Sublime

The best-known systems of normative ethics are the one-receptor systems I described in chapter 6: utilitarianism (which tells us to maximize overall welfare) and deontology (which in its Kantian form tells us to make the rights and autonomy of others paramount).

Everyone cares about fairness, but there are two major kinds. On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right it means proportionality—people should be rewarded in proportion to what they contribute, even if that guarantees unequal outcomes.

defective resistance to criminal tendencies and temptations, due to that ill-balanced

This, it would seem, is yet another example of white privilege—to retain humanity in the face of inhumanity. For criminals who defy our understanding of danger, the cultural threshold for forgiveness is incredibly low.

A much more dramatic illustration was produced in followup experiments by Gilbert, Tafarodi, and Malone.2 Subjects read aloud crime reports crawling across a video monitor, in which the color of the text indicated whether a particular statement was true or false. Some reports contained false statements that exacerbated the severity of the crime, ot

“woke”

Philosophers have long disagreed about whether it’s acceptable to harm one person in order to help or save several people. Utilitarianism is the philosophical school that says you should always aim to bring about the greatest total good, even if a few people get hurt along the way, so if there’s really no other way to save those five lives, go ahea

employees have trouble committing to a decision when they perceive the process as unfair.