MORAL
PHILOSOPHY THROUGH THE AGES
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Preface
1. Cultural Relativism
Introduction.
Classic Cultural Relativism.
Xenophanes and the Greek Skeptics.
Later Defenders of Cultural Relativism.
The Argument from Social Diversity.
Balfour’s Criticism: Many Customs are Simply Depraved.
Rachels’s Criticism: Some Key Values do not Vary.
Common Arguments Against Cultural Relativism.
Whether Cultural Relativists deny all Moral Values.
Whether Cultural Relativism leads to Horrible Values.
Whether Cultural Relativism rules out Universal Judgments.
Summary.
2. Plato’s Moral Objectivism
Introduction.
Background of Plato’s Moral theory.
The Sophists and Socrates.
Protagoras’ Individual Relativism.
Plato’s Moral theory.
Theory of the Moral Forms.
Recollection and Knowledge of the Forms.
Criticisms of Plato’s theory.
Aristotle’s First Criticism: The Forms do not Add to our Knowledge.
Aristotle’s Second Criticism: Participation is not Explained.
Mackie’s First Criticism: The Concept of the Forms is Queer.
Mackie’s Second Criticism: A Psychological Explanation of Objectification.
The Legacy of Plato’s Moral theory.
Plato’s Influence.
Skepticism About Plato’s Moral Objectivism.
Summary.
3. Virtue theory
Introduction.
Early Greek View of Virtues.
Aristotle’s theory.
Appetite-Regulating Habits.
Practical Wisdom.
Good Temper.
Virtue theory After Aristotle.
Traditional Criticisms of Virtue theory.
Grotius’s Criticism: Many Virtues are not at a Mean.
Kant’s Criticism: Without Moral Principles Misapplied Virtues Become Vices.
Mill’s Criticism: Morality Involves Judging Actions and not Character Traits.
Contemporary Discussions of Virtues and Rules.
Feminine Ethics and Virtue theory.
Virtues with Or without Rules?
Contemporary Criticisms.
The Value of Virtue theory.
Incorporating Virtue Theory Into Other Moral Theories.
The Best Teacher of Morality.
Summary.
4. Natural Law theory
Introduction.
Origins of Natural Law theory.
Aquinas Natural Law theory.
Four Types of Law: Eternal, Natural, Human, and Divine.
The Synderesis Principle.
Primary, Secondary and Super-Added Principles.
Revisions and Criticisms of Natural Law theory.
Suarez’s Revision: Knowledge of Natural Law is Based on Conscience, not Natural Inclinations.
Grotius’s Revision: Natural Law is Founded only on the Instinct of Sociability.
Hobbes’s and Pufendorf’s Revision: Natural Law is Founded on the Instinct of Self-Preservation.
Hume’s and Bentham’s Criticism: Natural Law Theories Erroneously Derive Ought from Is.
The Value of Natural Law theory.
Natural Law and Homosexuality.
The Legacy of Natural Law theory.
Summary.
5. Morality and the Will of God
Introduction.
Plato and the Euthyphro Puzzle.
Traditional Voluntarism.
Scotus’s Voluntarism.
Voluntarism after Scotus.
Arguments For and Against Voluntarism.
Argument from Revoking Established Moral Standards.
The Argument from Absolute Power.
Criticism: Voluntarism Implies that Divine Goodness is Meaningless.
God and Morality.
Lingering Problems with Religious Ethics.
Summary.
6. Social Contract theory
Introduction.
Hobbes’s theory.
The State of Nature.
The Laws of Nature.
Political Theory and Moral theory.
Social Contract Theory in the 17 and 18th
Centuries.
Criticisms of
Hobbes.
Hyde’s Criticism: Hobbes Denies that Morality is
Immutable and Eternal.
Clarke’s Criticism: Punishment Alone won’t Motivate us to Always Keep Contracts.
Hume’s Criticism: We don’t even Tacitly Agree to A Social Contract.
Recent Social
Contract theory.
The Prisoners’ Dilemma.
Rawls and Social Contract theory.
The Value of Social Contract theory.
Social Contract vs. Social Reciprocation.
Mixing Moral theory and Political theory.
Summary.
7. Duty theory
Introduction.
The Development and Popularity of Traditional Duty theory.
Pufendorf’s theory of Duties.
Survival and Mutual Cooperation.
Duties to God, oneself, and Others.
Intuitionism and Other Features of Duty theory.
Revisions and Criticisms of Duty theory.
Kant's Revision: No Duties to God since we cannot Know God.
Mill’s Criticism: Duties to oneself Reduce to only Self-Respect and Self-Development.
Sidgwick’s Criticism: Common Sense Moral Intuitions are Imprecise.
Duty theory today.
Ross’s theory of Prima Facie Duties.
The Value of Duty theory.
Duties and Suicide.
Summary.
8. Natural and Human Rights
Introduction.
Natural Rights and Natural Law.
Locke’s theory.
Natural Rights within the State of Nature.
Slavery and the Right to Life.
The Right to Property.
Political Authorities and the Right to Liberty.
Criticisms of Natural Rights theory.
Burke’s Criticism: Abstract notions of Natural Rights are too Simplistic.
Bentham’s Criticism: Legal Rights are Grounded in Fact, Natural Rights
are not.
Marx’s Criticism: Natural Rights Emphasize Selfishness and Ignore Community.
Human Rights theory today.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Interrelation Between Human Rights and Legal Rights.
Summary.
9. Moral Reason vs. Moral Feeling
Introduction.
Clarke’s Rationalist theory.
Eternal Moral Relations.
Hume’s Criticisms of Clarke.
Hume’s Moral
theory.
Early Moral Sense theories.
The Moral Spectator’s Sympathetic Feelings.
Moral Motivation and Morality without God.
Criticisms of
Hume.
Reid’s First Criticism: Hume Abuses Common Moral
Language.
Reid’s Second Criticism: Reporting Feelings
Differs from Approving.
The Value of
Hume’s theory.
Utilitarianism and the Fate of the Agent and
Spectator.
Summary.
10. Kant’s Categorical Imperative
Introduction.
Kant’s Moral theory.
Influences on Kant’s theory.
Motives that Influence our Human Will.
The Formula of the Law of Nature.
The Formula of the End Itself.
Criticisms of Kant’ theory.
Schopenhauer’s Criticism: The Categorical Imperative Reduces to Egoism.
Mill’s Criticism: The Categorical Imperative Reduces to Utilitarianism.
Anscombe’s Criticism: There is no Procedure for Constructing Maxims.
The Value of the Categorical Imperative.
Traditional Duty theory and the Formula of the Law of Nature.
The Value of the Formula of the End Itself.
Summary.
11. Utilitarianism
Introduction.
Historical Development of Utilitarianism.
18th Century Contributions.
Bentham’s Utilitarian Calculus.
Limitations of Bentham’s theory.
Mill’s Utilitarianism.
Elements of Mill’s theory.
General Happiness and Higher Pleasures.
Traditional Criticisms of Mill.
Bradley’s Criticism: Utilitarianism Conflicts with Ordinary Moral Judgments.
Grote’s Criticism: Utilitarianism only Perpetuates the Status Quo.
Albee’s Criticism: Higher Pleasures are Inconsistent with Hedonism.
The Continuing Utilitarian Tradition.
Ideal Utilitarianism and Preference Utilitarianism.
Problems with the Bare Bones Utilitarian Formula.
Summary.
12. Evolutionary Ethics
Introduction.
19th Century
theories of Evolutionary Ethics.
Darwin and the Evolution of
Moral Faculties.
Spencer’s Evolutionary
Ethics.
Moore’s Criticism of Spencer.
The Naturalistic Fallacy.
Identifying “Goodness” with “More Evolved”.
Identifying “Goodness” with
“Universal Pleasure”.
Evolutionary Ethics today.
Lingering Problems with
Evolutionary Ethics.
Sociobiology and Moral
Ambivalence.
Natural Selection as an Analogy.
Summary.
13. Emotivism and Prescriptivism
Introduction.
Ayer’s theory.
Logical Positivism and the Verification
Principle.
Descriptive Utterances vs. Performative
Utterances.
Emotivism and Prescriptivism.
Criticisms of
Ayer.
Ross’s Criticism: Performativism is Based on the
Faulty Verification Principle.
Moore’s Criticism: Performativism does not
Account For Moral Arguments.
Descriptive and
Performative Elements.
Stevenson and Hare.
Additional Performative Functions of Moral
Statements.
Skeptical Implications of Extreme Emotivism and
Prescriptivism.
Summary.
14. Best Reasons Morality and the Problem of
Abortion
Introduction.
The Process of
Moral Reasoning.
Toulmin’s View of Moral Reasoning.
Baier’s View of Moral Reasoning.
Best Reasons and Applied Ethics.
The Fetus’s Moral
Status.
Gathering the Facts.
Extreme Pro-Choice Potentiality Principle.
Extreme Pro-Life and Moderate Potentiality
Principles.
Fetus’s
Interests Vs. Other’s Interests.
Gathering and Weighing the Facts.
Some Extenuating Circumstances.
Other Extenuating Circumstances.
Conclusion.
Limitations of the Best Reasons Approach.
Summary.
15. The Interrelation Between Different Ethical theories
Introduction.
An Ethical Super-theory.
The Duties and Virtues of the Agent.
Rights, Virtues and Consequences Regarding the Receiver.
The Spectator’s Spontaneous and Reflective Assessments.
Moral Reflection and the Source of Moral Intuitions.
Isolationist Ethical Theories vs. an Ethical Super-Theory.
Moral Images.
The Function of Moral Images in Common-Life.
The Normative Image of the Golden Rule.
Philosophical Normative Images.
Common-Life Normative Images.
Metaethical Images.
Glossary
#PREFACE
On Halloween night in 1997, an 11-year-old boy from Michigan named Nathan Abraham shot to death a young man outside of a convenience store. Dressed in his Halloween costume at the time, Abraham fired a .22-caliber rifle from about 200 feet away from the store. Abraham claimed that he was aiming at trees and accidentally hit his victim, but prosecutors were not convinced. Abraham apparently had continual run-ins with the police and even bragged to his friends that he planned to shoot someone. Tried as an adult, Abraham became one of the youngest murder defendants in the United States. He was eventually found guilty of second-degree murder.
We are all disturbed by stories of violent juvenile crimes such as this, which are unfortunately becoming all too frequent. They suggest that something has gone seriously wrong in our society and we’ve lost our ability to instill a sense of moral responsibility in our children. Who is to blame for the problem? How can we fix the problem? Although we are not likely to find any quick and easy answers to these questions, we can nevertheless find some help by turning to moral philosophy. The subject of moral philosophy involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. As far back in civilization as we find writing, we find people struggling with ethical questions. At one point in Western civilization -- about 600 BCE -- philosophers began offering theories that clarified the source and content of our moral obligations. This book traces some of the major themes that have emerged in the history of Western moral philosophy, from the earliest days to the present.
Moral philosophers offer a range of theories to explain the nature and content of our moral obligations. Some theories -- commonly called metaethical theories -- try to explain where morality comes from and what psychologically takes place when we make moral judgments. Does society create morality? Is morality a fixed and objective feature of the cosmos? Am I doing anything more than expressing my feelings when I make moral judgments? Metaethical theories attempt to address these questions. Other theories -- commonly called normative theories -- try to tell us exactly what our moral obligations are. According to some of these theories, there is a specific list of foundational duties that we need to follow. Other theories maintain that there is a single principle that encapsulates our obligations, such as that we should maximize the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Still others maintain that our obligations are grounded in a group of virtuous habits that we develop, such as courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom.
The variety and complexity of both metaethical and normative ethical theories is sometimes daunting. If we study and slowly understand one theory, we are likely to find that the very next theory criticizes the earlier theory. And this new theory, in turn, is attacked by the next theory. So, not only are the theories themselves challenging, but we face a new challenge in trying to see how these competing theories illuminate the nature and content of our moral obligations. In writing this book I’ve taken measures to make the reader’s philosophical exploration of ethics easier -- or at least less overwhelming -- than it otherwise might be. I’ve minimized the use of technical vocabulary. I’ve also tied each of the chapters to matters of practical moral concern. The opening of each chapter discusses some concrete ethical issue, such as suicide, capital punishment, or abortion, which helps establish the importance of the chapter’s topic and often serves as a consistent example for discussion throughout the chapter.
When discussing the various ethical theories, I didn’t attempt to evaluate them all from the vantage of a single tradition, such as the utilitarian tradition. To do so would be cumbersome and risk forcing theories into molds that they don’t fit. Instead, I’ve tried to present the various theories in a positive light, defend them against key criticisms if possible, revise them if necessary, and find some central feature of the theory that illuminates the nature of morality. In the final chapter of this book I try to integrate as many of these theories as possible into a single coherent system, which I call an ethical super-theory. I also argue that each ethical theory can have value in our common moral lives by helping us visualize our moral obligations.
There are many possible topics and figures that an ethics book might cover, and it’s impossible for any single text to adequately touch upon everything of value. The issues selected here are restricted to the Western philosophical tradition that began in ancient Greece and developed in the countries of Western Europe, and later in America. They are also the issues that philosophers today commonly find interesting. Although scholars of moral philosophy today will certainly have their own lists of favorite issues, hopefully the ones presented here will have a common appeal.
Introductory books in ethics are typically structured in one of two ways. Some are arranged topically, and focus on major themes and issues, such as cultural relativism, virtue, or duty. Although it is interesting to discuss morality from a topical standpoint, the downfall of this approach is that writers often sacrifice historical context and sometimes even present theories that no traditional philosopher actually ever proposed. Other ethics textbooks are structured historically, and present a continuous chronological sequence of theories, beginning in ancient Greece and ending in present times. Although this approach preserves historical context, many historically-oriented ethics books are tedious to read and give us too many picky facts about a philosopher’s theory.
This book takes a middle ground between the topical and historical approaches. The chapters are topically arranged, but they preserve the flow of history in two ways. First, each chapter explains the historical development of the topic under consideration. Many ethical topics have very ancient beginnings, and by highlighting their history we better grasp how moral philosophers fall into specific traditions. Second, most chapters here focus on a specific famous philosopher who championed a particular tradition, such as Aristotle, Locke, or Kant, and the chapters are chronologically ordered based on when these key philosophers lived. Although chronologically ordered, the chapters in this book are conceptually self-contained, which allows them to be read in any order. To achieve the full benefit of their historical sequence, though, they should be read in the order presented. Many of the sections and subsections of the chapters are also conceptually self-contained discussions. So, a reader who skips some sections will not necessarily be at a loss to understand the remaining sections.
I wish to thank friends and colleagues who have generously offered advice on this book’s contents. Alphabetically, they are John Danley, Ken King, Norman Lillegard, Matthew McCormick, James Otteson, Gregory Pence, Louis Pojman, and Laura Roberts.
#1. CULTURAL RELATIVISM
INTRODUCTION.
In the early 20th century journalist Robert L. Ripley traveled around the world gathering stories of strange rituals, which he published in his popular column “Believe It or Not.” Our fascination with bizarre practices of other cultures is no less prominent today. Some foreign practices amuse us, such as that of Japanese men who tattoo their entire bodies. Others make us squeamish, such as a Latin American culinary practice of eating handfuls of live bugs in tortillas. However, other foreign cultural practices make us morally indignant. One of these is female genital mutilation, which is common in East African countries and parts of the Near East. This practice involves removing portions of a young girl’s genitals, including her clitoris and labia. Social scientists estimate that over 100 million women alive today have had this operation performed. An article published by UNICEF describes the situation for one six-year-old girl and her sympathetic aunt:
The lights are dim and the voices quiet. Tension fills the room where Nafisa, a six-year-old Sudanese girl lies on a bed in the corner. Her aunt, 25-year-old Zeinab, watches protectively as her niece undergoes the procedure now known as female genital mutilation (FGM), formerly called female circumcision. In this procedure, performed without anaesthesia, a girl’s external sexual organs are partially or totally cut away. Zeinab does not approve. For the past year she has been trying to persuade her mother and sister to spare Nafisa from the procedure. She lost the battle with her family, but she will stay at her niece’s side. She watches Nafisa lying quietly, brave and confused, and remembers her own experience. Zeinab underwent the procedure twice. At six years old she had the more moderate form of FGM, called Sunni, in which the covering of the clitoris is removed. When she was 15 the older women of her family insisted she have the Pharaonic form, which involves removal of the entire clitoris and the labia and stitching together of the vulva, leaving just a small hole for elimination of urine and menstrual blood. Zeinab still remembers the pain, the face of the women performing the procedure, the sound of her flesh being cut. She also remembers bleeding and being sick for weeks.
More extreme cases of female genital mutilation involve sewing closed the vagina, leaving only a small opening for passing urine and blood. The purpose of these procedures is to reduce sexual drive and thus assure a woman’s virginity prior to marriage and her fidelity after marriage. Female genital mutilation is performed as a rite of passage, sometimes involuntarily, in unsterile conditions and without the aid of painkillers and antibiotics. Ironically, older women of the community perform the procedure, who themselves underwent it in their youth. Although this practice is cultural rather than religious, it occurs predominately in Muslim countries.
In North America, we find the practices of female genital mutilation grossly immoral. They are not only illegal, but there is widespread public outcry against other cultures that endorse this practice. However, while we attack female genital mutilation, East African defenders of this practice charge that American culture has degenerated to the point that promiscuity, infidelity, and childbirth outside of marriage are acceptable behaviors. By guarding against such sexual misconduct, their culture, so they claim, is on morally higher ground. From a philosophical perspective, these foreign practices directly challenge our traditionally held moral views and they make us wonder whether their morality/immorality reduces to mere social convention.
For centuries, moral philosophers have reflected on the philosophical problems raised by clashing social values. The principal question raised is whether moral values exist independently of human social creations. Cultural relativism is the view that societies create their own traditions, pass them along from one generation to another, and continually reinforce them through rewards and punishments. On this view morality is a distinctly human invention and it makes no sense to look for a foundation of morality outside of human social approval. This is so for the east African practice of female genital mutilation as well as the American condemnation of this practice. This isn’t simply an issue of anthropological curiosity concerning how different people and cultures view morality. Instead, it is an issue of whether my and your specific moral obligations are grounded in nothing other than cultural approval.
Cultural relativism is a component of a broader moral theory called moral relativism, which holds more generally that moral values are human inventions. This broader theory includes both (a) individual relativism, namely, that each person creates his own moral standards, and (b) cultural relativism, namely that social cultures create moral standards. We will focus here on only the theory of cultural relativism and look at its historical development as well as the key arguments against it.
CLASSIC CULTURAL RELATIVISM.
The issue of cultural relativism was one of the first hotly debated issues in Western moral philosophy, and the views of early cultural relativists have trickled down to today largely unchanged.
Xenophanes and the Greek Skeptics. One of the earliest accounts of cultural relativism was offered by the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes (570-475 BCE.). His writings were unfortunately lost through time, but enough isolated quotations from his works survive so that we still have a general view of his position. Xenophanes focuses specifically on the culturally relative nature of religious beliefs, rather than ethical beliefs per se. In two fragments, Xenophanes explains how different ethnic groups depict their deities differently:
Ethiopians say that their gods are flat-nosed and dark, Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired.
If oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses and oxen to look like ox, and each would make the gods’ bodies have the same shape as they themselves had.
In the first of these passages Xenophanes notes that different ethnic groups portray the gods with physical attributes that are unique to their own people. In the second passage he speculates that if animals could draw then they would make the gods look like animals. Xenophanes’ point is that our own cultural experiences shape the things that we say about the gods, and our religious views aren’t really objective descriptions of the gods themselves. Although Xenophanes’ comments are confined to our views about the gods, it isn’t much of a stretch to extend this reasoning to ethical issues and see that morality is also culturally relative. Greek historians after Xenophanes fueled the discussion of cultural relativism in both religion and ethics by providing graphic examples of differing cultural practices in various civilizations of the day. After surveying the traditions of different countries, the Greek historian Heroditus (484-425 BCE) concluded that “Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best.” Heroditus’s point is that, not only do we all adopt the religious and ethical value systems of our respective cultures, but we typically go a step further and denounce foreign value systems as inferior to our own.
The
next big step in the development of cultural relativism was made by ancient
Greek philosophers of the skeptical tradition, who were directly influenced by
Xenophanes. Once again, we only have sketchy information about the earliest
philosophers of the skeptical tradition.
The founder of this tradition was a charismatic and original moral
philosopher named Pyrrho (c.365-c.275 BCE),
who had several loyal followers, but wrote nothing himself. In one of his few
surviving statements Pyrrho argues that in moral matters we cannot determine
whether anything is truly good or bad, and, so, we must suspend judgment. As
the skeptical tradition continued, followers of Pyrrho developed this line of
reasoning and, eventually the views of the skeptics were systematically written
down by Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus (fl. 200 CE). Sextus presents the
definitive statement of cultural relativism. Drawing on anthropological data
presented by earlier Greek historians, Sextus gives example after example of
moral standards that differ from one society to another. These include
attitudes about homosexuality, incest, cannibalism, human sacrifice, killing
the elderly, infanticide, theft, and eating animal flesh.
Sextus believes that this social diversity in and of itself is a
good reason to adopt cultural relativism. The differing cultural attitudes are
quite extreme and Sextus clearly wants to shock us into thinking seriously
about this diversity. Here is his account of differing attitudes concerning the
treatment of dead human bodies:
Some
wrap the dead up completely and then cover them with earth, thinking that it is
impious to expose them to the sun; but the Egyptians take out their entrails
and embalm them and keep them above ground with themselves. The fish-eating
tribes of the Ethiopians cast them into the lakes, there to be devoured by the
fish; the Hyrcanians expose them as prey to dogs, and some of the Indians to
vultures. And they say that some of the Troglodytes take the corpse to a hill,
and then after tying its head to its feet cast stones upon it amidst laughter,
and when they have made a heap of stones over it they leave it there. And some
of the barbarians slay and eat those who are over sixty years old, but bury in
the earth those who die young. Some burn the dead; and of these some recover
and preserve their bones, while others show no care but leave them scattered
about. And they say that the Persians impale their dead and embalm them with
niter, after which they wrap them round in bandages. [Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 3:24]
In this passage Sextus describes that in different cultures dead bodies are buried in the ground, embalmed above the ground, eaten by various animals, eaten by people, or burned. Sextus concludes from his discussion that “the skeptic, seeing so great a diversity of usages, suspends judgment as to the natural existence of anything good or bad or (in general) fit or unfit to be done.” That is, for Sextus, we should doubt the existence of an independent and universal standard of morality and, instead, see that moral values are the result of cultural preferences.
Sextus and other Pyrrhonian skeptics have a particular goal in mind when advancing cultural relativism, and that goal is personal tranquility. Suppose that I believe that there exists a fixed and objective standard of truth; suppose further that I follow this standard as a guide for my life. Since I see myself on the side of moral truth, then I will become morally outraged by those who don’t follow these moral standards. I’ll quarrel with other people, angrily condemn them, and ultimately become miserable through my extreme convictions. However, once I seriously reflect on the wide diversity of cultural practices that Sextus describes, I will be more inclined to see that my own cultural practices are rooted in social custom. I will then get off my moral high horse and be content to accept the moral diversity that I see in other cultures.
Later Defenders of Cultural Relativism. In the centuries following Sextus Empiricus, Christian philosophers of the middle ages harshly rejected the skepticism and cultural relativism of their Greek predecessors. According to most medieval Christian philosophers, moral values are eternal principles, mandated by God, and binding on all humans. Although some “heathen” cultures might consistently engage in strange moral practices, such as ceremonial prostitution, medieval philosophers argued that these practices are simply immoral, despite how widespread they are. This Christian view of morals continued for several centuries and was finally challenged by skeptically-minded philosophers in the Enlightenment period, who were inspired by Sextus Empiricus’s writings.
French
philosopher Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
(1533-1592) was among the first to resurrect the skeptical views of Sextus
Empiricus. Montaigne wholeheartedly endorsed Sextus Empiricus’s cultural
relativism, which he articulates in an essay titled “Of Custom, and That we
should not Easily Change a Law Received” (1580). In this essay Montaigne
describes dozens of strange cultural practices from foreign countries, focusing
especially on sexually-related practices. In one culture, unmarried women “may
prostitute themselves to as many as they please” and, when they get pregnant,
they can lawfully abort their fetuses “in the sight of everyone”. In another
culture, male guests at weddings are invited to sleep with the bride even
before the groom does, “and the greater number of them there is, the greater is
her honor and the opinion of her ability and strength.” Montaigne describes one
culture in which gender roles are strangely reversed: houses of prostitution
contain young men “for the pleasure of women” and “wives go to war as well as
the husbands”.
In
addition to sexually-related practices, Montainge lists others from almost
every aspect of life:
[There
are societies] where they boil the bodies of their dead, and afterwards pound
them to a pulp, which they mix with their wine, and drink it; where the most
coveted burial is to be eaten by dogs ... where they live in that rare and
unsociable opinion of the mortality of the soul; ... where women urinate
standing and men squatting; where they send their blood in a token of
friendship ... where the children nurse for four years, and often twelve; ...
where they circumcise the women; ... in another it is reputed a holy duty for a
man to kill his father at a certain age; ... where children of seven years old
endured being whipped to death, without changing expression ... [Essays, “Of Custom”]
Montainge concludes that
custom has the power to shape every possible kind of cultural practice.
Although we pretend that morality is a fixed feature of nature, morality too is
formed through custom: “the laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived
from nature, proceed from custom.” Montaigne argues further that social peer
pressure is so strong, that we automatically approve of our society’s customs:
“as everyone has an inward veneration for the opinions and manners approved of
and received among his own people, no one can, without very great reluctance,
depart from them, or apply himself to them without approval.”
Almost two centuries later, Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) reiterated Sextus’s skeptical view of cultural relativism. Hume presents a fictitious dialog in which the leading character argues that many moral practices are accepted by some cultures, yet condemned by other cultures. Some of these include attitudes about homosexual pedophilia, adultery, infanticide, and euthanasia. The leading character in Hume’s dialog boldly concludes that “fashion, vogue, custom, and law [are] the chief foundation of all moral determinations.”
Cultural relativism received another boost from sociologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Perhaps the best example is American sociologist William Graham Sumner (1840-1910). In his classic work Folkways (1906), Sumner argues that the morality of a given society simply amounts to the folkways or traditions of that society. For Sumner, theories that try to ground morality in some absolute standard are misguided:
In the folkways, whatever is, is right. ... When we come to the folkways we are at the end of our analysis. ... Therefore rights can never be “natural” or “God-given,” or absolute in any sense. The morality of a group at a time is the sum of the taboos and prescriptions in the folkways by which right conduct is defined. [Folkways, 1:31]
Sumner argues that there are no exceptions to this: a society’s values concerning slavery, abortion, killing the elderly, and cannibalism only reflect that society’s traditional taboos and prescriptions.
One of the most articulate philosophical defenders of cultural relativism in recent years is Australian philosopher J.L. Mackie (1917-1981). Like his skeptical predecessors, Mackie believes that moral values vary from culture to culture. Also like his predecessors, he believes that there simply are no objective moral values, a view that he calls moral skepticism. For Mackie, this means that morality is something that we invent: “Morality is not to be discovered but to be made: we have to decide what moral views to adopt, what moral stands to take.” From Xenophanes on through Mackie, the key points associated with the tradition of cultural relativism are these:
· Moral values are created by society (cultural relativism)
· Moral values vary from culture to culture (social diversity)
· There is no objective moral truth (moral skepticism)
THE ARGUMENT FROM SOCIAL DIVERSITY.
A running theme among cultural relativists is that values differ from society to society, and the best explanation for such variation is that societies simply create their own values. We can express this intuition more formally in the argument here:
(1) Morally significant values differ from society to society.
(2) These differing moral values are either grounded in objective moral standards or they are grounded only in social custom.
(3) It is difficult to explain how these differing moral values are grounded in objective moral standards.
(4) Therefore, it is more reasonable to believe that these differing moral values are grounded in social custom.
To understand this argument we need to go through it premise by premise. Premise 1 advocates the view of social diversity, that is, the view that different cultures in fact have different moral values. Defenders of this claim -- from Sextus down to Mackie -- believed that this is a matter of factual observation. We can directly see differences in values between various cultures. For example, Sumner argues that our observations will clearly reveal that even taboos against incest are “by no means universal or uniform, or attended by the same intensity of repugnance.” Similarly, in our own day, we directly witness that many East African cultures favor the practice of female genital mutilation; by contrast, it is plain that we in North America abhor the practice. If we properly make our observations, then there should be little dispute about the truth of social diversity with at least some morally significant values.
If we grant premise 1 above as a matter of fact, we can next consider the other two premises of this argument. Premise 2 maintains that there are two contending ways of understanding where moral values come from. Values are either grounded in (a) an objective standard that is independent of human society, or (b) social custom. Over the centuries, moral objectivists have proposed a variety of objective standards of morality. For example, some objectivists hold that moral standards are grounded in eternal truths, or in laws of nature, or in God’s commands. What is in common with all of these views is that, according to moral objectivists, moral standards are grounded in a more stable level of reality beyond mere human social custom. Premise 2, then, is at least a plausible way of seeing the possible foundations of moral standards: they are either grounded in a more stable level of reality beyond social custom, or they are grounded in social custom.
Finally, premise 3 states that it is hard to see how moral standards are grounded in an objective reality if they change from culture to culture. Moral objectivists believe that our objectively grounded moral beliefs should shape our cultural practices. For example, on the objectivist view, we condemn stealing in our culture because there is an objective standard that tells us that stealing is wrong. However, when we consider the wide variety of conflicting moral values in societies around the world, it does not seem reasonable that these all are grounded in a universal and objective standard. On face value, then, premise 3 also seems credible.
The conclusion that we draw, then, is that moral values are grounded in social custom, which -- compared to moral objectivism -- more reasonably explains the moral diversity that we see. Suppose, for example, that I believe that polygamy is immoral while my friend from Saudi Arabia believes that polygamy is morally permissible. The more reasonable explanation is that our respective cultures influence our individual beliefs, rather than the objectivist alternative that objectively informed beliefs influence our cultures. Cultural relativism, then, is the most reasonable explanation for why our moral beliefs mimic our culture. Although this argument seems plausible at face value, critics have pointed out some flaws. We will look at two criticisms.
Balfour’s Criticism: Many Customs are Simply Depraved. Over the centuries critics of cultural relativism have attacked the above argument from social diversity on several grounds. One response is to challenge premise 3, which states that “It is difficult to explain how these differing moral values are grounded in objective moral standards.” The entire argument from social diversity will topple if we can offer a cogent explanation as to how differing cultural values might be grounded in an objective reality. In responding to Hume’s statement of cultural relativism, 18th century Scottish philosopher James Balfour (1705-1795) argued that, even if customs do vary throughout time and from place to place, there is still an underlying ideal moral standard that these cultures simply ignore. The whole batch of these cultures are simply corrupt, and these corrupt values only highlight true morality all the more:
Such an opinion leads to this unavoidable consequence,
that whatever any set of men, or even any individual person, may think fit to
do, however criminal in itself, must yet be deemed a virtue; because it is
immediately agreeable to those who practise it.
But let us suppose that a whole nation should universally
countenance a bad practice, this never would alter the nature of things, nor
give sanction to vice. ...
But so far are the depraved customs of the multitude, or even the practices of the great from being the just standard of morality, that virtue shines forth with the greater lustre from amidst bad practices; and even an universal corruption renders it the more conspicuous. [Delineation, 5]
Part of Balfour’s attack is plausible, namely his contention that the customs of the multitudes may be depraved. Perhaps there exists an objective standard of morality and our particular moral beliefs become distorted as we try to perceive objective standards through our diverse cultures. So, if I believe that polygamy is immoral and my friend from Saudi Arabia believes polygamy is moral, then at least one of us, and perhaps both of us, might have a distorted understanding of objective morality.
Even if this is so, we need to know how to determine which of our practices are depraved and which reflects true morality. Balfour’s solution is that the true standard of morality “shines forth with the greater lustre from amid bad practices.” For Balfour, the contrast between depraved practices and true morality is so pronounced that we all can intuitively see the difference. But Balfour’s solution does not work. There is no question that Balfour genuinely believed that some moral values “shine forth” as more legitimate than others. But it probably never occurred to Balfour that the strength of his moral convictions might have been shaped by his 18th century Scottish moral tradition, which was heavily influenced by Calvinistic religious beliefs. In a different culture, other moral values might “shine forth” to those people as more legitimate than those that Balfour holds as true. In short, since our internal intuitions themselves may be products of our respective cultures, then we can’t safely appeal to these intuitions to determine which of our practices are depraved, and which reflect true morality.
Objectivist moral philosophers have offered a variety of more stringent litmus tests to help distinguish between true morality and depraved values; these proposed tests include rationality, natural law, religious scripture, and human nature. Although these appear to be more rigorous than Balfour’s test, they nevertheless all fall prey to the same problem that Balfour’s did. That is, they all may be products of our respective cultures. A chemical test to determine the pH level of swimming pools will work the same around the world. A mathematical test to determine the structural integrity of bridge designs will also work the same around the world. But notions of rationality, natural law, scripture, and human nature are matters of debate and do not represent uniform standards. Ultimately, if we can’t offer a uniform test to distinguish true morality from depraved values, then we should accept premise 3 in the above argument from social diversity.
Rachels’s Criticism: Some Key Values do not Vary. A second approach to attacking the argument from social diversity is to challenge premise 1 above, which holds that “many morally significant values differ from culture to culture.” Some critics of relativism argue that there is less variation than relativists claim. According to critics, although it is true that many values do vary from culture to culture, a large number of these so-called “values” are not truly moral in nature and would be better classified as rules of prudence. That is, they involve personal lifestyle choices that, in spite of their strangeness, don’t warrant moral condemnation by anyone. Many of the culturally relative practices noted by Sextus Empiricus fall into the prudence category, such as his discussion here about men wearing dresses:
no man here would dress himself in a flowered robe reaching to the feet, although this dress, which with us is thought shameful, is held to be highly respectable by the Persians. And when, at the court of Dionysis the tyrant of Sicily, a dress of this description was offered to the philosophers Plato and Aristippus, Plato sent it away with the words “A man am I, and never could I don a woman’s garb”... [Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 3:24]
Even Sextus’s above discussion of the differing cultural rituals surrounding dead human bodies also involves issues of prudence rather than morality. The same goes for many social customs that Montaigne lists.
Distinguishing between true morality and prudence takes away some of the force from premise 1 in the above argument. But some critics of relativism argue even further that, if we look hard enough, we will actually find basic moral values that are the same in all cultures. In Hume’s “Dialogue” on cultural relativism, one character in the conversation who opposes relativism argues just this point:
It appears, that there never was any quality recommended by any one, as a virtue or moral excellence, but on account of its being useful, or agreeable to a man himself, or to others. For what other reason can ever be assigned for praise or approbation? Or where would be the sense of extolling a good character or action, which, at the same time, is allowed to be good for nothing? All the differences, therefore, in morals, may be reduced to this one general foundation, and may be accounted for by the different views, which people take of these circumstances. [“A Dialogue”]
The point of the above reasoning is that, although there might be some diversity with specific types of conduct, there is one general moral standard that we find in all societies. This uniform moral standard involves the usefulness of conduct and the pleasure that we immediately experience from conduct. Consequently, underlying general moral standards don’t vary from culture to culture.
In recent years James Rachels made a similar argument for three core common values: caring for children, truth-telling, and prohibitions against murder. For Rachels, these are all necessary conditions for the survival of a society since, if a society consistently violated any one of these, it would disintegrate. As to caring for children, all societies need to replenish its supply of educated and productive citizens, otherwise in only a few generations that society would die out. As to truth telling, the successful operation of industries, businesses, schools and governments all rest on trusting each other’s word. I would not buy groceries at my local store if I couldn’t trust that the grocer would let me take home what I paid for. As to prohibitions against murder, if society allowed us to randomly kill other humans just for sport, then everyone would head for the hills and stay as far from society as possible.
The list of common values doesn’t need to stop with the three that Rachels mentions. Society would fall apart if there were no prohibition against stealing either privately held or publicly held property. Imagine what would happen, for example, if, to expand my garden, I simply annexed my neighbor’s back yard or the street in front of my house. Society also must commit itself to enforcing its core values, otherwise the values themselves would be empty words.
So, by distinguishing between issues of morality vs. prudence, and by hunting down common social values, the critic of relativism successfully raises serious questions about the truth of premise 1. What at first seems to be an obvious truth for relativists -- that moral values differ from culture to culture -- now seems more like a hasty generalization. The critic’s victory may not be absolute, though, especially when we consider sexual values such as those concerning pedophilia, incest, homosexuality, adultery, and polygamy. Most of us don’t see these as issues of mere prudence, and attitudes about these practices indeed vary so widely that we can’t link them with a core value. Nevertheless, enough damage is done to premise 1 of the argument from social diversity that the sweeping conclusion of that argument no longer follows. That is, it isn’t necessarily more reasonable to believe that differing moral values are grounded in social custom.
COMMON ARGUMENTS AGAINST CULTURAL
RELATIVISM.
Even if the argument from social diversity fails as a proof for cultural relativism, this isn’t a decisive loss for the cultural relativist. The issue of cultural variability is not necessarily the central issue behind the cultural relativism/objectivism dispute. For, even if all cultures throughout time consistently endorsed a particular value, such as “murder is wrong,” cultural relativists could still argue that this value is grounded in societal traditions and is not based on objective standards. There may be common factors that prompt all societies to create similar values, such as prohibitions against murder. But this doesn’t make these values any less social creations, and, on this view, moral values would still be grounded in social approval. So, we may distinguish between two ways of viewing cultural relativism:
Variable cultural relativism: moral values are grounded in social approval, and these values vary in different cultures.
Nonvariable cultural relativism: moral values are grounded in social approval, and these values do not necessarily vary in different cultures.
Nonvariable cultural relativism is a more modest approach to relativism since it grants in principle that moral values might be the same in different cultures. Although this sidesteps the objection that Rachels offered, even this more modest relativism has its critics. We will consider three objections.
Whether Cultural Relativists deny all Moral Values. Critics of cultural relativism sometimes argue that denying an objective basis of morality amounts to rejecting all moral values. In response, this criticism confuses the cultural relativist’s position with that of the moral nihilist who holds that there are no moral values at all, but simply repressive social conventions that a truly free person will reject. The cultural relativist, on the other hand, recognizes society’s moral values, and even endorses them; he only denies that they are grounded in an objective realm. To clarify the relativist’s point, it is helpful to distinguish between the issues of metaethics and issues of normative ethics. Metaethics investigates where morality comes from, and one of the key issues of metaethics concerns whether moral values exist in an objective realm that is external to human society. The relativist denies that moral values exist in a realm outside of human society.
Normative ethics, by contrast, involves a quest for the best values and guiding principles of human conduct. Some leading normative values are the Ten Commandments of Judaism, the Confucian principle of reciprocity that we should avoid treating others in ways we wouldn’t want to be treated ourselves, and the utilitarian position that we should pursue the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. The cultural relativist will acknowledge the binding nature of some set of moral values such as these. Like everyone, the relativist too lives in societies, raises children, is appalled by crime, and hopes for a better future. There are many practical and emotional reasons to adopt and perpetuate normative moral standards. In short, it is only the more abstract metaethical issue of objectively existing values that the relativist questions. The relativist would argue that it is the normative question that really matters in life and makes us good citizens.
Whether Cultural Relativism leads to Horrible Values. Critics of cultural relativism argue that, without the objective grounding of moral principles, societies will create many arbitrary and perhaps horrible values and simply give them the rubber stamp of “morality.” By grounding values in fixed objective principles, though, our values will be good ones. The cultural relativist has three replies to this charge. First, even if we grant that there are objective moral principles, objectivists simply assume that these principles are fixed, unchanging, and essentially good. However, this is a position that must be argued for, rather than merely assumed. The 19th century German Idealist philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) believed that the universe is a giant spirit that is continually evolving. As the absolute spirit evolves through time, so too do human social values evolve on earth: they started out a bit rough but over time became better. Hegel may not have gotten the story of the universe right, but the cultural relativist will argue that even if moral principles are objective, they are not necessarily unchanging, nonarbitrary, or even good.
Second, for the sake of argument, let’s grant that there are objective moral principles that are unchanging. However, if we have no clear litmus test for recognizing them, then, in point of practice, we may create our value system independently of them. So, the mere existence of objective moral principles alone doesn’t guarantee how we will formulate our social value systems. The objectivist needs to bolster his views with additional theories about how we recognize these unchanging moral truths and how we are motivated to follow them. In our discussion of Balfour’s criticism, we noted that this is difficult to do.
Third, cultural relativists don’t necessarily hold that moral values are completely arbitrary creations of human society. Some aspects of human nature might influence the kinds of customs that we approve of. Sextus Empiricus and most other traditional philosophers argued that humans and animals alike are biologically designed to find some things pleasing and other things painful. Skeptical philosophers also point to other factors in human nature that might influence how we develop social conventions, such as our natural sense of self-preservation, fear of death, and desire to live in peace. Even Mackie argues that we “create” morality in response to our natural drive to improve our well being as active social creatures. Cultural relativists would still deny that moral values are permanently fixed through our natural drives; however, relativists don’t typically deny altogether the influence of human nature.
Whether Cultural Relativism rules out Universal Judgments. Perhaps the strongest resistance to cultural relativism comes from our negative reactions to horrible customs such as female genital mutilation. Regardless of how defenders of these practices view them in their homelands, we feel strongly that they are wrong. It isn’t simply that they are wrong here in the United States, but they are wrong everywhere, even in the cultures in which they are practiced the most. The cultural relativist doesn’t seem justified in making this universal pronouncement if he denies the existence of an independent and objective moral realm.
In response, imagine that morality is a game we play that involves following specific rules that society creates. Some of the rules have us arrive at a normative list of dos and don’ts. Other rules involve punishments and rewards for those that break or abide by these dos and don’ts. Finally, other rules govern the vocabulary that we use when playing the morality game. For example, I’m allowed to call you a “good person” if you consistently perform the “dos”. I am allowed to call you a “bad person” if you consistently violate the “don’ts.” The rules also allow me to make universal pronouncements, such as “female genital mutilation is wrong everywhere.” Not only can I say this, but, according to the rules, I can also mean it, argue for it, feel anger towards those who perform this practice, and stipulate that defenders of this practice are simply wrong. All of these rules are consistent with the cultural relativist’s view that morality is grounded in a combination of human nature and social convention.
The moral objectivist won’t be satisfied with this game-based notion of “universal pronouncement.” Instead, objectivists such as Balfour will still argue that we need objective moral principles to give full force to universal pronouncements. The relativist can agree that there is in fact a greater metaethical strength to the objectivist’s notion of universal pronouncement. However, the relativist will argue that nothing is gained with objectivism from the standpoint of universal pronouncements. The rules of the morality game remain the same for both the objectivist and the cultural relativist, and both are entitled to make universal pronouncements according to the rules.
Summary. The moral theory of cultural relativism began with Xenophanes who held that our common notions of god are culturally shaped. Philosophers of the skeptical tradition, beginning with Pyrrho, refined the notion of cultural relativism and drew attention to the broad diversity of cultural practices. Cultural relativists were typically moral skeptics insofar as they denied an objective foundation of morality. The principal argument for cultural relativism is based on social diversity. That is, cultural relativism is a better explanation of social diversity than is moral objectivism. Against this argument, Balfour maintains that moral objectivism is really a better explanation insofar as many accepted social practices are corrupt and true objective morality is intuitively clear. In response, we noted that Balfour fails to provide an adequate test for distinguishing true morality from corrupt morality. A second criticism of the argument from social diversity is that social practices are not as diverse as the relativist contends, and, in fact, some key moral values are cross-cultural. We agreed with this criticism and concluded that the argument from social diversity fails.
We noted that there are two distinct approaches to cultural relativism: variable cultural relativism and nonvariable cultural relativism. Although the variable approach has problems, we noted that the nonvariable approach does not suffer from the same problems and common arguments against it are not convincing. This nonvariable cultural relativism indeed allows for the adoption of traditional moral values. It also does not lead to the establishment of horrible values any more than moral objectivism might. And, finally, it allows for the possibility of making universal moral judgments.
Sources
Quotations on female genital mutilation is from “Combatting genital mutilation in Sudan,” Sara Mansavage, UNICEF Feature No. 00109.SUD
Quotations by Xenophanes are Richard D. McKirahan, Philosophy Before Socrates (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), Chapter 7.
The
quotation by Heroditus is from The
Histories, tr. Aubery de Selincourt, (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1972), p. 220.
Quotations by Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book 3, Sect. 198-238, translated by R.G. Bury.
Quotations by Michel Eyquem de Montaigne are from “Of Custom, and That we should not Easily Change a Law Received” in his Essays (1580), adapted from the translation by Charles Cotton.
David Hume’s “A Dialogue” is included at the end of his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), which is available in several modern editions.
Quotations by William Graham Sumner are from Folkways (Boston: Guinn, 1906), Chapter 1, section 31; Sumner’s discussion of incest is in Chapter 12.
Quotations by J.L. Mackie are from Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, (New York: Penguin Books, 1977).
James Balfour’s attack on cultural relativism is in his A Delineation of the Nature and Obligation of Morality (1753), Chapter 5. That specific chapter is reprinted in James Fieser’s Early Responses to Hume, Volume 1 (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999).
James
Rachels critique of cultural relativism is in “The Challenge of Cultural
Relativism,” Elements of Moral Philosophy,
(New York: McGraw Hill, 1993).
Suggestions
for Further Reading
For discussions
of the Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition see J.
Annas and J. Barnes, The Modes of
Scepticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); M.F. Burnyeat,
ed., The Skeptical Tradition (Los
Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1983); Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers, trans. R.D.
Hicks, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925) 9:69-116; R.J.
Hankinson, The Sceptics (London:
Routledge, 1995); C.L. Stough, Greek
Skepticism (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1969).
For discussions of cultural
relativism and moral objectivism see Ruth Benedict, Patterns
of Culture (New York: Pelican, 1946); Gilbert Harman, Judith
Jarvis Thomson, Moral Objectivity,
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); Michael Krausz, ed., Relativism: Interpretation and Conflict, (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1989); John Ladd, ed., Ethical
Relativism (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1973); Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997); Edward Westermarck, Ethical
Relativity (Paterson: Littlefield, 1960).
#2.
PLATO’S MORAL OBJECTIVISM
INTRODUCTION.
Many people believe that reality is
limited to the physical world that we see around us. On this view, rocks,
rivers, plants, bugs and all of the things that we experience throughout the
day are physical in nature and can be fully explained through scientific
investigation. Even human consciousness and social interaction are rooted in
physical reality and, with enough investigation, science might fully unravel
all of their mysteries, including the nature of morality. On the other hand,
other people believe that the physical world around us is only the tip of the
iceberg and that a grander reality exists beyond the immediate and superficial
world of physical appearances. The New Age spiritualist movement today is a
graphic example of this view, and New Age believers use a variety of paranormal
techniques to help tap into that higher reality.
A vivid example is the recently
conceived spiritualist technique of past-life
therapy. A New Age version of psychoanalysis, past-life therapy involves
uncovering traumas from one’s previous lives. Past-life therapists argue that
by dredging up and resolving past-life traumas, we can heal ourselves of
psychological discomforts and mental disorders in our current lives. Reported
traumas from past-life experiences often involve moral components. For example
in one case study, a man with symptoms of schizophrenia revealed through
hypnosis that in a past life during the middle ages he was unjustly tortured by
religious officials. After working through that lingering issue, the man
allegedly became a normal functioning person. In a training manual on past
life-therapy, William J. Baldwin explains the underlying psychology of this
technique. He argues that our subconscious minds retain memories of everything
that our spirit-being has ever experienced:
This includes the present lifetime, prior
lifetimes, potential future lifetimes, the non-physical realms between
incarnations, and the entire track of awareness back to and including the
experience of separating or extending from Creator Source.
Many
people in the U.S. would probably view past-life therapy with great skepticism.
Part of the reason is that reincarnation is inconsistent with the notions of the
afterlife that we find in traditional Judeo-Christian theology. Also,
paranormal phenomena such as past-life experiences don’t lend themselves to
scientific scrutiny and so they lack the kind of hard evidence that impels
belief. Although we might doubt the validity of past-life therapy, we must
recognize that it reflects a common conviction that truth resides in a higher
reality beyond what we see around us. At one time in the history of Western
philosophy, theories of higher reality were commonplace. The most influential
of these was offered by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (428-348 BCE).
By almost any standard, Plato ranks
among the greatest philosophers of the world and many scholars view him as the
most important philosopher of Western civilization. We find in Plato a drive
for absolute truth that goes beyond the merely popular opinions of the
multitudes. We also find in Plato a conviction that the physical world around
us is a bad copy of the true reality of things that exists on a higher objective
plane. True knowledge -- including true moral
knowledge -- involves an intimate encounter with this objective plane. Plato holds a position called moral objectivism, which is the view that morality has an
objective foundation that is independent of human approval. Over the centuries,
philosophers have proposed a variety of theories of moral objectivism. Some
philosophers argued that morality
is grounded in the creative will of God, or the laws of nature, or in eternal
truths. Plato’s theory, though, is the grandfather of all of these. Not only
does Plato give the first detailed account of moral objectivism, but many moral
objectivists after Plato incorporated his basic assumption into their own
theories. That basic assumption is that moral standards are grounded in a
higher and more perfect realm of moral truth. We will look at the central
features of Plato’s moral objectivism and assess some of the criticisms
launched against his theory.
BACKGROUND OF PLATO’S MORAL THEORY.
Like most philosophers, Plato devised his theory in reaction to other views that he wasn’t happy with. Plato was especially bothered by philosophers of his day who held that moral values are simply human inventions. A brief look at the intellectual climate of Plato’s day will help illuminate the motivation behind his theory.
The Sophists and Socrates. Plato lived at a time when there was a special need for education throughout the ancient Greek city-states. Governments required more administrators and, to fill the void, aristocratic parents hired freelance philosophers to educate their sons for this vocation. Although not members of any particular philosophical school of thought, these teachers were collectively known as Sophists, a term which means “one who makes people wise.” They traveled widely throughout the Greek world and contracted out their services from one city-state after another. Many Sophists claimed the ability to teach any subject, but their specialization was rhetorical skills, particularly the kind of arguing and persuasive speaking techniques needed in public debates. The Sophists had a skeptical attitude toward the pursuit of truth and, by and large, maintained that in many areas of inquiry, truth is only a matter of persuasive argumentation. The true position in a debate is the winning position. To this end, they offered an argument strategy called “antilogic”, which involved learning to argue both sides of a case as strongly as possible. Using this technique, students could make the weaker argument become the stronger. Not only did the Sophists have flexible attitudes towards truth, but many also had flexible attitudes about morality and held that people create their own values to serve their particular needs. Civic leaders didn’t always admire the Sophists’ contributions to Greek society and leaders often questioned their moral and religious integrity.
Plato’s teacher was Socrates (469-399
BCE) who, like the Sophists, spent much of his life teaching Aristocratic
children in the city of Athens. Unlike many of the Sophists, though, Socrates
had a more optimistic view of morality, and Plato was directly influenced by
this. Socrates left no writings and the most reliable information that we have
about him comes from Plato. Plato’s surviving writings consist mostly of
dialogs, which, in modern editions, total around 1,500 pages. In honor of his
teacher, Plato introduces a character named “Socrates” who is the main speaker
and hero of many of the dialogs. In the dialogs the character Socrates moves
among a strange cast of politicians, aristocrats, and Sophists -- most also
modeled after historical figures. Socrates typically tries to point out
conceptual flaws in the views held by the other characters, although rarely do
these rivals concede to Socrates’ position. Scholars commonly divide Plato’s
writings into chronological groups of composition. The consensus for the past
century has been that Plato’s earliest dialogs aim at presenting the views of
the historical Socrates while, in later periods of composition, the Socrates
character is more of a dramatic mouthpiece for Plato’s own views. And, at times
Socrates is no longer a central character at all. Although it is a nearly
impossible task to mark off Socrates’ actual views from those of Plato’s even
in the earlier dialogs, we may make a few generalizations about the historical
Socrates’ views on morality.
Historians of philosophy often
credit Socrates with shifting the focus of philosophy from issues of cosmology
to moral issues. Philosophers prior to Socrates were more like scientists and
discussed questions about the primary elements of the physical world and how
natural forces balance between perpetual change and regularity. Socrates,
though, was principally concerned with moral
choice, that is, with choosing to follow a lifelong path of philosophical
inquiry, justice and courage, rather than a path of conventional expectations.
For Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living” and “Know yourself” are
mottoes that encapsulate this quest. By continually picking away at the moral
and religious views commonly held by Athenian society, Socrates alienated
himself from Athenian leaders. In their eyes, Socrates was just another
troublesome Sophist that threatened to undermine social order. For this reason,
when Socrates was around 70 years old, they put him on trial for atheism and
corrupting the youth. He was found guilty and executed.
Protagoras’ Individual Relativism. Socrates and Plato both strongly opposed the Sophists’ moral relativism – that is, the view that moral values are simply human inventions. The undisputed champion of moral relativism in Socrates’ day was the Sophist Protagoras (485-420 BCE). Protagoras expresses his moral relativism in his famous statement that “man is the measure of all things”. Most simply, this means that people are their own standard of truth in all judgments. Only fragments of Protagoras’ original writings survive and we are left to speculate about the precise meaning of this statement. Plato gives his own interpretation about what exactly Protagoras meant. First, when Protagoras states that “man is the measure of all things,” “man” refers to individual humans, rather than human society collectively. In this sense, then, Protagoras’ statement means that each person’s judgment constitutes the standard of truth -- rather than the view that a society’s judgment constitutes the standard of truth. So, on Plato’s interpretation, Protagoras is an individual relativist, which is the view that moral obligations are grounded in each individual person’s own approval. This stands in contrast to a different form of moral relativism called cultural relativism, which holds that moral obligations are grounded in the approval of social cultures. A second point that surfaces in Plato’s discussion concerns two possible interpretations of Protagoras’ statement:
§ each person’s private judgment constitutes the standard of truth for everyone
§ each person’s private judgment constitutes the standard of truth for whoever makes that judgment
Plato inclines towards the second interpretation, which is less radical.
A third point about Protagoras’ statement concerns its longer and less familiar form as we find it in Plato’s discussion:
Man is the measure of all things – of things that are, that they are, and of things that are not that they are not.
Literally speaking, Protagoras holds that individual people create their own truth, even to the extent that something exists or doesn’t exist. With many things, Protagoras’ individual relativism presents no serious problem. For example, if I taste some honey and find it sweet, then my judgment that it is sweet makes it true for me. If you, by contrast, don’t find honey sweet when you taste it, then it is true for you that honey is not sweet. In this situation, individual relativism makes sense, since I am describing how something tastes to me based on the physiology of my taste buds, and you are describing how it tastes to you based on your own physiology. But Protagoras pushes this individual relativism to an extreme and holds that the truth of everything is relative to the person. This is where many of us have problems with his individual relativism, since some truths don’t seem to be relative. For example, suppose that I believe it is true that “2+3=7” or “Tokyo is in France.” According to Protagoras, these statements are true for me, even though our normal reaction is that these statements are just plain false and are not true in any sense. For Protagoras, the same individual relativism that applies to judgments about honey or Tokyo also applies to judgments about morality. We all have our own perceptions about what things are good, evil, just and unjust. We can also defend our respective moral views with arguments. In this sense, each of our moral views is true for us respectively.
In short, on Plato’s interpretation of Protagoras, my personal beliefs constitute the standard of truth for me in all matters. We don’t know precisely why Protagoras adopted individual relativism, but we can speculate based on a skeptical statement that he made about religion:
Concerning the gods, I am unable to know either that they exist or that they do not exist, or what their appearance is like. For, there are many things that hinder knowledge, such as the obscurity of the matter and the shortness of human life.
Protagoras argues here that our limited human construction seems unable to penetrate religious reality. Because of this, he pleads ignorance on the subject of religion. Using parallel reasoning, he might also hold that we are unable to penetrate any ultimate moral reality and thus must plead ignorance on this matter as well. In the absence of our knowledge of a moral reality, an alternative is to emphasize the authority of our personal moral preferences.
PLATO’S
MORAL THEORY.
Although Plato presents Protagoras’
individual relativism very meticulously, Plato nevertheless harshly rejected
it. One problem that Plato had with this view is that he believed that it was
self-defeating. For Plato, if I am the judge of what’s true and false for me,
then I can simply judge that Protagoras’ theory of individual relativism is
itself false, and it thereby becomes false. More precisely Plato’s criticism is
this:
(1) According to Protagoras, if I judge something
as false then it is false for me.
(2) Suppose that I judge it false that
“individual people are the measure of all truth”
(3) Therefore, it is false for me that
“individual people are the measure of all truth”
Plato
has hit the nail on the head by locating the central problem with Protagoras’
theory of individual relativism. Specifically, the problem is with the sweeping
claim that the truth of all things is
relative to me, which includes the theory of individual relativism itself.
Although the truth of many things certainly is relative to me, such as how
something tastes, it is simply false that the truth of all things is relative to me. The most that Protagoras can
justifiably say, then, is that “Man is the Measure of some things.” Even
though we must reject Protagoras’ sweeping view of individual relativism, the
question still remains about the status of moral truths. Is morality relative
to individual people just as tastes are relative to individual people? In
reaction to Protagoras, Plato maintains that moral truths aren’t relative but,
instead, are grounded in a higher objective reality.
Theory of the Moral Forms.
Plato develops his
account of moral objectivism in what scholars call the theory of the forms. Plato’s theory of the forms is complex and
different features of the theory emerge in different writings of Plato. It will
help to begin with a simplified view of his theory and focus on some details
after that. According to Plato, the universe consists of two distinct realms.
First there is a visible world of appearances, which contains physical objects
such as rocks, chairs, cars, and people. Second, there is an intelligible world
of the forms, which contains
universal abstract objects, such as 2+3=5 and justice. Plato uses the Greek
term eidos to refer to these abstract
entities, a word that is often translated as idea, or form. “Idea”,
though, isn’t the best translation since ideas exist only in the minds of
people, whereas eidos, for Plato
exist independently of anyone’s mind. The English word “form” avoids this
pitfall and better captures Plato’s view of abstract entities that are eternal,
unchanging, and nonphysical in nature.
Imagine that we took a tour of the
realm of the forms -- assuming that such a place exists. We first see that the
form-realm contains no physical things, and, perhaps not even any
three-dimensional things. It is tempting to see it as a realm of spirit beings, although we must avoid
thinking of it as a heavenly domain containing the spirits of the dead. It is
more like the unconscious furniture of the spirit-realm. On our tour we
encounter mathematical relations such as 2+3=5. Although these aren’t conscious
spirits, they are nevertheless spiritual substances. We might think of these as
eternal mathematical laws and, for Plato, these are mathematical forms. Plato’s
notion of the forms in general was likely sparked by the universal and
unchanging nature of such mathematical principles. People often refer to
mathematics as the universal language since, regardless of what country we are
from, we rely on and understand the same basic mathematical notions. Not only
do mathematical concepts cut across human cultures, fans of science fiction
believe that mathematics is the universal language of intelligent life
elsewhere in the universe. In fact, a research organization called the SETI Institute (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence) makes a serious attempt to eavesdrop on
mathematically-based messages broadcasted from distant parts of outer space.
Moving beyond mathematical forms on
our tour, we come across the essence of moral concepts such as justice,
charity, honesty, and beauty. For Plato, these are the pure forms of moral
traits that people have. For example, every person who exhibits the moral
attribute of justice must possess a specific feature; according to Plato, that
feature is “doing one’s own business”. Like mathematical and physical forms,
moral forms function as ideal models for how we identify and categorize things.
Specifically, we rely on moral forms to identify and categorize proper actions.
Finally on our tour we encounter the
grandest form of all, namely, the form of the
Good. Higher than justice and the other moral forms, the Good is the source
of ultimate moral perfection in the other moral forms, and perhaps is even
ultimate perfection in general. Plato
himself struggles to adequately explain the nature of the Good. He
argues that we can’t simply reduce the Good to qualities that we commonly
value, such as pleasure or wisdom. However, he argues, we all seek the Good
and, like the sun, the Good illuminates everything that we know:
In like manner [to
the sun] the good may be said to be not only the author of knowledge to all
things known, but of their being and essence, and yet the good is not essence,
but far exceeds essence in dignity and power. [Republic, 509b]
The
latter part of the above passage is especially puzzling. Plato states here that
the Good “far exceeds essence”, that is, the Good does not exist in the way
that the other forms exist. One interpretation of this is that the regular
forms have one kind of spiritual existence while the Good has an even more pure
kind of spiritual existence.
Returning to the physical world, we
see particular things, such as a bridge across a river, or a man donating to
charity. For Plato, these physical things are imperfectly molded from various
mathematical and moral forms. For example, when building a bridge across a
river we rely on calculations about stress points and other mathematical
components. In Plato’s terminology, the particular physical things that I see participate (methexis) in different abstract forms. The structure of the bridge,
for example, participates in abstract mathematical forms. The bridge,
though, will never be perfect given the faulty material nature from which it is
made. Similarly, when a person donates to charity, he participates in
the moral form of charity; the overall morally good person participates in the
form of the Good.
Recollection
and Knowledge of the Forms. Perhaps the
strangest part of Plato’s theory is his explanation of how we obtain knowledge
of the forms. Plato
describes this as a recollecting process (anamnesis):
in a previous existence we were directly acquainted with all of the forms but
over the years we’ve suppressed our knowledge of them. To know the forms, then,
we must try to recollect them. This component of Plato’s theory places him in a
spiritualist tradition that extends to the present New Age movement. Plato does
not discuss the theory of past-life recollection in the Republic specifically. However, the theory of recollection appears
so strongly in several of his other dialogs that we can’t dismiss it as a
fluke. His most graphic description of it is this:
Thus the soul,
since it is immortal and has been born many times, and has seen all things both
here and in the other world, has the knowledge of virtue or anything else
which, as we see, it once possessed. All nature is akin, and the soul has
learned everything, so that when a man has recalled a single piece of knowledge
-- learned it, in ordinary language
-- there is no reason why he should not find out all the rest, if he keeps a
stout heart and does not grow weary of the search, for seeking and learning are
in fact nothing but recollection. [Meno,
81d]
The interesting thing about this passage is the
statement that the soul “has seen all things both here and in the other world”. For Plato, it is in the other world that we encountered the
forms. Suppose that I was born again and again in this present physical world.
If I can’t gain knowledge of the forms through normal sense perception, then,
even over a thousand lives, I would not be any closer to knowledge of the
forms. By describing the procedure as recollection,
rather than reacquaintance, Plato
implies that it is impossible for us to directly encounter the forms in our
present worldly situation, and all that we can do is recollect them. Our
previous acquaintance with the forms, then, was in some other world.
Plato states that this other world
is one in which we did not have a “human shape.” More to the point, it is a
world in which our souls were not restrained either by our bodies or by
physical things. Plato has a low regard for both the physical human body and
the visible world and blames them for our misfortunes. He writes that the body
flusters, maddens, and imprisons the soul. It is diseased, destroys the value
of life, and the true philosopher despises it. By contrast, the other world in which we encountered the
forms is spirit-like, which is better suited to the spiritual makeup of our
souls.
These are the key points of Plato’s
moral theory:
·
Moral
values are eternal, unchanging, and nonphysical forms
·
The highest
moral value is the form of the Good, which is ultimate moral perfection
·
People
become moral by participating in the moral forms
·
We gain
moral knowledge by recollecting the moral forms from a past-life encounter
CRITICISMS
OF PLATO’S THEORY.
From Plato’s own day to the present,
critics have exposed problems with various aspects of his moral theory. Shortly
after his death, Plato’s pupil Aristotle (384-322 BCE.) took issue with the
Platonic theory of the forms. Aristotle’s main dispute with Plato is vividly
represented in a famous painting by Italian Renaissance artist Raphaello Santi
(1483-1520) titled The School of Athens.
In this painting, an elderly Plato and a young Aristotle are walking side by
side down a staircase. Plato is pointing up at the sky, designating his view
that ultimate reality exists above and beyond the physical world. Aristotle,
though, is pointing down at the ground, designating his view that ultimate
reality is imbedded right here in the physical and tangible world. For
Aristotle, there simply is no higher objective realm of the forms. In is book Metaphysics, Aristotle launches a stream
of attacks on Plato’s theory, two of which we will look at here.
Aristotle’s First Criticism: The Forms do
not add to our Knowledge. Plato
is convinced that true knowledge about anything consists of knowledge of the
relevant forms. For example, to truly understand the nature of charity, I must
understand the form of charity. A second criticism by Aristotle addresses this
specific point. According to Aristotle, introducing the idea of the forms
neither explains the nature of particular things nor helps us better understand
particular things:
Above all one might discuss the question
what on earth the Forms contribute to sensible things, either to those that are
eternal or to those that come into being and cease to be. For they cause
neither movement nor any change in them. But again they help in no wise either
towards the knowledge of other things ... or towards their being ...
Aristotle
suggests that the theory of the forms simply confuses things by introducing
unneeded concepts. Suppose that I want to better understand the notion of
charity and I read in Plato that the true nature of charity rests in the form of charity. Not only does this fail
to advance my understanding of charity, but it also clutters my discussion with
unneeded metaphysical entities. Insofar as we understand a “form” of charity,
we do so by studying specific instances of it. The medieval philosopher William
of Ockham (d. 1347) recommended that we avoid multiplying entities beyond what
we actually need. Known more popularly as “Ockham’s Razor,” Ockham suggests
that we stick with our most metaphysically simple explanation. Aristotle
anticipates Ockham’s recommendation by pointing out that Plato’s account of the
forms merely adds useless metaphysical baggage.
Aristotle and Ockham are correct
that, as a rule, our theories should contribute to our knowledge and that we
should rid our theories of pointless complications. However, this criticism
loses sight of an important motivation behind Plato’s theory. The physical
world around us is very imperfect. If we try to understand the concept of
charity by surveying this world, we will arrive at an inadequate concept. Most
people are not as charitable as they should be. Even when we are charitable we
often act from ulterior motives, such as increased reputation. There may be
very few truly representative examples of charity upon which we can draw.
Nevertheless, in spite of the inadequacy of our real-life experiences of
charity, we in fact have formed a more perfect conception of charity. For
Plato, we need standards before we can evaluate specific instances. We
need to know what charity ideally is before we can evaluate an alleged instance
of charity. This requires more reflection than observation, and perhaps even
requires that we cast our vision away from this imperfect world toward a more
perfect world. By proposing the theory of the forms, Plato offers us a perfect
world upon which we can contemplate. So, Plato’s hypothesis of the realm of the
forms isn’t as needless as Aristotle charges.
Aristotle’s Second Criticism:
Participation is not Explained.
We’ve seen that the notion of participation is a key element of Plato’s theory.
For example, I am a charitable person to the degree that I participate in the form of “charity”. In our discussion above, the
notion of participation was explained using the notion of “molding”, that is, I
am charitable to the extent that I mold
myself after the moral form of charity. However, Aristotle criticizes that no
such descriptions adequately explain how physical things get their attributes
from the realm of the forms:
All other things cannot come from the Forms in any of the usual
senses of “from”. And to say that they are patterns and the other things
participate in them is to use empty words and poetical metaphors.
In
this passage Aristotle argues that Plato’s reliance on the notion of
“participation” does not help explain the connection between forms and physical
things. He argues that Plato uses the notion of “participation” metaphorically,
and that Plato never moves beyond the metaphor to give a more rigorous
explanation.
Taken literally, the term
“participation” means that one thing shares in or takes part in another thing,
such as when I participate in a game of checkers. This implies an activity of
giving or receiving. In this sense, it seems clear that the dog in front of me
does not literally give or receive anything with respect to the forms.
Aristotle is correct, then, that Plato uses the term “participation”
metaphorically, which only hints at the point that he wants to make. We might
try to help Plato out by using other notions instead of “participation”, such
as molding, mimicking, copying, or instantiating. But these too are only
metaphors. We still lack a descriptive procedure that explains how the forms
impact the world of appearances. What is worse, though, is that the nature of
the issue itself will never allow for a literal and direct description. Plato
is offering a theory concerning the interaction between two levels of reality
-- the physical and nonphysical. Our words and experiences are firmly grounded
in how things interact within the physical realm and we lack the conceptual
framework to literally denote features of a nonphysical realm.
Plato’s theory of the forms isn’t
necessarily refuted by the fact that his notion of “participation” is
unavoidably metaphorical. I am locked into metaphors in much of my daily
conversation as when I talk about my mental events, such as a splitting
headache or a painful thought. Religious believers are similarly locked into
metaphors when saying anything about God or the spirit-realm. In these arenas
we accept metaphors without demanding a more precise account. However, we also
recognize that there is great margin for error in what we say on these subjects
when using metaphors. The metaphorical nature of Plato’s description places his
theory in the same camp as talk about mental events or religion: although we
may allow his metaphors, at the same time we must also recognize the high
margin of error.
Mackie’s First Criticism: the Concept of the Forms is Queer. In recent decades Plato’s moral theory
has come under sharp attack by Australian philosopher J.L. Mackie (1917-1981).
For Mackie, there is something “queer,” or counterintuitive about any
description that we might give of Plato’s realm of the moral forms:
This [argument from queerness] has two
parts, one metaphysical, the other epistemological. If there were objective
values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange
sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if
we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral
perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing
everything else.
For
Mackie, the metaphysical problem with
Plato’s theory of the moral forms concerns its strange spirit-like realm. Where
is this realm? How many dimensions does it have? Mackie argues that the
strangeness of this realm alone is an argument against its existence. The epistemological problem with Plato’s
theory concerns how we gain knowledge of these spirit-like things. We gain
knowledge of the physical world through our five senses. But by what faculty do
we gain knowledge of this spirit-like realm? Plato says that it involves a
faculty of recollection -- similar to our memory faculty -- that dredges up
knowledge from past-life experiences. However, few of us would claim to have
this type of recollective faculty. Even if we say that it is a type of rational
faculty, this presumes that it is like a mental eyeball that peers into another
realm. It doesn’t seem that we have this kind of mental faculty either. The
crux of the problem, for Mackie, is that it isn’t clear how the peculiar,
non-natural realm of the forms has any connection with natural objects and
human actions: the two realms are too distinct.
How might Plato respond to this
charge? Here’s one possible response. A classic issue in philosophy is the mind-body problem, which wrestles with how mental events -- which are
nonphysical in nature -- connect with my body -- which is physical in nature.
Suppose, for example, that I pull my physical hand away from a flame because of
the pain that I mentally experience. For this to occur, the signal of pain must
first travel through my physical nerves. At some point, then, this physical
signal mysteriously jumps into my mental awareness. I then mentally decide to
remove my hand, and this decision mysteriously turns into another physical
nerve signal as my hand moves. The point is that mental experiences seem to be
different kinds of things than merely physical events, and explaining the
connecting links between the two is a mystery. So, using this as a parallel
example, Plato might argue that, since we accept the mystery of the mind-body
connection, then we can also accept the mystery concerning the connection
between the natural realm and the realm of the forms.
The problem with this response,
though, is that the two situations are not truly parallel. With the mind-body connection,
I have clear experience of both my mind and body, and I can’t reasonably
question the existence of either of them. However, as Plato himself
acknowledges, I don’t have direct experience of the realm of the forms; at best
I recollect the forms. This means that I can reasonably doubt the existence of
that realm. It also means that anything I say about that realm will sound
strange and far-fetched. So, the puzzle that Mackie raises seems genuine, and
it is here that we find the biggest problem with Plato’s moral theory. The
questions that Mackie asks are in fact pertinent to any theory of moral objectivism, and not simply Plato’s theory of
the forms. There are a variety of moral theories, which, like Plato’s,
maintains that moral values are grounded in an objective reality that is
independent of human approval. With any of these we may rightly inquire about
the metaphysical nature of that reality and how we gain access to it. Whatever
answer the moral objectivist gives to our inquiry, the odds are good that it
will be as counterintuitive as Plato’s theory of the forms.
Mackie’s Second Criticism: a
Psychological Explanation of Objectification. In a second criticism of Plato, Mackie
offers a psychological explanation for why people erroneously believe that
there are objective values of any kind. According to Mackie, people have a
natural tendency to objectify values that are actually subjective in origin.
For example, if I smell a rotten orange and it disgusts me, then I
automatically think that the rotten orange itself
is disgusting in nature. Clearly, though, the element of disgust is a
subjective quality pertaining to my reaction, and it isn’t really a feature of
the orange itself. I erroneously project the quality of disgust onto the orange. One reason that we make
this mistake is because something is
in fact external, namely, the orange itself. We then mistakenly think that everything pertaining to the orange is
also external.
According to Mackie, the same
psychological projection takes place with moral values. Society places external
constraints on me to behave morally, such as society’s demand that I shouldn’t
run around naked. This societal demand itself is external to me; that is, I
didn’t invent this myself. Since this societal demand is external, I then
erroneously think that everything about the demand is external, including the
moral value in question, such as “it is wrong to run around naked in public.”
Mackie concludes that it is more reasonable to adopt this psychological
projection theory rather than the alternative view that moral values have a
genuine external existence in a spirit-like realm of the forms.
Mackie’s argument strategy here is
appropriate. That is, it is relevant to consider a psychological explanation
for why we might hold to an erroneous view. To illustrate, suppose that my
neighbor wrongly believes that a grotesque monster is stalking him. One way of
exposing his error is to hire a surveillance team to continually watch him;
presumably they wouldn’t detect a monster. However, another way to expose his
error is to offer a cogent explanation of why he is having these delusions. I
might, for example, show that there is a history of schizophrenia in his family
and that he is another unlucky victim. My neighbor himself may not be convinced
by this and instead may think that I’m plotting with the monster against him.
However, to an impartial observer, this would be decisive evidence that my
neighbor was in error about the monster. Similarly, a follower of Plato might
not be persuaded by Mackie’s theory of psychological projection. However, to
the extent that we can consider the issue impartially, Mackie’s theory of
psychological projection is reasonable enough to make us think long and hard
about why we might hold to a conception of objective moral forms.
THE
LEGACY OF PLATO’S MORAL THEORY.
In spite of criticisms such as
Aristotles, Plato’s theory of the forms had a strong impact on philosophers for
more than 2,000 years. His theory of moral objectivism in particular was kept
alive by one generation of philosophers after another.
Plato’s Influence.
The fate of Plato’s
theory in the years immediately following his death is one of the great ironies
in the history of philosophy. Plato was very optimistic about our ability to
know truth and he was very bold in his assertion about the existence of an
ideal world beyond our immediate perceptions. He opened a school called the Academy to perpetuate his views, and
when he died leadership of the Academy was passed onto Plato’s nephew. However
Plato’s nephew quickly rejected the doctrine of the forms and transformed the
Academy into a mathematical school. A few generations later the new leaders of
the Academy completely abandoned Plato’s optimistic philosophy and instead
embraced a radical skepticism that emphasized suspending judgment. The
skeptical trend started by the new Academy reaches down to our present day, and
Mackie among others is part of that skeptical tradition. Although the Academy
in later years set skepticism aside, it never returned to a pure Platonist
tradition, but instead adopted an eclectic approach to philosophy that blended
the views of many philosophers. The Academy was eventually shut down in 529 CE
by Roman emperor Justinian.
The demise of Plato’s theory in the
Academy by no means put an end to the influence of Plato’s philosophy in
ancient times. Religious philosophers were especially attracted to Plato’s
theory. The realm of the forms coincided with religious conceptions of the
spirit-realm, and the notion of the Good coincided with the role that God plays
as the most perfect being that permeates all things. The best examples of this
are Plotinus (205-270 CE), an Egyptian-born mystical philosopher, and Augustine
(354-430), a Bishop and theologian of the early Christian Church. Both of these
philosophers offered moral theories that paralleled Plato’s, and their
respective moral views inspired religious philosophers throughout the Middle
Ages. During much of this time only one of Plato’s writings -- the Timaeus -- was accessible to scholars.
More of Plato’s writings surfaced in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, and
with them came a revived appreciation of Plato’s moral theory.
In 17th century England a
group of philosophers educated at Emmanuel College in Cambridge championed a
movement called Cambridge Platonism.
These philosophers were especially turned off by Puritan and Calvinist
Christian theologians who held that God somewhat arbitrarily ruled the universe
according to the whims of his will. Instead, the Cambridge Platonists argued
that there was a rational order to the universe and God, as a rational being,
followed that rational order.
The most influential of the
Cambridge Platonists was Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688). Cudworth argued that moral
principles are eternal truths that depend on no one’s will -- not even God’s.
Following Plato, Cudworth insisted that moral truths have a reality in a
spiritual realm, which was greater than the reality that physical things have
in the “stupid and senseless” material realm:
... those things which belong to Mind and
Intellect, such as Morality, Ethicks, Politicks and Laws are, which Plato
calls, The Offspring and Productions of Mind, are no less to be accounted
natural Things, or real and substantial, than those things which belong to
stupid and senseless Matter. [Treatise
concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, 4.6.8]
Cudworth
departed from Plato somewhat in explaining how we gain knowledge of eternal
moral truths. Plato believed that the moral forms existed outside of anyone’s
mind, and that, in a previous existence, we encountered them directly.
Cudworth, though, believes that we gain knowledge of eternal moral truths by
tapping into God’s understanding of those truths. Even though God didn’t invent
these eternal moral truths, God nevertheless thinks about them and this
knowledge is then passed onto us.
Cudworth’s
view of eternal moral truths was widely adopted during the 18th
century, and advocates clearly attributed the origins of this theory to Plato.
We see this in the following passage by 18th century moral
philosopher Catherine Macaulay:
… [morality involves] a necessary and essential difference
of things, a fitness and unfitness, a proportion and disproportion, a moral
beauty and a moral deformity, an immutable right and wrong, necessarily
independent of the will of every being created and uncreated, explained by the
philosopher Plato under the form of everlasting, intelligent ideas [i.e.,
forms], or moral entities, coeval with eternity....
Macaulay
continues describing this Platonism as the “Catholic opinion in the creed of
the moralist.” That is, from Macaulay’s perspective, the Platonist account of
morality was the accepted view of the
time. Macaulay’s observation is important in two ways. First, she indicates
that moral objectivism was the standard philosophical view of morality in her
time. Second, she indicates that – in spite of different terminology – the
moral objectivism of her day was essentially Plato’s theory.
Skepticism about Plato’s Moral Objectivism. The theory of morality that we find in Plato -- and those he inspired -- requires a unique belief commitment to higher objective levels of reality. Traditional Christian believers distinguish between an earthly realm and a higher heavenly realm. Nontraditional religious believers, such as advocates of New Age religion, also think that reality has higher levels than what we see around us. These religious believers may very likely feel that Plato and his successors have accurately captured the higher and objective nature of morality. Others of us, though, may feel that the physical world around us is all that we can be sure of, and notions of the forms or eternal truths don’t resonate with our earth-grounded view. This seems to be the conviction underlying the criticisms of Plato by Aristotle and Mackie. Aside from these earth-grounded criticisms, a skeptically-minded person might see an even greater problem with Plato’s assertions about objective moral reality. For the skeptic, the true nature of morality is completely inaccessible to us. We strive to be moral, but we will never know exactly what morality is and exactly why we approve of some actions and not others.
To illustrate, imagine that someone gave you a box that you couldn’t open, but which has something inside. If you shake the box in one direction then you feel its weight shift and you hear a rattling noise. If you shake it in other directions then its weight shifts differently and it makes thumps, crackles or squeaks. You and your friends come up with different theories about what exactly is inside the box, but none of you knows for sure. When philosophers investigate the nature of reality, they frequently find themselves in a similar situation and don’t have direct access to the thing that they want to explain. Philosophers have recognized this to be so with a variety of things. For example, I don’t have direct access to the actual physical objects in front of me, such as rocks, trees, or houses. Instead my knowledge of rocks, trees, or houses is restricted to what appears to my five senses, and my senses are limited in what they can tell me about these objects. Similarly, when I’m speaking with other people, I don’t have access to their thoughts; for all I know, the people I talk to may not have any thoughts at all and may simply be unconscious biological robots. Even my own thinking process is to a large extent beyond my reach. When I go to the grocery store and buy vanilla ice cream rather than chocolate, I don’t know exactly what is behind my decision to select one over the other. In all of these cases we devise theories to help explain the nature of external objects, or other people’s minds, or my own mental processes. Often these theories are a bit too aggressive and they make claims that go beyond the available facts.
According
to the skeptic, to this list of inaccessible things we need to add the nature
of morality. We struggle to uncover the true nature of morality, but all that
we end up with is a wide range of theories. These theories sometimes locate the
nature of morality in our individual preferences, such as Protagoras suggested,
or higher objective levels of reality, such as Plato suggested. These
explanations are not only diverse, but they can’t easily be reconciled with
each other. There’s a point at which we can reasonably abandon the quest for
the true nature of morality and simply accept that the nature of morality is
inaccessible to us. Theories such as Protagoras’s and Plato’s are interesting
guesses about the hidden nature of morality. But, like other philosophical
theories, these theories are frequently too aggressive and they make claims
that go beyond the available facts. The
skeptic’s approach to philosophy introduces its own set of problems, which we’d
have to sort out before completely agreeing with the skeptic about the
inaccessible nature of morality. Nevertheless, most philosophers agree that a
dose of skepticism is a good thing insofar as it helps us from becoming too
aggressive with our theories.
The upshot of the situation for
Aristotle, Mackie and the skeptic is that, although we regularly read and
admire Plato, it is difficult for us to actually believe in his theory of the objective moral forms. When we
can’t accept a literal interpretation
of a theory, a common tactic is to salvage something of the theory through a metaphorical interpretation. With
past-life therapy, for example, William J. Baldwin suggests that, for past-life
therapy to work, a therapist does not have to literally believe in reincarnation:
Whether these [past-life] are memories of
actual events or metaphoric, symbolic, even archetypal images, the therapist
must work with the imagery and narrative and emotions as if they were real.
They are real for the client, and the emotional impact of these memories can
seriously disrupt a person’s life.
We
may adopt a similar strategy in handling Plato’s theory. Rather than seeing the
forms as objectively existing spiritual things, we might simply see the forms
as expressing a demand for unchanging standards for moral judgment.
Protagoras’s “man is the measure” doctrine is simply inadequate, and, in its
place, we require a more fixed criterion of morality.
We can also take Plato’s theory
metaphorically as a statement about our own moral state as we strive for
perfection. Most of us try to be good people. We avoid stealing, we try to be
polite, and we try to help others in need. Unfortunately, most of us fall short
of moral perfection. We behave selfishly, disregard other people’s feelings, speak
unkind words about others and perform a host of other bad acts. However, in
spite of our failed efforts to be morally good, we always know that there is a
more perfect version of each of us. If I am truly concerned about moral
improvement, I will think about what that more
perfect me is like. How might that more
perfect me be more generous, courageous, or even-tempered than I am now?
What are the key features of justice or charity that I lack and the more perfect me has mastered? Plato and
his successors all warn against limiting ourselves to what we see when looking
in a mirror. They also warn that moving beyond the present world is a very
difficult task. By reading objectivist account of morality such as Plato’s, I
may learn from philosophers who have struggled to look beyond the present
world, and I may discover the features of that more perfect me.
Summary. Prior to Plato, Protagoras articulated
the view that “Man is the measure of all things.” Plato interpreted this as a
statement of individual relativism, namely, that whatever I judge to be true is
true for me. Against Protagoras’s individual relativism, Plato offered a theory
of moral objectivism. According to Plato, moral truth is located in the
spirit-realm of the forms. We gain moral knowledge through past-life
recollection of the moral forms, especially the form of the Good. Aristotle
criticized Plato for offering a theory that was unnecessarily complex. In
response, we noted that, given the state of moral imperfection around us, Plato
was justified in offering his complex theory of the forms. Aristotle also
criticized that Plato does not adequately explain the key notion of
participation, but simply rests on a metaphor. In response, we noted that
Plato’s use of metaphors may be justified, although such metaphors have the
disadvantage of being imprecise. Mackie criticized that Plato’s theory is
“queer” with regard to the nature of the forms and how we gain knowledge of the
forms. We agreed with Mackie’s criticism and noted that this is a central
problem for other theories of moral objectivism. Mackie also offered a
psychological projection theory that
explains why philosophers such as Plato wrongly believe that moral values are
objective.
Tracing the influence of Plato’s
moral theory, we noted Cudworth’s view that we access eternal moral truths by
seeing them in God’s mind. In conclusion, we noted that religious believers
have an affinity with Plato’s notion of a higher moral realm. However, more
earth-bound people have difficulties accepting his theory literally, and may
wish to view it more metaphorically as a demand for unchanging moral standards
or a vision of a more perfect self.
Sources
William J. Baldwin Past Life Therapy: A Training Manual, (Bethel Publications, 1997).
The Sophists are discussed in Richard McKirahan’s Philosophy Before Socrates (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994).
Protagoras’s views are described in Plato’s Theaetetus 152a, 161-173; his statement about the existence of the gods is from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, ix. 52.
Plato’s distinction between the physical
and intellectual realms is vividly illustrated in his analogy of the divided
line in the Republic, 6:510-511; his
theory of recollection is presented in Phaedo,
75; the analogy between sense perception and knowledge appears in the Republic, 6:507-509 and Theaetetus, 185-187. Quotations from are
The Dialogues of Plato,
translated by Benjamin Jowett (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1901).
Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato’s theory
of the forms are found in Metaphysics
1.9, which is available in several recent translations.
J.L. Mackie’s criticisms of Plato are in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, (New York: Penguin Books, 1977).
Plotinus’s
discussion of morality is from Enneads 1.2.1, the best translation of which is by A.H. Armstrong, Plotinus, 7 vol. (Cambridge, Mass.:
Heinemann 1966-1988).
Augustine’s discussion of virtue is from City of God, 19.25, which is available
in several recent editions.
The quotation by Ralph Cudworth is from Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable
Morality, 4.6.8, which is recently edited by Sarah Hutton (Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
The quotation by Catherine Macaulay is
from A Treatise on the Immutability of
Moral Truth (London: Dilly, 1783); there is no recent edition of
this work.
Thomas Kuhn’s discussion of paradigm
shifts is in his book The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
Suggestions for Further Reading
For discussions of Plato’s moral theory
see Terence Irwin, Plato’s Ethics
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Terence Irwin, Plato’s Moral Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977); The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed.
Richard Kraut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
For discussions of Plotinus see The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed.
Lloyd P. Gerson, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996); Dominic J. O’Meara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1993).
For discussions of Augustine’s theory of
knowledge and ethics see E. Portalie, A Guide to the Thought of Saint Augustine,
(Chicago, IL: Regnery, 1960); C. Kirwan, Augustine,
(London: Routledge, 1989).
For a discussion of Cudworth see J.A. Passmore Ralph
Cudworth, an Interpretation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ,
1951).
#3. VIRTUE THEORY
INTRODUCTION.
The media has recently focused on a phenomenon called road rage in which drivers become enraged at offending motorists and confront them. In Durham, North Carolina a driver’s education teacher was enraged when his car was cut off by another vehicle:
[David] Cline was teaching two female students how to drive when the other car cut them off, according to police. Cline instructed the student driver to chase down the car, police said. They caught up to [Jon David] Macklin, and Cline got out and punched him, police said. Macklin then took off, and the instructor allegedly had the student chase him again.
The teacher was charged with simple assault and was suspended from his job. He later resigned from his middle school position. Although this particular situation has an element of irony, many other stories of road rage are nothing but tragic. On Virginia’s George Washington Parkway, two motorists confronted each other when changing lanes, and the dispute erupted in a high-speed battle. Both drivers lost control, passed over the centerline, and killed two innocent motorists. Studies by the AAA suggest that about 30 deaths in a one-year period are directly attributable to road rage. However, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stated that in a one-year period, two thirds of 41,000 total highway deaths are at least partly attributable to road rage. In either case, most of the deaths occur from assailants using their vehicle as a weapon or by using guns they have with them.
The circumstances that spark road rage are mostly trivial. A motorist might brake abruptly, swerve into another lane or honk the horn. This prompts shouting, tailgating, obscene gestures, high-speed chases, and direct physical confrontations. There are several psychological explanations for the road rage phenomenon. Traffic is continually becoming heavier and thereby causing sensory overload. Many assailants are in large sports utility vehicles, which perhaps gives them a false sense of invulnerability. The root of the problem, however, is that the assailant experiences a strong emotion of anger and seemingly loses ability to control it. Many relatively minor events in our daily lives have the potential to make us angry. The cat might knock over a plant, the new stereo might malfunction, a store clerk might be rude, or the neighbors might be too noisy. We learn to combat our angry urges, though, and react in a civilized manner.
Anger is just one strong feeling that we must keep in check. Others are sexual appetite, hunger, envy, malice, hatred, resentment, fear, pride, and desire. Imagine what people would be like if we never retrained any of these emotions. We would constantly be at war with others and society as we know it would collapse. Controlling strong emotions is a matter of training. Our parents and teachers begin training us when we are young. As we get older, we continue the training process on our own. Eventually we develop habits that become fixed character traits of our personality. In short, we acquire what moral philosophers call virtues. A virtue is a good character trait that we develop that regulates emotions and urges. Typical virtues include courage, temperance, justice, prudence, fortitude, liberality, and truthfulness. Vices, by contrast, are bad character traits that we automatically develop in reaction to the same emotions and urges when we fail to acquire virtues. Vices include cowardice, insensibility, injustice, and vanity. As a fully developed moral theory, virtue theory is the view that the foundation of morality is the development of good character traits, or virtues. A person is good if he has virtues and lacks vices.
Early Greek View of Virtues. Historically, virtue theory is one of the oldest moral theories in Western philosophy, having its roots in ancient Greek civilization. The Greek term for virtue is arete, which means “excellence.” Greek epic poets and playwrights, such as Homer and Sophocles, described the morality of their heroes and antiheroes in terms of their respective virtues and vices. Their characters’ successes and failures hinged on their virtuous or vicious character traits. For example, in Sophocles’s tragic play Oedipus Rex, king Oedipus’s life crumbles after he unknowingly kills his father and sleeps with his mother. These tragic acts themselves, though, are a consequence of his character flaws, particularly pride and overconfidence.
Discussions of the virtues become more formalized by Plato who stressed four particular virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Early Christian theologians dubbed these cardinal virtues, given their central role for Plato, especially regarding Plato’s description of the human psyche. According to Plato, the human psyche has three distinct parts: one that reasons, one that wills, and one that has appetites. The job of our reason is to make sound judgments, and the job of the will is to ally itself with reason rather than appetite. We have wisdom when our reason is informed by general knowledge of how to live. We have courage when our will always obeys reason, regardless of what our appetites say. We have temperance when our reason governs our appetites. We have justice when each of the three parts of our psyche performs its proper task with informed reason in control. Plato believed that these virtues were unified insofar as all four require a properly developed reason. So, for Plato, if I have one of these virtues, I will necessarily have them all. Although Plato’s vision of reason’s involvement in virtues influenced later theorists, the details of his four cardinal virtues had limited impact given their somewhat forced reliance on his specialized theory of the psyche. The more developed analysis of virtues was left to his student, Aristotle (384-322 BCE.).
ARISTOTLE’S THEORY.
Aristotle’s account of virtue is found in his work The Nichomachean Ethics, which he named in honor of his son Nichomachus. The work is long, at around 200 pages, and only the highlights of his theory can be presented here.
Appetite-Regulating Habits. There are three main steps in Aristotle’s discussion of virtues. The first step involves establishing the fact that humans strive after an ultimate good that defines who we are. The subject of ethics is an attempt to discover this goal. For Aristotle, our ultimate good is an end that we seek in and of itself, and not merely for the sake of something else. In general, we call this ultimate end “happiness” (eudamonea), although this term is used in so many ways that we need to specify more precisely what it involves. Human happiness is different than the contentment that dogs experience, for example, and such happiness is unique to our human construction and purpose. The second step in Aristotle’s discussion involves discovering our uniquely human purpose by analyzing our uniquely human psyche. He offers this division of the human psyche:
Calculative (logic, math, science)
Rational <
Psyche Appetitive (emotions, desires)
Irrational<
Vegetative (nutrition, growth)
According to Aristotle, the psyche has an irrational element that is similar to that of non-human animals, and a rational element that is distinctly human. The highest aspect of the rational part is calculative in nature, and is responsible for the human ability to contemplate, reason logically, and formulate scientific principles. This is a uniquely human ability. At the other extreme, the most primitive and irrational element of our psyche is the vegetative faculty that is responsible for our physical nutrition and growth. This is a factor present in all life forms, and not just in humans and other animals. Between the two extremes there is an additional faculty that is by nature irrational but is guided by reason. This is the appetitive faculty and is responsible for our emotions and desires. The appetitive faculty is irrational since even lower animals experience desires. However, this faculty is rationally guided since humans have the distinct ability to control these desires with the help of reason. The human ability to properly control these desires is called moral virtue, and is the focus of ethics.
The third and last step in Aristotle’s discussion involves a description of the moral virtues themselves. Aristotle makes three general observations about the nature of moral virtues. First, he argues that the ability to regulate our desires isn’t instinctive, but learned and is the outcome of both teaching and practice. Second, he argues that desire-regulating virtues are character traits, or habitual dispositions, and shouldn’t be seen as either emotions or mental faculties. Third, moral virtues are desire-regulating character traits that are at a mean between more extreme character traits. If we regulate our desires either too much or too little, then we create problems. For example, in response to our natural emotion of fear when facing danger, we should develop the virtuous character trait of courage. If we develop an excessive character trait by curbing fear too much, then we are said to be rash, which is a vice. If, on the other extreme, we develop a deficient character trait by curbing fear too little, then we are said to be cowardly, which is also a vice. The virtue of courage, then, lies at the mean between the excessive extreme of rashness, and the deficient extreme of cowardice. Aristotle notes that this is similar to how “excess or deficiency of gymnastic exercise is fatal to strength.”
Most moral virtues, and not just courage, fall at the mean between two accompanying vices. Aristotle describes 11 virtues in particular that follow this model. Each virtue and vice arises in reaction to some specific appetite or desire we have. His analysis is summarized in this table:
Appetite
|| Vice of Deficiency | Virtuous
Mean | Vice of Excess
Fear danger || Cowardice Courage Rashness
Pleasure || Insensibility Temperance Intemperance
Give money || Stinginess Generosity Extravagance
Spend money || Pettiness Magnificence Vulgarity
Self-worth || Humility Self-respect Vanity
Honor || No Ambition Right Ambition Over-ambition
Anger || Spiritlessness Good Temper Ill temper
Social life || Unfriendliness Friendly Civility Bootlickingness
Truth || False Modesty Sincerity Boastfulness
Amusement || Humorlessness Wittiness Buffoonery
Fear dishonor || Immodest Modesty Bashfulness
Of these 11 virtues, the pinnacle of these for Aristotle is self-respect, which is also translated as “pride” or “high-mindedness.” It involves having a respectful attitude about our self-worth in everything that we do. For example, it is unbecoming for a self-respecting person to be cowardly when facing danger, or to be insensible with pleasure, or to be stingy about giving money.
Aristotle notes that that there weren’t enough terms in his language to adequately name all the virtues and corresponding vices. This is also the case with the English language, and it may be difficult at first to grasp the relation between the various virtues and vices on the above list. Aristotle also notes that not all virtues fall at a mean between two more extreme dispositions. One such virtue is that of justice, which simply has injustice as its contrary. The virtue of justice involves being lawful and fair. The unjust person, by contrast, is unlawful, unfair, and greedily grasps at things.
Practical Wisdom. Although Aristotle’s analysis of the above 11 virtues fits into a nicely organized scheme, in common life situations it is in fact hard to pinpoint the mean between two extreme dispositions. Suppose that I am a soldier and I know in theory that if my fear gets the best of me I will be a coward, and if I completely ignore my fear I will be rash. Somewhere in the middle lies courage. However, how many bullets need to fly above my head before I can courageously crawl back into my foxhole for safety? Suppose I am a college student and I understand that temperance involves knowing how to regulate my desire for pleasure. Am I insensible if I completely avoid going to fraternity parties? And, if I do go, how many beers can I have before I am intemperate? Suppose that, in my drive for success at my job, I understand that lack of ambition will get me fired, but too much ambition will destroy my home life. How much devotion should I show at my job?
Aristotle confesses that it is indeed difficult to live the virtuous life primarily because of the challenges presented in finding the mean between the extremes. He notes that calculating the mean isn’t simply a matter of taking an average. For example, if drinking 20 cans of beer at a party is too much, and drinking zero cans is too little, this doesn’t imply that I should drink 10 cans of beer, which is the mathematical mean. However, there is a solution to this problem. Aristotle explains that an aspect of our calculative reasoning called practical wisdom (phronesis) helps us find the virtuous mean. There are two components to practical wisdom. First, it intuitively grasps our ultimate purpose in life. In a nutshell, our ultimate purpose is to be community-oriented rational creatures. Each properly formed virtue contributes to fulfilling this ultimate purpose. Second, practical wisdom involves deliberating about and planning the best way of attaining this ultimate purpose. As a soldier, cowering in my foxhole won’t help me attain my community-oriented purpose; being too rash won’t help me either. Practical wisdom will help me assess the risks in different combat situations, and it will help me see when it would be most effective for me to charge against the enemy. Similarly, practical wisdom will help me figure out how many beers I should drink at a party, and how much ambition I should have at my job. With each dilemma we face, then, our practical wisdom will help us chisel out the appropriate conduct that will facilitate our ultimate purpose.
In spite of the assistance that we receive from practical wisdom, we shouldn’t see it as a small voice within us that tells us for each action whether that action hits the mean or one of the extremes. First, when we are in the process of developing virtuous habits, practical wisdom doesn’t pronounce judgment on each of our actions. Instead, through our life experiences, we gradually develop a sense of our ultimate purpose and just as gradually we cultivate virtuous habits. Second, once our virtuous habits are developed, we act spontaneously without step by step rational prompting. For example, once I learn how to be a safe automobile driver, my highway manners become second nature and I slow down before approaching a stop sign without consciously thinking about it.
If I successfully acquire virtues, then I attain the status of a good person. As a good person, each of my actions will be a reflection of the virtuous character traits that I developed. However, Aristotle argues, each action must be freely chosen. That is, the action must have its causal origin within me, and can’t be mechanically imposed on me by other people. Further, for my choice to be truly free, I must know all of the important details pertaining to the action in question. He argues that freedom of the will is a factor with both virtuous choices and vicious choices.
Good Temper. In view of our opening illustration of road rage, let’s look at Aristotle’s discussion of the virtue of good temper, which is the seventh virtue listed on the above chart. Good temper properly curbs one’s appetite of anger. If I curb my anger too much I have the vice of spiritlessness, and if I don’t curb it enough I have the vice of ill temper. For Aristotle, there are five factors involved in our appropriate response to anger. We should only become angry (1) at the appropriate person, (2) for an appropriate offense, (3) to an appropriate degree, (4) with appropriate quickness, and (5) for an appropriate length of time. He concedes that it is difficult to precisely define what counts as “appropriate” in these five circumstances, but maintains that the good tempered person won’t allow himself to be dragged around by his passions, and will be guided by practical wisdom. Aristotle believes that it is appropriate to get angry when someone callously insults us. However, the good-tempered person isn’t vengeful, and to a degree he accepts his situation.
As for the vice of spiritlessness, there are several reasons why it is bad for us to completely lack expressions of anger. If we never react in anger even when there is a proper cause, then it will appear to others that we will tolerate injustice. People will think that we won’t defend ourselves and, for example, we will sit back and put up with insult after insult against our loved ones and ourselves. In a word, people will see us as fools. In spite of how bad it is to be completely unaffected by anger, Aristotle believes that it is better to err on the side of spiritlessness than on the side of ill-temper since spiritless people are easier to live with.
On the other extreme, ill-tempered people respond inappropriately to anger with at least one of the above five factors. In fact, Aristotle notes that we have different names for ill-tempered people based on the combination of factors in which they fail. Hotheaded people get angry too quickly, with the wrong people, for the wrong reason, and to the wrong degree (factors 1-4). However, they get over their anger quickly (factor 5), which is the best thing about them. Choleric people get angry quickly at everything on every occasion (factors 1, 2 and 4). Brooding people fail mainly with the fifth factor and carry out their anger far too long. Bad-tempered people get angry at the wrong things for a long period of time (factors 2 and 5) and won’t be satisfied until they inflict punishment on the offender. How would Aristotle view the person who exhibits road rage? The enraged driver has perhaps picked out the appropriate person for an appropriate offense, and maybe is angry for an appropriate length of time. But the degree of his reaction is far too extreme and his angry reaction is far too quick. His principal failure, then, is with factors (3) and (4).
These are the main points of Aristotle’s virtue theory:
· Moral virtues are habits that regulate the desires of our appetitive nature
· Most virtues are at a mean between two vicious habits
· Our practical wisdom guides us in developing moral virtues by gradually informing us of our ultimate purpose and showing us the best means of attaining it
· My moral actions are freely chosen and are an extension of my virtuous habits
Aristotle himself summarizes his notion of moral virtue here:
Virtues are means between extremes; they are states of character; by their own nature they tend to the doing of acts by which they are produced; they are in our power and voluntary; they act as prescribed by right governance [i.e., practical wisdom]. [Nicomachean Ethics, 1114b 25]
Virtue Theory After Aristotle. For almost 2000 years Greek notions of virtue -- and Aristotle’s theory in particular -- were central to Western conceptions of morality. The details were sometimes different, but moral philosophers consistently emphasized the need to acquire good character traits that guide our actions and thereby make us good people. Immediately after Aristotle, the rival philosophical schools of Epicureanism and Stoicism offered competing views of morality and the virtues. Epicurus (341-270 BCE) identified the virtuous life with the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. By contrast, Zeno of Citium (334-262 BCE), the founder of Stoicism, emphasized the importance of resigning oneself to fate and suppressing our desires for things beyond our control. For Zeno, virtue is intimately connected with our knowledge of the physical world and, to this end, the virtuous person develops four knowledge-oriented virtues. Through intelligence I know what is good and bad. Through bravery I know what to fear and what not to fear. Through justice I know how to give what is deserved. Through self-control I knows what passions to ignore.
With the arrival of Christianity, the Apostle Paul endorsed the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which were later dubbed the “theological virtues” in contrast to Plato’s four “cardinal virtues.” Medieval theologians sometimes referred to the “seven virtues,” combining the three theological virtues with the four cardinal virtues. Medieval theologians such as Aquinas held Aristotle in especially high regard and wrote commentaries on the Nichomachean Ethics, and this perpetuated Aristotle’s analysis of the virtues. By the Renaissance, philosophical discussions of virtue were mainly analyses of Aristotle’s theory.
TRADITIONAL CRITICISMS OF VIRTUE THEORY.
In the 17th century, interest in Aristotle’s version of virtue ethics declined. His theory wasn’t outright rejected; instead, leading moral philosophers believed that virtues were only of secondary importance in explaining moral obligation. Of primary importance was the need to follow rational moral rules and make sure that our actions abided by those rules.
Grotius’s Criticism: Many Virtues are not at a Mean. In his work The Law of War and Peace (1625), Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) began the attack on Aristotle by arguing that his theory fails as a systematic account of morality. Grotius focuses specifically on Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. For Aristotle, virtues regulate our desires insofar as we form middle-ground habits between more extreme habits. According to Grotius, some virtues do indeed control our passions through a middle course, but not all virtues do this, and, in fact, some virtues are actually extreme dispositions. For example, Aristotle lists insensibility -- or contempt for pleasure -- as a vice, but Grotius believes that this is a virtue. Aristotle lists ambitionlessness -- or contempt for honor -- as a vice, but Grotius believes that this too is a virtue. In religious matters, Grotius believes that it is impossible to worship God too much, or seek heaven too much, or fear hell too much. The larger point, for Grotius, is that morality consists of following the rational rules of natural law, and not in scouting about for an elusive middle ground of behavior. Grotius believes that everyone has access to the rules of natural law, and our reason will quickly tell us when we should seek a middle ground, and when we should do something in the extreme.
On face value Grotius’s criticism seems plausible: we can understand how Aristotle might have forced a number of virtues into a mold that they didn’t quite fit. However, if we carefully examine the specific cases that Grotius cites, Aristotle’s account of middle-ground virtues seems on target. Are contempt for pleasure and honor really virtues as Grotius claims? For average people in average social situations, these extreme behaviors don’t seem appropriate. By having contempt for all pleasure, we cut ourselves off from many of life’s best opportunities, such as romance, good food, or entertainment. By having contempt for all honor, we feel incomplete in what we try to accomplish in life. Grotius also believes that it is virtuous to be extreme in our worship of God, fear of hell, or desire of heaven. Similarly, though, for average people in average social situations, if we focus too much on religious matters, then we may neglect our earthly responsibilities.
When praising these extreme character traits, perhaps Grotius has in mind religious believers, such as monks, who devote their lives to austerity. Monks deny all bodily pleasures and any emotional pleasure that comes from personal accomplishment. Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) discusses what he calls “monkish virtues” and, unlike Grotius, Hume readily calls them vices:
Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues ... server to no manner of purpose .... We justly, therefore, transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices ... [Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 9:1]
For Hume, these monkish qualities are actually vices since they don’t make life more agreeable for ourselves or other people. Instead, they inhibit our happiness. Perhaps, like Grotius, Hume has also gone too far in assessing extreme monkish character traits. Although these may be vices for people in normal social situations, they are not vices for the monks themselves. The monks themselves believe that they are bettering their lives through their more extreme behavior. And -- most significantly for Aristotle’s theory -- the monks will likely feel that they too are following a middle ground life-style. Even a zealous monk could become too extreme and starve himself to death, or whip himself to death, or pray to the point of becoming insane.
So, contrary to Grotius, it seems appropriate to discover virtues through middle-ground dispositions -- both for ordinary people and for monks. Many Eastern religions provide two separate lists of moral codes: one for monks, and one for non-monks, and each of these codes are reasonable in their own contexts. The key issue, then, is identifying one’s social context and finding the appropriate mean in that context.
Kant’s
Criticism: Without Moral Principles Misapplied Virtues become Vices. German
philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
recognized that virtues are important for developing our worth as people.
However, he argued that virtues have no moral value unless they are directed by
rational moral principles. In fact, for Kant, if our virtues are not guided by
moral principles, then they actually become vices. For example, according to
Kant, “the coolness of a villain makes him not only much more dangerous but
also immediately more abominable in our eyes than he would have been regarded
by us without it.” That is, we typically think that it is a virtue to be cool
headed; but when a villain is cool headed, this actually makes him more evil
than he would have been otherwise. Although Kant does not reject virtues, he
believes that they are secondary to our need to follow moral principles. Our
primary moral task is to discover the rules of morality, and then shape our
character based on these rules.
Philosophers before Kant also recognized that misapplied virtues become vices. One of the most dramatic illustrations of this is given by French statesman Maximilien de Béthune (1559-1641). De Béthune describes a man he knew who had an extraordinary number of virtues:
His genius was so lively that nothing could
escape his penetration, his apprehension was so quick, that he understood every
thing in an instant, and his memory so prodigious, that he never forgot
anything. He was master of all the
branches of philosophy, the mathematics; particularly fortification and
designing. Nay, he was so thoroughly
acquainted with divinity, that he was an excellent preacher ... He applied this
talent to imitate all sorts of persons, which he performed with wonderful dexterity;
and was accordingly the best comedian in the world. He was a good poet, an excellent musician, and sung with equal
art and sweetness. ... His body was perfectly proportioned to his mind. He was
well made, vigorous and agile, formed for all sorts of exercises. He rode a
horse well, and was admired for dancing, leaping, and wrestling. He was acquainted with all kinds of sports
and diversions, and could practice in most of the mechanical arts.
As
de Béthune continues his
description, he suggests that all of these virtues become tainted when we
consider the horrible qualities of the same person:
Reverse the medal: He was a liar, false, treacherous, cruel, and cowardly, a sharper, drunkard and glutton. He was a gamester, an abandoned debauchee, a blasphemer and Atheist. In a word, he was possessed of every vice, contrary to nature, to honour, to religion, and society: he persisted in his vices to the last, and fell a sacrifice to his debaucheries, in the flower of his age; he died in a public stew, holding the glass in his hand, swearing, and denying God.
Both de Béthune and Kant expose a genuine problem for virtue theory, which is that virtuous character traits by themselves are not necessarily good. Kant indeed gives one successful solution to this problem, namely, that we should develop our virtues in response to general moral principles that we follow. Although a successful solution, this isn’t the best solution.
Many moral philosophers -- including Cicero, Hutcheson, Balfour, and Beattie -- distinguished between two groups of character traits, the first being more important than the second:
Moral virtues: benevolence, fidelity, integrity, justice, humanity, generosity
Intellectual abilities: courage, coolness, industry, intelligence, wit, good manners, eloquence
According to these philosophers, it is more ethically important for me to develop moral virtues, such as benevolence, rather than intellectual abilities, such as courage. In fact, my overall moral goodness depends on me developing moral virtues, rather than intellectual abilities. So, if we first develop moral virtues, such as benevolence, then we won’t be able to misapply intellectual abilities such as courage. We can see this by returning to Kant’s example of the cool-headed villain. Kant’s villain lacks moral virtues, but has the intellectual ability of coolness, which he misapplies. Suppose, though, that the villain had a moral conversion and acquired moral virtues such as justice. As a morally just person, his coolness would then become a moral asset rather than a moral liability. It is difficult to even see how a just person could ever misapply his intellectual virtue of coolness. The distinction between moral virtues and intellectual abilities also solves the puzzle raised by de Béthune’s example. The man’s “virtues” first listed by de Béthune are really only intellectual qualities, and the man’s vices next listed are mostly genuine moral vices.
In short, to solve the puzzle of misapplied virtues, we don’t have to subordinate virtues to moral rules, as Kant argues. Instead, we can recognize and adopt a superior class of truly moral virtues, and this will prevent us from misapplying our intellectual abilities.
Mill’s Criticism: Morality involves Judging Actions and not Character Traits. British philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) recognized the importance of virtues in forming our personal character and our opinion of people. Good people, he believed, are people who have virtues, such as charity. Mill also recognized that virtues are important for inclining us to act properly. If I have the virtue of charity, for example, then I will be more inclined to help others in need. Nevertheless, Mill argued that the job of morality is to assess people’s actions and not their character:
... no known ethical standard decides an action to be good or bad because it is done by a good or a band man, still less because done by an amiable, a brave, or a benevolent man, or the contrary. These considerations are relevant, not to the estimation of actions, but of persons ... [Utilitarianism, Ch. 2]
According to Mill I am morally guilty only for what I actually do, and not for what I am inclined to do. Suppose, for example, that I dive into a river to rescue someone from drowning, and that I’m motivated by the hope of getting a reward. Mill believes that I did the morally right thing. What matters is that I in fact rescued that person, and it doesn’t matter what specifically inclined me to do it. So, since virtues are only inclinations, then they are not relevant in our assessment of the actions themselves.
Although we should disregard virtuous inclinations when making moral judgments, Mill is quick to point out that we must recognize the immediate intention behind an action. The intention involves the action’s specific purpose. For example, when I dive into the river, my intention is to rescue you, and it is not my intention to drag you out of the river and torture you to death. My intention to rescue you will be the same, regardless of whether I am motivated by greed or benevolence. Mill recognizes that he might be going too far by devaluing the importance of virtues, but he believes that is best to err on the side of caution and rigidly judge people for each of their intended actions.
Mill is correct that we often judge people’s intended actions, and not their predispositions. This is similar to how we legally judge criminals for the crimes that they actually commit, and not for their criminal predispositions. However, contrary to Mill, there are clear cases in which both moral and legal judgments go beyond the intended action and focus also on predispositions. This is clearly the case with repeat offenders who show a predisposition towards immoral or illegal actions. Suppose that you are typically a mild-mannered person, but on one occasion you get into a bar fight and break a guy’s nose. This is certainly bad, but not as bad as if you were predisposed to violence -- and especially if you displayed this predisposition by routinely getting into bar fights. Sometimes we carry our moral track record around with us, and we expect that people will judge our actions based on the kind of person that we’ve become.
The upshot of the situation is that moral judgments are more multifaceted than Mill allows and sometimes we look beyond the intended action to the virtue or vice.
CONTEMPORARY DISCUSSIONS OF VIRTUES AND
RULES.
Continuing the trend set by Grotius, Kant and Mill, moral philosophers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries typically assigned virtues a secondary place within their theories. In 1958, philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe published an influential article titled “Modern Moral Philosophy” in which she harshly criticizes the direction of moral philosophy since the days of Grotius. According to Anscombe, modern moral theories inconsistently advance moral rules without any notion of a rule giver. She advises that we abandon the entire rule-based approach in favor of the virtue-based approach offered by Aristotle, which avoids this inconsistency.
Anscombe and other critics suggest that there are essentially two approaches to morality: virtue-based theories and action/rule-based theories. According to virtue-based theories, (1) greater importance is placed on developing good character traits, rather than acting in accord with moral rules; (2) good actions are those that flow from our virtuous character traits; and (3) morality is a matter of being a good person, which involves having virtuous character traits. By contrast, according to action/rule-based theories, (1) emphasis is placed on proper actions, which conform to moral rules; (2) although good character traits might help us perform good actions, they don’t define good actions; and (3) people are judged based on their actions, not on whether they are good people.
Feminine Ethics and Virtue Theory. Virtue-based theories received an extra boost from some recent feminist philosophers who argue that action/rule-based morality is male-centered. Contemporary feminist writers express a wide range of ideas, and it is a mistake to associate any particular moral theory with the entire group. However, a theme in many feminist writers is that, historically, the creation of strict moral rules is modeled after practices that were traditionally male-dominated, such as acquiring property, engaging in business contracts, and governing societies. The rigid systems of rules required for trade and government set a pattern for creating equally rigid systems of moral rules, such as lists of moral rights and duties. Some of this may be the result of a male instinct to organize and pigeonhole things. It may also be the result of self-serving male interests, which involved creating moral rules that subverted the interests of women, such as requiring women to be obedient, industrious, servile, and silent. Men not only created the rules of morality itself, but they also created the rules that govern proper discussion of morality, so input from women became almost impossible.
Women, by contrast, traditionally had a nurturing role by raising children and overseeing domestic life. These tasks require less rule-following, and more spontaneous and creative interaction. Proponents of a view called feminine ethics argue that we should use the woman’s experience as a model for moral theory, and the basis of morality should be caring for others as would be appropriate in each unique circumstance. On this view, we first listen to people’s concerns and try to understand the total situation; we then respond to the diversity of needs and perspectives reflected in the situation. This involves acquiring nurturing character traits and having our actions flow from these. This stands in sharp contrast with male-modeled morality in which the agent mechanically performs his duty as moral laws require. Some feminist philosophers argue that a morality based on female virtues should replace male-modeled moral systems that emphasize rules. More moderate writers argue that it should only be a supplement.
Although many feminists endorse virtue-based approaches to ethics in general, contemporary philosopher Nel Noddings argues that Aristotle’s specific account needs modification. Aristotle’s list of specific virtues comes from an elite social class, as opposed to social classes of slaves and women who had more subservient roles in society. For Noddings, feminine morality is a quest for new virtues based on traditional women’s practices that we see in everyday experiences. For example, accepted women’s occupations today are cooking, cleaning, nursing, secretarial services, and childhood education. Although these are roles that women should rise above, they nevertheless reflect a caring mentality, which Noddings believes is inherent to women.
Virtues With or Without Rules? Anscombe and some feminine ethicists suggest that virtue theory should be completely independent of moral rules. Is this plausible? One side of the dispute, which we will call strong virtue theory, maintains that rules must be eliminated from all notions of virtue. That is, morality is founded entirely on virtuous character traits such as courage, and these virtues are independent of ideal principles. The other side of the dispute, which we will call weak virtue theory, maintains that there is either a single rule or a core set of rules that establish when a character trait is good or bad. Some of the appeal of strong virtue theory undoubtedly stems from a frustration with the inadequacies of various action/rule-based approaches to morality, such as those proposed by Kant and Mill. As some feminists argue, rigid rules seem so contrary to the nurturing dispositions needed for genuine morality that we should simply reject them. However, in spite of the appeal of strong virtue theory, it isn’t clear that classical virtue theorists held to this strong notion when devising their theories. Three aspects of Aristotle’s theory in particular suggest that rules are at least part of virtue-based morality.
First, Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean is itself a general principle, which some followers of Aristotle call “the principle of the golden mean.” This principle is that right or virtuous actions are those that intermediate between extreme responses. This rule is somewhat flexible and depends on our specific circumstances and the guidance of practical wisdom. Nevertheless, it is still the standard in determining virtuous conduct. Second, each specific virtue is a standard by which we assess the correctness of our own actions as well as those other people. This is clear in Aristotle’s discussion of the virtue of good-temper noted above. We praise people who abide by the virtuous mean of good temper, and blame those who don’t. He also advises us as individuals to “cling to the middle state” of good temper so that we become praiseworthy. Similarly, the virtues of courage, temperance, generosity, and self-respect all become standards by which we praise and blame actions.
A final “rule” aspect of Aristotle’s theory involves the intimate connection he establishes between ethics and politics. Ethics involves the discovery of our ultimate human purpose as developed in virtuous character traits. Politics extends directly from this and involves legislating “what we are to do and what we are to abstain from” (Nichomachean Ethics, 1.2). Part of this is establishing just actions and just punishments (Politics, 7:13). Virtues, then, are only the starting point; the next step is to create governing bodies, social classes, and the obligations of both rulers and citizens, all of which is rule-oriented. In view of these “rule” aspects of Aristotle’s theory, he is best seen as a weak virtue theorist as defined above.
Contemporary Criticisms. In spite of the recent strong support for virtue-based morality, defenders of action/rule-based approaches point out several limitations with virtue theory. However, most of these are attacks on strong virtue theory. Because of the popularity of such criticisms, it is important to see how defenders of weak virtue theory can quickly answer these charges. First, critics charge that there is a problem with determining precisely who is virtuous. It doesn’t help to look for some external criterion, such as visible indications in the person’s action, since outward actions are no guarantee that the person’s inner self is virtuous. It also doesn’t help to look for an inner criterion, such as the agent’s self-respect or integrity, since we don’t have the ability to read people’s minds. In response, weak virtue theorists say that we look at people’s actions as indicators of their character traits. For example, we spot whether a given action appears ill tempered. We then praise or blame the action based on whether it approaches the virtuous mean.
Second, critics argue that some acts are so intolerable, such as murder, that we must devise a special list of prohibited offenses. Virtue theory doesn’t provide such a list. In response, it is easy for the weak virtue theorist to construct a list of prohibited actions. When we assess how well a person’s actions conform to the virtuous mean, it becomes evident that some actions are more blameworthy than others are. We then make a list of these actions. Although Aristotle doesn’t provide a definitive list, he does note that certain vices are worse than others. For example, in the above discussion of good-temper, he argues that the vice of ill temper is worse than the vice of spiritlessness. Also, other virtue theorists do provide short lists of prohibited actions that stem from serious vices, the most famous of which is the medieval list of seven deadly sins.
Finally, critics argue that virtue theory permits us to occasionally act badly, as long as the virtue in question remains intact. For example, virtue theory emphasizes long-term character traits, such as honesty or generosity. Because of this long-term emphasis, we might overlook particular lies or particular acts of selfishness on the grounds that they are only temporary departures from our overall dispositions. The weak virtue theorist has two responses to this charge. First, once we set virtues up as standards of praise and blame, we are in a position to judge every particular action that departs from a given virtuous standard. The occasional lie, for example, will stand out and call for judgment. Second, it may be a mistake to think that occasional departures such as white lies don’t compromise virtuous character traits. With many virtues, to be virtuous means to always have exemplary conduct. For example, even a single act of marital infidelity sufficiently signals a lack of virtue. A politician who publicly lies even once loses the trust of the people. It may sometimes seem as though we can still be virtuous while occasionally acting unvirtuously, but this may only mean that we have compromised our standards of morality.
THE VALUE OF VIRTUE THEORY.
Virtues play some role in most traditional moral theories and even Grotius, Kant, and Mill don’t suggest that we completely abandon interest in them. The real questions concern, first, how important of a role virtues should play in a theory, and, second, what specific virtues should we adopt.
Incorporating Virtue Theory into Other Moral Theories. Regarding the first question -- how important of a role virtues should play -- our discussion so far suggests that they certainly deserve a central role, but not the only role. First, even the simple task of listing various virtues involves at least some rules. To determine whether a given character trait is virtuous as opposed to vicious, we will likely fall back on some rule, such as the Principle of the Golden Mean. We are also likely to see each specific virtue itself as a standard and rule that indicates proper conduct. So, at minimum, we should prefer weak virtue theory to strong virtue theory. Second, moral judgments are quite varied and even weak virtue theory can’t adequately explain this diversity without bringing in other theories. Suppose that, when driving down the highway, I accidentally cut off another driver who then flies into a rage and runs me into a ditch. Aristotle would say that the other driver was immoral largely because he had the vice of intemperance. This, though, is only one kind of moral assessment, and it isn’t even the most natural assessment that we might make. Instead, I might say that the driver was immoral because he caused me emotional pain for no justifiable reason. I might also say that the driver violated my rights -- specifically my right not to be physically attacked. If I am religious, I might say that the man sinned by going against God’s will.
Contemporary virtue theorist Alasdair MacIntyre would say that I’m uttering nonsense with these other moral assessments -- regardless of how commonly we speak about personal happiness, individual rights, or the will of God. MacIntyre believes that today we have only fragments of conflicting moral traditions:
… we continue to use many of the key expressions [of morality]. But we have – very largely, if not entirely – lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality. [After Virtue, 1]
To make sense of morality, according to MacIntyre, we need to follow Aristotle’s view of virtues. Contrary to MacIntyre, though, it isn’t reasonable to simply dismiss most of our moral vocabulary simply because it doesn’t draw on virtue theory. More importantly, it is not even possible for us today to abandon these other moral notions in exclusive favor of virtue theory. Notions of moral rights are firmly imbedded into American moral consciousness, particularly the natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as endorsed by the Declaration of Independence. Religious believers who ground morality in God’s will are not likely to shift to Aristotle’s virtue theory anytime soon. To best understand morality and theorize about it, we should begin by acknowledging the wide range of approaches that people actually do take to the subject. Virtue theory is only one of many approaches.
Concerning the second question -- what specific virtues we should focus on -- it is clear that Aristotle’s short list of virtues is incomplete. Whereas Aristotle stopped at about a dozen virtues, 17th and 18th century virtue theorists expanded the list to as many as 100 distinct virtues. Today we should modify the list even more. Feminist critics such as Noddings correctly point out that Aristotle’s list reflects an aristocratic bias that we should reject. Following the observations of feminists, we should include more feminine and nurturing qualities. As social trends shift and we become more receptive to racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, we should adopt virtues of social tolerance and acceptance. With growing interest in animal rights and environmental issues, we should cultivate virtues that display a sensitivity to these concerns. Part of the task of moral philosophers is to sift through social trends and update moral theories in this way.
The Best Teacher of Morality. Although we want to view virtue theory as only one of many approaches to morality, we want to keep in mind virtue theory’s unique asset. Imagine that, as a parent, you want to teach your child that it is wrong to become inappropriately enraged. When your child is older, you don’t want him to give in to road rage, beat his wife, or perform any other action that is the consequence of inappropriate anger. Imagine further that you had two teaching methods available. The first method established meticulous rules for what counts as inappropriate anger in virtually every circumstance. It also included rules describing the kinds of punishments that were justified for each type of violation. According to this first teaching method, your child would memorize all these rules so that, for each situation that arises, your child immediately knows the right thing to do. The second method doesn’t involve memorizing specific rules, but, instead, focuses on instilling good habits. Using various techniques, such as behavior modification, you teach your child to avoid inappropriate action and become habituated towards appropriate action. You also give him techniques so he can properly modify his behavior on his own, without your constant monitoring. All other factors being equal, which of these two methods would work best in preventing inappropriate anger? The habit-instilling method appears to be the winner.
Virtue theorists capitalize on the benefits of teaching morality through creating virtuous habits. They argue that the most important thing about studying ethics is its impact on conduct. Aristotle himself said that he wrote the Nichomachean Ethics “not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good.” Detailed lists of rules in and of themselves don’t make us better people, but instilling good habits does. In 1993, attorney William J. Bennett edited an anthology titled The Book of Virtues, which quickly became a best seller. The work contains classic stories and folk tales highlighting 10 virtues, including self-discipline, compassion, responsibility and friendship. Bennett says that the work is meant to assist in the “time-honored task of the moral education of the young.” Among the essential elements of moral training, he notes that “Moral education must provide training in good habits. Aristotle wrote that good habits formed at youth make all the difference.”
In our actual lives as we raise our children, we will likely adopt a hybrid approach to teaching morality which involves both teaching rules and instilling good habits. The fact remains, though, that it is a mistake to completely ignore the benefits of virtue theory in moral instruction. Society needs all the help it can get in improving its moral climate. To that end moral philosophers of all traditions should welcome the contributions of virtue theory.
Summary. Aristotle offered the view that morality consists of developing virtuous habits that are a mean between extreme vicious habits. Philosophers during the Middle Ages adopted Aristotle’s view, although virtues were reduced to a secondary status by 17th and 18th century moral philosophers. Grotius argued that Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean fails since some virtues such as religious worship actually require extreme behavior. In response, we noted that virtues in fact do occupy a middle-ground, although the middle ground must be seen within particular social contexts. Kant argued that some virtues -- such as cool-headedness -- might become vices if they aren’t guided by higher moral principles. We’ve seen, however, that we can avoid misapplying virtues by distinguishing between more important moral virtues, such as justice, and less important intellectual qualities, such as cool-headedness. By acquiring the more important moral virtues, we thereby avoid misapplying the less important intellectual qualities. Mill argued that morality involves judging a person’s actions and not a person’s character. Contrary to Mill, though, we saw that at least sometimes it is relevant to consider a person’s character when judging actions, especially with repeat offenders.
Contemporary discussions of virtue assess the relative merits of virtue-based morality vs. action/rule-based morality. Some feminist philosophers reject the action/rule-based approach for being to male in orientation, and instead suggest that morality involves acquiring more feminine virtues such as nurturance. In response, we distinguished between strong virtue theory, which rejects all rules, and weak virtue theory, which involves some rules. We noted that Aristotle himself is a weak virtue theorist, and that weak virtue theory sidesteps many common criticisms against virtue theory in general. In conclusion we saw that virtue theory is only one of many approaches to moral philosophy, although virtue theory is uniquely suited for teaching morality.
Sources
Quotation on road rage is from The Washington Post, Thursday, October 16, 1997.
Plato’s discussion of the divisions of the soul is in the Republic Book 4.435, and his account of the unity of the virtues is in the Protagoras 349b.
The discussion of Aristotle’s theory presented here is from Nichomachean Ethics, Books 1-5, which is available in several modern translations.
Grotius’s discussion of Aristotle is from On the Law of War and Peace (1625), Prolegomena, 43-35. The best current translation of this work is that by Francis W. Kelsey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925).
Hume’s discussion of monkish virtues is from his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 9.1. The best current edition of this work is edited by Tom Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1999).
Kant’s criticism of virtue theory is from his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), which is available in several modern translations.
The quotation from Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (1559-1641) appeared in his Mémoires des sages et royales oeconomies (Amsterdam, 1652-62), translated into English in Memoirs of Maximilian de Bethune, duke of Sully, prime minister to Henry the Great (London, Printed for A. Millar, 1756). The quotation is as appears in James Balfour’s A Delineation of the Nature and Obligation of Morality (1753), Chapter 5, which is available in a recent facsimile reprint (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1989).
Mill’s criticism of virtue theory is in chapter 2 of Utilitarianism (1863), which is available in several modern editions.
Elizabeth Anscombe’s contemporary defense of virtue theory is in “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958), Philosophy, 1958, Vol. 33; this article is reprinted in her Ethics, Religion and Politics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981).
Nel Noddings discussion of feminist ethics and virtue theory is in “Ethics From the Stand Point of Women” in Woman and Values, ed. Marilyn Pearsall (Wadsworth)
Some of the contemporary criticisms of virtue theory are taken from Robert Louden “On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics” (1984), American Philosophical Quarterly, 1984, Vol. 21
Alasdair MacIntyre’s contemporary defense of virtue theory is in After Virtue, second edition, (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1984).
Suggestions for Further Reading
Commentaries on Aristotle’s ethical theory include John M. Cooper,
Reason and Human Good in Aristotle
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), W. Hardie, Aristotle’s Ethical
Theory (Oxford University Press, 1980); H.H. Joachim, Aristotle: The Nichomachean Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1954);
Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of
Goodness (Cambridge University Press, 1986); Amelie Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics (University
of California Press, 1980).
John Duns Scotus discusses various medieval philosophers on the subject of the interconnectedness of virtues (Ordinatio III, suppl. dist. 36), translated in Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality (Washington D.C.: Catholic Uiversity of America Press, 1986) tr. Allan B. Wolter. James Beattie discusses early virtue theorists who distinguished between moral virtues and intellectual abilities; see Beattie’s Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770), Part 3, Chapter 2, recently edited by James Fieser (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2000). For a discussion of 18th century philosophers who also made this distinction, see James Fieser “Hume’s Wide View of the Virtues” in Hume Studies, November 1998.
J.B. Schneewind describes the post-Renaissance decline of virtue theory as a matter of continual revision, rather than a matter of complete rejection; “The Misfortunes of Virtue” in Ethics, 1990, Vol. 101.
For contemporary discussions of virtue theory see Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices, (University of California Press, 1978), William Frankena, Ethics (Prentice-Hall, 1963), Chapter four, R. Kruschwitz, ed., The Virtues: Contemporary Essays on Moral Character (Wadsworth, 1987), and Greg Pence, “Recent Work on the Virtues,” in American Philosophical Quarterly, 1984, Vol. 21.
#4. NATURAL LAW THEORY
INTRODUCTION.
Richard Cooper, an artist from Pennsylvania, often put images of himself in his paintings. In one work he painted a woman on the left side of the canvas, a man on the right side, and himself between the two. He depicted himself pivoting away from the woman and reaching toward the man. The painting represents a moment in Cooper’s life when he resolved an ongoing struggle with his gender orientation. Although attracted to men even in his youth, he followed society’s expectations and dated women. Eventually the inner tension became too great and he acknowledged his homosexual leaning. Social attitudes about homosexuality have varied greatly throughout time. Some ancient Greek literature, such as Plato’s Symposium, describes homosexual relations between a master and his apprentice as commonplace. In a recent controversial work, John Boswell argues that during the early middle ages, the Catholic Church endorsed same-sex unions, which may have been a cover for homosexual activity. On the other hand, passages in the Jewish Old Testament take strong stands against homosexuality, stating that “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable” (Leviticus 18:22). A medieval Eastern religious text states in even stronger terms that it wouldn’t be murder if anyone sees two men having sex with each other and, in a fit of rage, smashes their skulls with a rock.
American society today is somewhere in between these two extremes. We appreciate the social contributions of our overtly gay friends and acquaintances. Reflecting the value system of political correctness, several recent television situation comedies teach gay toleration and gay rights as a running theme. Yet, at the same time, most Americans resist the idea of officially endorsing homosexual marriages and some even publicly express revulsion at homosexual behavior. How we deal with homosexual family members is also revealing. One third of American teenagers who inform their parents of their homosexuality are thrown out of their houses.
The most common criticism against homosexual behavior is that it is unnatural or abnormal for properly functioning people. But in what sense is homosexuality “unnatural” or “abnormal”? It can’t merely mean that homosexual behavior falls outside the statistical mean of human behavior. Although it is true that we find regular homosexual activity in only a small percentage of the population, many practices that we find morally acceptable are also statistical aberrations. Stamp collecting, deep-sea fishing, hang gliding, and thousands of other pastimes, are all practiced by only a small segment of the population. Similarly, we often condemn many behavioral practices even when they are practiced by a statistical majority of the people, such as premarital sex. So, if homosexuality is wrong because it is “unnatural,” it must be for reasons other than mere statistics. The natural law theory of morality offers a detailed account of what it means for an action to be natural or unnatural, and discussions of natural law often focus on homosexuality as an example of unnatural conduct.
It is
difficult to succinctly define natural law theory. It isn’t a single theory, per se, but a system of several smaller
theories. Further, over the years, natural law philosophers proposed different
systems and it is hard to find features common to them all. However, common
themes of natural law theory are these:
· God endorses specific moral values and pronounces them as “law” by fixing them in human nature.
· There is one highest principle of natural law, which we discover by looking at aspects of our human nature (such as, “people ought to be sociable”).
· We rationally deduce subsidiary moral rules from this highest principle (such as, “we ought not murder”).
· These subsidiary rules carry the force of natural law to the degree that they are necessary for fulfilling the highest principle of natural law.
The notion of moral deduction is central to natural law theory. For example, suppose that God plants within me the intuition that “people ought to be sociable.” I recognize that there are many kinds of actions that run contrary to this, such as murder, stealing and lying. I can then deduce that murder, stealing and lying are wrong because they are contrary to the intuition that I ought to be sociable.
Origins of Natural Law Theory. Natural law theory has its roots in ancient Greek thought, particularly Stoicism, which maintained that we should live in agreement with nature. Stoic philosophers believed that god permeates the entire world and strictly regulates all events. Everything in life -- including natural disasters, the rise and fall of governments, and human conflicts -- happens according to a pre-ordained rational plan. Our moral responsibility is to conform our expectations to this pre-ordained plan, and, thus, live in agreement with nature. Inspired by the Stoic view of nature, Roman philosopher Cicero (106-43 BCE) gives an early account of the key ingredients of natural law:
True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrong doing by its prohibitions. ... We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchanging law will be valid for all nations and all times and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. [The Republic, 3:22]
According to Cicero, God establishes within nature one eternal and unchanging moral law that applies to all countries. Whether we are from Rome or Athens, we are under the command of the same natural law. We discover this natural law by looking within ourselves, and not by consulting any external political governing bodies, such as the Roman Senate. The commanding force of natural law is so strong that we are automatically impelled to obey it.
The natural law tradition also has its roots in Roman Law, which developed over a 1,000 year period -- from about 500 BCE to 500 CE. Emperors, statesmen, and legal experts all contributed to evolving discussions about laws pertaining to everything from marriage contracts to slave ownership. In the 6th century CE these discussions were gathered together into a multi-volume collection called the Body of the Civil Law (Corpus iuris civilis). Although this great work focused mainly on practical legal matters, it also had a philosophical side. Specifically, it makes the philosophical distinction between three realms of law: civil law, law of nations, and natural law. Civil law (ius civile) concerns the laws created by a particular country, such as the Roman Empire, and apply mainly to its own citizens. For example, specific laws of the Roman Empire determined who could buy or sell slaves. Law of nations (ius gentium) concerns international laws that apply to citizens and foreigners alike. For example, laws of various countries establish the institution of slavery in general. Natural law (ius naturale) concerns laws that apply to animals as well as humans. For example, animals and humans alike are born free by natural law, although we may become enslaved according to the laws of nations.
With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, the Christian Church stepped in as the dominant political and intellectual force within Western Europe. As Christian philosophers and jurists turned to the issue of natural law, they viewed it from a distinctly Christian perspective. According to Christian doctrine, humans are inherently corrupt because of our sinful heritage that began with Adam and Eve’s first sin. Virtually everything that we do carries some sinful taint, and, so even the best human laws that we devise will be flawed. Christian philosophers argued that, because of our sinful nature, we need to distinguish between the perfect divine law as mandated by God, and more imperfect human laws that we devise on our own. For these philosophers, natural law is part of the perfect divine law. Early medieval discussions of natural law were often brief and sketchy. That changed, though, with Italian Christian monk Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) who systematically explored the topic of natural law and offered what quickly became the definitive medieval account of the subject.
AQUINAS NATURAL LAW THEORY.
Aquinas’s account of natural law appears in his “Treatise on Law,” a section of his several thousand page Summa Theologica (1a2ae q. 90-144). Drawing on discussions by his predecessors, Aquinas begins his analysis by distinguishing between different kinds of law.
Four Types of Law: Eternal, Natural, Human, and Divine. Drawing on the views of his predecessors, Aquinas argues that there are four distinct kinds of law: eternal law, natural law, human law and divine law. Eternal law is the most perfect and complete set of God’s laws, which govern “the whole community of the universe”. Similar to earlier Stoic notions of divine order, Aquinas also believed that God’s rule permeates the entire universe. We might view eternal law as something like a master database of all of God’s laws. From a moral standpoint, these laws include both general moral rules of conduct, such as “murder is wrong,” and more particular rules, such as, “angry employees shouldn’t gun down their bosses.” Only God has access to the complete list of rules, and we humans will at best only ever have partial knowledge of this list. Natural law, for Aquinas, is a subset of eternal law and includes only general rules of conduct, such as “murder is wrong.” In different ways these rules are imbedded in our human nature and we access them through rational intuition.
Human law is our attempt to deduce more specific rules from the general rules of natural law. For example, from the general rule that “murder is wrong” we might deduce the more specific rule that “angry employees shouldn’t gun down their supervisors”. According to Aquinas, it is all too easy to make mistakes when deducing specific rules and, for that reason, we commonly assign this task to legislators and other legal experts. As long as governing bodies carefully and rationally deduce specific laws from natural law, then these specific laws will conform to eternal law. However, even the slightest error of reasoning may result in improper human laws, and these would clearly not be contained in eternal law. Finally, divine law is a special subset of eternal law that God reveals to us in divinely inspired texts, such as the Ten Commandments in the Hebrew Bible. The purpose behind divine law is to help eliminate human error when searching for moral rules. For example, we might not correctly grasp the general principle of natural law that “murder is wrong”; similarly, we might incorrectly deduce particular rules of human law. Divine law is a safeguard that helps us confirm our results.
In short, for Aquinas, all moral laws are ultimately grounded in God’s unchanging eternal law, and we discover general rules of natural law through intuition. Legal experts then deduce more specific rules of human law from these, and in scriptural divine laws we find examples of both general and specific rules. Since we don’t have access to the complete list of eternal law, from our limited human perspectives morality begins with a search for the general rules of natural law. But where do we begin looking for the general rules of natural law? Aquinas says that we must look to human nature as a guide:
... [each human being] has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law. [Summa Theologica, 1a2ae 90:2]
According to Aquinas, when God created us he gave us natural instincts that reflect the general moral principles of natural law. There are two distinct levels of morally-relevant instincts. First, God implanted in us an instinctive intuition that we should pursue our proper human end. Second, God implanted in us a series of instincts that define our proper end as living, reproducing, and rational creatures.
The Synderesis Principle. Concerning the first level of morally-relevant instincts -- the intuition to do good and avoid evil -- Aquinas says that we get this through an intuitive faculty called synderesis. The word “synderesis” is a Greek term that means “innate moral consciousness”. Christian theologians described it as a “spark” that ignites our conscience, or the “fuel” that feeds our conscience. Aquinas has a more precise psychological analysis of the synderesis faculty. First, he describes it as an instinctive habit. According to Aquinas, some human habits are very strong, such as the ability to acquire language, and others are much weaker, such as our inclination to be religious. For Aquinas, synderesis is a weak habit. Second, he describes it as a component of our reason. According to Aquinas, sometimes we reason about things simply as a matter of speculation, such as whether 2+3=5. Other times, though, we reason about things for the practical purpose of performing an action, such as whether I should get a drink from the refrigerator. For Aquinas, synderesis is an aspect of practical reasoning, and it involves reasoning about performing moral actions.
Third, as a habit of practical reasoning, synderesis involves reasoning from principles. Aquinas argues that reasoning always begins with general principles, and from these we deduce more specific things. For example, I may begin with general principle that “all men are mortal” and deduce from that the more particular statement that “Bob is mortal”. Practical reasoning similarly involves starting with the general principles and moving to specific things. The synderesis faculty feeds us a single general principle of natural law, which commentators conveniently call the synderesis principle. Aquinas explicitly states the synderesis principle here:
... every agent acts on account of an end, and to be an end carries the meaning of to be good. Consequently the first principle for the practical reason is based on the meaning of good, namely that it is what all things seek after. And so this is the first command of law, “that good is to be sought and done, evil to be avoided.” All other commands of natural law are based on this. Accordingly, then, the commands of natural law extend to all doing or avoiding of things recognized by the practical reason of itself as being human goods. ... As converging on one common primary precept these various precepts of natural law all take on the nature of one natural law. [Summa Theologica, 1a2ae, 94:2]
In this passage Aquinas states that the highest principle of natural law is that “good is to be sought and done, and evil to be avoided.” At first, we might think that the synderesis principle is so general that it is almost useless. In fact, some critics of Aquinas say that his synderesis principle is an empty concept since it is true by definition; according to critics, “doing good and avoiding evil” is simply built into the definition of “what is to be done and avoided”.
However, the synderesis principle isn’t as meaningless as critics charge, particularly because Aquinas defines “good” and “evil” in a very specialized sense. Specifically, “good” is that which conforms to our proper human end, and “evil” is that which does not. Using somewhat technical jargon, Aquinas makes this point here.
...the good or evil of an action, as of other things, depends on its fullness of being or its lack of that fullness. Now the first thing that belongs to the fullness of being seems to be that which gives a thing its species. [Summa Theologica, 1a2ae, 18:2]
The synderesis principle tells us that we should do those things that are conducive to our proper end, and avoid those things that are not conducive to our proper end. More precisely, the synderesis principle contains two distinct parts:
(1) If X is for our proper human end, then X ought to be done.
(2) If X is not for a proper human end, then X ought not to be done.
From these two parts of the synderesis principle, we can deduce two separate lists of actions: first, those that we should perform, and, second, those that we should avoid. For simplicity, let’s refer to these two parts of the synderesis principle as the “pursue good” and “avoid evil” clauses respectively.
The upshot of Aquinas’s account of the synderesis principle is that it is a divinely implanted habit of practical reason that tells us to act according to our proper end. This is the highest principle of natural law, and from this we are to deduce more specific moral principles. There is clearly a religious element to Aquinas’s theory insofar as God creates us with the instinctive synderesis faculty. However, according to Aquinas, we don’t actually need to believe in God for the synderesis faculty to give us knowledge of natural law. We are all created with this instinct in spite of our individual religious views, and we all have the ability to grasp its meaning, just as we have the ability to grasp any other general rational principle.
Primary, Secondary and Super-added Principles. We’ve seen that the first instinctive component to natural law is our innate knowledge of the synderesis principle, namely, that we should act according to our proper end. The second instinctive component of natural law involves a series of human instincts that define our proper end as living, reproducing and rational creatures. Aquinas argues that we must discover our proper human end by considering our most basic human natural inclinations. Following Aristotle’s theory of human nature, Aquinas lists our basic inclinations according to three distinct faculties of the human psyche: the vegetative, appetitive, and rational faculties. First, our vegetative faculty is responsible for keeping us alive through nutrition and growth. Arising from this faculty, then, we have an inclination for self-preservation. Second, our appetitive faculty provides us with an array of emotions and desires that prompt us to act out in different ways. From our appetitive faculty we have an inclination to reproduce through heterosexual activities, and also an inclination to educate our offspring. Third, our rational faculty sets us apart from other animals and from this we have inclinations to be rational, know God, and live in society. In total, then, Aquinas lists six human inclinations: (1) self-preservation, (2) heterosexual reproduction, (3) education of offspring, (4) rational thought, (5) knowledge of God, and (6) living in society. Just as God implanted the synderesis principle within us, God also implanted these six inclinations within us. At this point, God’s task is done, and it is up to us to discover draw out the moral implications of the synderesis principle combined with our natural inclinations.
Aquinas argues that, from these six natural inclinations, we will discover six primary principles of natural law: (1) preserve human life, (2) have heterosexual (as opposed to homosexual) intercourse, (3) educate your children, (4) shun ignorance, (5) worship God, and, (6) avoid harming others. Aquinas notes specifically that divine law corroborates the last two of these: “you should love the Lord your God,” and “you should love your neighbor”. For Aquinas, we arrive at these six primary principles by logically deducing each of them from the synderesis principle. For example, with the sixth primary principle -- avoid harming others -- we can see the precise deduction process here:
1. All acts that are unsuitable for human ends are acts that we should not do.
2. All acts that harm others are acts that are unsuitable for human ends.
3. Therefore, all acts that harm others are acts that we should not do.
The first premise in this argument is the “avoid evil” clause of the synderesis principle. The second premise is based on the observation that humans instinctively live in society. Following the rules syllogistic logic, from these two premises we deduce the primary principle of natural law that we should avoid harming others. We deduce all six of the primary principles of natural law in a similar way. Aquinas believes that these deductions are so intuitive that any reasonable person can arrive at these six primary principles.
Aquinas argues that the deduction process does not stop here with the six primary principles of natural law. Rather, we must continue to draw out more precise secondary moral principles. At this stage, we leave the domain of natural law and enter the domain of human law. For example, from the primary principle “avoid harming others” we can deduce a secondary principle that we should not unjustifiable kill others:
1. All acts that harm others are acts that we should not do.
2. All acts of unjustified killing are acts that harm others.
3. Therefore, all acts of unjustified killing are acts that we should not do.
The first premise in this argument is the primary principle that we should avoid harming others -- which we previously deduced from the synderesis principle. The second premise here is the observation that we harm others when we unjustifiably kill people. For Aquinas, this is a premise that is supplied through the “careful reflection of wise people”. Following the rules syllogistic logic once again, from these two premises we deduce the secondary principle of human law that we should not kill people unjustifiably. When deducing secondary principles of human law, any mistake of reasoning will pervert its connection with natural law. For this reason, unlike the primary principles that can be deduced by everyone, secondary principles of human law require “careful reflection of wise people”. To guard against errors at this level, divine law has confirmed the most general precepts of human law in the Ten Commandments.
Aquinas argues that the deduction process continues further by drawing out even more specific principles, which calls super-added principles. We derive these directly from secondary moral principles. At this stage, we leave the domain of natural law and enter the domain of human law. For example, from the secondary principle “do not kill people unjustifiably” we can deduce a super-added principle that employees should not kill their bosses:
1. All acts of unjustified killing are acts that we should not do.
2. All acts of killing one’s boss are acts of unjustified killing.
3. Therefore, all acts of killing one’s boss are acts that we should not do.
The first premise in this argument is the secondary principle that we should not kill others unjustifiably. The second premise here is an observation by legal experts that we are not justified in killing our bosses at work. From this we deduce the super-added principle that we should not kill our bosses. The force of natural law diminishes as we move to more and more particular principles. The reason, according to Aquinas, is that specific cultures have their own views as to what counts as harm or unjustified murder. For example, if I am an indentured servant in a third world country and my boss routinely tortures me, I may indeed be morally justified in killing my boss. So, as we move further away from the self-evident primary principles of natural law, we must rely more and more on the judgments of wise people and legal experts.
The key points of Aquinas’s theory of natural law are these:
· Natural law consists of general principles of eternal law that God fixes in human nature.
· Our instinctive synderesis faculty informs us of the highest principle of natural law: we should act according to our proper end.
· Six specific natural inclinations define our proper end and give us six primary principles of natural law.
· From primary principles of natural law we deduce secondary and super-added principles of human law.
Here is a final illustration that links together all the deductive stages, beginning with the “avoid evil” clause of the synderesis principle, on through primary, secondary, and super-added principles:
1. All acts that are unsuitable for human ends are acts that we should not do. [“avoid evil” clause of the synderesis principle]
2. All acts that harm others are acts that are unsuitable for human ends. [based on the inclination of humans to live in society]
3. Therefore, all acts that harm others are acts we should not do. [primary principle of natural law]
4. All acts of stealing are harmful acts. [carefully reflected observation of wise people]
5. Therefore, all acts of stealing are acts we should not do. [secondary principle of human law]
6. All acts of fraud are acts of stealing. [observation by legal experts]
7. Therefore, All acts of fraud are acts we should not do. [super-added principle]
REVISIONS AND CRITICISMS OF NATURAL LAW
THEORY.
Aquinas was canonized by the Catholic Church about 50 years after his death, and his writings became enormously influential. Aquinas’s conception of natural law in particular became the dominant view of morality throughout Europe for the next 300 years. Medieval moral philosophers after Aquinas took issue with minor points of his theory, but the general scheme remained intact: by looking at human nature, we understand the primary moral principles of natural law, and we deduce more specific principles from these. During the seventeenth century, though, a new wave of natural law philosophers questioned more central features of Aquinas’s theory, especially the role that Aquinas assigns to our six human inclinations.
Suarez’s Revision: Knowledge of Natural Law is based on Conscience, not Natural Inclinations. Spanish monastic philosopher Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) was one of the more devoted followers of Aquinas and, in his On Law and God the Law Giver (1612) Suarez discusses and expands on Aquinas’s theory of natural law. On the issue of our natural human inclinations, though, Suarez parts company with Aquinas. Aquinas believed that we discover the primary principles of natural law by looking at our six natural inclinations, which define our purpose. For example, I first recognize my natural inclination to live in society, and only then do I discover the primary principle of natural law that I must avoid harming others. However, according to Suarez, the connection between natural law and human inclination is actually reversed. I must begin with an independent knowledge of natural law, and this knowledge will then help me regulate my six natural inclinations:
... the natural law brings man to perfection, with regard to every one of his tendencies and, in this capacity, it contains various precepts. ... all these propensities in man must be viewed as being in some why determined and elevated by a process of rational gradation. For, if these propensities are considered merely in their natural aspect, or as animal propensities, they must be bridled, [so] that virtue may be attained[.] [A]nd on the other hand, if the same propensities are considered with respect to their capacity for being regulated by right reason, then proper and suitable precepts apply to each of them. [On Law and God the Law Giver, 2:8:4]
Suarez argues here that, by themselves, natural inclinations are animalistic and we must perfect them through natural law. And, we perfect our inclinations by following moral precepts, which are supplied by “right reason”, that is, conscience.
Although the difference between Aquinas and Suarez is subtle, it is important in two respects. First, Suarez is more pessimistic than Aquinas about the value of human nature. For Aquinas, natural inclinations do a good job of reflecting our true human purpose. For Suarez, natural inclinations are little better than animalistic urges. Second, Aquinas and Suarez differ concerning how we learn about natural law. According to Aquinas, we discover natural law through observation and experience -- specifically by surveying the natural inclinations of our human nature. For Suarez, though, we discover natural law more intuitively: our conscience rationally dictates primary moral principles to us.
We might commend Aquinas both for his optimistic view of human nature and his attempt to bring the subject of morality into the arena of public observation. However, there are serious and perhaps irresolvable problems with Aquinas’s emphasis on natural inclinations, and Suarez appears correct in his suspicions about them. The central problem is that Aquinas’s list of natural inclinations is too contrived. Again, Aquinas lists six specific inclinations: (1) self-preservation, (2) heterosexual reproduction, (3) education of offspring, (4) rational thought, (5) knowledge of God, and (6) living in society. However, a genuine list of human inclinations would be much longer. If our list includes the inclination for sexual intercourse, then we should also include our inclination to eat food, to excrete waste outside of our sleeping area, to get angry, to laugh, to cry, or any other behavior that is linked with the natural release of hormones. By pre-selecting only these six, Aquinas reveals a special moral agenda that he wishes to impose on the subject of our natural inclinations. If we adopt his restricted list, then we follow Aquinas’s moral hunch, rather than an objective survey of human inclination. Not only is Aquinas’s list too short, but at least one of the six items on the list isn’t really a “natural” inclination, namely, knowledge of God. Rather than being a natural inclination, this seems more like a culturally shaped inclination, which not everyone has, and which also differs dramatically depending on one’s religious affiliation and conception of God. Again, by listing this as a natural inclination, Aquinas advances a special moral agenda and doesn’t present an objective list of human inclinations.
In short, it appears that a purely objective understanding of human inclinations won’t give us the knowledge of natural law that Aquinas supposes. Suarez offers one possible solution to this problem: abandon all natural instincts as a source of natural law, and look to conscience instead. This, though, is only one of many approaches taken by natural law philosophers.
Grotius’s Revision: Natural Law is founded only on the Instinct of Sociability. Shortly after Suarez, Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) took natural law theory in a different direction. Suarez consciously endorsed Aquinas’s basic theory and saw himself as part of Aquinas’s philosophical tradition. This is not so for Grotius. In the opening of his landmark book The Law of War and Peace (1625), Grotius announces that he aims to systematize Roman law since “the welfare of mankind demands that this task be accomplished.” By analyzing Roman law directly, Grotius was looking at a natural law tradition that predated Aquinas and, so, Grotius avoided many of the assumptions that Aquinas made. Specifically, Grotius does not attempt to base natural law on a wide range of human inclinations, such as Aquinas’s list of six. Taking his lead from Stoic philosophy, Grotius considers only one human inclination: sociability:
... among the traits characteristic of man is an impelling desire for society, that is, for the social life -- not of any and every sort, but peaceful, and organized according to the measure of his intelligence, with those who are of his own kind; this social trend the Stoics called “sociableness.” [On the Law of War and Peace, Prolegomena, 6]
According to Grotius, we are naturally inclined to live in peaceful societies with other intelligent and like-minded humans. This basic fact of human sociability is the foundation of natural law:
This maintenance of the social order, which we have roughly sketched, and which is consonant with human intelligence, is the source of law properly so called. [On the Law of War and Peace, Prolegomena, 8]
For Grotius, then, the highest principle of natural law is simply to be sociable. Like previous natural law theorists, Grotius also believed that we can deduce more specific rules of natural law from this highest principle, and he lists five specific ones: (1) do not take things that belong to others; (2) restore to other people anything that we might have of theirs; (3) fulfill promises; (4) compensate for any loss that results through our own fault; (5) punish people as deserved. These more specific rules focus largely on issues of personal property and punishment, and it seems clear that the list is not complete. Specifically, we don’t see rules about sexual behavior, family responsibilities, religious obligations, and similar moral issues that philosophers of the time commonly addressed. However, Grotius is not interested in offering a handbook of morality for use in our ordinary lives. Instead, he wants to explain the foundation of international laws that apply to warring nations around the world. What are the causes of war? When are wars justified? How can we maintain peace? Grotius’s five specific principles of natural law help answer these questions and they are the standard of proper conduct for all countries around the world.
Although Grotius didn’t draw out the implications of natural law for our day to day moral behavior, he set the agenda for natural law philosophers after him. On Grotius’s view, as we search for the rules of natural law that govern our personal lives, we should look towards our instinct of sociability -- and not the broader list of six instincts that Aquinas suggested.
Hobbes’s and Pufendorf’s Revision: Natural Law is Founded on the Instinct of Self-Preservation. British philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was one of the many ethical writers influenced by Grotius’s account of natural law. Like Grotius, Hobbes sees laws of nature as the basis for establishing peaceful societies and ending warring conflicts. However, unlike Grotius, Hobbes explains in great detail how laws of nature impact our daily moral behavior. As Hobbes begins his account of natural law, he immediately parts company with Grotius concerning the instinct of sociability: for Hobbes, humans simply have no such natural inclination. Not only do we lack instinctive sociability, but our human nature continually blocks the path for living sociably with each other. We have differing likes and dislikes with virtually everything, from our favorite foods to our political views. From these differences arise “disputes, controversies, and at last war.” Hobbes also explains how we differ from other more sociable animal species, such as ants, which naturally live peacefully in groups. Unlike ants, humans continually compete with each other for honor, and we take great pleasure in acquiring more things than our neighbors. We also commonly think that we are smarter than our leaders, and we have rhetorical skills that enable us to make evil things appear to be good.
Having rejected the instinct of sociability, Hobbes finds another instinct upon which to base natural law: the instinct of self-preservation. Self-preservation is so central to Hobbes’s account of natural law that he even defines “law of nature” as a rational principle that mandates self-preservation:
A Law of Nature (lex naturalis) is a precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life or taketh away the means of preserving the same, and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be best preserved. [Leviathan, 1:14]
Hobbes lists 12 specific laws of nature and each one of these is rooted in our inherent need to survive. His first and most important law of nature is “to seek peace, and follow it … [and] by all means we can, to defend ourselves.” Hobbes believes that the best way of preserving ourselves is to live in peace with other people, but if we can’t do this then we should defend ourselves in any way that we can.
Hobbes’s view of self-preservation had a direct impact on German philosopher Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694), the most widely published natural law theorist of the 17th century. Echoing Hobbes, Pufendorf argues that we are naturally unsociable and self-preservation drives us more than all of our other natural inclinations. However, striking a compromise between Grotius and Hobbes, Pufendorf argues that our instinct of self-preservation ultimately forces us to be sociable:
So, then, man is an animal which is very desirous of his own
preservation. He is liable to many wants, unable to support himself without the
help of others of his kind, and yet wonderfully fit in society to promote a
common good. But then his is malicious, insolent, and easily provoked, and not
less prone to do harm to his fell man than he is cable of executing it. From
this it must be inferred that to attain our self-preservation, it is absolutely
necessary that we be sociable. [The Duty
of Man and Citizen, 1:3]
According to Pufendorf, we are too
weak to survive on our own and, so, we must rely on help from others. Pufendorf
finds sociability so important to our survival that, following Grotius, he
makes sociability the highest principle of natural law: “From what has been
said, it appears that this is a fundamental
law of nature: to the extent that we can, every person ought to preserve
and promote society, that is, the welfare of mankind.” In short, although
Pufendorf denies instinctive sociability, he endorses the mandate to be
sociable in our instinct to survive.
The trend in natural law theory from Suarez onward shows a growing discontentment with using natural inclinations as a source of moral guidance. Although abandoning Aquinas’s optimistic view about the wide range of human inclinations, these philosophers nevertheless used at least some of our natural inclinations as foundations of moral laws. Eventually, though, even this more cautious view of human inclinations came under fire.
Hume’s and Bentham’s Criticism: Natural Law Theories erroneously derive Ought from Is. Scottish philosopher David Hume (1771-1776) argued that there is a big difference between statements of fact, such as “stealing is harmful to society” and statements of obligation, such as “you should not steal.” We establish statements of fact through observation and scientific investigation. For example, a sociologist could confirm the claim that “stealing is harmful to society.” By contrast, Hume believes that we cannot establish statements of obligation through observation or scientific investigation. For example, no sociological study can establish the moral mandate that “you should not steal.” According to Hume, moral theories commonly err by beginning with statements of fact and concluding with statements of obligation. Philosophers today sum up Hume’s point with the motto “We cannot derive ought from is.” After reading Hume, British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was convinced that natural law philosophers made the blunder that Hume describes:
Some fourscore years ago, by David Hume, in his Treatise on Human Nature, the observation was, for the first time, (it is believed,) brought to light -- how apt men have been, on questions belonging to any part of the field of Ethics, to shift backwards and forwards, and apparently without their perceiving it, from the question, what has been done, to the question, what ought to be done, and vice versa: more especially from the former of these points to the other. ... Such it has been in general, for example to the writers on International Law; witness Grotius and Puffendorf. In their hands, and apparently without their perceiving it, the question is continually either floating between these two parts of the field of Ethics, or shifting from one to the other. [Chrestomathia, Appendix 4, Section 20, note]
Although Bentham mentions Grotius and Pufendorf by name, his criticism applies equally to most natural law philosophers from Aquinas onward. Aquinas begins with facts about our six human inclinations and concludes that we ought to follow the six primary principles of natural law. Grotius begins with the fact about our instinct to be sociable and concludes that we ought to be sociable. Hobbes begins with the fact of self-preservation and concludes that we ought to seek peace to preserve ourselves. Finally, Pufendorf begins with the fact of self-preservation and concludes that we ought to be sociable to survive.
Bentham is certainly correct that natural law philosophers derive ought from is, and they do so more blatantly than most other moral philosophers. However, we need to ask, what is so bad about deriving ought from is? One key problem is that there is too much flexibility in how we deduce ought statements from is statements. For example, from the natural inclination toward self-preservation Aquinas infers that we should always preserve our lives and never resort to suicide, even when terminally ill. However, there are more modest inferences that we could make. For example, from the natural inclination toward self-preservation we might reasonably deduce that we should preserve our lives in cases of self-defense, but we are morally permitted to end our lives when terminally ill. With every instinct mentioned by natural law philosophers, there are both extreme and modest conclusions that we can draw, and the differences between the two can be dramatic. It seems, then, that something more than mere facts guides us in selecting the extreme vs. the modest recommendation. We might be guided by our intuitions, personal feelings, or our social customs, and, if so, the pure facts are far less important than natural law philosophers believe. So, although it may appear as if we are simply deducing obligations of moral law from facts about natural inclination, we are not really doing this and instead we are relying on some other means of moral assessment. We should then just drop the factual facade in our moral theories and instead highlight the true basis of moral assessment – whether that is intuition, personal feeling, social custom, or something else.
THE VALUE OF NATURAL LAW THEORY.
It seems that nature does not magically hand us moral principles through our natural inclinations in the way that natural law theorists believed. Natural law theorists themselves disagree about which natural inclinations are relevant for morality, and this disagreement itself is an argument against distilling morality from natural inclinations. Hume and Bentham appear correct that we cannot simply deduce moral obligations from facts about natural inclinations. One of the attractive features of natural law theory is that it aims to provide a clear and universal standard of morality that any reasonable human can grasp. Unfortunately, natural law theory does not fulfill this promise. The limitations of natural law theory become especially clear when we examine the standard argument from natural law against homosexuality.
Natural Law and Homosexuality. We noted at the outset that natural law philosophers often focus on homosexuality as an example of unnatural and immoral conduct. This is specifically so with Aquinas and his followers since they believe that heterosexual reproduction is one of the six natural inclinations that define our purpose. We can reconstruct Aquinas’s argument against homosexuality here, beginning with the avoid evil clause of the synderesis principle:
1. All acts that are unsuitable for human ends are acts that we should not do.
2. All acts of homosexuality are acts that are unsuitable for human ends.
3. Therefore, all acts of homosexuality are acts that we should not do.
The success of this argument rests on the claim in premise 2 that all homosexual acts are unsuitable for human ends. Aquinas would defend premise 2 by noting that humans have a natural inclination towards sexual reproduction and this partly defines our proper end as human beings. The continuation of our species depends on sexual reproduction, and our heterosexual inclinations are designed for this purpose. Homosexual activity clearly runs contrary to our natural inclination to reproduce through heterosexual activity, and, so, homosexuality is unsuitable for our proper human end. There are two distinct assumptions in this defense: (a) humans have a natural inclination towards heterosexual activity, and (b) sexual activity is exclusively for the purpose of reproduction. There are problems with both of these assumptions.
Concerning Aquinas’s first assumption – that humans have a natural inclination towards heterosexual activity -- researchers today believe that sexual orientation is largely a matter of genetic predisposition. Although most humans are indeed genetically predisposed to heterosexual orientation, around 1 percent of the human population is genetically predisposed to homosexual orientation. For that 1 percent, homosexual orientation is indeed their natural inclination, and heterosexual activity is as foreign to them as homosexuality is foreign to heterosexuals. Contrary to Aquinas, then, human beings don’t have a single natural predisposition regarding sexual activity, and it is a mistake to talk about “human ends” as though there is a single end that applies to everyone. So, we must reject premise 2 since it is based on the false assumption that there exists a uniform sexual inclination that defines a single human end. At best we are only justified in saying for premise 2 that “All acts of homosexuality for heterosexuals are acts that are unsuitable for heterosexual human ends.” That is, for people naturally predisposed to heterosexual activity, it is unsuitable for them to engage in homosexual acts since it is contrary to their human end of heterosexual reproduction.
Concerning Aquinas’s second assumption – that sexual activity is exclusively for the purpose of reproduction – this seems like an overstatement. Again, for Aquinas, the continuation of the human species depends on reproduction, and our sexual inclinations are there for that purpose. Aquinas is correct that a large amount of sexual activity must be devoted to the continuation of the human species. On average, a man and woman who want children must actively try for almost an entire year before the woman successfully conceives. Although that certainly is a lot of sexual activity, it does not account for many sexual activities that aren’t devoted to reproduction, such as oral sex, phone sex, cyber-sex, sex with contraception, and sex after menopause. A defender of Aquinas might see some of these as mating rituals that, in the long run, serve the purposes of reproduction, such as phone sex with couples who temporarily live far away from each other. However, even for married couples, this still leaves a large amount of sexual activity that is unrelated to reproduction. Should we see all of these sexual acts as distortions or violations of the reproductive purpose of sexual activity? Few of us would probably go that far. Although our sexual nature serves a fundamental task in propagating the species, it also serves non-reproductive tasks by shaping our identities, our intimate relationships, and our conceptions of happiness. These other tasks may certainly overlap with the reproductive tasks, but they don’t need to for most people. We must then reject Aquinas’s assumption that sexual activity is exclusively for the purpose of reproduction. And once we reject that assumption, we can’t single out homosexuality for violating the reproductive purpose of sexual activity.
The upshot of Aquinas’s argument
against homosexuality is that it fails because it makes unwarranted assumptions
about the existence of a universal natural inclination and the purpose of such
an inclination. If we closely examined the other natural inclinations listed by
Aquinas, we’d likely find similar problems with these.
The
Legacy of Natural Law Theory. During the 17th and 18th
centuries there were essentially two distinct traditions of natural law theory:
one started by Aquinas, and another started by Grotius. Aquinas’s specific
theory was perpetuated by philosophers in the Roman Catholic tradition who held
that we discover our proper human end by considering a wide range of human
natural inclinations. To this day Aquinas’s theory plays a vital role in Roman
Catholic moral philosophy. However, non-Catholic philosophers perpetuated the
theory that was first forged by Grotius and later developed by Pufendorf. This
approach draws more selectively from our human nature, and founds natural law
only on a specific human inclination, such as sociability. By the 19th century, though, moral
philosophers lost interest in Grotius’s tradition of natural law. In spite of
this decline in interest, the impact of natural law theory on moral philosophy
was so strong that it left a legacy that is still with us today. We find this
continuing legacy principally in minor themes of the natural law theory, which
have since become major themes in moral philosophy.
One of these themes involves natural rights and duties. Grotius and
Pufendorf argued that natural law dictates both a list of natural rights that
protect me from the hostility of other people, and another list of specific
moral duties that obligate me towards other people. The U.S. Declaration of
Independence, for example, draws on this notion natural rights in its claim
that God endows us with unalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Another theme
of natural law theory is that of the social
contract. Hobbes argued that the
principles of natural law compel us to create peaceful societies through social
contracts. That is, we mutually agree to set aside our hostilities and live in
peace since this is the best way for each of us to preserve our own lives.
Again, the U.S. Declaration of Independence rests on social contract theory,
particularly in its view that “governments are instituted among men” to bring
about our “safety and happiness.”
Another child of natural law theory
is the notion of a supreme moral
principle. Aquinas believed that the highest principle of natural law was
to “do good and avoid evil.” Grotius and Pufendorf believed it was “be
sociable”. Natural law philosophers during the 18th century offered
similar supreme principles, and, influenced by this tradition, later moral
philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and J.S. Mill offered their own highest
principles of morality. A related notion in natural law theory is the idea that
we deduce specific moral rules from more general ones. Many moral philosophers
today believe that this kind of deduction is a normal part of moral reasoning.
Although moral theories today regularly incorporate these secondary features of natural law theory, we should not simply assume the validity of these features. Just as we scrutinized the natural law conception of human inclinations, so too should we scrutinize the notions of rights, duties, social contracts, and supreme moral principles.
Summary. We find the first hints of natural law theory in the Stoic notion that we should live in agreement with nature as mandated by God. Roman Law introduced the term “natural law” in contrast to more narrow notions of civil law and law of nations. The first systematic account of natural law, though, was offered by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas argued that natural law is a subset of God’s eternal law that rules the universe. Specifically, natural law consists of general principles of morality that God imbeds in our human nature. Through the faculty of synderesis we receive knowledge of the highest principle of natural law: do good and avoid evil, as defined by our proper human end. By reflecting on this principle and our six main human inclinations, we deduce six primary principles of natural law, such as “avoid harming others”. From these six principles we deduce more specific principles of human law. As natural law theory developed in the 16th and 17th centuries, philosophers abandoned Aquinas’s view that we gain knowledge of natural law by inspecting our six natural inclinations. Francisco Suarez believed that our conscience gives us knowledge of the principles of natural law, and this helps us regulate our six natural inclinations.
Returning to earlier Stoic and Roman notions of natural law, Hugo Grotius argued that we gain knowledge of natural law through our inclination of sociability, and the highest principle of natural law is simply to be sociable. Thomas Hobbes believed that natural law is founded on our instinct to survive, and the highest principle of natural law was to preserve our lives by seeking peace and defending ourselves. Influenced by both Hobbes and Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf argued that natural law is founded on our survival instincts, and the best way to survive is to be sociable. Following Hume, Bentham criticized the natural law tradition for deriving ought from is, that is, beginning with facts about human nature and concluding with statements of moral obligation. Using the example of homosexuality, we how natural law theories can make unwarranted assumptions about the existence and purpose of some human inclinations. Although interest in natural law theory declined during the 19th century, its influence lives on in moral theories involving rights, duties, social contracts, and supreme moral principles.
Sources
John Boswell’s account of medieval church attitudes towards homosexuality is in Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, (New York: Villard, 1994).
Quotation by Cicero is from The Republic (De Re Publica) 3:22, translated by Clinton Walker Keyes (Cambridge, Mass,: Harvard University Press, 1928).
Quotations by Aquinas are from “The Treatise on Law” (1a2ae q. 90-144) and other portions of Summa Theologica, tr. Laurence Shapcote, Fathers of the English Dominican Province, (London: 1911-1936).
For a more detailed account of the deductive process in Aquinas’s theory see James Fieser’s “The Logic of Natural Law in Aquinas’ ‘Treatise on Law,’“ Journal of Philosophical Research, 1992, Vol. 17, pp. 147-164.
Quotation by Suarez is from On Law and God the Lawgiver (De Legibus ac Deo Legislatoro, 1612), 2:8:4, translated by Gwladys Williams, et al, in Selections From Three Works of Francisco Suarez (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1944).
Quotation by Grotius is from On the Law of War and Peace (De jure belli ac pacis, 1625), Prolegomena, translated by Francis W. Kelsey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925).
Quotation by Hobbes is from Leviathan (1651) 1:14, which is available in several modern editions, the best of which is that by Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994).
Quotations by Pufendorf are adapted from The Whole Duty of Man according to the Law of Nature (London, 1691), a 17th century English translation of his book De officio hominis et civis juxta legem naturalem (1673). Pufendorf also presents his theory in a longer and more detailed work titled Of the Law of Nature and Nations (De Jure Naturae et Gentium, 1762).
Hume’s view about not deriving ought from is in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740) 3:1:1, which is available in several recent editions.
Quotation from Bentham is from Chrestomathia: being a collection of papers (1816), Appendix 4, Section 20, note; from The Works of Jeremy Bentham, edited by John Bowring (London: 1838-1843).
Suggestions
for Further Reading
For
discussions of Aquinas’s theory of morality and natural law see R.A. Armstrong, Primary and Secondary Precepts in Thomistic Natural Law Teaching
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, l966); Alan Donagan, Human Ends and Human Action (Milwaukee: Marquette, 1985). D.J.
O’Connor, Aquinas and Natural Law,
(London: MacMillan, 1968); Ralph McInerny, Aquinas
on Human Action (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press,
1992).
For discussions of the history of natural law theory see Lloyd L. Weinreb, Natural Law and Justice (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987); J.B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),
#5. MORALITY AND THE WILL OF GOD
INTRODUCTION.
On April 19, 1993, around 80 members of a religious sect called the Branch Davidians burned to death in their communal home in Waco, Texas at the close of a siege initiated by the FBI and other US Government military organizations. The siege was prompted by the FBI’s concern about weapons that the group stockpiled. The FBI was also concerned that the Davidians’ 34-year-old leader, David Koresh, was sexually and physically mistreating children in the group. During the siege Koresh admitted to fathering more than 12 children by different wives who were around 12 or 13 years old when becoming pregnant. At earlier Bible study sessions Koresh taught that the younger girls in the compound would have the privilege of having sex with him once they reached puberty. Koresh also harshly disciplined the children by beating them and withholding food from them. The FBI became increasingly frustrated by the Davidians’ failure to surrender and, on the 51th day of the siege, the FBI launched an assault against their communal home. Rather than comply, the Davidians set themselves on fire and died.
The theology of the Branch Davidian group is complex, but many of their views hinge on their belief in divinely inspired prophecies. According to their view, we find some divine prophecies in the Bible, which foretell of events leading to the end of the world. Other divine messages, though, come from recent prophets -- including David Koresh himself. Koresh believed that, as a prophet, he was in a unique position to know God’s plan for the world. In a taped message during the siege, he explains that God’s saints know how to slowly uncover God’s truth, one precept at a time:
... if she [i.e., God’s bride] has the righteousness of saints, we as saints, should we not know rightly how to divide the Word of God (line upon line, precept on precept; to see here, there; and a little here, and there a little) the Truth of God? [Taped Message of March 2nd, 1993]
More specifically, Koresh believed that God’s plan involved a bloody confrontation between the Church and the US government -- which was his reason for stockpiling weapons. He also believed that God directed him to father children with his various young brides.
An underlying component of Koresh’s prophecies is that God is a law to himself and can order things as he sees fit. This appears to include God’s ability to create moral standards. Although at times God might tell us to cooperate with our governments, at another time he might tell us to resist our government with military force. Although at times God may give us specific rules regarding marriage and having children, at another time he might instruct a special person -- such as David Koresh -- to defy these rules in a manner that we would ordinarily find morally repugnant. Theological positions such as Koresh’s prompt us to think more closely about the relation between morality and the will of God. Does God simply invent moral rules as he sees fit or does God himself answer to a higher standard? A longstanding tradition in Christian philosophy holds that God indeed does create moral rules purely as a matter of his free will. We will look at the central arguments for and against this position.
Plato and the Euthyphro Puzzle. The philosophical issue surrounding morality and the will of God first came to light by the Greek philosopher Plato (428-348 BCE) in his dialog Euthyphro. In this dialog, a character named Euthyphro is prepared to turn his father over to the authorities for mistreating and causing the death of a slave. In ancient Greece, children were expected to show unconditional loyalty to their parents, and, so, by turning in his father, Euthyphro would be violating the standard code of morality. Nevertheless, Euthyprho believes that he is following the will of the gods and therefore doing the right thing. On his way to the courthouse, Euthyphro bumps into Socrates, and the two start debating on the connection between morality and religious obedience. Socrates then poses this question to Euthyphro: “Are good things good because the gods approve of them, or do the gods approve of them because they are good?” In this puzzle, Socrates presents two options regarding the relation between the gods and morality. The first option is that something becomes good when the gods will that it is good. For example, the gods might will that children should show unconditional loyalty to their parents, and, by so willing, it is thereby morally good and obligatory that children should show unconditional loyalty to their parents. On this view, the gods invent morality and, in a sense, the gods create morality completely from scratch without any source of guidance. If the gods will that something should be morally good, then it simply becomes morally good.
The
second option in the above puzzle is that good things are objectively good, and
the gods merely recognize them as
such. For example, it may be objectively good and obligatory for children to
show unconditional loyalty to their parents, and the gods simply endorse this
moral standard. On this view, morality is grounded in a pre-existing standard
of moral goodness, which the gods themselves have no control over and which the
gods themselves must adopt. The genius of Plato’s puzzle is that -- assuming
that God has an interest in morality -- these are the only two choices
available for explaining the connection between God and morality: God either
invents it from scratch or God abides by a pre-existing standard. Further,
since we can’t endorse both of these options at the same time, we are locked
into choosing one over the other. Plato himself believed that morality is
grounded in external and pre-existing standards, and, so, Plato went with the
second option above. Many philosophers after Plato followed his lead and held
that there exists an eternal and independent standard of morality.
TRADITIONAL VOLUNTARISM.
During the middle ages, Christian philosophers thought about the connection between God and morality and considered more seriously whether God might be the author of moral standards. The philosophers who debated this issue were all part of the natural law tradition of moral philosophy. That is, they all roughly held that God endorses specific moral standards and fixes them in human nature. We then discover the natural laws of morality through our conscience or by reflecting on our natural human inclinations. Although natural law philosophers agreed on these basic points, they disagreed about where God got moral standards to begin with. Aquinas, for example, believed that, although God endorses the moral principles of natural law, God doesn’t literally author these principles. Instead, moral principles are rational laws that exist independently of God. God simply adopts moral principles because, as a rational being, God has a kinship with rational notions such as moral principles. Since God created humans as rational creatures, then we too have the capacity to rationally grasp these moral principles. This position is commonly called intellectualism, insofar as it emphasizes the view that moral principles issue from God’s intellect. Other medieval philosophers took the opposing view called voluntarism, which is that moral principles of natural law are not independent rational principles. Instead, they are creations of God’s will, or in Latin, voluntas. In recent years the voluntarist position also goes by the name of divine command theory.
Scotus’s
Voluntarism. One of the great defenders of voluntarism in the middle
ages was Scottish born philosopher John Duns Scotus (c.1266-1308). There are two components to Scotus’s view. First, Scotus
believed that God has a genuinely free
will in the sense that God could have willed things differently than he
actually did. Suppose, for example, that God willed to create the planet Mars
at a specific point in time. At the precise moment that he willed to create
Mars, God could have willed instead
to not create it. Scotus’s notion of
God’s will is substantially stronger than the views of God’s will held by
intellectualist philosophers before him. Aquinas, for example, believed that
God’s will is intimately bound up with God’s rational abilities, so that when
God willed something he would thereby will things that were rational. For
Aquinas, when God willed to create the laws of morality, he did so because such
laws involve a rational and orderly way for moral beings to conduct their
lives. Scotus, though, believes that Aquinas’s notion of God’s will is
inadequate since it constrains God’s will with prior reasons or causes. A
genuinely free will, for Scotus, is unconstrained.
The second component of Scotus’s view is that God has absolute power in the sense that God can bring about anything that he wants, so long as it doesn’t involve a logical contradiction. Scotus makes this point here:
God, therefore, insofar as he is able to act in accord with those right laws he set up previously, is said to act according to his ordained power; but insofar as he is able to do many things that are not in accord with, but go beyond, these [divinely] preestablished laws, God is said to act according to his absolute power. For God can do anything that is not self-contradictory or act in any way that does not include a contradiction (and there are many such ways he could act); and then he is said to be acting according to his absolute power. [Oxford Commentary, 1:44]
In this passage Scotus explains that God has two kinds of powers: ordained and absolute. God’s ordained power involves a basic ability for God to act in accord with laws that he previously sets up, such as laws of salvation or laws of physics. By contrast, God’s absolute power involves a stronger ability to act contrary to his previously established laws, and God can do this in any way that he wants, so long as there is no logical contradiction. A statement is logically contradictory when it both asserts and denies the same thing. Take, for example, the statement that “Bob is a married bachelor”. Since the definition of “bachelor” includes being unmarried, then this statement is contradictory insofar as it implies that Bob is married and unmarried at the same time. Similarly, the statement “Bob has a tattoo of a round square” is contradictory since it implies that a specific shape contains 90-degree angles and lacks 90-degree angles at the same time.
When we put together God’s free will with his absolute power, we see that God is free to do what he wants, and he has the power to do what he wants -- so long as there are no logical contradictions. We can better understand the scope of God’s free will and absolute power by considering three kinds of laws:
· Physical laws, such as the law of gravity
· Mathematical laws, such as “2+2=4”
· Logical laws, such as the law of identity (the Empire State Building is the Empire State Building)
According to Scotus, God’s absolute power gives him control over some of these laws, but not others. Concerning physical laws, Scotus and most theologians quickly grant that God has creative control over the structure of the physical world and the rules that govern it. For any physical law that we pick, such as gravity, God could change it without logical contradiction. However, mathematical and logical laws can’t be changed without logical contradiction. If we say that God has the power to make 2+2=4, then God would also have the power to make 2+2=5. And this seems absurd. Similarly, if we say that God has the power to create logical laws such as the law of identity, then he also has the power to institute the opposite law. So, for example, God could make the Empire State Building not identical to itself, or, for that matter, God could make himself not identical to himself. Since Scotus holds that God can’t perform logically contradictory tasks, then he would reject the view that God has power over mathematics and logic. Most medieval philosophers also held this view. However, medieval philosophers didn’t see this as a restriction on God’s absolute power, since no possible being can perform logically contradictory tasks.
When we turn to the issue of moral laws, we must determine whether moral laws are more like physical laws, which God has control over, or more like mathematical and logical laws, which God doesn’t have control over. For Aquinas, moral laws, such as “murder is wrong” are more like mathematics and logic, which God has no control over. Scotus, though, sees moral laws as more like physical laws, which God does have control over. For Scotus, God first freely wills a specific conception of morality, and then institutes these values through his absolute power. He creates these without reliance on any pre-existing external standards, and he implants knowledge of them in our human nature.
Scotus’s voluntarism creates a paradox: if morality is a creation of God’s will, then God could will whatever moral values he wants, even the exact opposite of present moral values. For example, although God in fact mandates that stealing is wrong, God could have made stealing morally permissible. So too for killing, lying, and marital infidelity. So, God’s moral commands seem arbitrary. Scotus is willing to accept this paradox and all of its strange implications. In fact, he believes that at specific points in history God actually did reverse the rules of morality to suit his own special purposes. Scotus draws attention to three particular stories from the Hebrew Bible in which several of the Hebrew patriarchs commit seemingly immoral acts at God’s command:
To kill, to steal, to commit adultery, are against the precepts of the decalogue, as is clear from Exodus [20:13]: “You shall not kill” [etc.]. Yet God seems to have dispensed from these. This is clear in regard to homicide from Genesis 22, regarding Abraham and the son he was about to sacrifice; or for theft from Exodus 11:[2] and [12:35] where he ordered the sons of Israel to despoil the Egyptians, which despoilment is taking what belongs to another without the owner’s consent, which is the definition of theft. As for the third, there is Hosea 1: “Make children of fornications.” [Oxford Commentary, 3:37]
The first story depicts how God commands Abraham to offer his son as a human sacrifice. At the last minute, as Abraham raises his knife in the air to kill his son, God provides an animal as a substitute. Nevertheless, Abraham’s intent is already fixed and he attempts to carry out the act in accord with God’s will. The second story relates how, just before the Israelites leave Egypt, God commands the Israelites to steal vessels from their Egyptian neighbors. In the third story, God commands Hosea to have sex with an adulteress.
Scotus believes that these are genuine examples of God granting a special dispensation or privilege for these people. By granting such dispensations, God is temporarily revoking a specific moral law and setting up a new and possibly opposite standard in its place:
... any legislator dispenses unconditionally when he revokes a precept of positive law made by himself. He does not allow the prohibited act or precept to remain as before, but removes the prohibition or makes what was formerly illicit now licit. [Oxford Commentary, 3:37]
Scotus concludes that God could alter virtually all of the moral laws if he wanted. The only exceptions are moral laws involving our subservience to God, such as the commands to worship and obey God. To alter these, God would need to stop being the infinitely great God that he is, and, because doing so would be in contradiction to God’s nature, God cannot do this.
These are the main points of Scotus’s view of voluntarism:
· God has a genuinely free will, which is unconstrained by prior reasons or causes.
· God has absolute power insofar as he can do anything that is logically possible.
· Moral standards are creations of God’s will, and God can alter them without logical contradiction.
· Some Biblical stories depict God revoking previously established moral standards.
Voluntarism after Scotus. In the centuries after Scotus, advocates continued to line up on both sides of the intellectualism/voluntarism debate. The dispute became so central to moral theory that virtually every moral philosopher felt compelled to state one way or the other whether morality is a creation of God’s will. One of the more dramatic defenders of voluntarism after Scotus was English-born philosopher William of Ockham (1285-1349). Like Scotus, Ockham believed that God could revoke any moral law he wanted. For example, Ockham argued that although God will in fact punish us for being immoral, nothing requires him to do so. And, supposing that we didn’t repent, God could still grant us forgiveness and not punish us, if that’s what God wanted to do. Ockham pushes this line of reasoning further and argued that, although God commands us to love him, God could command us to hate him instead:
Every will can conform to the commands of God. God can, however, command a created will to hate Him. Therefore, the created will can do this. Moreover, any act that can be just on earth could also be just in heaven. On earth the hatred of God can be just, if it is commanded by God Himself. Therefore, the hatred of God could also be just in heaven. [Fourth Book of the Sentences, 13]
Ockham argues here that if God did command us to hate him, then this would in fact be the morally right thing to do. Ockham’s statement was so controversial that it contributed to his excommunication from the Church in 1328.
During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, German reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546) came down strongly on the side of voluntarism. In a statement that sounds like a direct answer to Plato’s Euthyphro puzzle, Luther writes, “What God wills is not right because he ought or was bound so to will; on the contrary, what takes place must be right, because he wills.” Following Luther’s lead, French Protestant reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) argued that God’s will is the highest authority for morality:
God’s will is so
much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever he wills, by the very fact
that he wills it, must be considered righteous. When, therefore, one asks why
God has so done, we must reply: because he has willed it. But if you proceed
further to ask why he has so willed, you are seeking something greater and
higher than God’s will, which cannot be found. [Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3:23:2]
Calvin argues here that God’s will is the final authority behind everything that God does, including God’s pronouncements about morality. If we attempt to explain why God chose this or that moral standard, our only answer is that God simply willed it that way. Luther’s and Calvin’s statements were important for moving the voluntarist position beyond its Catholic origins and establishing it within the Protestant philosophical tradition.
Within a century after the Reformation, though, several Protestant moral philosophers resisted the idea that God creates moral standards. The trend started with Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) who stated directly that God cannot change moral standards:
The law of nature, again, is unchangeable -- even in the sense that it cannot be changed by God. Measureless as is the power of God, nevertheless it can be said that there are certain things over which that power does not extend; for things of which this is said are spoken only, having no sense corresponding with reality and being mutually contradictory. Just as even God, then, cannot cause that two times two should not make four, so he cannot cause that that which is intrinsically evil be not evil. [Law of War and Peace, 1:10:5]
In this passage, Grotius appears to accept the notion of God’s absolute power as Scotus defined it, namely, the ability to do anything that is not logically contradictory. However, Grotius rejects voluntarism by suggesting that moral laws are similar to mathematical laws, which can’t be altered without contradiction. As we’ve seen, voluntarists such as Scotus believe that moral laws are more like physical laws, which can be changed without contradiction. Grotius, then, does not technically ascribe less power to God’s abilities, but, instead, Grotius elevates the status of moral standards, which places them beyond God’s reach.
We
don’t know why Grotius was motivated to elevate moral standards to the level of
mathematical laws. However, shortly after Grotius, a group of philosophers
known as the Cambridge Platonists
gave very clear reasons behind their rejection of voluntarism. Cambridge
Platonists, such as Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688),
were bothered by followers of Calvin who made God’s will the final authority in
all moral matters. According to Calvinists, God somewhat arbitrarily chooses
some people for salvation, and other people for damnation, and nothing that we
do on our own can change God’s choice. Following Plato, Cudworth believed that
there exists an objective standard of moral goodness that humans must submit
to. This moral standard is independent of God’s will and everyone can grasp it
through the use of reason. For Cudworth, then, I don’t have to worry about
whether God arbitrarily chose me for salvation. Instead, as long as I follow
this objective standard of morality, then I will be in God’s favor.
Over the next 150 years, dozens of
critics of voluntarism similarly claimed that moral standards are eternal and
immutable, and even God can’t change them. Although rejecting voluntarism per se, many of these philosophers believed
that God’s will still plays at least some role in morality. Suppose, for
example, that by using my reason I learn the eternal moral truth that I should
not steal from other people. Although I now know
that I should not steal, I nevertheless may not be motivated to actually follow this moral rule. And that’s where
God’s will enters the picture. If God wills that we should all follow these
eternal moral truths -- and we don’t want to disappoint God -- then we’ll all
be motivated to follow those moral truths. So, even though God does not
willfully create moral truths, he
willfully mandates them on humans,
and this motivates us to be moral.
Voluntarists
and intellectualists differ about whether God creates moral standards, but both
sides of the dispute held equally that God is an important component in
morality. Virtually no one publicly questioned the existence of God until the
18th century, and philosophers commonly held that no true atheists
either did exist or could exist. So, the climate was well
suited for mixing morality and religious belief. Since the 18th
century, however, the tables have turned regarding the connection between
religion and morality. Scientifically minded moral philosophers of the 18th
century attempted to create a science of ethics, which, like the physical
sciences, stands independently of religious doctrines. During the 19th
century, several philosophers and scientists publicly affirmed atheism or
agnosticism, and this further established a secular agenda for moral
philosophy. We’ve inherited this agenda, and an academic book on ethics
published today might not contain the word “God” even once.
ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST VOLUNTARISM.
Traditional
voluntarists offer two central arguments for the position that God freely
creates moral standards: an argument from revoking established moral standards
and an argument from absolute power. We will examine each of these in turn.
Argument from Revoking Established Moral Standards. Scotus and like-minded voluntarists often argue that the Bible and other sacred texts give us examples of how God temporarily revokes previously established moral standards for special purposes. Since God has the ability to revoke previously established moral standards, then this implies that these standards must be creations of God. Put more precisely, the argument is this:
(1) If God has the ability to temporarily revoke a moral standard, then he has the power to freely create moral standards.
(2) Some divinely inspired texts depict God as temporarily revoking a previously established moral standard.
(3) Therefore, God has the power to freely create moral standards.
The success of this argument depends on the truth of premises 1 and 2. However, both of these premises have problems.
Premise one makes the basic claim that if someone has the power to revoke a standard, then that person had the initial power to create that standard. Suppose, for example, that the State of Tennessee decided to raise the speed limit from 70 miles per hour to 80 miles per hour. If the Tennessee government has the authority to revoke the 70 mile per hour limit, then it is reasonable to assume that they are the ones who created that speed limit to begin with. However, although this is a reasonable inference, it isn’t absolute. It is possible that some other governing body, such as the Federal government, established the original 70 mile per hour limit, and simply assigned power to the State of Tennessee to revoke that standard if they saw fit. Similarly, it is possible that something other than God set in place our basic moral values, and God simply has the power to revoke those standards. For example, perhaps the fabric of the cosmos itself set in place our basic moral values, and God uses his power to override them on occasion. Alternatively, perhaps human societies invented our basic moral values, and sometimes God enters into the moral decision making process and uses his power to override the values that we invented. So, just because someone has the power to revoke moral standards this does not necessarily mean that he had the power to create those standards.
Premise two in the above argument states that some divinely inspired texts depict God as temporarily revoking a previously established moral standard. The stories of Abraham, the Israelites fleeing Egypt, and Hosea seem to be examples of this. The most obvious problem with these examples is that they carry weight only for believers within religious traditions that recognize the authority of specific scriptures. In the case of stories from the Hebrew Bible, these principally carry weight for Jews and Christians, which together constitute only a minority of the world’s population. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and members of other religions might find these stories interesting, but not authoritative.
For the sake of argument, let’s confine our discussion to the stories from the Hebrew Bible and to the Jews and Christians who see these stories as authoritative. Even so, there is still a major problem with premise two: these stories don’t conclusively illustrate God revoking moral standards. Take, for example, the story of Abraham who is prepared to kill his son. Although murder is certainly wrong, it is often difficult to determine whether an act of killing is unjustified to the point that it counts as murder. If an intruder breaks into my house and threatens my family, I may be justified in killing him and, so, it may not count as “murder”. To determine if an act of killing rises to the level of murder, we must examine the context of a person’s act and consider his motivations for killing someone. If Abraham slaughtered his son for no good reason, then that would certainly appear to be murder. However, Abraham does have a reason for preparing to kill his son, and this reason involves a complex relationship with God. In addressing the story of Abraham, Aquinas believes that Abraham’s act was justified in view of God’s ultimate role in the life and death process:
All men alike, both guilty and innocent, die the death of nature: which death of nature is inflicted by the power of God on account of original sin, according to 1 Kings. 2:6: “The Lord killeth and maketh alive.” Consequently, by the command of God, death can be inflicted on any man, guilty or innocent, without any injustice whatever. [Summa Theologica, la-2ae, Q. 94:5]
According to Aquinas, God has ultimate authority over when and how anyone dies. Although it might be wrong for Abraham to kill his son on his own, it would not be wrong for Abraham to carry out God’s orders since, on Aquinas’s view, God is and always was the final authority over human life.
Aquinas similarly runs through the examples of the Israelites’ leaving town with the property of their Egyptian neighbors, and Hosea sleeping with an adulteress. Once again, although stealing and adultery are immoral, Aquinas argues that God ultimately owns all property and spouses, and he can assign them to whomever he wants. Even if we don’t agree with Aquinas’s precise explanations, his larger point is still valid: the Biblical stories don’t conclusively depict God revoking previously established moral standards. So, there are serious problems with premise 2, which, like the problems with premise 1, force us to reject the argument from revoking established moral standards.
The Argument from Absolute Power. Scotus and other voluntarists offer a second argument for the position that God freely creates moral standards, and this argument is grounded in the notion of God’s absolute power. If God has absolute power, then he can do basically anything, including create moral principles in any way that he sees fit. The more precise argument is this:
(1) If a being is absolutely powerful, then that being can freely create moral standards without contradiction
(2) God is absolutely powerful
(3) Therefore God can freely create moral standards without contradiction
Again, the success of this argument rests on the truth of premises 1 and 2. Premise 1 draws on Scotus’s notion of absolute power, namely the ability to do anything that doesn’t involve a contradiction. Premise 1 also claims that, in principle, moral standards can be created and altered in various ways without logical contradiction. For example, according to Scotus, it is not logically contradictory to state that “we are morally obligated to murder, steal, or commit adultery.” This statement may be false, and it certainly sounds strange when we say it out loud, but it contains no logical contradiction, such as we find in the statement “Bob is a married bachelor”.
A critic of Scotus might argue that prohibitions against murder, stealing, and adultery are actually built into our notion of moral obligation. That is, when we speak about our moral obligations, we actually refer to a specific collection of moral obligations, which include our obligations against murder, stealing, and adultery. So, according to the critic, a contradiction is lurking beneath the surface in the statement that “we are morally obligated to murder, steal, or commit adultery.” In response, Scotus would deny that we define the notion of “moral obligation” with a specific collection of moral obligations. Instead, “moral obligation” has a much more general meaning and is linked to what God freely wills. It is too soon in the argument to grant Scotus’s point that God himself defines the nature of moral obligation. Nevertheless, Scotus’s view is at least logically possible, and this by itself shows that prohibitions against murder, stealing and adultery are not logically part of the definition. Although we’ve gotten used to linking “moral obligation” with prohibitions against murder, stealing, and adultery, these prohibitions are not logically included in the notion of moral obligation.
Premise 1 of the above argument, then, seems acceptable. That is, it seems that moral standards might be created and altered in various ways without logical contradiction. The success of the above argument, then, rests on premise 2: God is absolutely powerful. According to this premise, there exists a God who has the power to do anything that doesn’t involve a logical contradiction. Should we accept this premise? Medieval philosophers devised proofs to demonstrate that God exists and that God has infinitely great qualities -- including the power to do all logically possible things. Scotus himself formulated one of the most elaborate proofs for God’s existence that any philosopher has ever offered. Suppose, though, that we are not convinced by such proofs, or we aren’t even interested in wading through the details of these proofs to see if they work. We might instead wish to simply grant that God exists and then consider as a matter of personal faith whether God has absolute power. For traditional believers, the idea of a God with limited power doesn’t make much sense. Who would want to believe in a puny God with restricted abilities? Instead, a dedicated believer motivated by a sense of devotion should want to attribute as much power to God as possible, including creative power over moral principles. So, a strong sense of religious devotion should incline the believer to accept premise 2.
There are two problems with this devotion-based endorsement of premise 2. First, just because we want to attribute absolute power to God, that doesn’t mean that an absolutely powerful God actually exists. Our devotion may be misdirected and we may be only thinking wishfully -- just as we might hope to hit the big lottery jackpot. Wishful thinking isn’t a strong enough basis for concluding that God freely creates morality. Second, it is not clear that, as a matter of devotion, we should want to attribute absolute power to God. How much power must we ascribe to God before we are psychologically content in our devotion towards him? A believer may certainly be psychologically compelled to believe in a God that is very powerful. But as the believer heaps more and more powerful abilities on God, there is a point at which ascribing that extra power is unnecessary for spiritual contentment and even collapses into self-indulgence.
Suppose, for example, that I love to eat apples and for the next month I vow to eat nothing but apples. During this one-month period there are physical limits to the number of apples I could eat, which would be about 1,000 apples. Suppose next that a local apple grower decides to support my efforts during that one-month period and brings by a truckload of 1,000 apples. Upon delivering the apples, I protest “that’s not good enough, and I demand 2,000 apples even though I won’t be able to eat them all!” Like my desire for more apples than I can eat, a believer can stipulate more divine power than the believer actually needs to be spiritually satisfied, and anything beyond that is something like spiritual gluttony. The least admirable form of religious faith is that which is directed by the believer’s personal cravings, such as the desire for heavenly rewards. The Hindu Bhagavad Gita makes this point here:
The foolish utter flowery speech, and rejoice in the letter of the Vedas [i.e., Hindu scriptures]. For them there is nothing but a desire for the self with only the intent on reaching heaven. [Bhagavad Gita, 2]
This passage condemns established religious practices that are rooted in the believer’s selfish desires. The Bhagavad Gita recommends instead that we distance ourselves from any personal benefit that our faith might give us. Although traditional Christians may resist taking spiritual advice from Hindu texts, this particular point in the Bhagavad Gita is universal: selfish interests shouldn’t guide faith. Accordingly, it isn’t appropriate for us to grant God creative power over moral principles when we are motivated by spiritual gluttony.
In the absence of a convincing proof for the existence of an absolutely powerful God, we should hold premise two in suspicion and thereby reject the argument from absolute power. So, we’ve rejected both the argument from revoking established moral standards and the argument from absolute power. Although both of these arguments fail, it is important to note that this does not necessarily mean that voluntarism is false; it only means that these specific arguments fail as proofs for the view that morality is a creation of God’s will. The voluntarist may offer other more successful proofs or simply hold voluntarism as a matter of faith in spite of the criticisms.
Criticism: Voluntarism implies that Divine Goodness is Meaningless. Although voluntarism is no longer part of mainstream moral philosophy, some Christian philosophers today continue to argue that God creates morality. Like their medieval predecessors, contemporary voluntarists often rely on both the argument from revoking established moral standards and the argument from absolute power. This continued interest in voluntarism has sparked a number of critical reactions. The most commonly discussed contemporary criticism is that if God does create moral goodness, then we can’t meaningfully say about God himself that “God is morally good.” According to voluntarism, “moral goodness” simply means “that which God ordains.” This definition by itself does not present problems when we make moral statements about human beings. Suppose, for example, that I say, “Bob is morally good.” Based on the voluntarist’s definition of moral goodness, this statement means “Bob does that which God ordains,” and this is a perfectly meaningful statement. However, suppose that I next say, “God is morally good.” Based on the voluntarist’s definition of moral goodness, this statement translates “God ordains that which he ordains,” and here the notion of divine moral goodness is lost. The critic’s general point appears correct: if voluntarism is true, then moral statements about God aren’t as meaningful as moral statements about human beings. It also seems clear that the voluntarist’s notion of divine moral goodness isn’t as meaningful as the intellectualist’s notion of divine moral goodness. According to intellectualism, “moral goodness” means “that which conforms to an independent moral standard.” If I then say that “God is morally good”, for the intellectualist, this means that “God conforms to an independent moral standard”-- and this is perfectly meaningful.
For the critic, then, the voluntarist implicitly abandons any meaningful notion of divine moral goodness. This is a problem since, without moral goodness, God wouldn’t be much better than an absolutely powerful bully. The heart of this issue involves a tension between the notions of divine power and divine goodness. On the one hand, if God has absolute power over moral principles, then the notion of divine moral goodness is not meaningful. On the other hand, if we wish to preserve the notion of divine moral goodness, then we must deny God’s absolute power over moral principles. The critic advises that we should take this second option and preserve God’s goodness at the expense of God’s power, which is the intellectualist position on the issue. Should the believer follow the critic’s intellectualist advice? The question appears to hinge on the believer’s differing levels of psychological comfort. Presumably, according to the critic, it is more comforting to retain a meaningful notion of divine goodness rather than it is to retain the notion of God’s absolute power over morality.
However, we run into problems when basing arguments on issues of comfort. We’ve seen above that endorsing the notion of absolute power may simply be motivated by spiritual gluttony, which isn’t very admirable. Similarly, if we inspect the intellectualist’s psychological motives for retaining a meaningful notion of divine goodness, we may find something equally unadmirable. Intellectualism retains a meaningful notion of divine goodness because it sets up an independent standard of morality that is external to God. Perhaps this is motivated by a sense of distrust in God. If God creates moral standards on his own, then who knows what whimsical commands he might come up with? And, if we instead see that morality is grounded in an independent standard from God, then we are free from God’s moral authority. To a degree, this was the motivation behind the endorsement of intellectualism by the Cambridge Platonists.
In short, the worst-case motivation for voluntarism is spiritual gluttony, and the desire to heap more power on God than is necessary. On the other hand, the worst-case motivation for intellectualism is a distrust of God, and the desire to have a more reliable standard of morality. Neither of these are particularly good motives for a believer to have. If believers hope to resolve the dispute between intellectualism and voluntarism, they will need to find more pure motives for adopting one of these options over the other. Without a more pure motive, the dispute collapses into self-indulgent assertions. The safest route for the believer, though, is to set the whole issue aside and concede the inability to mark off the boundaries between God’s absolute power and God’s moral goodness. Whether God creates moral principles or not, it should be sufficient for the believer to see that God endorses these principles.
GOD AND MORALITY.
In recent years the tables have turned against religious morality so much that contemporary moral philosophers hold with suspicion, simply dismiss, or even ridicule those who vocalize any religious ethics. What, though, is so bad about linking morality with God? On one level, the religious ethics of Aquinas and Scotus is a purely academic issue with little immediate practical implication. For Aquinas, God simply endorses the same rational moral standard that any other rational being would also endorse, including humans. Aquinas contends that we don’t even need to believe in God to rationally uncover moral standards. To a degree, this is also the case for Scotus. Even though God freely creates moral standards as he pleases, Scotus argues that we gain knowledge of these divinely created moral standards through our conscience, which is a natural faculty that we all possess. Since I have this faculty regardless of whether I personally believe in God, then, just like the believer, I too will intuit these proper moral standards. It is true that Aquinas and Scotus both believe that God encourages us to be moral, and will punish us for immoral conduct. This, they believe, has an impact on our motivation to be moral. However, as long as our moral views are firmly grounded in our conscience, then the component of divine punishment simply adds an exclamation point to their views of morality. It is like saying, “Stealing is wrong and, by the way, God will punish you if you steal.” This, though, isn’t much different than saying “Stealing is wrong and, by the way, the cops will get you if you steal.”
Lingering Problems with Religious Ethics. Critics don’t seem upset about the above aspects of religious ethics as found in Aquinas’s and Scotus’s theories. The big problem for critics, though, is when believers merely stipulate that God morally endorses a particular type of conduct. For example, David Koresh believed that God morally endorsed him to have sex with 12-year-old girls for the purpose of siring children. The mere sound of this is likely to make anyone cringe – believer and nonbeliever alike. Critics, though, have the same negative response when believers appeal to God’s authority concerning a wide range of moral issues, such as abortion, homosexuality, interracial marriages, and handgun ownership. When pressed, the believer might justify his views by appealing to the Bible, his religious tradition, or his religious conscience. Again, though, we must ask, what is so bad about this? There are three problems that the critic of religious ethics might point out. First, according to the critic, appealing to religious intuitions on moral issues is a conversation stopper. We would like to at least dialog on an issue, but we can’t since the believer quickly appeals to his foundational and non-negotiable religious assumption. In response, the believer maintains that there is room for dialog within his religious tradition, but that the critic stops the conversation with his secular viewpoint. In one swoop, the critic shuts off an entire range of religious-based discourse because of his own foundational and non-negotiable secular assumptions. If there is a stoppage of conversation, much of the fault rests with the critic.
Second, the critic might argue that the believer’s chain of reasoning isn’t long enough, and rests too quickly on his foundational religious assumption. Proper ethical decisions involve detailed reasoning. The typical believer, on the other hand, has a one-step reasoning process: abortion, for example, is wrong because the believer’s religious intuitions tell him so. In response, other nonreligious moral theories also have a one-step reasoning process. A utilitarian, for example, might argue that it is wrong to torture animals since this increases the quantity of pain in the world. A rights theorist might argue that stealing my car is wrong since it violates my property rights. What is relevant in these cases is (a) the strength of the initial moral standard, such as the importance of reducing pain, and (b) the applicability of the moral standard to a given issue, such as torturing animals. So, if we dismiss religious ethics because it involves a one-step reasoning process, then we must also dismiss many secular theories.
Finally, the critic might argue that the believer blindly perpetuates bigotry when pronouncing, for example, that God commands men to be in charge of women. Bigotry is certainly bad, but if there is a link between bigotry and religious ethics it is at most a sociological connection, and not a logical one. Religious intuitions don’t logically entail that one must single out and unjustly condemn specific groups of people. And even from a sociological perspective, it isn’t immediately clear that believers in religious ethics tend more towards bigotry than does the population as a whole. Unless such a connection can be established through responsible sociological studies, then it is bigotry itself to dismiss proponents of religious ethics for being bigots, simply on the basis of a hunch.
Critics of religious ethics may be bothered by appeals to religious intuitions for additional reasons. However, critics aren’t justified in declaring a monopoly on the field of ethics by restricting it to only nonreligious approaches which, historically, are relatively recent, and, geographically, are confined mostly to European and American culture. In today’s secular environment, the religious believer undoubtedly limits his audience by appealing to religious intuitions in moral matters. For example, if I debate the issue of women’s rights with a Muslim and he appeals to the Koran for his perspective, his appeal will carry little weight for me. However, we must distinguish between arguing to win a debate, and arguing to justify a moral view. We can only expect the latter of anyone making ethical choices and, in their own contexts, at least some religious appeals are legitimate justifications.
There are, though, limits to religious appeals. First, religious appeals won’t be morally binding for nonbelievers who question fundamental points about religion, such as the existence of God. Second, believers should consider that there are limits to the authority of religious appeals even for themselves. Interpretations of scripture change, religious organizations redefine their doctrines, and an individual’s religious conscience often shifts over the years. For example, throughout much of their long history, the Roman Catholic Church held that slavery was morally permissible since it reflected a natural hierarchy in social groups. In more recent times, though, the Catholic Church harshly condemns slavery. Several centuries ago the Catholic Church and many early Protestant denominations believed that they were morally justified in torturing and killing vocal members of rival Christian denominations. Today this idea is appalling to all Christian groups. When contraception devices became widely available in the early 20th century, most Protestant denominations harshly condemned their use since they felt that the use of these devices would thwart God’s plan for human reproduction. Within 50 years, though, virtually all Protestant denominations reversed their views. So, even for the believer, religious assessments of moral matters should be viewed in light of this changing backdrop.
Summary. Medieval Christian philosophers heavily debated the relation between morality and God’s will. Intellectualist moral philosophers such as Aquinas believed that moral standards are independent of God and God endorses them because of his rational nature. By contrast, voluntarist moral philosophers such as Scotus argued that moral standards are created by God and don’t exist independently of God. Scotus believed that God has a genuinely free will and absolute power to create anything that does not involve a logical contradiction. For Scotus, moral principles fall under the domain of God’s absolute power. Scotus and other voluntarists offer two arguments for this position. First, voluntarists argue that, insofar as religious texts depict God as revoking previously established moral laws, then God has creative power over these moral laws. In response, we’ve seen that the power to revoke moral laws does not necessarily imply the power to create moral laws. We’ve also seen that the specific Biblical stories discussed by voluntarists are not clear illustrations of God revoking moral standards. Second, voluntarists argue that, insofar as God has absolute power, God has the ability to create moral standards. We agreed that, in theory, moral standards might be created and altered in various ways without logical contradiction. However, there are problems with granting that God is absolutely powerful. In the absence of a proof, belief in God’s absolute power may be driven by either wishful thinking or spiritual gluttony.
A common contemporary argument against voluntarism is that, if God creates moral standards then the notion of divine moral goodness becomes meaningless. That is, the statement “God is morally good” simply means “God ordains that which he ordains.” The issue involves a tension between God’s goodness and God’s absolute power. According to an intellectualist, it is best for us to preserve God’s moral goodness even though this means reducing God’s range of power. In response, we’ve seen that both sides of the dispute may have questionable motives: the voluntarist may be motivated by spiritual gluttony, and the intellectualist may be motivated by distrust of God. The safest way to address the dispute is simply to concede ignorance about the nature of God’s goodness and power and contend only that God endorses moral principles. Although religious-based ethics is currently unpopular in secular discussions of morality, we noted that there is nothing wrong with religious morality as long as believers recognize that there are limits to this approach.
Sources
Plato’s statement of the Euthyphro puzzle is in the dialog Euthyphro 10a-11b, translated by Benjamin Jowett in The Dialogues of Plato (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1901).
Quotations by Scotus are from Oxford Commentary on the Four Books of the Sentences, translation by Allan B. Wolter, Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986).
Quotation by Ockham is from Fourth Book of the Sentences, Question 14, as translated by Lucan Freppert in The Basis of Morality According to William Ockham (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988).
Quotation by Luther is from Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Garden City, NY: 1961), p. 196.
Quotation by Calvin is from Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Ford Lewis Battles, (London: 1941).
Quotations by Aquinas are from “The Treatise on Law” (1a2ae q. 90-144) in Summa Theologica, tr. Laurence Shapcote, Fathers of the English Dominican Province, (London: 1911-1936).
The Bhagavad Gita is available in several modern translations; the quotation here from Chapter 2 is rendered from the translation by Annie Wood Besant, (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1895).
Suggestions
for Further Reading
For a discussion of Scotus’s moral theory see Allan B. Wolter, Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986); B.M. Bonansea, Man and his Approaches to God in John Duns Scotus (Lanham, MD.: University Press of America, 1983).
For a discussion of Ockham’s moral theory see Lucan Freppert, The Basis of Morality According to William Ockham
(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988).
For contemporary defenses of divine command theory see Robert M. Adams, “A Modified Divine Command
Theory of Ethical Wrongness,” in The
Virtue of Faith (Oxford, 1987); Richard J. Mouw, The God who Commands (University of
Notre Dame, 1990); Philip L. Quinn, Divine Commands and Moral Requirements
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).
For a contemporary criticisms of divine command
theory see Kai Nielsen, Ethics Without
God (Pemberton, 1973).
#6.
SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY
INTRODUCTION.
On April 19, 1995 a terrorist car bomb exploded
outside of a nine-story federal office building in Oklahoma City. The explosion
was so powerful that people in buildings several blocks away were thrown from
their chairs and others 30 miles away could feel the blast’s vibration. About
550 people were inside the federal building at the time, and 168 of those
people were crushed to death by the collapsed structure, making the explosion
the worst terrorist activity on U.S. soil. The FBI immediately distributed
composite drawings of two bombing suspects and within days the bombers were
identified as 27-year-old Timothy McVeigh, a former Army mechanic, and
39-year-old Terry Nichols. Both McVeigh and Nichols had ties with
anti-government paramilitary organizations.
These organizations opposed government gun control efforts and were
hostile to any freedom-restricting activities of the Federal government. For
McVeigh and Nichols, the message behind the bombing was that the Federal
government should not take away our freedoms.
The Oklahoma City bombing is among the saddest events in recent U.S. history, and the bombers’ callous disregard for human life violates everything we know about morality. One troubling aspect about this tragedy is its underlying ideological message, part of which we accept as freedom-lovers, and part of which we reject for its extremism. According to many anti-government groups, we establish governments to perform only a specific range of tasks, principally protection from outside invasion. However, the U.S. government pushes its authority beyond its established purpose by unjustly restricting people’s freedoms. This justifies resistance, which even the U.S. Declaration of Independence endorses: “… whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends [i.e., rights to life, liberty and happiness], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government….”
The underlying philosophy of such
anti-government groups is that of social contract theory. In its less extreme
form, social contract theory is both a legitimate and historically important
account of political and moral obligation. Briefly, social contract theory
describes a disease, and then proposes a cure. The disease is that humans have
unsociable tendencies and are unable to construct and live in cooperative
societies. The cure is that we contractually agree to be civil to each other
under threat of punishment from a governing body that we establish for this
purpose. This mutual contract then becomes the backbone for our moral
obligations to each other.
Social contract theory has a long but spotty history. Plato hints at a social contract theory in his great dialog the Republic. A skeptical character in that dialog named Glaucon argues that people are naturally inclined to exploit each other. Since I don’t like being exploited, then I agree not to exploit others on the condition that others don’t exploit me:
... when men have both done and suffered
injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and
obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to
have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is
ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. [Republic, 2: 358e]
For Glaucon, the mutual contracts
that we create are the basis of the rules of justice. Plato himself didn’t
accept this skeptical view of the origins of morality and, instead, Plato
argued that moral truths are fixed in a higher and more eternal realm of the
universe. For almost two thousand years, most moral philosophers largely agreed
with Plato’s view. In particular, they believed that both morality and
governmental authority are grounded in objective natural laws that God himself
endorses. During the 17th century, a few skeptically-minded
philosophers offered alternative explanations of morality that were grounded
more in the human realm than the heavenly realm. One of these was British
philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who offers the first detailed account of
social contract theory.
HOBBES’S
THEORY.
Hobbes presents his social contract theory in a
series of works, the most famous of which is The Leviathan (1651). The term “Leviathan” refers to a large
mythological sea creature as depicted in the Hebrew Bible and earlier Canaanite
mythology. For Hobbes, the powerful governing body that we establish for
protection is like the giant Leviathan.
The Hebrew Bible describes the great sea creature as the “king over all the
children of pride.” Similarly, Hobbes sees that the government is the king over
prideful people insofar as our human pride forces us to create a government for
our own protection.
The State of Nature. A common story
line in science fiction movies is that modern society crumbles because of a
nuclear world war or a colossal ecological disaster. A few isolated surviving
humans forage through the ruins of destroyed cities, hoping to find a stray can
of food, a container of gasoline, or a box of bullets. Every contact with
another human is a life-or-death struggle to acquire the other person’s goods.
Rather than looking into the future to describe a post-apocalyptic world,
Hobbes instead looks to the distant past and asks us to imagine what life might
have been like before there were any governing bodies. The condition that
Hobbes describes is as selfish and brutal as any science fiction story. Hobbes
calls this primitive condition “the state of nature.” Hobbes isn’t describing
an actual time in human history, but he offers this thought experiment only to
highlight the limits of our human nature and how our unsocial inclinations
affect our interaction with others.
Hobbes argues that, in this state of
nature, we are roughly equal to each other in both intellectual cunning and
physical strength. Intellectually, we all gain knowledge through experience
and, given enough time and effort, we can all rise to a decent intellectual
level. Physically, although a bigger person might be able to beat me in an arm
wrestling contest, with a little cunning I can overpower him. Hobbes writes
that, “as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the
strongest, either by secret mechination, or by confederacy with others that are
in the same danger with himself.” Although intellectual and physical equality
might seem like good things, in the state of nature they only perpetuate
struggle. If someone stood out with superhuman physical abilities, such as
Superman, then he could simply take control and force people to cooperate.
Perhaps the same thing could happen if someone stood out with superhuman
intellectual abilities. But since we’re all equal in the state of nature, no
one will naturally emerge who can take charge.
In view of our equality, Hobbes notes three factors that immediately cause us to quarrel. First, we equally desire things that are in limited supply. All of us seek after basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter. If all of my physical needs in life could be met by simply reaching up and picking things off a tree, then there would be no need to engage in conflict with anyone. The reality of the situation, though, is otherwise. Necessities are in limited supply, and, as we compete for the same things, we quickly see each other as enemies. Through violence, then, we seek to subdue “men’s persons, wives, children, and cattle.” The second cause of quarrel is that, once we acquire some goods, we are immediately distrustful of people who come near us and thus we will attack them. This isn’t merely paranoia, but a necessary means of protecting things that we’ve acquired. For example, when people win large amounts of money in a lottery, they are often inundated with scam artists who try to defraud them of their winnings with shady investment opportunities. The more distrustful I am of outsiders, the better I’ll be able to retain what I’ve acquired. In the state of nature, this distrust translates into violence. The third cause of quarrel is that I will attack someone simply to preserve my reputation as a tough guy that people shouldn’t mess around with. If my reputation diminishes, then others will see me as easy prey.
The consequence of all this is a
state of war of all against all. It includes actual wars as well as anticipated
wars that, similar to the cold war between the U.S. and the former Soviet
Union, involve constant military posturing. Hobbes’s description of this state
of war is one of the most famous passages in philosophy:
In such condition there is no place for industry,
because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, no culture of the
earth, no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea,
no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as
require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time,
no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and
danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short. [Leviathan, 13].
For Hobbes, in the state
of nature we would lack all social comforts that come about through mutual
cooperation. We wouldn't even attempt to grow food, import goods, or build
dwellings on our own since we would simply make ourselves targets of attack by
other people. Our rivals would see what we have, desire it, and kill us to
acquire it. We would have no "knowledge of the face of the earth"
since the only geographical area that counts is the one immediately around us
as we seek to survive from attacks by others. We would have "no account of
time" since the only time that matters is the present moment in which we
struggle to survive. We would have no arts and no literary compositions since
these are luxury items that humans create only after we secure our survival. We
would have no society since social interaction requires trust and cooperation,
which we wouldn't be capable of. In essence, our human lives would be
"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
What kind of morality is there in
this state of nature? In a word, none! Hobbes argues that in this condition the
“notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place.”
It is a moral free-for-all in which we have rights to do whatever we want. It
is a condition in which “every person has a right to everything, even to one
another’s body.” Hobbes offers several
examples from ordinary life situations to prove his gloomy description of human
nature. When we go on trips we take guns with us for protection against
robbers. When we go to bed at night we lock our cabinets to prevent our
housekeepers and even our own children from stealing from us. We take these
extra steps to protect ourselves in addition to the protection that we get from
the police and court systems. Also, when we consider that individual countries
around the world are like independent people, we see that countries are always
poised for war to defend themselves against invaders who want to plunder their
resources.
The Laws of Nature. The state of nature that Hobbes describes is so gloomy that we have good reasons to rise above that condition if possible. None of us wants to die violently; we all want decent living conditions; we also carry hopes that we can improve our living conditions through work. We can’t fulfill any of these desires until we achieve peace, and Hobbes next describes what we need to do to secure such peace. This part of his discussion is influenced by natural law theory, particularly the version developed by Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). In his work The Law of War and Peace (1625), Grotius explains that there are fixed moral laws of nature that are binding on everyone worldwide. Further, according to Grotius, we set up governing bodies to ensure that we follow these moral mandates of natural law and thus live peacefully. Hobbes not only follows Grotius’s basic solution to securing peace, but he also adopts the language of natural law theory. For Hobbes, then, we get out of the state of nature by following laws of nature. Hobbes lists 15 distinct laws of nature that facilitate ending conflict and securing peace, the first three of which are the most important.
Hobbes describes the first law of nature as this:
… every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it, and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war. [Leviathan, 14]
This first law of nature tells us that we should seek peace, and defend ourselves if we can’t achieve peace. The binding nature of this law is clear: we all wish to survive, and peace is the best way to survive. When peace fails, we need to defend ourselves. The second law of nature describes more precisely how we achieve peace with each other. We saw that in the state of nature “every person has a right to everything, even to one another’s body.” Imagine that each of us carried around a bag with slips of paper that listed all of our respective rights in the state of nature. The rights that I have in the state of nature are almost infinite in number and allow me complete liberty. For example, I might pull one slip out of my bag that says that I have a right to hop around on one foot. I might pull another slip out that says that I have the right to kill you. The second of these rights surely worries you. However, in your rights bag, you have a similar slip of paper that says that you have the right to kill me, and that worries me. As long as we both hold onto our rights to kill each other, we can never achieve peace.
The second law of nature, then, says that you and I should agree to give up those specific rights that threaten each of us respectively:
... a man [should] be willing, when others are so too, as far-forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things, and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself. [Leviathan, 14]
According to this law of nature, if you're willing to remove from your bag the slip of paper that grants you the right to kill me, then I should be willing to remove from my bag the slip of paper that grants me the right to kill you. We should do this with all rights that breed hostility, such as my rights to kill you, steal from you, to lie to you, or assault you. We should also do this with any person that is willing to cooperate with us. In short, the second law of nature tells us “Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself.” Why should I be willing to give up any of my personal rights? Because my survival depends on it. However, Hobbes implies that we should only mutually give up those rights that are necessary for securing peace. For example, my right to hop around on one foot has no bearing on the peace process, so I shouldn’t give up that right.
The third law of nature is simply that “people perform their covenants made” since our agreements are empty words if we don’t keep them. For Hobbes, even if you and I have the best of intentions and we plan on giving up our hostile rights forever, we must actually abstain from those hostilities, otherwise we are still in the state of nature. Assuring that we abide by our agreements is tricky. I will always be looking for ways to cheat the system, and I can only assume that you will to. Our verbal agreement alone isn’t enough, and we both need some extra motivation to follow through on our agreements. The solution is that we both agree to give unlimited power to a political authority that will punish us if we break our agreements. This means that you and I must give up a few more of our rights and hand them over to this political authority. But it is worth it if this is the only way to guarantee our contractual arrangement, which in turn ends the state of nature.
Hobbes’s remaining 12 laws of nature are principally rules of diplomacy that preserve peaceful coexistence once it gets going. The fourth law tells us that we should show gratitude toward others who comply with contracts. If we don’t, then others might regret participating in the contract. The fifth law is that we should compromise on minor issues that serve the larger interests of society. If we debate every little issue, then the peace process grinds to a halt.
Political Theory and Moral Theory. Hobbes’s
social contract theory serves double duty as both a political theory that
justifies the existence of a government, and also a moral theory that tells us
specifically about our moral obligations. As a political theory, Hobbes’s
social contract theory maintains that governments are the creations of people,
and not the creations of God. The complete justification of a government’s
existence is its role as preserver of the peace. However, even though we are
the ones that create governments, we are never allowed to overthrow them once
they are established, even if we’re not happy with the job that they’re doing.
The reason for this is that, to guarantee that governments will be effective in
their mission to keep peace, we must give them absolute and irrevocable
authority over us. For Hobbes, if governments have anything less than this then
they will be unable to enforce the laws. The governments that we establish can
be monarchies, aristocracies, or democracies. However, Hobbes believes that monarchies will be the most
effective in preserving peace, and he offers several reasons for his view. For
example, a monarch will receive better counsel since he can select
experts and get advice in private. A monarch’s policies will also be more
consistent since he is operating as a single person, unlike other forms of
government that have many leaders. Similarly, there is less chance of a civil
war with a monarchy since the monarch will not disagree with himself.
As a moral theory, scholars debate about the precise details of Hobbes’s view. Two features, though, seem prominent. First, morality isn’t a permanent feature of the nature of things but is only a creation of the social contract. We saw that in the state of nature “notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place.” The notions of morality that emerge through the laws of nature are contractual agreements. In this regard, Hobbes is a moral skeptic insofar as he holds that moral principles have no objective foundation independent of human society.
The second feature of Hobbes’s moral
theory is that our specific moral obligations are intimately linked with the 15
laws of nature. For example, the third law of nature maintains that we should
keep our contracts. When we do this, we have the moral virtue of justice, and when we fail to do this we
have the moral vice of injustice.
Similarly, the fourth law of nature is that we should show gratitude towards
those who keep their contracts. When we follow this fourth law, we have the
virtue of gratitude and when we fail
to do so we have the vice of ingratitude.
Other virtues that Hobbes lists are sociability, modesty, equity, and
mercy, each linked directly with one of the 15 laws of nature. Hobbes also
notes that his theory recognizes the same virtues as traditional virtue
theories, such as Aristotle’s, which includes courage and fortitude. So, Hobbes
writes that “the
science of virtue and vice is moral philosophy, and therefore the true doctrine
of the Laws of Nature is the true moral philosophy.” There are two specific
implications to Hobbes’s virtue account of morality. First, the job of moral philosophy is to find out specifically which
virtuous character traits facilitate adherence to the various laws of nature.
Second, our job as morally responsible people is to cultivate virtuous
character traits since, if we don’t, we place the peace of society at risk.
Here are the main points of Hobbes’s
theory:
§
The pre-political
state of nature for humans is a condition of mutual conflict that contains no
objective moral values.
§
We achieve peace by
mutually agreeing to give up our rights to harm each other.
§
To assure
compliance, we create governments that punish those who break the agreements.
§
To further secure
compliance we recognize various laws of nature and acquire moral virtues.
Social Contract Theory in the 17 and 18th
Centuries. Shortly after Hobbes’s writings appeared, theologically-minded
critics attacked Hobbes for eliminating God’s role in mandating morality and
establishing political authority. Charges of atheism and irreligion were so
strong that several bishops reportedly discussed burning Hobbes to death.
Fortunately for Hobbes, threats like this never materialized. In spite of these
harsh reactions, Hobbes’s general notion of the social contract captured the
imagination of philosophers after him and for
a century and a half social contract theory was a dominant theme among
political philosophers. These social contract theorists modified features of
Hobbes’s account to make it less skeptical, but they all followed the basic
pattern of an original state of nature, followed by a social contract that
addresses limitations of our natural state. For example, German
philosopher Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694) agreed with Hobbes that the state of
nature is pretty miserable and that, to survive, we enter into a social
contract and establish political
authorities to punish contract violators. However, Pufendorf argued that
God sets the basic terms of the social contract by mandating that we should be
sociable. For Pufendorf, then, the social contract is grounded in God’s
authority, and not simply in the authority of people.
British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) also put a more positive spin on social contract theory. According to Locke, the state of nature isn’t a condition of moral anarchy as Hobbes supposed; instead, it is an environment in which we have God-given natural rights to life, health, liberty and possessions. According to Locke, we still need to contractually form governments to punish rights violators. However, whereas Hobbes believed that governments have absolute authority once we put them in place, Locke believed that citizens may justly overthrow their government if it fails at its peace-keeping role. So, on Locke’s version of social contract theory, political revolutions are sometimes justifiable. The British Whig party quickly adopted Locke’s version of social contract theory and its justification for revolution. This, in turn, provided the intellectual climate to justify the American Revolution as we find expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
As in Great Britain, social contract theory played an
equally vital role in 18th century French political thought,
especially in the writings of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).
Contrary to Hobbes who described the state of nature as a condition of mutual
conflict, Rousseau argued that it is a condition of individual freedom in which
creativity flourishes. According to Rousseau, in this state of nature people
can’t avoid interacting with each other, and, so, citizens set up a social
contract to regulate this interaction. The contract specifically establishes an
absolute democracy that is ruled by the general will of the people, which, for
Rousseau, involves what is best for all people. Just as social contract theory
offered a philosophical justification for revolutionary activity in Great
Britain, it similarly offered justification for the French Revolution of 1789.
CRITICISMS
OF HOBBES.
For decades after his death, Hobbes was the
principal target of criticism among moral and political philosophers, and
dozens of negative reactions were published that criticized almost every part
of his theory. We will look at three criticisms that are directed at central
features of Hobbes’s account of morality.
Hyde’s Criticism: Hobbes Denies that Morality is Immutable and Eternal. We saw that, for Hobbes, traditional moral values are nonexistent in the state of nature and that morality is a creation of the social contract. Although Hobbes is bold in denying morality in the state of nature, he fudges the issue a little when describing the invented status of morality within the social contract. In fact, he goes so far as to say that “The Laws of Nature are immutable and eternal.” Traditionally, when philosophers such as Grotius claimed that morality is “eternal” and “immutable” they meant that moral values are universal and unchanging, and are not creations of human convention. Hobbes’s choice of the words “immutable” and “eternal” was probably politically motivated, in an attempt to avoid condemnation from conservative critics. If so, Hobbes’s ruse wasn’t successful. Edward Hyde (1609-1674), a British politician and contemporary acquaintance of Hobbes, criticizes that Hobbes’s laws of nature are not at all “immutable” and “eternal” in the usual philosophical understanding of those terms:
If nature has thus providently provided for the
peace and tranquillity of her children, by laws immutable and eternal that are
written in their hearts, how come they to fall into that condition of war, as
to be every one against every one, and to be without any other cardinal
virtues, but of force and fraud? [A
Survey of Mr. Hobbes]
According to Hyde, even the content of Hobbes’s laws of nature reveal that they are not immutable and eternal in the traditional sense:
But where are those maxims to be found -- which Mr. Hobbes declares and publishes to be the laws of nature -- in any other author before him? That is only properly called “the law of nature” [when] that is dictated to the whole species…. [A Survey of Mr. Hobbes]
Hyde has two complaints against Hobbes. First, Hobbes in reality denies the immutable and eternal nature of morality, as seen in Hobbes’s depiction of the state of nature. Second, Hobbes tries to flimflam us by describing the laws of nature as immutable and eternal, when Hobbes clearly doesn’t mean it. Hobbes must plead guilty on both of these charges. However, from today’s perspective, neither of these charges are as bad as Hyde makes them to be. As to Hyde’s first charge, philosophers today typically don’t describe moral principles as “immutable” and “eternal.” To do so requires that we postulate some eternal realm in which moral principles permanently exist – a realm completely outside of human society. This calls for more metaphysical speculation than philosophers today are comfortable with.
As to Hyde’s second complaint, even flimflamming on key terminology is defensible. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, philosophers, theologians, and scientists could be imprisoned, tortured, and even executed for publishing controversial ideas. The most famous example of this is the case of Italian astronomer Galileo (1564-1642) in which, under threat of torture, Galileo retracted his sun-centered views of the heavens. Sometimes controversial authors could appease religious and political authorities by simply being diplomatic in their choice of words. Hobbes was concerned about negative reactions from authorities, and it is reasonable to see his choice of the terms “immutable” and “eternal” as an act of diplomacy.
We can also see Hobbes’s choice of these words as an attempt to scientifically redefine traditional moral vocabulary. Like astronomers and other scientists of his time, Hobbes hoped to break from medieval traditions and set his area of inquiry on a new and more scientifically rigorous course. The context of Hobbes’s comments about the immutable and eternal nature of morality show how he tried to redirect discussions on the nature of morality:
The Laws of Nature are immutable and eternal. For injustice,
ingratitude, arrogance, pride, iniquity, acception of persons, and the rest,
can never be made lawful. For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and
peace destroy it. [Leviathan, 15]
Hobbes argues here that the laws of nature are “immutable and eternal” to the extent that they are required for preserving life through making peace. Hobbes, then, shifts the discussion of moral truths from a mysterious eternal realm of things to the observable realm of human nature and our desire for survival. In the end, the history of philosophy shows that the terms “immutable” and “eternal” didn’t take to redefining and, instead, simply dropped out of use.
Clarke’s Criticism: Punishment Alone won’t Motivate us to Always Keep Contracts. Suppose that I agree to participate in the social contract. Although I understand that I’m supposed to keep the agreements that I’ve made, I occasionally see opportunities to violate these agreements when it benefits me. For example, while my neighbor isn’t looking I could sneak next door, steal his lawnmower and then sell it to a pawnshop. If I’m careful, I won’t get caught. What should stop me from violating the social contract if I can get away with it? British philosopher Samuel Clarke (1675-1729) draws attention to this problem and contends that ultimately Hobbes’s theory offers no safeguard to ensure that we keep our agreements in such situations:
If the Rules of Right and Wrong, Just and Unjust, have none of them any obligatory force in the State of Nature, antecedent to positive Compact, then, for the same Reason, neither will they be of any force after the Compact, so as to afford men any certain and real security; (Excepting only what may arise from the Compulsion of Laws, and Fear of Punishment, which therefore, it may well be supposed, is all that Mr. Hobbes really means at the bottom.) [Discourse, 1]
Clarke argues here that, if we aren’t motivated to follow moral rules in the state of nature, then we won’t be motivated any more to follow moral rules once we enter into the social contract. Clarke recognizes that fear of punishment may provide some motivation to follow the rules, but he argues that this isn’t enough. For Clarke, our main motivation to follow moral rules comes directly from an awareness of eternal and immutable moral truths themselves -- and Hobbes denies this as a source of moral obligation. In short, according to Clarke, fear of punishment is the only source of motivation that Hobbes provides, and that is not enough to motivate us to always keep our agreements.
Hobbes addresses this issue himself, and he agrees that someone might reason as follows: “there is no such thing as justice ... [and that] to make or not make, keep or not keep, covenants was not against reason, when it conduced to one’s benefit.” However, Hobbes believes that this line of reasoning is flawed:
He, therefore, that breaketh his covenant, and consequently declareth that he thinks he may with reason do so, cannot be received into any society that unite themselves for peace and defense but by the error of them that receive him; nor when he is received, be retained in it without seeing the danger of their error; which errors a man cannot reasonably reckon upon as the means of his security ... [Leviathan, 15]
Hobbes’s response here is that it isn’t reasonable for the sneaky contract breaker to base his own security entirely on his ability to go undetected. If he is caught, then he will be expelled from society, and, it is just not reasonable for him to take this risk. So, for Hobbes, fear of punishment is sufficient to restrain the sneaky contract breaker.
Hobbes is probably right that we won’t take the risk if there is a good chance that we’d be detected. But what if we scheme the perfect crime, with no reasonable chance of getting caught? In this case, Hobbes needs another source of moral obligation that goes beyond an immediate fear of punishment. Perhaps we can rescue Hobbes from this problem by drawing on the virtue component of his theory. Suppose that I carefully scheme to steal my neighbor’s lawnmower, and I succeed without getting caught. As a creature of habit, I am likely to scheme similar crimes