For example, beliefs by
Americans that
Scots are cheap and drive hard bargains are never given as

reasons for
depriving Scots of rights or privileges. Indeed, these qualities
are endear-
ing in Scots, perhaps even virtues. With respect to Jews,
however, it is
another matter.
If the Belief-Centered theorist cannot identify racist beliefs on
the
basis of their content, how can he identify them? I can see no
plausible
answer. On the Act-Centered account, however, the answer is
clear.
First, we identify Basic Racist Acts, and then we uncover the
personal
and/or social ideologies in relation to which these acts are
believed to be
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justified. This move, of course, requires that we are capable of
identify-
ing Basic Racist Acts independently of racist beliefs and is not,
therefore,
open to the Belief -Centered theorist.
V

Before applying my account to the question of racist humor, I
would
like to anticipate one further objection, viz., that on my
account too
many actions which seem entirely unobjectionable turn out to
be racist.
The objector recognizes that on my account racist acts are
wrong prima
facie, and that there may be occasions on which one is morally
justified
in acting in a racist manner. His concern is that in other cases
of prima
facie wrongs it is typically wrong to act in the proscribed
manner, but
that this does not appear to be so in the case of racism. For
once we begin
to think about it, it is clear that there are myriad ways we may
contribute
to the victimization of members of victimized groups without
doing
anything wrong. Consider, for example, cases of distrust. You
are walk-
ing down a dark street in a poor Black neighborhood at night.
A large
Black man approaches you from the opposite direction. You
cross the
street to avoid contact. You recognize that the odds are slim
that this par-
ticular man will attack you (25 to 17). But the consequences of
being at-
tacked are so great that you would be foolish to take the risk.
By so ac-
ting, however, you exhibit distrust of a particular person.
Moreover,
chances are excellent that this person has been treated with fear
and

distrust by Whites throughout his adolescence and adulthood
simply in
virtue of his size and race. To be treated in such a way is to be
victimized,
and by crossing the street you are contributing to this
victimization. Ex-
amples of this sort of distrust are commonplace. And, in many
cases at
least, this distrustful attitude - though unfair to the
overwhelming ma-
jority who pose no threat - is nonetheless rational. For, though
the odds
against any particular attack may be much in one's favor - e.g.,
25 to 1
- if one is not distrustful in this way and one lives in an urban
environ-
ment, it is likely that one will be attacked sooner or later. And
again, the
consequences of an attack are so severe that it is foolish to take
the risk in
any case. According to the objection, acts of this sort are not
typically
wrong. And if they are not typically wrong, the victimization
they in-
volve ought not be regarded as prima facie wrong either.
This objection is not a strong one. It is interesting, however, in
that it
brings into relief an important fact about moral relations in
racist
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Michael Philips
societies. The fact is that in any society in which racism is
pervasive there
will be a social chasm between the races that forces most
members of
every ethnic group to relate to members of other groups
through racial
stereotypes, at least most of the time. There is too little
opportunity for
most people to get to know members of other groups well
enough to per-
mit anything else. Moreover, as the present example suggests,
there may
be good reason to act on stereotypes, even where it is
recognized that a
stereotype applies to only a small number of persons within a
group.4
Now where the treatment dictated by the stereotype is negative,
most
persons in the victimized group (e.g., twenty-four or twenty-
five) will be
treated unfairly as a matter of course by most members of the
victimizing
group. The fact that this treatment is unfair, however, makes it
prima
facie wrong. The objector makes an obvious mistake in denying
that vic-
timization is prima facie wrong merely because it may typically
be
justified by overriding considerations. But he is correct in

emphasizing
the high price - perhaps even the impossibility - of avoiding
complici-
ty in this victimization. If we are members of a victimizing
race, it is vir-
tually certain that we will be complicit. It is the genius of a
racist society
to arrange that this is so. This does not mean that we are all
racists. Nor
does it mean that we are moral monsters. Again, there are times
that
even the best intentioned of us have no real choice. But in this
case, what
we have no real choice about is whether to commit a racist act.
This is
the tragedy of living in a racist society for the morally
sensitive members
of the victimizing race.
VI
Belief- and Agent-Centered theories tend to direct our attention
to the
cognitive aspect of racist acts. In relation to humor, they
incline us to
4 It is worth noting that given the social hiatus between
victimizing and victimized
groups in racist societies stereotypes need little confirmation to
achieve
widespread belief. Partly as a result of this social chasm
confirming instances of a
stereotype are far more accessible than disconf inning
instances. Consider the
Italian gangster stereotype, i.e., the view that most Italians are

linked to organ-
ized crime. The confirming instances - Mafia personnel - are in
the public eye.
But it seems likely that those who take this stereotype seriously
do not know
many Italians personally, and have no way of knowing whether
or not the
Italians with whom they have contact (e.g., grocery store and
restaurant owners)
are connected with the Mafia.
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2017 00:15:50 UTC
focus on content. Accordingly, they direct our attention
primarily to one
form of humor - humor based on racist stereotypes - and they
incline
us to consider such humor in a certain way, viz., in relation to
the beliefs
it may promote or express. Thus, if we adopt such an account,
we are
likely to consider the problem of characterizing racist humor as
the pro-
blem of describing the sorts of beliefs such humor portrays or
expresses.
Accordingly, we shall probably begin by characterizing racist
humor as
humor which expresses false and unflattering beliefs about an

ethnic
group. And this beginning leads us inevitably to questions of
truthfulness. For we must now decide how to characterize
humor based
on stereotypes which have some foundation in truth. For
example, if it is
statistically true that Blacks are significantly less literate than
Whites, we
will be inclined to ask whether it is racist to make jokes about
problems
created by Black illiteracy. It is likely, moreover, that we see
in this ques-
tion a conflict between truth, on the one hand, and social
justice, on the
other. By freeing us from focusing narrowly on content, the
Act-
Centered theory frees us from focusing on questions of truth.
Moreover,
in many cases, at least, it enables us to avoid formulating the
question of
the morality of certain jokes as questions that involve deciding
in favor
of truth, on the one hand, or of social justice, on the other.
Roughly speaking, then, the Act-Centered theory holds that
ethnic
humor is racist: (a) when it is used with the intent to victimize
a member
of an ethnic group in virtue of her ethnicity; and (b) when it in
fact pro-
motes such victimization or can reasonably be expected to
promote it
(e.g., by contributing to an atmosphere in which it is more
likely to oc-
cur)/

To be more precise, let us use the expression 'a bit of humor'
for a par-
ticular occurance of humor, e.g., the telling of a joke, the
mimicking of
an accent, the appearance of a cartoon in a particular time and
place. On
my account, a bit of ethnic humor is racist if: (1) it is a Basic
Racist Act,
or (2) it can reasonably by expected to promote an atmosphere
in which
Basic Racist Acts are more likely to occur, or (3) it is intended
to promote
such an atmosphere. Of course, we also speak of jokes, books,
films, etc.
as racist 'in themselves/ i.e., apart from their particular
occurrences. But
if I am correct, this way of speaking is parasitic on the other.
Roughly,
we say that a joke 'itself is racist because a typical act of
telling it will be
racist in at least one of the ways described; and analogous
points hold for
films, books, laws, etc. (though, of course, we may need to
express these
points somewhat differently). A consequence of this view is
that a joke
which embodies a discarded and forgotten racist stereotype -
e.g., a
scheming Phoenician - is not now racist. Indeed, where
stereotypes
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Michael Philips
have been forgotton, stereotyped characters in jokes (books and
movies)
will not be identified as such; their actions will be construed as
the acts of
individuals rather than as representative of ethnic groups. Upon
discovering that these characters were stereotypes, we may
decide to call
the work in question 'racist/ But here we mean only that the
work was
racist in its time. This use of 'racist' does not have the same
moral
significance as our ordinary use. We do not mean to suggest by
this, for
example, that there is anything wrong with exhibiting or
distributing this
material now.
As suggested at the outset of this paper, at least much racist
humor is
'put down' humor. Racial 'put downs,' of course, are at least
often Basic
Racist Acts. In any case, it is clear that they are when they are
used to in-
sult, humiliate, ridicule, or otherwise assault someone in
consequence of
his ethnic identity. Such bits of humor need not make use of
ethnic
stereotypes. It is sometimes enough merely to humiliate a
member of a

victimized group in some manner thought to be funny (e.g., in
the
American West, to cut the 'Chinaman's' pigtail). Such humor is
often ex-
tremely cruel. Moreover, even where stereotypes are
incorporated in
ridicule or humiliation, use of these stereotypes is not racist
merely
because they promote racist beliefs. Indeed, their chief use may
be to
identify the form of insult or humiliation thought appropriate to
the
member of the victimized group. This form of humiliation,
moreover,
may be rather far removed from any racist belief that 'justifies'
mistreat-
ment. Thus, though Jews were not mistreated on the ground
that they
were believed (or said) to have large noses, some think it quite
amusing
to make jokes about 'Jewish noses.' Note that insults, ridicule,
and
humiliation do not, in general, require justification - or even a
sham of
justification - to do their work. All that is required is an
attitude of deri-
sion on the part of the victimizer toward some characteristic
that the vic-
tim is said to have (however insincere the attribution). Again,
some
stereotypes do not function so much to promote beliefs but to
ridicule or
humiliate in just this way. The main point of portraying Jews
with enor-
mous noses and Blacks with huge lips is not to perpetuate the
belief that

Jews or Blacks tend to look that way. Rather, it is to promote
an attitude
about looking that way, and to take the position that Jews and
Blacks
look that way as a way of insulting Jews and Blacks. What goes
on here
is similar to what goes on in the school yard when a group of
children
decide to humiliate another child by taunting him with
accusations that
are insulting merely in virtue of the attitudes expressed toward
him.
Again, almost any characteristic will do here and it doesn't
really matter
to anyone whether or not the victim is that way. In fact, it may
be more
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2017 00:15:50 UTC
effective if he is not. Then, in addition to insult, he suffers a
further
miscarriage of justice. The difference between school yard
tauntings and
the caricatures of Jews and Blacks in question is that the tone
of school
yard tauntings is often deadly earnest while the caricatures in
question
taunt through comic ridicule.

Moreover, jokes and cartoons which on some occasions create
or
reinforce racist stereotypes, may be racist in contexts where
they do not
serve this end. For they may be used simply to insult,
humiliate, or
ridicule. The most obvious example is that of a stereotyping
joke told
with gleeful hostility to a member of a victimized group. If the
victim and
the victimizer are alone, there may be no question of spreading
or
perpetrating racist beliefs here.5 What is racist about
expressing such
stereotypes is their use to insult or to humiliate. Where such
jokes are
told before 'mixed audiences/ they may be racist both because
they insult
and because they help to reinforce racist beliefs.
It is important to notice, moreover, that bits of humor that
insult by
the use of stereotypes may do so however close or far that
stereotype is
from a relevant statistical truth. As suggested, ridicule, insult,
and
humiliation are what they are whether or not the victims are as
they are
said to be; and, indeed, whether or not there is in fact
something deffi-
cient about being as the victim is said to be. Note that children
and insen-
sitive adults may ridicule or humiliate retarded persons and
spastics by
imitating them accurately. In general, it may be insulting

merely to point
out some truth about a person that someone with respect for the
feelings
and well-being of others would pass over in silence.
Precisely what determines the conditions under which a person
is
humiliated, insulted, or ridiculed - as opposed to merely feeling
that
way - is a complex question that I cannot hope to answer here.
It is
clear, however, that context is extremely important. And here,
two
points are worthy of comment.
First, although it may occasionally be possible to exchange
what
would ordinarily be considered racial insults in an atmosphere
of good
will and comraderie, good will does not preclude the possibility
of in-
sults. One may insult or humiliate another with the purest of
hearts and
the best of intentions, so long as one is sufficiently stupid or
insensitive
(consider the high school principal who introduces a Japanese
com-
5 Although such jokes may contribute to the sense of
inferiority often suffered by
members of victimized races. And when this occurs it could be
said that they
promote the belief that such people are inferior.
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2017 00:15:50 UTC
Michael Philips
mencement speaker by 'assuling' the audience that he 'explesses
the freer-
ings of his frerrow immiglants/)
Secondly, one may insult without saying or doing anything that
is
'objectively insulting/ Sometimes it is enough simply to probe
what
ought to be recognized as a sensitive area. Typically, if we
know that a
friend is very touchy about, e.g., some characteristic, we avoid
referring
to it, even in jest. Indeed, unless there is some strong
countervailing
reason to refer to it, we insult him by so doing. And it does not
matter
whether or not we believe that our friend's sensitivity is
rational, i.e.,
whether such remarks ought to be considered insulting or
humiliating. If
it is no great burden to respect his sensitivity, to fail to do so is
insulting.
And what holds for friends in this regard ought also to hold for
acquain-
tances or even strangers. Typically, if we know that members
of a
vicitimized group are insulted by certain jokes made about
them, we

ought not to make such jokes in their presence (unless, e.g., we
do this
for therapeutic purpose). This standard, however, is too
restrictive to
govern communications before mass audiences, e.g., television.
But even
here we ought not require that sensitivities be perfectly rational
in order
to be respected. If a substantial number of the victimized group
- say, a
majority - is known to be offended by certain ways of
portraying them,
then it may be insulting to them to portray them in these ways
simply
because we ignore their sensitivities by so doing. If there is no
overriding
reason for portraying them in this way, we ought not to do so.
Moreover, we ought to give special weight to the opinion of the
vict-
imized group that such portrayals are insulting in and of
themselves. For
it requires more empathy on the part of an outsider fully to
appreciate
the position of a victimized group than many of us have a right
to claim.
Consider, for example, the glee that the most educated among
us take in
telling Polish jokes.
But it is not only the immediate impact of racist humor on
victimized
groups that makes it racist. The impact on victimizers and
potential vic-
timizers is also important. Typically, discussion of this impact
focuses on
the cognitive side, i.e., on how racist humor spreads and

reinforces racist
beliefs. At least as important, I think, are the affective
consequences.
For, insofar as racist humor constitutes an assault on members
of an
ethnic group, it joins together those who participate - both
performers
and audience - in a community of feeling against that group. By
ap-
preciating such humor together, we take common joy in putting
them
down, e.g., in turning them into objects of scorn or contempt or
into be-
ings not to be taken seriously (wife jokes). Our mutual
participation in
this through shared laughter legitimizes this way of feeling
about them.
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2017 00:15:50 UTC
Those among us who fail to laugh - or who object to laughter -
are im-
mediately outsiders, perhaps even traitors. In general, the price
of object-
ing is a small exile. By participating, however, one accepts
membership
in a racist association (albeit a temporary one). The seriousness
of so do-

ing, of course, is far less than, e.g., the seriousness of joining
an official
white supremicist organization. But notice that the difference
in
seriousness diminishes the greater one's participation in such
informal
communities of feeling.
It is important to note that this creation of a community of
feeling is
not contingent on the creation of a community of belief. Many
people
who entertain one another with Polish jokes do not thereby
implicitly ac-
cept Polish slovenliness or stupidity as a fact. What they share
is the
pleasure of ridiculing Poles and they legitimize this pleasure by
sharing it
with one another. Typically, because they are innocent of racist
beliefs
and of hatred against Poles, they take this pleasure to be
innocent (an
Agent-Centered understanding). But one wonders how the
Poles think of
it. How do American philosophers of Polish descent feel
knowing that
their colleagues entertain themselves in this 'innocent' way?
(Imagine a
Black philosopher in a department of Whites who told Sambo
and Rastus
jokes.)
The reason most frequently given for describing a bit of humor
as
racist is that it expresses a racist belief. As we have seen, this
view is in-

adequate where the belief expressed is identified with the
belief of the
speaker. Whether it is adequate where the belief in question is
not that of
the speaker, but rather a belief abroad in the land, depends a
good deal
on what we mean by 'express.' Where jokes work by
stereotyping, the
most natural way to understand this is to identify what belief a
joke ex-
presses with the stereotype on which the joke turns. The
emphasis here
is on content. But if we take 'express' in this way, the common
view that
bits of humor are racist in virtue of expressing racist beliefs is
not quite
accurate. For, e.g., a comedian may tell a series of jokes which
express
such beliefs (embody such stereotypes) without committing a
Basic
Racist Act and without doing or intending to do anything that
can
reasonably be believed to contribute to an atmosphere in which
such acts
are more likely to occur. He might tell such jokes, for example,
to make a
point about racism in order to combat it. Understood as bits of
humor -
as performances - the jokes told by such a comedian are not
racist.
A better way to make the point about stereotyping, I think, is to
characterize bits of humor as racist if they can reasonably by
expected to
promote or to reinforce racist beliefs or if they are intended to
do so. This

way of putting things, moreover, frees us from an exclusive
preoccupa-
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Michael Philips
tion with content and enables us more clearly to understand the
impor-
tance of context.
Most racist jokes do not persuade by argument that a certain
stereotype is true of a certain ethnic group. Rather, they
promote such
stereotypes by repeated assertion. At least part of what gives
such asser-
tions their power to establish and to reinforce belief is that they
are in-
vested with the authority of those who make them. Roughly,
one pro-
motes racist beliefs by means of racist humor when one lends
one's
authority to a joke that embodies some racist stereotype. One
may do
this simply by telling such a joke in the way jokes are
ordinarily told (as
one may lend one's authority to what one asserts merely by
asserting it).
However, if one's audience has antecedent reason to believe
that one

does not hold such beliefs, or if one provides it with such
reasons, this
relationship will not hold. In this case, one may tell a joke that
embodies
some such stereotype without committing a racist act. Whether
one lends
one's authority to a stereotype by telling a joke (or displaying a
cartoon)
depends in part on the context. Typically, for example, one
does not lend
one's authority to such stereotypes by telling such jokes where
the con-
text is scholarly, e.g., where the purpose is to examine the
means by
which racist beliefs are perpetuated (though it is possible to
lend one's
authority even here by telling such jokes with obvious glee and
approval).
It is worth pointing out, moreover, that we cannot determine by
an
abstract or acontextual analysis of content whether a joke could
reasonably be expected to promote a racist stereotype.
Consider the following Polish joke:
Q: How do you tell the groom at a Polish wedding?
A: He's the one in the clean bowling shirt.
To an audience familiar with the current American Polish
stereotype,
this joke will be understood to assert that Poles are deficient in
the
categories of style and hygiene. An audience unfamiliar with
this

stereotype - e.g., an audience that believes that Poles are
reputed to be
elegant and cultured - cannot be expected to understand these
sentences
in this way. Indeed, such an audience would be at a loss to see
any joke
here at all. Many jokes are like this. Still other jokes can
reasonably be
expected to be understood differently depending on who tells
them, to
whom they are told, in what spirit they are told, and under what
cir-
cumstances. Consider:
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White Washington, what the hell are you doing lying down on
the job
Foreman: again? When I hired you, you said you never get
tired.
Black That's how I do it, sir.
Worker:
White Don't talk in riddles boy.
Foreman:
Black I ain't. You see, the reason I never gets tired is as soon

as I
Worker: begins to get tired I jes lies down and takes myself a
rest.
Depending on who tells this joke to whom and on how it is
told, it may
reasonably be expected to be understood as a joke about Blacks
in
general, a joke about Black laborers, or a joke about a
particular Black
man named Washington. Moreover, the joke may be understood
to
mean that Blacks are lazy, sly, or shiftless; or it may be
understood to
show how a clever Black worker can talk his way out of a
tough spot; or,
if Washington is an established character, it may be understood
as
another illustration of how Washington gets on in the world.6
If we focus
narrowly on content - if we focus on what is presupposed by
'the joke
itself - it is easy to miss the importance of context here.
VII
Defenders of the Belief Centered theory may object that some
jokes are
racist merely in virtue of 'embodying' racist beliefs and
attitudes, whether
or not the expression of these beliefs and attitudes are Basic
Racist Acts
6 Of course, Washington could be an established character
who, in effect,
represented a Black 'type' or Blacks in general. Were this the

case, the joke in
question might be racist. Whether or not it is would depend,
e.g., on what else is
true of Washington as a character, and perhaps, on where the
joke appears (e.g.,
whether in a predominantly Black or a predominantly White
publication). Note
that members of a victimized group are far less likely to
mistake a survival
strategy for a character trait than members of a victimizing
group.
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2017 00:15:50 UTC
Michael Philips
and whether or not they contribute or are intended to contribute
to an at-
mosphere in which such acts occur. Suppose, for example, that
a tribe of
isolated Aborigines in the Australian outback happened onto a
book of
Polish jokes and began to entertain one another by generating
new jokes
in this genre. And suppose further that this group will never
encounter
Poles nor encounter anyone who will be influenced by their
attitudes
toward Poles. Still, it might be maintained, such jokes are
racist. And

this seems a counter-example to my view.
It seems to me however, that there is no real problem here. For
our in-
clination to regard these jokes as racist is no stronger or no
weaker than
our inclination to regard the telling of them as a form of
mistreatment.
They may be regarded as such for a number of reasons. To
begin with, it
may be painful to some Poles to know that they are objects of
ridicule
and derision in the Australian outback, even though they are
unlikely to
suffer in any other way from this treatment. Further, even were
the tell-
ing of these jokes to remain a secret, it could still be said that
they con-
stitute a form of mistreatment. Ridicule and derision are what
they are
whether the victim is aware of them or not. And to those who
value their
good name for its own sake, they do harm in either case. It is
worth men-
tioning in this regard that some maintain that we may be
harmed by
those who ridicule or slander us after we are dead and buried. I
am not
arguing that these are good reasons for holding that Poles are
wronged
by such jokes. I am, rather, suggesting that we will regard the
telling of
these jokes in this context as morally objectionable to the
degree that we

accept them as good reasons.
There is, however, a derivative sense of 'racist' that has no
moral
force. This is the sense in which jokes that embody long-
forgotten and
dead stereotypes may be so described (e.g., jokes about
scheming
Phoenicians, assuming that these do not wrong Phoenicians by
unfairly
sullying their memory). To say that a joke is racist in this
derivative
sense is to say that typical acts of telling it were racist in the
morally im-
portant sense at some time. It is not to say, however, that such
acts are
currently prima facie objectionable. If we are permitted to
regard spacial
isolation as analogous to temporal discontinuity, it may be that
the
Polish jokes in question are racist in this derivative sense. But
again, to
say this is not to say that it is prima facie wrong to tell them.
And again,
if we are inclined to say that they are racist in the morally
important
sense, I would suggest it is because we believe that unfairly to
be made an
object of ridicule or derision is to be mistreated, whether or not
one
knows that this has happened, and whether or not one suffers in
some
additional way in virtue of its so happening.
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2017 00:15:50 UTC
VIII
Let me conclude by summarizing my position and by applying
it to the
question of truth raised in the introductory section of this
paper. To
begin with, then, bits of humor may be racist in three ways: (1)
They
may insult (or be intended to insult), humiliate, or ridicule
members of
victimized groups in relation to their ethnic identity; (2) They
may create
(or be intended to create) a community of feelings against such
a group;
and (3) They may promote (or be intended to promote) beliefs
that are
used to 'justify' the mistreatment of such a group.
Whether a particular bit of humor is racist in one or more of
these
ways depends on a variety of contextual features. On this view,
when we
describe a joke or cartoon as racist 'in itself we mean that a
typical use of
it will be racist in our culture. In making this judgment we
presuppose a
background of contextual features so familiar in our culture
that they

need not be specified. Given the history of racist cartoon
caricatures of
Blacks, a political cartoon that portrayed a prominent Black
American
with huge lips and bug eyes is a racist insult, despite the fact
that he may
have rather large lips and somewhat bulging eyes. Were it not
for this
history, however, such a caricature would be no more racist
than any
political cartoon that exaggerated the unusual anatomical
features of its
subject. And since it would not insult, it would not help to
perpetuate a
community of feeling against Blacks as well. Our judgment that
any such
cartoon is racist 'in itself presupposes this history. As we have
seen,
moreover, a corresponding point holds in relation to the
promotion of
racist beliefs. Polish jokes cannot reasonably be expected to
perpetuate
or reinforce racist beliefs against Poles where the audience is
familiar
with a much different Polish stereotype (e.g., Poles as cultured
and in-
telligent). In general, how an audience can reasonably be
expected to
understand such jokes will depend on what the audience
already believes
about the group in question.
Compare:
Question: What has an I.Q. of 100?
Answer 1: Poland
Answer 2: Israel

In general, to determine whether a bit of humor is racist in
virtue of being
insulting to a member of the relevant group may require a good
deal of
intelligence and sensitivity to feelings and to social dynamics.
And the
same may be said in relation to the creation of communities of
feeling.
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2017 00:15:50 UTC
Michael Philips
For the formation of social alliances - and the use of humor to
form
them - may be very obvious or very subtle. Again, it may take a
good
deal of sensitivity to detect it.
Applying these findings to the questions raised in the
introduction to
this paper, it should be clear by now that truth is not a
sufficient defense
against the charge of racism. To begin with, racist
victimization in a
society may be supported by an ideology that consists - in part
- of
statistically true beliefs. For example, Blacks are statistically

less literate
than Whites. Such statistical truths, however, are abused in
racist
ideologies in two ways. First, they are used to support factual
inferences
that would not follow from them were all the evidence in (e.g.,
Blacks
are genetically less capable of literacy than Whites); and
secondly, they
are used as premises in moral arguments for conclusions that
do not
follow from them (e.g., Blacks should have fewer rights than
Whites).
Most of us agree that it is racist to help to promote this
ideology. Accord-
ingly, we would judge ourselves amiss were we to mention the
rate of
Black literacy to someone who might come to be influenced by
this
ideology and also fail to give him an explanation of this fact.
But this is
just what we do when we tell such a person a joke in which
Blacks are
portrayed as illiterates. Even jokes that are grounded in
statistically true
stereotypes, then, may be racist in virtue of promoting racist
ideology.
Whether such jokes are racist for this reason, of course, is
dependent on
the audience to whom they are addressed. Where there is no
question
that the audience will be influenced in the direction of this
racist ideology
- e.g., where the audience consists of Black sociologists - the
telling of
such jokes need not be racist at all. Indeed, they could be used

as a way
of portraying just how bad things are (e.g., how Blacks have
been
deprived of educational opportunities).
As we saw, moreover, one can use the truth to insult, humiliate,
or
ridicule members of a victimized group, whether or not the
truth ought
to be considered shameful. Thus, Blacks are ridiculed for
having big lips,
Jews for having big noses, etc. It does not matter here whether
or not this
is true. Again, what is insulting here is the attitude of derision
adopted
toward the trait. Once members of a group are made to feel
ashamed of
being certain ways, it is insulting and humiliating to 'remind'
them that
they are - whether they are or not or whether the trait is
shameworthy
or not. Moreover, it is clear that a community of feeling against
a group
is created when members of another group adopt an attitude of
derision
toward some trait alleged in the first, whether or not this
allegation is
true. Accordingly, bits of humor may be racist in all three ways
despite
the fact that they are 'grounded' in some truth.
May 1982
96

2017 00:15:50 UTC
Contents75767778798081828384858687888990919293949596Is
sue Table of ContentsCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 14,
No. 1 (Mar., 1984), pp. 1-165Front MatterUtilitarianism and
Moral Rights [pp. 1-19]Utility and the Basis of Moral Rights: A
Reply to Professor Brandt [pp. 21-30]Comments on Professor
Card's Critique [pp. 31-37]Utility and the Value of Persons: A
Response to Professor Brandt's Comments [pp. 39-43]Locke on
Language [pp. 45-73]Racist Acts and Racist Humor [pp. 75-
96]On Showing Invalidity [pp. 97-101]Reliability and Justified
Belief [pp. 103-114]Could We Be Brains in a Vat? [pp. 115-
123]Critical NoticeReview: untitled [pp. 125-145]Review:
untitled [pp. 147-152]Review: untitled [pp. 153-165]Back
Matter
Philosophy 118WI
First Writing Assignment
In response to one of the (sets of) questions below, you are to
write
a three or four page dialogue. The paper will be assessed based
on four
criteria: writing, reasoning, clarity, and originality.
Writing: Is the writing appropriate for a college course (no
spelling, punc-
tuation or grammatical errors, the paper exhibits a clear
structure,
etc.)?
Reasoning: Are there any obvious reasoning errors?
Clarity: Are the ideas clearly presented? Is it obvious what the

conclusion
is, and what the arguments for it are?
Originality: Are the ideas presented the author’s own (are they
presented
in the author’s own words)? How original are the criticisms
leveled by
the “opponent” of the author’s views?
1. Mill claims that the Greatest Happiness Principle articulates
what is
for an action to be right or wrong. Is he right about that? Why
or why
not?
2. Mill maintains that there is to tell whether one pleasure is of
a higher
quality than another, one should use the competent judge test.
Does
this test really get at which pleasures are of a higher quality?
Why or
why not?
3. Kant thinks that acting out of a good will is essential for
one’s actions
to count as one’s having done the right thing. Is he right about
that?
Why or why not?
4. Maller thinks that tipping is not morally required. Is he right
about
that? Why or why not?
5. Philips and Benatar offer accounts of what it is for a bit of
humor to
be racist. Is their account correct? Why or why not?

6. Brock and Callahan disagree about whether there is a
distinction be-
tween killing and letting die. Who is right about that? Why or
why
not?
7. Brandt thinks that sometimes suicide is morally excusable. Is
he right
about that? Why or why not?

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