2

THE SELF IN MORAL SPACE

2.1
I said at the beginning of section I. s that the naturalist reduction which
would exclude frameworks altogether from consideration cannot be carried
through, and that to see why this is so is to understand something important
about the place of frameworks in our lives. Having seen a little better what
these frameworks consist in, I want now to pursue this point.
In sections I ·4 and I. s I have been talking about these qualitative
distinctions in their relation to the issue of the meaning of life. But it is plain
that distinctions of this kind play a role in all three dimensions of moral
assessment that I identified above. The sense that human beings are capable
of some kind of higher life forms part of the background for our belief that
they are fit objects of respect, that their life and integrity is sacred or enjoys
immunity, and is not to be attacked. As a consequence, we can see our
conception of what this immunity consists in evolving with the development
of new frameworks. Thus the fact that we now place such importance on
expressive power means that our contemporary notions of what it is to
respect people's integrity includes that of protecting their expressive freedom
to express and develop their own opinions, to define their own life concep-
tions, to draw up their own life-plans.
At the same time, the third dimension too involves distinctions of this
kind. The dignity of the warrior, the citizen, the householder, and so on
repose on the background understanding that some special value attaches to
these forms of life or to the rank or station that these people have attained
within them.
Indeed, one of the examples above, the honour ethic, has plainly been the
background for a very widespread understanding of dignity, which attaches
to the free citizen or warrior-citizen and to an even higher degree to someone
who plays a major role in public life. This goes on being an important
d~mension of our life in modern society, and the fierce competition for this
ktnd of dignity is part of what animates democratic politics.
These distinctions, which I have been calling frameworks, are thus woven

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