Greg Detre
2/10/01
the project of justifying morality failed because of certain shared characteristics derived from their (Kierkegaard, Kant, Diderot, Hume, Smith) highly specific shared historical (Christian) background, producing an internally incoherent scheme of moral beliefs
shared beliefs, e.g. marriage + family, promise-keeping + justice
they agree that a rational justification of morality would be premised on feature(s) of human nature (the characteristics of the passions for Hume + Diderot, the universal and categorical character of certain rules of reason for Kant), and that we would accept certain rules because of our nature
i.e. arguments from premises concerning human nature as they understand it to be to conclusions about the authority of moral rules + precepts
this is bound to fail because of an ineradicable discrepancy between their shared conception of moral rules and their shared conception of human nature
Aristotle:
transition between man-as-he-happens-to-be and man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realised-his-telos with the precepts of rational ethics
becomes more complicated when placed within theism:
divinely ordained law
adds a concept of sin to the Aristotelian concept of error
but retains the above three-fold structure
a moral utterance (i.e. saying what someone ought to do) has a two-fold point/purpose:
1. what will lead toward a man�s true end
2. what the law (ordained by God + comprehended by reason) states
thus moral sentences are true/false
but then, new theologies (e.g. Protestantism, Jansenist Catholicism) assert that reason can supply no genuine comprehension of man�s true end
that power of reason was destroyed by the fall of man � now reason is powerless to correct our passions (e.g. Hume was brought up a Calvinist)
now, only grace enables us to obey the precepts of divine moral law to move from man-as-is to man-as-telos
reason is calculative/instrumental � it can only assess truths of fact and maths, and can only speak of means in the real of practice
reason cannot even refute scepticism (Descartes)
Pascal: a central achievement of reason is to recognise that our beliefs are ultimately founded on nature, custom and habit
this leads to a rejection of reason as a means of seeing teleology/essential features in the universe, or in human nature
this all amounted to a rejection of the telos in �man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realised-his-telos�, leaving the relationship between the two remaining elements unclear
what are the injunctions appealing to, if there�s no telos?
18th-C morality presupposed something very like the teleological scheme of God, freedom and happiness
Hume and Smith are most unaware of this inconsistency (the discrepancy between 18th-C moral injunctions and its conception of human nature), Diderot slightly more aware, Kant the most (� pg 53)
in their positive arguments, they were trying to base morality on human nature, in their negative arguments they recognised the problems of moving from entirely factual premises to any moral/evaluative conclusion
having said that, this is not an exceptionless instance of a general principle that no element may appear in a conclusion that is not present in the premises (??? pg 54), and there are counter-examples, e.g.
from �He is a sea-captain� to �He ought to do whatever a sea-captain ought to do� (Prior)
or �from �this watch is grossly inaccurate and irregular in time-keeping� and �this watch is too heavy to carry about comfortably� to �this is a bad watch�
this is valid because of the special character of the concept of a watch (- same with the farmer example he gives), in terms of the purpose/function which a watch is characteristically expected to serve
so you can say �this is a good X� if you are picking out an item specified by a functional concept (thus, moving from factual premises to an evaluative conclusion)
this is exactly what moral arguments in the classical, Aristotelian tradition did � the concept of man had an essential nature + purpose/function
though it predates Aristotle�s metaphysical biology, and is rooted in a tradition of seeing a man first and foremost in terms of a role
but without that functional concept of man, you have trouble with the �no ought from an is� argument
moral concepts and arguments have changed their meaning
Aristotle: to call X good is to say that it is the kind of X which someone would choose who wanted an X for the purpose for which X�s are characteristically wanted � factual
modern moral utterance and practice can only be understood as a sense of fragmented survivals from an older past, and we need to understand this to resolve the issues they have raised, e.g. deontology from divine law or teleology from anthropocentrism, which don't square with modern metaphysics
talks of old taboos in Pacific islands � without the original context which made them intelligible and out of which they arose, taboos are unintelligible, arbitrary-seeming conventions (e.g. Cooks� seamen�s astonishment at lax sexual prhibitions and strict eating laws)
Nietzsche: what purported to be appeals to objectivity were in fact expressions of subjective will
and what problems this poses for moral philosophy
but he generalised illegitimately from the condition of moral judgement in his own day to the nature of morality as such
GS 335 � attack morality as based on inner moral sentiments (Strawson???) or universalisability
he proposes a gigantic pre-slave-morality assertion of non-rational will to turn ourselves into autonomous self-legislating moral agents
he is the moral philosopher of our age, if the only alternative is the Enlightenment search for a rational basis for morality
Erving Goffman�s theories of social interaction: everyday counterpart to Weber/Nietzsche
surface presentations + hidden agendas � trying to affect our will within a role-structured situation
it�s all about honour (i.e. whatever embodies or expresses the regard of others)
insults have been displaced from socially crucial public conflicts to private emotional ones
MacIntyre sees the debate as being Nietzsche vs Aristotle, ultimately
Nietzsche: what sort of person ought I become?
modern moral philosophy: what rules ought I follow? and why?
Dworkin points out that modernity (e.g. Rawls) sees virtues as just dispositions to do what is right
post-Enlightenment approaches that subordinate questions of �the good life�, e.g. Hume, Kant and Mill, are misguided
every activity/enquiry/practice aims at some good � Aristotle is seeking to describe factually what the good for man is � his metaphysical biology is taken as given
the virtues = those qualities which �/span> achievement of eudaimonia (blessedness/happiness/prosperity)
the good for man = a complete human life lived at its best
the exercise of the virtues is necessary + central, not a preparatory means, to this
the immediate outcome of the exercise of virtue = a choice which issues in right action
acting virtuously is not, as Kant thought, to act against inclination � it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues � though he must do so because he knows it is virtuous, as the basis of true and rational judgement
the exercise of the virtues requires judgement, to do the right thing in the right place at the right time in the right way
and that judgement cannot be routinised as rules
Aristotle hardly mentions any rules � but he talks about certain universal, community-orientated qualities (e.g. taking innocent life, theft, perjury) as intolerable and prohibited
Aristotle links virtues/morality and the law, through the virtue of justice (to give each person what each deserves)
in complicated situations, act �according� to the right reason
not �in accordance with the right rule� (W. D. Ross)
phronesis is the central virtue, of judgement, of ascertaining where the Golden Mean lies
it is an intellectual virtue, but a required one for the virtues of character
intellectual virtues are acquired through teaching; moral virtues through habitual exercise
one cannot possess one of the virtues of character without all of the others, according to Aristotle �/span> one complex measure of virtue
Aristotle sees laws as being underpinned by friendship, and common goals + virtues � the political community (polis) as common project
Aristotle�s portrait of the inter-related hierarchy of virtues can be criticised as idealised and simplified, and emphasises too much the unity + inseparability of virtues in the good man
there is a tension in Aristotle�s view of man as either political or metaphysical (where the ultimate human telos lies in contemplation)
the virtues are unavailable to slaves + barbarians (anyone without a polis, i.e. incapable of political relationships between free men)
this is part of his blindness to history in general, and ignoring the possibility of a telos of community or mankind
enjoyment/pleasure �/span> telos <= excelling at an activity/pursuit
the pleasure supervenes on the activity, but should not become a criterion for our actions
pg 160
the conclusion to a practical syllogism is a particular kind of action
in contrast, Hume would say that only statements can have truth-values and be (in)consistent in deductive argument
but statements only possess these characterics in virtue of their capacity to express beliefs, and beliefs can certainly (if indirectly) be expressed by actions
Aristotle�s account of the practical syllogism provides a statement of universal, necessary conditions for intelligibility of human action
4 elements of practical reasoning:
1. the wants + goals of the agent, presupposed by but not expressed in, his reasoning
2. the major premise � an assertion that something is good
3. the minor premise � perceptual judgement that this is just such an instance or occasion
4. the conclusion = the action
reason cannot be the servant of the passions � ethics is all about educating the passions into conformity with what theoretical reasoning identifies as the telos and practical reasoning as the right action in the right time/place etc.
major criticisms:
what implications for his teleology if we reject his metaphysical biology? need a replacement account of the telos
how can Aristotle be reformulated in modern terms without the context of the ancient city-state?
can we view the city-state as just one example in history in which the self can flourish and exemplify Aristotle�s often community-based virtues?
what if we don't like Aristotle�s Platonic unity of the individual and the polis, and the view that conflict should be avoided or managed?
Aristotle vs Sophocles � Aristotle is blind to the centrality of conflict in human life (even of good with good) � sometimes it is only through conflict that we learn what our ends and purposes are
(Aristotle: friendship is primarily sharing in the pursuit of certain goods (pg 179))
conceptions, lists and rankings of virtues has varied hugely
for Homer, the paradigm of human excellence was the warrior, for Aristotle the (necessarily rich) Athenian gentleman
the Homeric aretai were very different to modern ones, e.g. inclusion of physical strength. re-considering arete to mean excellence simply introduces a new and independent concept
similarly, the Aristotelian notions of friendship or phronesis are very different to ours
quite differently, the New Testament praises faith, hope and love, and humility (an Aristotelian vice)
Jane Austen�s novels prioritise �constancy� (almost like Aristotle�s phronesis) � necessary for the possession of other virtues
she considers the Aristotelian virtue of �agreeableness�
as only the simulacrum of the genuine virtue of amiability
Benjamin Franklin includes new virtues among his thirteen (defined in terms of maxims), e.g. cleanliness, silence and industry, and redefines chastity to allow for sex for reproduction
they
all seem to have different theories about what a virtue is:
Homeric poems � enables someone to do exactly what
their well-defined social role requires
Aristotle � virtues attach to the telos of man as a
species (though admittedly some are available only to certain types of people)
�Although Aristotle treats the acquisition and
exercise of the virtues as means to an end, the relationship of means to end is
internal and not external. I call a means internal to a given end when the end
cannot be adequately characterised independently of a characterisation of the
means. So it is with the virtues and the telos which is the good life for man
on Aristotle�s account. The exercise of the virtues is itself a crucial
component of the good life for man.�
New Testament�s account of the virtues:
Aristotle would not have admired Jesus, and would
have been horrified by St Paul
parallelism (same logical + conceptual structure as
Aristotle�s account):
a virtue = a quality the exercise of which leads to
the achievement of the human telos
the good for man is of course a supernatural as well
as natural good
��moreover,
the relationship of virtues as means to the end which is human incorporation in
the divine kingdom of the age to come is internal and not external, just as it is
in Aristotle�
�the concept of the
good life for man is prior to the concept of a virtue in just the way in
which on the Homeric account the concept of a social role was prior� � it is
the way in which the former concept is applied which determines how the latter
is to be applied � in both cases, the concept of a
virtue is a secondary concept
Franklin�s account is utilitarian � the virtues are means to an end
Three different conceptions of a virtue:
a virtue is a quality which enables an individual to discharge his social role (Homer)
a virtue is a quality which enables an individual to move towards the achievement of the specifically human telos, whether natural or supernatural (Aristotle, the New Testament and Aquinas)
a virtue is a quality which has utility in achieving earthly and heavenly success (Franklin)
Builds up a complex unitary core concept of the virtues:
a virtue always requires for its application the acceptance of some prior account of certain features of social and moral life in terms of which it has to be defined + explained
three stages in the logical development of the concept that have to be identified in order to understand the concept of a virtue:
1. a practice (see � pg 175)
he considers teaching a child to play chess, offering candy as a reward for winning � if the child�s only reason for wanting to win is the candy, it�s an external goal, but there are the goods internal to the practice of chess which cannot be had in any way but by playing chess
involves standards of excellence, and obedience to rules, as well as the achievement of goods � the authority of goods + standards rules out all emotivist + subjectivist analyses of judgement
external goods are zero-sum, internal benefit the whole community
a virtue is an acquired human quality, the possession + exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices
in order for a virtue to produce internal goods, it has to be exercised without regard to consequences
we have to accept as necessary components of any practice with internal goods + standards of excellence the virtues of:
justice
= treat others in respect of merit/desert according to uniform/impersonal
standards
courage = the capacity to risk harm/danger to oneself, and is necessary for genuine care/concern
honesty = e.g. if you don't tell one of your friends the truth, your relationship with them is now different from your other friends, and you allegiance to each other in the pursuit of common goods has been put in question
otherwise we are barred from the goods internal to the practice, and it becomes pointless except as a device for achieving external goods
i.e. these virtues (and perhaps some others) are genuine excellences (whatever your private moral standpoint of social codes), without which practices cannot be sustained (though e.g. in our society, we may not be wholly truthful to great-aunts about their new hats)
distinguishes practices from mere technical skills (pg 180) and institutions (pg 181)
external goods genuinely are goods too � not only are they characteristic objects of human desire, but no one can despise them altogether without a certain hypocrisy � and we have to recognise that the virtues are a stumbling block to external goods
this first-stage account strengthens Aristotle�s account because:
a) it does not require Aristotle�s metaphysical biology (but employs instead a social teleology)
b) it shows that conflict will not spring solely from flaws in individual character (but also from the the multiplicity of contingently incompatible human practicies + goods)
and it has in common with Aristotle that:
a) voluntariness, distinction between intellectual + character virtues, relationship of both to natural abilities and to the passions and the structure of practical reasoning
b) can accommodate an Aristotelian view of pleasure + enjoyment � the enjoyment of the activity/achievement is not the end at which the agent aims, but supervenes upon the successful activity (such that the activity achieved and the activity enjoyed are one and the same state) � to aim at one is to aim at the other, and so they are often confused � but there are also pleasures purely of external goods
this does not fit with Franklin�s account of the virtues, which is formed entirely in terms of external relationships + external goods
this is a further problem for utilitarianism: it cannot accommodate the distinction between goods internal to and goods external to a practice (though it could perhaps be accommodated within Mill�s �higher� and �lower� pleasures)
c) the link between explanation + evaluation, i.e. without alluding to the place that the virtues play in human life very little will be genuinely explicable
2. the narrative order of a single human life
3. a moral tradition
each later stage presupposes the earlier, but not vice versa
he considers that some practices are, or can produce, evil
1. concedes that there may be practices which simply are evil
but he doesn't think that his account entails that we ought to condone such evils, or that whatever flows from a virtue is right
a human life informed only by the conception of the virtues in terms of practices would be defective in these ways:
1. too many conflicts and too much arbitrariness
2. doesn't fully specify the virtues
3. the notion of constancy, or singleness of purpose in a whole life can have no application unless that of a whole life does
ends with the Aristotelian question, should we understand the virtues as giving a human life unity?
two obstacles to viewing each human life as a whole/unity, whose character provides the virtues with an adequate telos:
modernity partitions each human life into a variety of segments, each with its own norms/modes of behaviour
e.g. work vs leisure, private vs public, corporate vs personal, childhood, old age
we are taught to think in terms of the distinctiveness of each, rather than the life of the individual who passes through them all
tendency to think atomistically about human action, and to analyse complex actions + transactions in terms of simple components (notion of a �basic action�)
particular actions derive their character as parts of larger wholes � life is not just a sequence of actions + episodes
a.virtue is not a disposition that makes for success only in some one particular type of situation
need a modern conception of a selfhood: the concept of a self whose unity resides in the unity of a narrative which links birth to life to death as a narrative
you can describe the same segment of human behaviour in various ways
e.g. digging, gardening, taking exercise, preparing for winter, pleasing his wife etc.
some characterise intentions, unintended consequences etc.
we cannot intelligibly characterise behaviours independently of �intentions, nor intentions independently of the setting (e.g. marriage, household-cum-garden etc.)
we need to know which intentions are primary, i.e. causally effective, i.e. if the agent had intended otherwise, he would not have performed that action
behaviours also can be characterised according to the stretch of time to which reference is made
narrative history of a certain kind turns out to be the basic + essential genre for the characterisation of human actions
the concept of an intelligible action is a more fundamental concept than that of an action as such � unintelligible action are failed candidates for the status of intelligible action, and you can't just lump them together and characterise them neatly as a single class of actions
identifying an occurrence as an action is for it to be intelligible in terms of an agent�s intentions, motives, passions and purposes
to be intelligible, purposes + speech acts require contexts
the most familiar type of context in and by reference to which speech acts + purposes are rendered intelligible is conversation
to find a conversation intelligible is not the same as understanding it
they�re mini-dramas (genres, narratives, reversals, authors as actors � pg 196)
the same is true of battles, chess games, courtships etc. � of human transactions in general
Hardy: �we dream in narrative, day-dream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticise, construct, gossip, learn, hate and love by narrative� (MacIntyre pg 197)
Mink denies this � �stories are not lived but told� (i.e. retrospectively)
Sartre: narrative is very different from life, and that to present human life in the form of a narrative is always to falsify it
essential characteristics of narratives, and of our lives:
unpredictable
teleological character (a variety of ends/goals towards which we move/fail to move in the present, i.e. in terms of certain possibilities that beckon/repel us, that seem foreclosed or inevitable)
in both actions + fictions, man is a story-telling animal
I can only answer the question, �what am I to do?� if I can answer the prior question, �of what story/stories do I find myself a part?�
considers personal identity
Parfit and others have drawn our attention to the contrast between the:
1. criteria of strict identity
all-or-nothing, e.g. either the Tichborne claimant is the last Tichborne heir; either all the properties of the last heir belong to the claimant or the claimant is not the heir � Leibniz�s Law applies
2. the psychological continuities of personality which are a matter of more or less
am I the same man at fifty as I was at forty in respect of memory, intellectual powers, critical responses? more or less
but it�s crucial for human beings as characters in enacted narratives that, possessing only the resources of psychological continuity, we have to be able to respond to the imputation of strict identity
you can't found a person�s identity on the psychological continuity of the self � this is omitting the background, that of the concept of a story and of that kind of unity of character which a story requires
the narrative concept of selfhood requires:
being the subject of my own history
my life being intelligible, in terms of a telos � without that, it feels �meaningless�
but it also involves one�s own life as part of an interlocking set of narratives
to ask �what is the good for me?� is
to ask how best I might live out the unity of a narrative embodied in a single
life
asking �what is the good for man?� is simply what all the former questions have in common
the
unity of a human life is the unity of a narrative quest
medieval conception of a quest:
needs a fairly determinate conception of the telos to get anywhere
but at the
same time, a quest is always an education both as to the character of that
which is sought and in self-knowledge
virtues = �those dispositions which
will not only sustain practices and enable us to achieve the goods internal to
practices, but which will also sustain us in the relevant kind of quest for the
good, by enabling us to overcome the harms, dangers, temptations and
distractions which we encounter, and which will furnish us with increasing
self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good�
the virtues required:
sustain the kind of households + political communities in which we can seek for the good together
and are necessary for philosophical enquiry about the character of the good
the good life concretely varies with circumstance, even when the conception + virtues remain the same
since we live in different social circumstances, and so approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity, which gives my life its own moral particularity
this seems alien to modern individualism (I am what I myself choose to be)
but the story of my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity
it is in moving forward from the moral limitations of the particularity of a given form of community that the search for the good, for the universal, consists � but the particularity can never be wholly left behind
contrasting tradition with reason, and the stability of tradition with conflict, are both obfuscations
all reasoning takes place within the context of some traditional mode of thought
and traditions, when vital, embody/require continuous argument (i.e. conflict) as to what a given institution (e.g. university, or farm) is and ought to be
a living tradition = an historically extended, socially embodied argument (precisely in part???) about the goods which constitute that tradition
the individual�s search for his good is generally + characteristically conducted within a context defined by those traditions of which the individual�s life is a part
traditions decay if their relevant virtues are not exercised
there is a virtue of having an adequate sense of the traditions to which one belongs or which confront one
Austin:
either we can admit the existence of rvial and contingently incompatible goods which make incompatible claims to our practical allegiance
or we can believe in some determinate conception of the good life for man
but this is blind to the possibility that there are better + worse ways for individuals to live through the tragic confrontation of good with good, and that to know what the good life for man is may require knowing what the better and worse� ways of living in/through such situations are
this is all becoming a bit too mystical a cryptic � why can't two people from the same tradition convey to each other what the good life for them is, and stop messing about???
if you accept this, then you depart from modern moral notions because incommensurable moral premises (where both of the alternative courses of action have to be recognised as leading to some authentic + substantial good) mean that there�s always something good left undone
such �ought�s do not imply �can�
= �tragic dilemmas�
there can still be objectivity (truth/falsity) about what is better for X, if we can (fully) understand the notion of �good for X� � it is the alck of any such unifyign conceptionf o a human life which underlies modern denials of the factual character of moral judgements (especially those which ascribe virtues/vices)
Ch 16 � From the virtues to virtue and after virtue
what was the Aristotelian �essential nature + purpose/function� of man??? see later chapter
�deontology from divine law�???
Weber???
what is taboo in our world???
paedophilia, BDSM, anal sex � anything non-sexual??? swearing?, homosexuality a bit, intolerance (e.g. racism, homophobia � political correctness�)
what did Moore mean by �good� as a �non-natural� property???
he was talking about Mackie�s sort of queer, supernatural moral entities/facts
Moore vs emotivism???
cynical (in the ancient sense)???
�Resembling or characteristic of the Cynic philosophers: distrustful or incredulous of human goodness and sincerity; sneering. L16.�
one of the ways that a character- rather than act-based system is better is that it fits with the non-formulisable character of ethics
and it is an ethical, rather than moral, system
how does free will/determinism affect Aristotle�s virtue theory???
one explanation for the fact that the virtues seem to cluster in good people might simply be that the sort of person inclined towards learning and applying one will have the judgement to see the others too
interestingly, for Aristotle, the virtues are unavailable to anyone incapable of political relationships between free men
E M Forster: if faced with a choice between betraying his country and betraying his friend, he hoped he would have the courage to betray his country
what is there left for anyone to contemplate after Aristotle has finished???
how does MacIntyre view conflict then, if not as something to be avoided or managed???
when MacIntyre talks of the relationship between telos (the good life) and the virtues as internal, does he mean that, partly the good life results from the exercise of the virtues, and partly it is constitutive of the virtues
what is �evil�???
I suppose if you have all the virtues, then that rules out the sort of act that requires virtues but is bad news (e.g. the diligent Nazi death camp supervisor etc.) � this is one way to impose anti-relativising restrictions on what a virtuous man would do, e.g. have a catch-all super-virtue, e.g. phronesis�???
does MacIntyre say enough to preclude (e.g.) a Nazi or slavery tradition??? (see above about diligent Nazi)
am I happy with his argument/conclusions??? is there anything I disagree with??? do I feel he�s argued rigorously enough, rather than just appealing to my intuitions???
presumably, his (more or less) anti-deontological notions of ethics mean that free will is a bit less of an issue, though if we�re unable to change who we are and how we act (and so are barred from the good life) then I suppose that free will is still a problem???