Open Learn - Exploring philosophy: faking nature

Question 1

1 Key questions

When is it right to restore something that has been damaged? In 1982, the philosopher Robert Elliot raised this question in regards to the natural environment. However, the issue has wider ramifications, centrally concerned with the key issue of authenticity. The issues of restoration and authenticity raise a number of key questions:

Can damage ever be made right? Can restoration ever make anything ‘as good as it was before’?

When a piece of nature or a damaged building is restored, does it become something authentic, or is it a fake?

Can nature or buildings ever be restored and not faked?

Should objects be restored to ‘as good as new’ or only to how they were immediately before they were damaged?

Is it always better to have an original than it is to have a copy?

If it is impossible to have the original, is a copy better than nothing?

What is valuable about originals anyway?

Answer 1

4 Elliot: Part I

In this section, you will start reading Elliot’s classic article about the restoration thesis.

In the article, Elliot mentions some historical examples, but you don’t need to know the specifics of these to understand the overall point he is making. However, he mentions something which may be new to you: the ‘familiar ethical system’ of utilitarianism. (In the first paragraph, he uses the term ‘utilitarian’ in a non-technical sense – he is saying that people consider the dunes to have value apart from them being useful.) He considers two versions of the ethical system: ‘preference utilitarianism’ and ‘classical utilitarianism’. Generally, utilitarianism provides a method for deciding what ought to be done in a given situation: it claims that you ought to do whatever maximises ‘the good’.

Preference utilitarianism holds that ‘the good’ (what you ought to maximise) is the satisfaction of people’s preferences. That is, you should do what will give most people what they want.

Classical utilitarianism holds that ‘the good’ (what you ought to maximise) is happiness. That is, you should do what will make most people happy.