How to Think about the Basic Moral Status of Manipulation

Shlomo Cohen, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

ORCID 0000-0002-9852-5221

Assigned DOI: doi.org/10.3998/jpe.9952

Abstract

Drawing on the broader theoretical framework that I developed in The Concept and Ethics of Manipulation, this paper examines the question of the basic moral status of manipulation, challenging the prevailing assumption that manipulation is inherently morally problematic. I first argue that we may conclude that manipulation is not pro tanto wrong by showing that no relevant wrong-making feature—such as deception, exploitation, or disrespect for autonomy—is necessarily present in all cases of manipulation. I then address a stronger claim: that manipulation may be inherently morally bad even if not strictly wrong. Against this view, I illustrate the central role of manipulation in the good human life, especially emphasizing its function as a “social lubricant” that enables cooperation, alleviates psychological barriers, and facilitates interpersonal understanding in contexts where rational persuasion is ineffective or counterproductive. I argue that once we appreciate how pervasively manipulation is integral to and indispensable for the human good, it becomes implausible to view it as pro tanto bad. I conclude with a note on “metaethical humanism”: the indispensability of philosophical anthropology for determining moral valence.

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Manipulation is ubiquitous. Perhaps, paradoxically, it was that very ubiquity that made it transparent to philosophical reflection for so long. Even the word “manipulation”—in its psychological sense that interests us—did not exist in English until the nineteenth century. Philosophical reflection about manipulation has only gained real momentum in the past generation, and the first two books to provide full-blown theories of manipulation finally came out roughly simultaneously: Robert Noggle’s Manipulation: Its Nature, Mechanisms, and Moral Status (2025) and my The Concept and Ethics of Manipulation (Cohen 2025).^[1]

My intention in this paper is to concentrate on the question of how we should think about the basic moral status of manipulation. This will involve both substantive points about manipulation and more general methodological points. This discussion will lead to some grander implications for ethics. The question of the moral status of manipulation (specifically) might seem a rather niche moral concern. This impression is, I believe, mistaken. Manipulation is the realm of soft psychological power; and it is precisely from that extensive and inescapable gray area of human interaction, the area that straddles cooperation and soft control, often in an inseparable interplay, that some of the most nuanced moral insights about human relations can be gained. Inspecting it is important for ethics.

First, however, I zoom out to offer a succinct overview of the main novel arguments in my book, which provide the context for the present discussion.

I.

The book has two parts. The first part (Chapter 1-3) analyzes the concept of manipulation—it asks what “manipulation” means—while the second (Chapters 4-6) assesses the basic moral status of manipulation.

Chapter 1 offers an overview of the conceptual field within which the meaning of “manipulation” is structured, focusing on the concepts of rational persuasion, deception, and coercion or pressure. It reviews notable attempts to define “manipulation,” and the many difficulties they left open. The criticisms of those attempts, I argue, raise a deeper suspicion: perhaps manipulation cannot be captured by a definition at all. Chapter 2 starts with a wide-ranging deconstruction of the dichotomy between manipulation and rational persuasion. This suggests that manipulation is not to be understood—as it usually has been—primarily in terms of a distinction from rational persuasion. (There are, obviously, paradigmatic cases of each, but if the grey area in the middle is large enough, the distinction is unlikely to offer the best venue for explaining manipulation.) The chapter then offers an alternative paradigm: it argues that “manipulation” is best understood as conceptual metaphor. “Manipulation” is the result of a specific kind of social perception: of seeing an act of influence as “operating the other as mechanism.” The mechanification metaphor, as I call it, is diagnosed as constitutive of the concept “manipulation.” Chapter 3 explores the anatomy of that concept. In contrast to the definitional paradigm of concepts, it understands manipulation as a cluster concept. That's a type of concept that doesn't have a single set of necessary and sufficient conditions for membership. Instead, it is defined by a group of characteristics which tend to occur together. Thus, the various instances of the concept exhibit “family resemblance” (Wittgenstein’s [1953] seminal example was the concept “game”). Cluster concepts tend to have paradigm instances versus less typical ones. The chapter presents and analyzes ten criteria whose various combinations construct the concept. It then discusses the connection between the roles of the metaphor and of the criteria in constituting the concept of manipulation.

Chapters 4 and 5 explore the basic moral status of manipulation. Manipulation is often morally bad; the interesting ethical question, however, is whether manipulation is inherently morally bad. In contrast to the prevailing wisdom, I argue in Chapter 4 that manipulation is not inherently morally bad. Below I elaborate on that analysis. Chapter 5 follows up on 4, and concentrates on an important doubt that remains, namely whether, being an exercise of power over others, manipulation necessarily expresses disrespect for persons as such. An in-depth analysis of respectfulness in human communication concludes that manipulation is not necessarily disrespectful. The differences between mechanification (treating the other as mechanism) and objectification (treating the other as object) prove to be of importance here, as well as a philosophical anthropology that transcends a narrow focus on being rational. The upshot of chapters 4 and 5 is that manipulation is not intrinsically morally bad. Finally, Chapter 6 applies the insights of the previous chapters to the political arena. It argues that manipulation (though often very wrong, nonetheless) performs indispensable roles in politics and would accordingly remain integral even to ideal politics in a realistic utopia.

II.

Let us refocus now on our main topic: the basic moral status of manipulation. The discussion here will proceed from the more familiar to the less familiar (I think).

We all know that manipulation can be bad or even very bad, but that sometimes it is morally warranted. The interesting question to ask about the morality of manipulation then is about its basic moral nature: whether manipulation is inherently morally problematic or not. Arguably no one would claim that manipulation is categorically wrong, that under no circumstances is it ever justified. Hence, by “inherently wrong” I mean that manipulation is pro tanto wrong. To be “pro tanto wrong” means to be morally impermissible as such, i.e. independently of other moral considerations, yet to be potentially permissible all-things-considered, in case some relevant offsetting consideration is locally weightier.

Now while I agree that manipulation is often wrong, which creates a presumption of wrongness against it (it is prima facie wrong), I do not think that manipulation is pro tanto wrong. This view is heterodox; it goes against common wisdom. How does one argue for it? How can we check whether a kind of act is pro tanto wrong or not? Finding convincing examples where manipulation seems fully morally legitimate won’t help: Any example of that sort would leave open the question of whether the lack of wrongness in that case is an exonerating proof, showing that manipulation is not in fact inherently wrong, despite often being bad or wrong, or whether it is inherently wrong but its wrongness is merely offset by the good it does in that particular instance. Knockout arguments and outright refutations are probably impossible here. Rather, our aim should be to reject successfully all arguments for the pro tanto wrongness of manipulation. If we succeed, then any intuition that manipulation “simply must be” deep down inherently wrong will be left with no argument to support it (Cohen 2025: 127).

We must then return to the concept of manipulation to assess whether we find any type of wrongness essentially associated with it. (If we viewed manipulation as categorically wrong, recourse to the concept wouldn’t be needed; a convincing counterexample where manipulation is permissible would be sufficient refutation.) Returning to the concept of manipulation requires agreement on its meaning. The first part of my book indeed provides a theory on the meaning of manipulation. For present purposes we need not delve into that; I should mention only that manipulation is not revealed to be a moralized concept. (Moralized concepts have (im)morality built into their definition. Some have viewed manipulation in this way, defining it, for instance, as “illegitimate domination.” Similarly, any definition that incorporated terms as “maliciously” or “unjustly” would make manipulation ipso facto pro tanto wrong.) Having mentioned this caveat, we can now set it aside.

To probe whether any action-type is pro tanto wrong, we should make a list of all established wrong-making features (i.e. qualities of actions that render them wrong) that we think might be associated with it, and check whether any one wrong-making feature is invariably associated with manipulation. In the second section of Chapter 4, I go over the relevant wrong-making features—harming, betraying trust, deceiving, exploiting (treating merely as means), disrespecting autonomy—and attempt to show that none is invariably associated with manipulation. That is to say: We can rather easily find examples of manipulation that do not exhibit the wrong-making feature under inspection. If my argument, or any equivalent one, is successful, if, that is, no specific wrong-making feature is essentially associated with manipulation, then manipulation is not after all pro tanto wrong.

This would seem to provide sufficient proof to exonerate manipulation from being inherently morally problematic. In fact, it is only here that things start to get interesting. For even if we find exceptions to all associations of manipulation with wrong-making features, this still won’t be enough to exonerate manipulation. Why not? Here are four possibilities for nonetheless judging manipulation to be inherently unethical. (I will merely mention the first and second possibilities, say something brief about the third, and then focus on the fourth.)

(1) One theoretical possibility is that no wrong-making feature is universally associated with manipulation, and yet that each case of manipulation does have some wrong-making feature associated with it. This is theoretically possible, but very unlikely, since if no specific wrong-making feature is invariably associated with manipulation, what would compel that all manipulations be somehow associated with some wrong-making feature or other? Hence, I will not speak further of that logical possibility.

(2) Aristotle memorably claimed that “it is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness in each kind which the nature of the particular subject admits.” (Aristotle 1925: 1094b 24-25). Accordingly, since we are not dealing with exact science, the sheer fact of there being some exception or another cannot automatically be taken to determine the nature of the phenomenon. In human affairs one can find exceptions to almost every rule. Hence, to argue convincingly that manipulation is not pro tanto wrong, we need to show more than that there are cases where manipulation is not associated with a given wrong-making feature. We must show this holds not only in rare exotic cases but in mundane ones. This is a stronger test of inherent wrongness. I indeed attempt to show precisely this in Chapter 4.

(3) Manipulation, I argue (Chapter 3), is a non-definable, cluster concept. If so, then there is typical manipulation versus less typical or even non-typical manipulation. Here lies an interesting and important point: It may be that manipulation is not inherently wrong, as shown by the fact that a non-negligible number of instances of manipulation are not wrong, yet that it is nonetheless inherently wrong in a different sense, namely, that its prototypical instances are pro tanto wrong. In the book (Chapter 5), I argue that such is in fact the case. Thus, when it comes to cluster concepts, the idea of inherent wrongness exhibits an interesting ambiguity: It may refer, traditionally, to the entire scope of instances of the concept, yet it may also refer, uniquely, to the most representative ones. Providing sufficient and convincing examples in which manipulation is morally unproblematic can thus rule out pro tanto wrongness in the traditional sense, yet there remains a second sense, which could provide a unique version of essential wrongness.

The ambiguity in the idea of essential wrongness between referring to prototypical instances and referring to the entire range is an important distinction. It has not received the attention it deserves, partly due to the trivial fact that there has been hardly any interest in cluster concepts as such within moral theory.

III.

The possibility of inherent moral fault that I want to focus on is a fourth one:

(4) Manipulation may not be pro tanto wrong, yet it may be pro tanto bad. What does this distinction mean? Some kind of action, X, may not reach the threshold of wrongness, and yet it may be unsavory as such, nonetheless. Its essential character may be morally bothersome, even criticizable; hence, if we could secure similar results while avoiding doing X, it would ceteris paribus always be better. X’s being (inherently) pro tanto bad is compatible with the claim that not all instances of X are strictly-speaking morally wrong.

Now if our aim is to assess the pro tanto badness of manipulation, then the analysis that shows that it is not pro tanto wrong, i.e. that no wrong-making feature is necessarily exhibited by manipulation, is insufficient for our purposes. It may be correct that manipulation is not pro tanto wrong, yet if it is pro tanto bad, then it is nonetheless true that it is generally best to avoid it. Virtuous people would indeed try not to manipulate as much as possible, that is to say, whenever alternative ways are available to achieve acceptable results.

Is manipulation inherently morally problematic by the more stringent test of pro tanto badness? I think not. Accordingly, I would like now, first, to explain why I think that manipulation is not pro tanto bad. Second, I will use this analysis of manipulation to shed light on a more general view about ethics.

How do we go about assessing pro tanto badness? I believe this requires a wide-ranging assessment of the role that manipulation (in our case) plays in human life and human interaction. The basic idea is that in the background of our ascriptions of moral badness are conceptions of good human relations and the good human life. In cases of clear harm or violence, we admittedly need not refer to such conceptions, as the badness is obvious, and mostly common to all sentient creatures. But in less extreme categories of action—in categories, such as manipulation, that tend more to merge with normal human interaction (Buss 2005; Baron 2014)—our conceptions of human relations have greater salience in determining our ascriptions of badness.

There are, I suggest, two general substantive background intuitions about human relations that support viewing manipulation as pro tanto bad. One involves the role of straightforwardness in human relations. Manipulation, even if not outright deceptive, always involves the use of some subconscious mechanism or some cognitive bias or some background pressure, or choice architecture, etc. So it seems that there is something inherently sneaky or devious about it; and from here it is easy to conclude that manipulation is inherently bad, since it deviates from the simple, direct, look-you-straight-in-the-eye attitude that we all appreciate. Hence, manipulation has negative valence attached to it, independently of any specific wrong-making features that it may instantiate.

A second view, not independent of the first but still discrete, is the following: Given that manipulative influence deviates from rational persuasion and so utilizes indirect ways of influence, it arguably always involves some kind of exercise of power, either through pressure or through concealment. And power relations of this manner deviate from the desirable paradigm of respectful relations among equals. Hence, again, without necessarily specifying any concrete wrong, the way manipulation features within human relations reveals a negative moral nature.

These very basic background narratives about human relations orient us to see manipulation unfavorably. Consequently, even if we cannot associate manipulation necessarily with any established wrong-making feature, still, in cases where manipulation seems morally legitimate, we assume that it is because the good consequences of the specific case outweigh manipulation’s inherent negativity. We tend not to say that a given manipulation being legitimate shows (alongside parallel examples) that manipulation is not in fact pro tanto bad.

IV.

I argue in response that these basic narratives on badness offer but a partial picture of the relevant phenomenology of human relations associated with manipulation, and that the other part of the picture, which is of much importance, has not received adequate attention. Once it does, I don’t think we are left with good-enough reasons to view manipulation as pro tanto bad.

My claim (Chapter 4) is that there is a large set of positive manipulations that enhance the good life. These include manipulations that are enjoyed for their own sake as well as a much larger set of manipulations that are prosocial. These latter have very important social lubrication functions (as I call them). This means that manipulations are often crucial in facilitating social relations that would otherwise run into various troubles.

Now merely understanding that manipulation has social lubrication functions leaves open the question of how exactly to assess and what weight to give to the prosocial contribution of manipulation as against its rampant unethical features. To make such an assessment, we need a wide-enough description of the workings of manipulation as a social lubricant, so we can get a reliable sense of the positive roles it performs in our lives, alongside the negative ones. A wide-angle view is necessary to determine the basic moral status of a phenomenon. (Judgments of badness tend to be more holistic than deontological judgments of wrongness.) I claim that if we take stock of the extensiveness and importance of the social lubrication dynamics of manipulation, as well as their indispensability for the smoothness and success of social relations, we will reasonably conclude that manipulation is not inherently morally negative. We will have good reason, I think, not to see the positive facets of manipulation as merely fortunate results contingently added to a basically pro tanto bad phenomenon.

As mentioned, the idea that manipulation exhibits a basic-level negative moral valence relies on two intuitions about its functioning in human relations: (1) that manipulation falls short of the straightforwardness we expect in human relations, and (2) that manipulation involves the use of (psychological) force and is therefore a disrespectful mode of human interaction. In the rest of this paper, I will concentrate only on the first of these charges. (The second charge is extensively dealt with in Chapter 5 of my book.)

I will now quote excerpts from Chapter 4. Their aim is to start softening you toward the idea that the social lubrication functions of manipulation are so integral to and important for the success of human relations and social cooperation as to make it implausible to view manipulation as bad at its core. These indispensable positive contributions of manipulation can be found in myriad kinds of situations where conditions necessary for social cooperation do not prevail and cannot be brought about by rational persuasion. (In Chapter 6, which I cannot touch here, I expand the same type of insight to the realm of politics.)^[2]

For social cooperation to happen and be successful, the parties should feel comfortable enough with the interaction. When one party feels uncomfortable (insecure, awkward, etc.), trying to persuade it to not feel uncomfortable is frequently embarrassingly awkward itself, and tends to backfire by further accentuating the discomfort. (“Why do you feel awkward around me? Tell me your reasons, and I’ll refute them one by one” is a self-stultifying strategy.) An indirect approach is therefore needed, which often spells manipulation. In order to dissipate the other’s discomfort, the agent (a) pretends not to notice it (since knowing that others know that one feels awkward intensifies the feeling); (b) pretends not to feel herself discomforted by the situation, given that embarrassment is contagious; (c) engages in well-meaning yet insincere lighthearted small talk, to deflect attention from the awkward situation; (d) compliments the other for whatever, in the hope of turning the tide from negative feelings to positive ones; and so on. The agent is using prosocial manipulative techniques as a necessary means for removing obstacles that hinder interaction and cooperation.

Cooperative relations, whether interpersonal or social, frequently do not arise spontaneously. To establish cooperation, it is often necessary to overcome barriers in the form of unconducive emotions and moods. Imagine a couple on a first date. The date is going well, yet the woman senses a clear avoidant streak in the man. It is quite evident that he likes her, but also that he stops himself every time he starts getting more-than-a-bit enthusiastic. The wise woman understands that to get to the second date, she must downplay her own enthusiasm for her reserved date. Manipulative dissimulation is here essential for success: meeting avoidance with avoidance is the only, ironic, way to overcome avoidance, and (possibly) establish a relationship, to everyone’s satisfaction. More generally, anxieties, which are integral to human life, diminish responsiveness to reason, and therefore the capacity to cooperate rationally. Quelling anxieties to restore cooperation cannot, due to anxiety’s very nature, be done through reasoning. Soothing manipulations geared toward distraction and changing of mood are the way to connect across the anxiety barrier. As said above, the same prosocial manipulation can be intended toward enabling cooperation or toward altruistic help – in this case, toward helping the anxious avoid suffering. Altruistic manipulation can of course be used also to prevent anxiety in the first place, as when one feigns self-confidence in the face of adversity, to prevent dependent others from panicking.

Indifference, a highly common feature in human affairs, frustrates social engagement and cooperation. Rational persuasion, brilliant as it may be, is likely to prove inert when the listener simply doesn’t care. Arguments as to why one should care are swiftly deflected by he who doesn’t and cannot be bothered. Surmounting the indifference barrier may well necessitate manipulative shaking up – for example, by presenting things in more shocking and sensational ways. Recalcitrant inattention can similarly mandate more circuitous, manipulative approaches to establish first contact. Here is an example of dissimulation that could well be inevitable: “[P]erhaps the object of one’s romantic interest is an entomologist, and one asks him or her to come over to identify an insect about which one is only very mildly curious – if indeed curious at all. Such conduct does not, I think, reflect any lack of virtue; it is not inferior to being straightforward, though I would not say that it is superior.”^[3] Once first contact is established, the parties will sort out optimal terms of engagement; to get there, however, the eccentric entomologist’s inattention must be overcome, and so manipulation may be necessary.

Social cooperation can be thwarted by distorted perceptions of self and others, which tend in turn to distort reasonable reception and understanding of communicated messages. Significantly inflated self-esteem, for instance, diminishes readiness to listen to criticism of oneself and generate imperviousness to criticism when it is met. Rational criticism is rebuffed, and so a manipulative approach to the overconfident person – for instance, by targeting the few vulnerabilities he does acknowledge – then becomes the most rational tool to deal with the person, since it exclusively has any meaningful chances of generating successful conversation. (Importantly, inflated self-esteem is the norm, rather than the exception. When people are asked to rate themselves, almost everyone thinks they are above average at virtually everything. This “better-than-average effect” is robust. Given the scope and depth of distorted self-evaluation, manipulations that can cope with it need to be employed on a regular basis.)

Manipulation’s role in dealing with distortions of perception is surely not restricted to self-perception; distortions of social and interpersonal perception [e.g. stereotyping or actor-observer bias] are at least as pervasive. At times, the perceptual distortions can be rationally explained away, at other times not (either in principle or in the particular context). Here is an example from medical ethics. People have a strong interest in securing the confidentiality of their sensitive medical information. Principles of medical ethics correspondingly require providing clear and comprehensive assurances (in the informed consent form) regarding the measures taken to secure privacy and confidentiality. Research has shown, however, that the more detailed the assurances given, the more people’s willingness to disclose medical information diminishes (even when confidentiality practices are not mentioned at all – suggesting total absence of protections – people disclose more). Apparently, people misperceive the mention of assurances as a warning sign, instead of as a sign of safety. The ability to counter this biased perception is limited. To successfully meet everyone’s interests (clinical and research interests in information and patients’ interest in safety) a manipulative tactic of downplaying the full extent of privacy measures is, ironically, needed.

Social cooperation will often not be meaningful or even possible without mutual understanding by the parties. Misunderstandings are rife, however, among people who come from sufficiently different backgrounds and subcultures within a society. Arguments, as good and as clear as they may be, cannot always bridge misunderstandings all by themselves, since arguments can change their meanings and their importance when set against different ways of life. To communicate opinions across a cultural divide successfully, and so facilitate cooperation, one must therefore find ways to appeal to the other’s emotions and imagination – ways that “disrupt,” or “destabilize,” the other’s perspective, to make her capable of being receptive to one’s arguments as intended. Such “disruptive” nonargumentative influences would frequently amount to manipulation.

Prosocial manipulation may be primarily altruistically motivated (as mentioned), and dissimulation necessary to avoid conflict is no exception. At times, manipulative dissimulation may be the most reasonable, or indeed the only, way to avoid hurting others. Imagine a wife who realized she has fallen in love with her husband’s best friend. The wife loves her husband and does not want to hurt him, she believes deeply in marital fidelity, and her cooler judgment tells her that the man she is secretly having a crush on [without acting on it] will anyway not be a good long-term partner for her. Simultaneously, knowing her husband’s vulnerabilities, she realizes that explaining all this to him will be virtually futile, will hurt him deeply, and might even snowball to the collapse of the marriage that both of them wish to maintain. What is she to do? The friend comes to visit often, and the wife artificially feigns “business as usual.” There is good reason to think that her manipulative dissimulation (while anticipating that her “irrational” feelings will eventually subside) is the wisest and most ethically sound choice of action. Indeed, Shakespeare called precisely this kind of concealment “love’s best habit.”^[4] Many people, arguably, acknowledge Shakespeare’s intuition. Very few people want every truth in its entirety in their faces, always, and in every kind of relationship. Surely, difficult-to-digest truths can be important to hear; but not all of them are, and surely not always in precise detail or exactly at the moment they happen to come up. Sarah Buss’ observation supports the wise wife’s tactics: “most reasonable people do not expect to be informed at all times about how others are trying to get them to think; to the contrary, they expect not to be informed in many cases; indeed, they do not always want to be treated ‘straightforwardly’.”^[5] On the same insight – that total candor is virtually nobody’s optimal balance, and that therefore some manipulations are socially imperative – we may quote the great Molière: “In certain cases it would be uncouth/ And most absurd to speak the naked truth./ With all respect for your exalted notions/ It is often best to veil one’s true emotions./ Wouldn’t the social fabric come undone/ If we were wholly frank with everyone?”^[6]

Somewhat lengthy descriptions are inevitable if we are to establish that manipulation is integral to the normal dynamics of communication and cooperation of decent, normative people. And if such is indeed the case, then this should give us pause when we come to argue that manipulation is inherently bad (and a fortiori inherently wrong).

There is a second argument implicit in all this: To the extent that manipulation, as lubricant of social disharmony, is an essential component of the good life for humans, rational choosers behind Rawls’ famous “veil of ignorance” would choose a society that incorporates positive manipulations. If this is indeed true—and the descriptions above are meant to suggest that it is—then this constitutes a new argument against the claim that manipulation essentially offends against respect for autonomy. For if people choose autonomously to be manipulated, then to that extent manipulation does not disrespect their autonomy.

V.

Lastly, I want to highlight a more general philosophical point that lurks within this analysis of manipulation, and that connects normative theory to metaethics.

The critic may not be persuaded by my arguments about the moral significance of the positive role of manipulation in our lives. He may insist that the way all of us decent, normative people act is simply not good enough. And even if, as my analysis suggests, manipulation is an essential ingredient of social competence, this only means that human social life, as we know it, is inherently unholy, not to say corrupt.

Now at this point we must, I think, take a principled philosophical stand between two opposing alternatives. The first is to hold that we can make moral judgments—and specifically, moral judgments regarding manipulation—from some objective point that totally transcends the human experience. A point that Bernard Williams, quoting Sidgwick, called “the point of view of the universe.” Only from such an independent, universal perspective, could a moral critic rule out behavior that is integral to and indispensable for the thriving of human relations and societies.

The alternative option is to deny the plausibility and even coherence of such a presumptuous point of view. And if so, then extensive descriptions of the dynamics of human interaction and of what is essential for their success are necessary input for cogent moral judgment, at least as regards inherent badness. This means, in other words, that we need a conception of the human “form of life” to make reliable moral judgments about pro tanto badness. More generally and concisely put: moral judgment needs to be supplemented—in a sense preceded—by philosophical anthropology.

Hence, my brief exploration of the question of the pro tanto badness of manipulation has in effect led us to a metaethical junction: To the extent that moral judgment about the essential badness (or otherwise) of action types is constrained by philosophical anthropology, then morality is not universal (be that universal realism or universal constructivism); morality is rather irreducibly human-based. Such a view is essentially humanistic; we can accordingly call it “metaethical humanism.”

We see here how the probing of a specific question—the moral status of manipulation—leads us to tie together considerations of applied ethics, normative ethics, metaethics, and philosophical anthropology. To the extent that all these converge into one stable, coherent picture, this can vindicate the moral analysis I have given. My personal sympathy for what I’ve just called “metaethical humanism” thus lends background support for my harnessing the dynamics of human relations to understand the basic moral status of manipulation—to my suggesting, specifically, that manipulation, while indeed often wrong, is not inherently wrong, and even not inherently bad.

Bibliography

Aristotle (1925) Nicomachean Ethics, transl. W. D. Ross, in The Works of Aristotle W. D. Ross (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Baron, Marcia (2003) "Manipulativeness," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 77.2: 37-54.

Baron, Marcia (2014) "The Mens Rea and Moral Status of Manipulation," in Coons, C. and Weber, M. (eds.), Manipulation: Theory and Practice, 98-120. New York: Oxford University Press.

Buss, Sarah (2005) "Valuing autonomy and respecting persons: Manipulation, seduction, and the basis of moral constraints." Ethics 115.2: 195-235.

Cohen, Shlomo (2025) The Concept and Ethics of Manipulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Handelman, Sapir (2009) Thought Manipulation: The Use and Abuse of Psychological Trickery. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.

Noggle, Robert (2025) Manipulation: Its Nature, Mechanisms, and Moral Status. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953) Philosophical investigations, transl. G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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Manipulation wrongness badness metaethical humanism