By G. E. M. Anscombe
Originally published in Philosophy 33, No. 124 (January 1958).
I will begin
by stating three theses which I present in this paper. The first is that it is
not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid
aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which
we are conspicuously lacking. The second is that the concepts of obligation,
and duty‑-moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say‑-and of
what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of "ought,"
ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are
survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics
which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it. My third
thesis is that the differences between the well‑known English writers on moral
philosophy from Sidgwick to the present day are of little importance.
Anyone who
has read Aristotle's Ethics and has also read modern moral philosophy must have
been struck by the great contrasts between them. The concepts which are
prominent among the moderns seem to be lacking, or at any rate buried or far in
the background, in Aristotle. Most noticeably, the term "moral"
itself, which we have by direct inheritance Aristotle, just doesn't seem to
fit, in its modern sense, into an account of Aristotelian ethics. Aristotle
distinguishes virtues as moral and intellectual. Have some of what he calls
"intellectual" virtues what we should call a "moral"
aspect? It would seem so; the criterion is presumably that a failure in an
"intellectual" virtue--like that of having good judgment in
calculating how to bring about something useful, say in municipal government‑-may be
blameworthy. But-‑it may reasonably be asked‑-cannot
any failure be made a matter of blame or reproach? Any derogatory criticism,
say of the workmanship of a product or the design of a machine, can be called
blame or reproach. So we want to put in the word "morally" again:
sometimes such a failure may be morally blameworthy, sometimes not. Now has
Aristotle got this idea of moral blame, as opposed to any other? If he has, why
isn't it more central? There are some mistakes, he says, which are causes, not
of involuntariness in actions but of scoundrelism, and for which a man is
blamed. Does this mean that there is a moral obligation not to make certain
intellectual mistakes? Why doesn't he discuss obligation in general, and this
obligation in particular? If someone
professes to be expounding Aristotle and talks in a modern fashion about
“moral” such-and-such he must be very imperceptive if he does not constantly
feel like someone whose jaws have somehow got out of alignment: the teeth don’t
come together in a proper bite.
We cannot
then, look to Aristotle for any elucidation of the modern way of talking about
“moral” goodness, obligation, etc. And
all the best-known writers on ethics in modern times, from Butler to Mill,
appear to me to have faults as thinkers on the subject which make it impossible
to hope for any direct light on it from them.
I will state these objections with the brevity which their character
makes possible.
Butler
exalts conscience, but appears ignorant that a man’s conscience may tell him to
do the vilest things.
Hume defines
“truth” in such a way as to exclude ethical judgments from it, and professes
that he has proved that they are so excluded.
He also implicitly defines “passion” in such a way that aiming at
anything is having a passion. His
objection to passing from “is” to “ought” would apply equally to passing from
“is” to “owes” or from “is” to “needs.”
(However, because of the historical situation, he has a point here,
which I shall return to.)
Kant
introduces the idea of “legislating for oneself,” which is as absurd as if in
these days, when majority votes command great respect, one were to call each
reflective decision a man made a vote resulting in a majority, which as a
matter of proportion is overwhelming, for it is always 1-0. The concept of legislation requires superior
power in the legislator. His own
rigoristic convictions on the subject of lying were so intense that it never
occurred to him that a lie could be relevantly described as anything but just a
lie (e.g. as “a lie in such-and-such circumstances”). His rule about universalizable maxims is
useless without stipulations as to what shall count as a relevant description
of an action with a view to constructing a maxim about it.
Bentham and
Mill do not notice the difficulty of the concept “pleasure.” They are often said to have gone wrong
through committing the “naturalistic fallacy”; but this charge does not impress
me, because I do not find accounts of it coherent. But the other point—about pleasure—seems to
me a fatal objection from the very outset.
The ancients found this concept pretty baffling. It reduced Aristotle to sheer babble about
“the bloom on the cheek of youth” because, for good reasons, he wanted to make
it out both identical with and different from the pleasurable activity. Generations of modern philosophers found this
concept quite unperplexing, and it reappeared in the literature as a
problematic one only a year or two ago when Ryle wrote about it. The reason is simple: since Locke, pleasure was taken to be some
sort of internal impression. But it was
superficial, if that was the right account of it, to make it the point of
actions. One might adapt something
Wittgenstein said about “meaning” and say “Pleasure cannot be an internal
impression, for no internal impression could have the consequences of
pleasure.”
Mill also,
like Kant, fails to realize the necessity for stipulation as to relevant
descriptions, if his theory is to have content.
It did not occur to him that acts of murder and theft could be otherwise
described. He holds that where a
proposed action is of such a kind as to fall under some one principle
established on grounds of utility, one must go by that; where it falls under
none or several, the several suggesting contrary views of the action, the thing
to do is to calculate particular consequences.
But pretty well any action can be so described as to make it fall under
a variety of principles of utility (as I shall say for short) if it falls under
any.
I will now
return to Hume. The features of Hume’s
philosophy which I have mentioned, like many other features of it, would
incline me to think that Hume was a mere—brilliant—sophist; and his procedures
are certainly sophistical. But I am
forced, not to reverse, but to add to, this judgment by a peculiarity of Hume’s
philosophizing: namely that although he reaches his conclusions—with which he
is in love—by sophistical methods, his considerations constantly open up very
deep and important problems. It is often
the case that in the act of exhibiting the sophistry one finds oneself noticing
matters which deserve a lot of exploring:
the obvious stands in need of investigations as a result of the points
that Hume pretends to have made. In
this, he is unlike, say, Butler. It was
already well known that conscience could dictate vile actions; for Butler to
have written disregarding this does not open up any new topics for us. But with Hume it is otherwise: hence he is a
very profound and great philosopher, in spite of his sophistry. For example:
Suppose that
I say to my grocer “Truth consists in either relations of ideas, as that
20s=£1, or matters of fact, as that I ordered potatoes, you supplied them, and
you sent me a bill. So it doesn’t apply
to such a proposition as that I owe you such-and-such a sum.”
Now if one
makes this comparison, it comes to light that the relation of the facts
mentioned to the description “X owes Y so much money” is an interesting one,
which I will call that of being “brute relative to” that description. Further, the “brute” facts mentioned here
themselves have descriptions relatively to which other facts are “brute”—as,
e.g., he had potatoes carted to my house and they were left there are brute
facts relative to “he supplied me with potatoes.” And the fact X owes Y money is in turn
“brute” relative to other descriptions—e.g. “X is solvent.” Now the relation of “relative bruteness” is a
complicated one. To mention a few
points: if xyz is a set of facts brute
relative to a description A, then xyz is a set out of a range some set among
which holds if A holds; but the holding of some set among these does not
necessarily entail A because exceptional circumstances can always make a
difference; and what are exceptional circumstance relatively to A can generally
only be explained by giving a few diverse examples, and no theoretically
adequate provision can be made for exceptional circumstances, since a further
special context can theoretically always be imagined that would reinterpret any
special context. Further, though in normal
circumstances, xyz would be a justification for A, of which institution A is of
course not itself a description. (E.g.
the statement that I give someone a shilling is not a description of the
institution of money or of the currency of the country.) Thus, though it would be ludicrous to pretend
that there can be no such thing as a transition from, e.g., “is” to “owes,” the
character of the transition is in fact rather interesting and comes to light as
a result of reflecting on Hume’s arguments.[1]
That I owe
the grocer such-and-such a sum would be one of a set of facts which would be
“brute” in relation to the description “I am a bilker.” “bilking” is of course a species of
“dishonesty” or “injustice.” (Naturally
the consideration will not have any effect on my actions unless I want to
commit or avoid acts of injustice.)
So far, in
spite of their strong associations, I conceive “bilking,” “injustice” and
“dishonesty” in a merely factual way.
That I can do this for “bilking” is obvious enough; “justice” I have no
idea how to define, except that its sphere is that of actions which relate to
someone else, but “injustice,” its defect, can for the moment be offered as a
generic name covering various species.
E.g.: “bilking,” “theft” (which is relative to whatever property
institutions exist), “slander,” “adultery,” ”punishment of the innocent.”
In
present-day philosophy an explanation is required how an unjust man is a bad
man, or an unjust action a bad one; to give such an explanation belongs to ethics;
but it cannot even be begun until we are equipped with a sound philosophy of
psychology. For the proof that an unjust
man is a bad man would require a positive account of justice as a “virtue.” This part of the subject-matter of ethics, is
however, completely closed to us until we have an account of what type of
characteristic a virtue is—a problem, not of ethics, but of conceptual
analysis—and how it relates to the actions in which it is instanced: a matter which I think Aristotle did not
succeed in really making clear. For this
we certainly need an account at least of what a human action is at all, and how
its description as “doing such-and-such” is affected by its motive and by the
intention or intentions in it; and for this an account of such concepts is
required.
The terms
“should” or “ought” or “needs” relate to good and bad: e.g. machinery needs
oil, or should or ought to be oiled, in that running without oil is bad for it,
or it runs badly without oil. According to this conception, of course,
"should" and "ought" are not used in a special
"moral" sense when one says that a man should not bilk. (In
Aristotle's sense of the term "moral" [ήθικός], they are being used
in connection with a moral subject‑matter: namely that of human passions
and [non‑technical] actions.) But they have now acquired a special so‑called
"moral" sense-‑i.e. a sense in which they imply some
absolute verdict (like one of guilty/not guilty on a man) on what is described
in the "ought" sentences used in certain types of context: not merely
the contexts that Aristotle would call "moral"‑-passions
and actions‑-but also some of the contexts that he would call
"intellectual."
The ordinary
(and quite indispensable) terms "should," "needs,"
"ought," "must"‑-acquired this special sense by being
equated in the relevant contexts with "is obliged," or "is
bound," or "is required to," in the sense in which one can be
obliged or bound by law, or something can be required by law.
How did this
come about? The answer is in history: between Aristotle and us came
Christianity, with its law conception of ethics. For Christianity derived its
ethical notions from the Torah. (One might be inclined to think that a law
conception of ethics could arise only among people who accepted an allegedly divine
positive law; that this is not so is shown by the example of the Stoics, who
also thought that whatever was involved in conformity to human virtues was
required by divine law.)
In
consequence of the dominance of Christianity for many centuries, the concepts
of being bound, permitted, or excused became deeply embedded in our language
and thought. The Greek word " ἁμαρτάνειν," the aptest to be turned to
that use, acquired the sense "sin," from having meant
"mistake," "missing the mark," "going wrong." The
Latin peccatum which roughly corresponded to ἁμαρτημα was even apter for the
sense "sin," because it was already associated with "culpa"‑-"guilt"‑-a
juridical notion. The blanket term "illicit," "unlawful,"
meaning much the same as our blanket term "wrong," explains itself.
It is interesting that Aristotle did not have such a blanket term. He has
blanket terms for wickedness‑-"villain,"
"scoundrel"; but of course a man is not a villain or a scoundrel by
the performance of one bad action, or a few bad actions. And he has terms like
"disgraceful," "impious"; and specific terms signifying
defect of the relevant virtue, like "unjust"; but no term
corresponding to "illicit." The extension of this term (i.e. the range
of its application) could be indicated in his terminology only by a quite
lengthy sentence: that is "illicit" which, whether it is a thought or
a consented‑to passion or an action or an omission in thought or
action, is something contrary to one of the virtues the lack of which shows a
man to be bad qua man. That formulation would yield a concept co‑extensive
with the concept "illicit."
To have a
law conception of ethics is to hold that what is needed for conformity with the
virtues failure in which is the mark of being bad qua man (and not merely, say,
qua craftsman or logician)--that what is needed for this, is required by divine
law. Naturally it is not possible to have such a conception unless you believe
in God as a law‑giver; like Jews, Stoics, and
Christians. But if such a conception is dominant for many centuries, and then
is given up, it is a natural result that the concepts of "obligation,” of
being bound or required as by a law, should remain though they had lost their
root; and if the word "ought" has become invested in certain contexts
with the sense of "obligation," it too will remain to be spoken with
a special emphasis and special feeling in these contexts.
It is as if
the notion "criminal" were to remain when criminal law and criminal
courts had been abolished and forgotten. A Hume discovering this situation
might conclude that there was a special sentiment, expressed by "criminal,"
which alone gave the word its sense. So Hume discovered the situation which the
notion "obligation" survived, and the notion "ought" was
invested with that peculiar for having which it is said to be used in a
"moral" sense, but in which the belief in divine law had long since
been abandoned: for it was substantially given up among Protestants at the time
of the Reformation.[2] The situation, if I am right, was the interesting one of
the survival of a concept outside the framework of thought that made it a
really intelligible one.
When Hume
produced his famous remarks about the transition from "is" to
"ought," he was, then, bringing together several quite different
points. One I have tried to bring out by my remarks on the transition from
"is" to "owes" and on the relative "bruteness" of
facts. It would be possible to bring out a different point by enquiring about
the transition from "is" to "needs"; from the
characteristics of an organism to the environment that it needs, for example.
To say that it needs that environment is not to say, e.g., that you want it to
have that environment, but that it won't flourish unless it has it. Certainly,
it all depends whether you want it to flourish! as Hume would say. But what
"all depends" on whether you want it to flourish is whether the fact
that it needs that environment, or won't flourish without it, has the slightest
influence on your actions, Now that such‑and‑such "ought" to be or
"is needed" is supposed to have an influence on your actions: from
which it seemed natural to infer that to judge that it "ought to be"
was in fact to grant what you judged "ought to be" influence on your
actions. And no amount of truth as to what is the case could possibly have a
logical claim to have influence on your actions. (It is not judgment as such
that sets us in motion; but our judgment on how to get or do something we
want.) Hence it must be impossible to infer "needs" or "ought to
be" from "is." But in the case of a plant, let us say, the
inference from "is" to "needs" is certainly not in the
least dubious. It is interesting and worth examining; but not at all fishy. Its
interest is similar to the interest of the relation between brute and less
brute facts: these relations have been very little considered. And while you
can contrast "what it needs" with "what it's got"--like
contrasting de facto and de iure--that does not make its needing this
environment less of a "truth."
Certainly in
the case of what the plant needs, the thought of a need will only affect action
if you want the plant to flourish. Here, then, there is no necessary connection
between what you can judge the plant "needs" and what you want. But
there is some sort of necessary connection between what you think you need, and
what you want. The connection is a complicated one; it is possible not to want
something that you judge you need. But, e.g., it is not possible never to want
anything that you judge you need. This, however, is not a fact about the
meaning of the word "to need," but about the phenomenon of wanting.
Hume's reasoning, we might say, in effect, leads one to think it must be about
the word "to need," or "to be good for."
Thus we find
two problems already wrapped up in the remark about a transition from
"is" to "ought"; now supposing that we had clarified the
"relative bruteness" of facts on the one hand, and the notions
involved in "needing," and "flourishing" on the other‑there
would still remain a third point. For, following Hume, someone might say:
Perhaps you have made out your point about a transition from "is" to
"owes" and from "is" to "needs": but only at the
cost of showing "owes" and "needs" sentences to express a
kind of truths, a kind of facts. And it remains impossible to infer
"morally ought" from "is" sentences.
This comment,
it seems to me, would be correct. This word "ought," having become a
word of mere mesmeric force, could not, in the character of having that force,
be inferred from anything whatever. It may be objected that it could be
inferred from other "morally ought" sentences: but that cannot be
true. The appearance that this is so is produced by the fact that we say
"All men are Φ" and "Socrates is a man" implies
"Socrates is Φ." But here "Φ" is a dummy predicate. We mean
that if you substitute a real predicate for "Φ" the implication is
valid. A real predicate is required; not just a word containing no intelligible
thought: a word retaining the suggestion of force, and apt to have a strong
psychological effect, but which no longer signifies a real concept at all.
For its
suggestion is one of a verdict on my action, according as it agrees or
disagrees with the description in the "ought" sentence. And where one
does not think there is a judge or a law, the notion of a verdict may retain
its psychological effect, but not its meaning. Now imagine that just this word
"verdict" were so used-‑with a characteristically solemn
emphasis-‑as to retain its atmosphere but not its meaning, and
someone were to say: "For a verdict, after all, you need a law and a
judge." The reply might be made: "Not at all, for if there were a law
and a judge who gave a verdict, the question for us would be whether accepting
that verdict is something that there is a Verdict on." This is an analogue
of an argument which is so frequently referred to as decisive: If someone does
have a divine law conception of ethics, all the same, he has to agree that he
has to have a judgment that he ought (morally ought) to obey the divine law; so
his ethic is in exactly the same position as any other: he merely has a
"practical major premise"[3]; "Divine law ought to be
obeyed" where someone else has, e.g., "The greatest happiness
principle ought to be employed in all decisions."
I should
judge that Hume and our present‑day ethicists had done a considerable
service by showing that no content could be found in the notion "morally
ought"; if it were not that the latter philosophers try to find an
alternative (very fishy) content and to retain the psychological force of the
term. It would be most reasonable to drop it. It has no reasonable sense
outside a law conception of ethics; they are not going to maintain such a
conception; and you can do ethics without it, as is shown by the example of
Aristotle. It would be a great improvement if, instead of "morally wrong,"
one always named a genus such as "untruthful," "unchaste,"
"unjust." We should no longer ask whether doing something was
"wrong," passing directly from some description of an action to this
notion; we should ask whether, e.g., it was unjust; and the answer would
sometimes be clear at once.
I now come
to the epoch in modern English moral philosophy marked by Sidgwick. There is a
startling change that seems to have taken place between Mill and Moore. Mill
assumes, as we saw, that there is no question of calculating the particular
consequences of an action such as murder or theft; and we saw too that his
position was stupid, because it is not at all clear how an action can fall
under just one principle of utility. In Moore and in subsequent academic
moralists of England we find it taken to be pretty obvious that "the right
action" is the action which produces the best possible consequences
(reckoning among consequences the intrinsic values ascribed to certain kinds of
act by some "Objectivists"[4]). Now it follows from this that a man
does well, subjectively speaking, if he acts for the best in the particular
circumstances according to his judgment of the total consequences of this
particular action. I say that this follows, not that any philosopher has said precisely
that. For discussion of these questions can of course get extremely
complicated: e.g. it can be doubted whether "such‑and‑such is
the right action" is a satisfactory formulation, on the grounds that
things have to exist to have predicates‑so perhaps the best formulation is
"I am obliged"; or again, a philosopher may deny that
"right" is a "descriptive" term, and then take a roundabout
route through linguistic analysis to reach a view which comes to the same thing
as "the right action is the one productive of the best consequences"
(e.g. the view that you frame your "principles" to effect the end you
choose to pursue, the connection between "choice" and
"best" being supposedly such that choosing reflectively means that
you choose how to act so as to produce the best consequences); further, the
roles of what are called "moral principles" and of the "motive
of duty" have to be described; the differences between "good"
and "morally good" and "right" need to be explored, the
special characteristics of "ought" sentences investigated. Such
discussions generate an appearance of significant diversity of views where what
is really significant is an overall similarity. The overall similarity is made
clear if you consider that every one of the best known English academic moral
philosophers has put out a philosophy according to which, e.g., it is not
possible to hold that it cannot be right to kill the innocent as a means to any
end whatsoever and that someone who thinks otherwise is in error. (I have to
mention both points; because Mr. Hare, for example, while teaching a philosophy
which would encourage a person to judge that killing the innocent would be what
he "ought" to choose for over‑riding purposes would also teach, I
think, that if a man chooses to make avoiding killing the innocent for any
purpose his "supreme practical principle," he cannot be impugned for
error: that just is his "principle." But with that qualification, I
think it can be seen that the point I have mentioned holds good of every single
English academic moral philosopher since Sidgwick.) Now this is a significant
thing: for it means that all these philosophies are quite incompatible with the
Hebrew‑Christian ethic. For it has been characteristic of that ethic
to teach that there are certain things forbidden whatever consequences
threaten, such as choosing to kill the innocent for any purpose, however good;
vicarious punishment; treachery (by which I mean obtaining a man's confidence
in a grave matter by promises of trustworthy friendship and then betraying him
to his enemies); idolatry; sodomy; adultery; making a false profession of
faith. The prohibition of certain things simply in virtue of their description
as such‑and‑such identifiable kinds of action,
regardless of any further consequences, is certainly not the whole of the
Hebrew‑Christian ethic; but it is a noteworthy feature of it; and if
every academic philosopher since Sidgwick has written in such a way as to
exclude this ethic, it would argue a certain provinciality of mind not to see this
incompatibility as the most important fact about these philosophers, and the
differences between them as somewhat trifling by comparison.
It is
noticeable that none of these philosophers displays any consciousness that
there is such an ethic, which he is contradicting: it is pretty well taken for
obvious among them all that a prohibition such as that on murder does not
operate in face of some consequences. But of course the strictness of the
prohibition has as its point that you are not to be tempted by fear or hope of
consequences.
If you
notice the transition from Mill to Moore, you will suspect that it was made
somewhere by someone; Sidgwick will come to mind as a likely name; and you will
in fact find it going on, almost casually, in him. He is rather a dull author;
and the important things in him occur in asides and footnotes and small bits of
argument which are not concerned with his grand classification of the
"methods of ethics." A divine law theory of ethics is reduced to an
insignificant variety by a footnote telling us that "the best
theologians" (God knows whom he meant) tell us that God is to be obeyed in
his capacity of a moral being. η
φορτικός ὁ έπαινος one seems to hear Aristotle saying: "Isn't the praise
vulgar?"[5] But Sidgwick is vulgar in that kind of way: he thinks, for
example, that humility consists in underestimating your own merits-‑i.e, in a
species of untruthfulness; and that the ground for having laws against
blasphemy was that it was offensive to believers; and that to go accurately
into the virtue of purity is to offend against its canons, a thing he reproves
"medieval theologians" for not realizing.
From the
point of view of the present enquiry, the most important thing about Sidgwick
was his definition of intention. He defines intention in such a way that one
must be said to intend any foreseen consequences of one's voluntary action.
This definition is obviously incorrect, and I dare say that no one would be
found to defend it now. He uses it to put forward an ethical thesis which would
now be accepted by many people: the thesis that it does not make any difference
to a man's responsibility for something that he foresaw, that he felt no desire
for it, either as an end or as a means to an end. Using the language of intention
more correctly, and avoiding Sidgwick's faulty conception, we may state the
thesis thus: it does not make any difference to a man's responsibility for an
effect of his action which he can foresee, that he does not intend it. Now this
sounds rather edifying; it is I think quite characteristic of very bad
degenerations of thought on such questions that they sound edifying. We can see
what it amounts to by considering an example. Let us suppose that a man has a
responsibility for the maintenance of some child. Therefore deliberately to
withdraw support from it is a bad sort of thing for him to do. It would be bad
for him to withdraw its maintenance because he didn't want to maintain it any
longer; and also bad for him to withdraw it because by doing so he would, let
us say, compel someone else to do something. (We may suppose for the sake of
argument that compelling that person to do that thing is in itself quite
admirable.) But now he has to choose between doing something disgraceful and
going to prison; if he goes to prison, it will follow that he withdraws support
from the child. By Sidgwick's doctrine, there is no difference in his
responsibility for ceasing to maintain the child, between the case where he
does it for its own sake or as a means to some other purpose, and when it
happens as a foreseen and unavoidable consequence of his going to prison rather
than do something disgraceful. It follows that he must weigh up the relative
badness of withdrawing support from the child and of doing the disgraceful
thing; and it may easily be that the disgraceful thing is in fact a less
vicious action than intentionally withdrawing support from the child would be;
if then the fact that withdrawing support from the child is a side effect of
his going to prison does not make any difference to his responsibility, this
consideration will incline him to do the disgraceful thing; which can still be
pretty bad. And of course, once he has started to look at the matter in this
light, the only reasonable thing for him to consider will be the consequences
and not the intrinsic badness of this or that action. So that, given that he
judges reasonably that no great harm will come of it, he can do a much more
disgraceful thing than deliberately withdrawing support from the child. And if
his calculations turn out in fact wrong, it will appear that he was not
responsible for the consequences, because he did not foresee them. For in fact
Sidgwick's thesis leads to its being quite impossible to estimate the badness
of an action except in the light of expectedconsequences. But if so, then you
must estimate the badness in the light of the consequences you expect; and so
it will follow that you can exculpate yourself from the actual consequences of
the most disgraceful actions, so long as you can make out a case for not having
foreseen them. Whereas I should contend that a man is responsible for the bad
consequences of his bad actions, but gets no credit for the good ones; and
contrariwise is not responsible for the bad consequences of good actions.
The denial
of any distinction between foreseen and intended consequences, as far as
responsibility is concerned, was not made by Sidgwick in developing any one
"method of ethics"; he made this important move on behalf of
everybody and just on its own account; and I think it plausible to suggest that
this move on the part of Sidgwick explains the difference between old‑fashioned
Utilitarianism and that consequentialism, as I name it, which marks him and
every English academic moral philosopher since him. By it, the kind of
consideration which would formerly have been regarded as a temptation, the kind
of consideration urged upon men by wives and flattering friends, was given a
status by moral philosophers in their theories.
It is a
necessary feature of consequentialism that it is a shallow philosophy. For
there are always borderline cases in ethics. Now if you are either an
Aristotelian, or a believer in divine law, you will deal with a borderline case
by considering whether doing such‑and‑such in such‑and‑such
circumstances is, say, murder, or is an act of injustice; and according as you
decide it is or it isn't, you judge it to be a thing to do or not. This would
be the method of casuistry; and while it may lead you to stretch a point on the
circumference, it will not permit you to destroy the center. But if you are a
consequentialist, the question "What is it right to do in such‑and‑such
circumstances?" is a stupid one to raise. The casuist raises such a
question only to ask "Would it be permissible to do so‑and‑so?"
or "Would it be permissible not to do so‑and‑so?" Only if it would not be
permissible not to do so‑and‑so could he say "This would be
the thing to do."[6] Otherwise, though he may speak against some action,
he cannot prescribe any‑for in an actual case, the
circumstances (beyond the ones imagined) might suggest all sorts of
possibilities, and you can't know in advance what the possibilities are going
to be. Now the consequentialist has no footing on which to say "This would
be permissible, this not"; because by his own hypothesis, it is the
consequences that are to decide, and he has no business to pretend that he can
lay it down what possible twists a man could give doing this or that; the most
he can say is: a man must not bring about this or that; he has no right to say
he will, in an actual case, bring about such‑and‑such unless he does so‑and‑so.
Further, the consequentialist, in order to be imagining borderline cases at
all, has of course to assume some sort of law or standard according to which
this is a borderline case, Where then does he get the standard from? In
practice the answer invariably is: from the standards current in his society or
his circle. And it has in fact been the mark of all these philosophers that
they have been extremely conventional; they have nothing in them by which to
revolt against the conventional standards of their sort of people; it is
impossible that they should be profound. But the chance that a whole range of
conventional standards will be decent is small.-‑Finally, the point of considering
hypothetical situations, perhaps very improbable ones, seems to be to elicit
from yourself or someone else a hypothetical decision to do something of a bad
kind. I don't doubt this has the effect of predisposing people--who will never
get into the situations for which they have made hypothetical choices-‑to consent
to similar bad actions, or to praise and flatter those who do them, so long as
their crowd does so too, when the desperate circumstances imagined don't hold
at all.
Those who
recognize the origins of the notions of "obligation" and of the
emphatic, "moral," ought, in the divine law conception of ethics, but
who reject the notion of a divine legislator, sometimes look about for the
possibility of retaining a law conception without a divine legislator. This
search, I think, has some interest in it. Perhaps the first thing that suggests
itself is the "norms" of a society. But just as one cannot be
impressed by Butler when one reflects what conscience can tell people to do,
so, I think, one cannot be impressed by this idea if one reflects what the
"norms" of a society can be like. That legislation can be "for
oneself" I reject as absurd; whatever you do "for yourself" may
be admirable; but is not legislating. Once one sees this, one may say: I have
to frame my own rules, and these are the best I can frame, and I shall go by
them until I know something better: as a man might say "I shall go by the
customs of my ancestors." Whether this leads to good or evil will depend
on the content of the rules or of the customs of one's ancestors. If one is
lucky it will lead to good. Such an attitude would be hopeful in this at any
rate: it seems to have in it some Socratic doubt where, from having to fall
back on such expedients, it should be clear that Socratic doubt is good; in
fact rather generally it must be good for anyone to think "Perhaps in some
way I can't see, I may be on a bad path, perhaps I am hopelessly wrong in some
essential way".‑-The search for "norms"
might lead someone to look for laws of nature, as if the universe were a
legislator; but in the present day this is not likely to lead to good results;
it might lead one to eat the weaker according to the laws of nature, but would
hardly lead anyone nowadays to notions of justice the pre‑Socratic
feeling about justice as comparable to the balance or harmony which kept things
going is very remote to us.
There is
another possibility here: "obligation" may be contractual. Just as we
look at the law to find out what a man subject to it is required by it to do,
so we look at a contract to find out what the man who has made it is required
by it to do. Thinkers, admittedly remote from us, might have the idea of a
foedus rerum, of the universe not as a legislator but as the embodiment of a
contract. Then if you could find out what the contract was, you would learn
your obligations under it. Now, you cannot be under a law unless it has been
promulgated to you; and the thinkers who believed in "natural divine
law" held that it was promulgated to every grown man in his knowledge of
good and evil. Similarly you cannot be in a contract without having contracted,
i.e. given signs of entering upon the contract. Just possibly, it might be
argued that the use of language which one makes in the ordinary conduct of life
amounts in some sense to giving the signs of entering into various contracts.
If anyone had this theory, we should want to see it worked out. I suspect that
it would be largely formal; it might be possible to construct a system
embodying the law (whose status might be compared to that of "laws"of
logic): "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," but
hardly one descending to such particularities as the prohibition on murder or
sodomy. Also, while it is clear that you can be subject to a law that you do
not acknowledge and have not thought of as law, it does not seem reasonable to
say that you can enter upon a contract without knowing that you are doing so;
such ignorance is usually held to be destructive of the nature of a contract.
It might
remain to look for "norms" in human virtues: just as man has so many
teeth, which is certainly not the average number of teeth men have, but is the
number of teeth for the species, so perhaps the species man, regarded not just
biologically, but from the point of view of the activity of thought and choice
in regard to the various departments of life--powers and faculties and use of
things needed--"has" such‑and‑such virtues: and this
"man" with the complete set of virtues is the "norm," as
"man" with, e.g., a complete set of teeth is a norm. But in this
sense "norm" has ceased to be roughly equivalent to "law." In
this sense the notion of a "norm" brings us nearer to an Aristotelian
than a law conception of ethics. There is, I think, no harm in that; but if
someone looked in this direction to give "norm" a sense, then he
ought to recognize what has happened to the notion "norm," which he
wanted to mean "law‑-without bringing God in"--it
has ceased to mean "law" at all; and so the notions of "moral
obligation," "the moral ought," and "duty" are best
put on the Index, if he can manage it.
But
meanwhile‑-is it not clear that there are several concepts that
need investigating simply as part of the philosophy of psychology and, as I
should recommend--banishing ethics totallyfrom our minds? Namely-‑to begin
with: "action," "intention," "pleasure,"
"wanting." More will probably turn up if we start with these.
Eventually it might be possible to advance to considering the concept
"virtue"; with which, I suppose, we should be beginning some sort of
a study of ethics.
I will end
by describing the advantages of using the word "ought" in a non‑emphatic
fashion, and not in a special "moral" sense; of discarding the term
"wrong" in a "moral" sense, and using such notions as
"unjust."
It is
possible, if one is allowed to proceed just by giving examples, to distinguish
between the intrinsically unjust, and what is unjust given the circumstances.
To arrange to get a man judicially punished for something which it can be
clearly seen he has not done is intrinsically unjust. This might be done, of
course, and often has been done, in all sorts of ways; by suborning false
witnesses, by a rule of law by which something is "deemed" to be the
case which is admittedly not the case as a matter of fact, and by open
insolence on the part of the judges and powerful people when they more or less
openly say: "A fig for the fact that you did not do it; we mean to
sentence you for it all the same." What is unjust given, e.g., normal
circumstances is to deprive people of their ostensible property without legal
procedure, not to pay debts, not to keep contracts, and a host of other things
of the kind. Now, the circumstances can clearly make a great deal of difference
in estimating the justice or injustice of such procedures as these; and these
circumstances may sometimes include expected consequences; for example, a man's
claim to a bit of property can become a nullity when its seizure and use can
avert some obvious disaster: as, e.g., if you could use a machine of his to
produce an explosion in which it would be destroyed, but by means of which you
could divert a flood or make a gap which a fire could not jump. Now this
certainly does not mean that what would ordinarily be an act of injustice, but
is not intrinsically unjust, can always be rendered just by a reasonable
calculation of better consequences; far from it; but the problems that would be
raised in an attempt to draw a boundary line (or boundary area) here are
obviously complicated. And while there are certainly some general remarks which
ought to be made here, and some boundaries that can be drawn, the decision on
particular cases would for the most part be determined κατόν όρθον λόγον
"according to what's reasonable."-‑E.g. thatsuch‑and‑such a
delay of payment of a such‑and‑such debt to a person so
circumstanced, on the part of a person so circumstanced, would or would not be
unjust, is really only to be decided "according to what's
reasonable"; and for this there can in principle be no canon other than
giving a few examples. That is to say, while it is because of a big gap in
philosophy that we can give no general account of the concept of virtue and of
the concept of justice, but have to proceed using the concepts, only by giving
examples; still there is an area where it is not because of any gap, but is in
principle the case, that there is no account except by way of examples: and
that is where the canon is "what's reasonable": which of course is
not a canon.
That is all
I wish to say about what is just in some circumstances, unjust in others; and
about the way in which expected consequences can play a part in determining
what is just. Returning to my example of the intrinsically unjust: if a
procedure is one of judicially punishing a man for what he is clearly
understood not to have done, there can be absolutely no argument about the
description of this as unjust. No circumstances, and no expected consequences,
which do not modify the description of the procedure as one of judicially
punishing a man for what he is known not to have done can modify the
description of it as unjust. Someone who attempted to dispute this would only
be pretending not to know what "unjust" means: for this is a paradigm
case of injustice.
And here we
see the superiority or the term "unjust" over the terms "morally
right" and "morally wrong." For in the context of English moral
philosophy since Sidgwick it appears legitimate to discuss whether it might be
"morally right" in some circumstances to adopt that procedure; but it
cannot be argued that that the procedure would in any circumstances be just.
Now I am not
able to do the philosophy involved-‑and I think that no one in the
present situation of English philosophy can do the philosophy involved‑-but it is
clear that a good man is a just man; and a just man is a man who habitually
refuses to commit or participate in any unjust actions for fear of any
consequences, or to obtain any advantage, for himself or anyone else. Perhaps
no one will disagree. But, it will be said, what is unjust is sometimes
determined by expected consequences; and certainly that is true. But there are
cases where it is not: now if someone says, "I agree, but all this wants a
lot of explaining," then he is right, and, what is more, the situation at
present is that we can't do the explaining; we lack the philosophic equipment.
But if someone really thinks, in advance,[7] that it is open to question
whether such an action as procuring the judicial execution of the innocent
should be quite excluded from consideration‑-I do not want to argue with him; he
shows a corrupt mind.
In such
cases our moral philosophers seek to impose a dilemma upon us. "If we have
a case where the term `unjust' applies purely in virtue of a factual
description, can't one raise the question whether one sometimes conceivably
ought to do injustice? If `what is unjust' is determined by consideration of
whether it is right to do so‑and‑so in such‑and‑such
circumstances, then the question whether it is `right' to commit injustice
can't arise, just because `wrong' has been built into the definition of
injustice. But if we have a case where the description `unjust' applies purely
in virtue of the facts, without bringing `wrong' in, then the question can
arise whether one `ought' perhaps to commit an injustice, whether it might not
be `right' to? And of course `ought' and `right' are being used in their moral
senses here. Now either you must decide what is `morally right' in the light of
certain other `principles,' or you make a `principle' about this and decide
that an injustice is never 'right'; but even if you do the latter you are going
beyond the facts; you are making a decision that you will not, or that it is
wrong to, commit injustice. But in either case, if the term `unjust' is
determined simply by the facts, it is not the term `unjust' that determines
that the term `wrong' applies, but a decision that injustice is wrong,together
with the diagnosis of the `factual' description as entailing injustice. But the
man who makes an absolute decision that injustice is `wrong' has no footing on
which to criticize someone who does not make that decision as judging
falsely."
In this
argument "wrong" of course is explained as meaning "morally
wrong," and all the atmosphere of the term is retained while its substance
is guaranteed quite null. Now let us remember that "morally wrong" is
the term which is the heir of the notion "illicit," or "what
there is an obligation not to do"; which belongs in a divine law theory or
ethics. Here it really does add something to the description "unjust"
to say there is an obligation not to do it; for what obliges is the divine law‑as rules
oblige in a game. So if the divine law obliges not to commit injustice by
forbidding injustice, it really does add something to the description
"unjust" to say there is an obligation not to do it. And it is
because "morally wrong" is the heir of this concept, but an heir that
is cut off from the family of concepts from which it sprang, that "morally
wrong" both goes beyond the mere factual description "unjust"
and seems to have no discernible content except a certain compelling force,
which I should call purely psychological. And such is the force of the term
that philosophers actually suppose that the divine law notion can be dismissed
as making no essential difference even if it is held‑because
they think that a "practical principle" running "I ought (i.e.
am morally obliged) to obey divine laws" is required for the man who
believes in divine laws. But actually this notion of obligation is a notion
which only operates in the context of law. And I should be inclined to congratulate
the present-day moral philosophers on depriving "morally ought" of
its now delusive appearance of content, if only they did not manifest a
detestable desire to retain the atmosphere of the term.
It may be
possible, if we are resolute, to discard the notion "morally ought,"
and simply return to the ordinary "ought," which, we ought to notice,
is such an extremely frequent term of human language that it is difficult to
imagine getting on without it. Now if we do return to it, can't it reasonably
be asked whether one might ever need to commit injustice, or whether it won't
be the best thing to do? Of course it can. And the answers will be various. One
man-‑a philosopher-‑may say that since justice is a
virtue, and injustice a vice, and virtues and vices are built up by the
performances of the action in which they are instanced, an act of injustice
will tend to make a man bad; and essentially the flourishing of a man qua man
consists in his being good (e.g. in virtues); but for any X to which such terms
apply, X needs what makes it flourish, so a man needs, or ought to perform,
only virtuous actions; and even if, as it must be admitted may happen, he
flourishes less, or not at all, in inessentials, by avoiding injustice, his
life is spoiled in essentials by not avoiding injustice‑so he
still needs to perform only just actions. That is roughly how Plato and
Aristotle talk; but it can be seen that philosophically there is a huge gap, at
present unfillable as far as we are concerned, which needs to be filled by an
account of human nature, human action, the type of characteristic a virtue is,
and above all of human "flourishing." And it is the last concept that
appears the most doubtful. For it is a bit much to swallow that a man in pain
and hunger and poor and friendless is "flourishing," as Aristotle
himself admitted. Further, someone might say that one at least needed to stay
alive to "flourish." Another man unimpressed by all that will say in
a hard case "What we need is such‑and‑such, which we won't get without
doing this (which is unjust)‑so this is what we ought to do."
Another man, who does not follow the rather elaborate reasoning of the
philosophers, simply says "I know it is in any case a disgraceful thing to
say that one had better commit this unjust action." The man who believes
in divine laws will say perhaps "It is forbidden, and however it looks, it
cannot be to anyone's profit to commit injustice"; he like the Greek
philosophers can think in terms of "flourishing." If he is a Stoic,
he is apt to have a decidedly strained notion of what "flourishing
consists" in; if he is a Jew or Christian, he need not have any very
distinct notion: the way it will profit him to abstain from injustice is
something that he leaves it to God to determine, him self only saying "It
can't do me any good to go against his law." (But he also hopes for a
great reward in a new life later on, e.g. at the coming of Messiah; but in this
he is relying on special promises.)
It is left
to modern moral philosophy‑the moral philosophy of all the well‑known
English ethicists since Sidgwick‑-to construct systems according to
which the man who says "We need such‑and‑such, and will only get it this
way" may be a virtuous character: that is to say, it is left open to
debate whether such a procedure as the judicial punishment of the innocent may
not in some circumstances be the "right" one to adopt; and though the
present Oxford moral philosophers would accord a man permission to "make
it his principle" not to do such a thing, they teach a philosophy
according to which the particular consequences of such an action could
"morally" be taken into account by a man who was debating what to do;
and if they were such as to conflict with his "ends," it might be a
step in his moral education to frame a moral principle under which he
"managed" (to use Mr. Nowell‑Smith's phrases[8]) to bring the
action; or it might be a new "decision of principle," making which
was an advance in the formation of his moral thinking (to adopt Mr. Hare's
conception), to decide: in such‑and‑such circumstances one ought to
procure the judicial condemnation of the innocent. And that is my complaint.
Endnotes
[1] The
above two paragraphs are an abstract of a paper “On Brute Facts,” Analysis, 18,
3 (1958).
[2] They did
not deny the existence of divine law; but their most characteristic doctrine
was that it was given, not to be obeyed, but to show man's incapacity to obey
it, even by grace; and this applied not merely to the ramified prescriptions of
the Torah, but to the requirements of "natural divine law." Cf. in
this connection the decree of Trent against the teaching that Christ was only
to be trusted in as mediator, not obeyed as legislator.
[3] As it is
absurdly called. Since major premise = premise containing the term which is
predicate in the conclusion, it is a solecism to speak of it in the connection
with practical reasoning.
[4] Oxford
Objectivists of course distinguish between "consequences" and
"intrinsic values" and so produce a misleading appearance of not
being "consequentialists." But they do not hold‑and Ross
explicitly denies‑that the gravity of, e.g., procuring
the condemnation of the innocent is such that it cannot be outweighed by, e.g.,
national interest. Hence their distinction is of no importance.
[5] E. N.
1178b16.
[6]
Necessarily a rare case: for the positive precepts, e.g. "Honor your
parents," hardly ever prescribe, and seldom even necessitate, any
particular action.
[7] If he
thinks it in the concrete situation, he is of course merely a normally tempted
human being. In discussion when this
paper was read, as was perhaps to be expected, this case was produced: a
government is required to have an innocent man tried, sentenced and executed
under threat of a "hydrogen bomb war." It would seem strange to me to
have much hope of so averting a war threatened by such men as made this demand.
But the most important thing about the way in which cases like this are
invented in discussions, is the assumption that only two courses are open:
here, compliance and open defiance. No one can say in advance of such a
situation what the possibilities are going to be‑-e.g. that there is none of stalling
by a feigned willingness to comply. Accompanied by a skillfully arranged “escape” of the victim.
[8] Ethics,
p. 308.
