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First published in Great Britain in 1994 by Fount Paperbacks

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© 1994, 1999 Peter Vardy and Paul Grosch

Peter Vardy and Paul Grosch assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

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Praise for the first edition of The Puzzle of Ethics

‘A wonderfully clear introduction to moral philosophy and to various topics of contemporary ethical concern … This is a book for which many students and the general reader … will be grateful.’

David Atkinson

‘The great advantage of The Puzzle of Ethics over its rivals is that the authors are so thorough, so balanced and so clear. This is a good book.’

Robin Gill, The Tablet

‘The philosopher of religion and gifted communicator Peter Vardy … and Paul Grosch … provide an accessible, balanced and up to date introduction to moral philosophy.’

The Way

‘This book will fill an irritating gap in the current literature available and provide a valuable resource … Vardy and Grosch are serious commentators who have something to say to the general reader; as with all the Puzzle books, accessibility and clarity are the benchmarks of style.’

Peter Tyler, The Month

Dedication

To

Lindsay Grosch and Christian Vardy

– Again!

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Acknowledgements

PART ONE: THEORETICAL ETHICS

1 Setting the Scene

2 Plato – Virtue and Knowledge

3 Aristotle and Virtue Theory

4 Aquinas, Natural Law and Proportionalism

5 Kant and the Moral Law

6 Bentham and Mill – Utilitarianism

7 Post-utilitarian Perspectives:

Intuitionism

Emotivism

8 MacIntyre – Virtue Theory Revisited

9 Virtue Ethics

10 Situation Ethics

11 Justice and Morality – Rawls and Nozick

PART TWO: APPLIED ETHICS

12 Abortion and Personhood

13 Euthanasia and Medical Ethics

14 Just War

15 Crime and Punishment

16 Human Rights

17 Animal Rights

18 Environmental Ethics

19 Genetic Engineering

20 Media Ethics

21 Conclusion

Further Reading

Index

About the Author

About the Publisher

Acknowledgements

Both authors owe a great debt to their students past and present. Responsibility for the errors and omissions in this book rests entirely with the authors, however there would have been more of them were it not for the help of those who read individual chapters and offered their advice. Peter Vardy wishes to acknowledge help given by Michael Barnes SJ, Alan Carter, Bernard Hoose, Gerry Hughes SJ, Janice Thomas and Anne Vardy. Paul Grosch wishes to thank Adrian Mills and Alan Gorman for the many discussions on the nature of justice. He has also benefited from discussions with his colleagues: Dilys Wadman, Liz Stuart, Rachael Quinlan, Adrian Thatcher, Jim Little, Jon Goulding, Gordon Bartlett and Alan Cousins. He wishes to record his special thanks to Anne Littlejohn and David Benzie for their help in taming recalcitrant word-processors when time was fast running out.

PART 1

THEORETICAL ETHICS

ONE

Setting the Scene

Ethics is central to modern life. Lawyers, accountants, doctors, nurses, the police, members of the armed forces, social workers and many others are required to study ethical issues as part of their training. Before any ethical issue can be examined, however, it is first necessary to be clear on the underlying assumptions which govern the debate and, in particular, to understand the different ethical frameworks that can be applied. Unless one is clear on the assumptions, it will not be possible to understand the viewpoints of others or challenge one’s own.

Discussion of, for instance, abortion, euthanasia or sexual morality cannot usefully take place unless there has first been an examination of key issues which will include:

 When does human life begin?

 What is a human person?

 Is life an absolute good?

 Should governments seek to maximise freedom?

 Is achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people the main aim of politics?

 Do you support a deontological or a consequentialist approach to ethics?

 Can a proportionate reason ever justify going against a firm moral rule?

This book is divided into two parts. The first looks at the issues in theoretical ethics underlying the debates; then, in the second part, issues in applied ethics are dealt with. The aim of this book is to present the issues clearly so that you, the reader, can make your own decisions. There is no attempt to impose a particular agenda nor to persuade you to make the ‘right’ answer. Indeed, the whole idea of there being single ‘right’ answers in ethics has come under increasing attack. Some support a radical relativism in which each person’s view is as good as the next – but this carries its own problems. If this position is seriously held, then how does one condemn the behaviour of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, those who took part in ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, or those who carried out the massacres in Rwanda?

The terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ have come to be treated as almost identical in meaning, but they have different derivations. ‘Ethics’ comes from the Greek word ethikos which relates to ‘ethos’ or character. It is sometimes translated ‘custom’ or ‘usage’ so it refers to the customary way to behave in society. Ethical behaviour, therefore, is behaviour that is in accordance with a virtuous character. Aristotle uses the word in this way, maintaining that virtue is happiness, and that the pursuit of virtue is the highest and noblest aim for a human being. In his book The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle maintains that a human being’s highest happiness comes from philosophic speculation but that this must be combined with a life of prudence and a search for virtue. Becoming virtuous involves the individual establishing a habit of virtuous behaviour and this is directly related to a virtuous character.

‘Morality’ comes from the Latin word moralis – particularly as used in Cicero’s commentaries on and translations of Aristotle. Morality is more concerned with which actions are right or wrong rather than with the character of the person who performs these actions. Today the two terms, ethics and morality, are often interchanged with particular philosophers wishing to emphasise one or another aspect.

In this book the field of ethics will be taken to cover not just those actions which are right or wrong but will also explore the fundamental principles which lie behind these actions. In addition, at least at times, the issue of virtue that so preoccupied Aristotle and many of his successors will be considered. We shall see, however, that Aristotle’s approach has been subject to considerable criticism.

Ethical judgements underpin our society and hard choices face us in the years ahead as we attempt to decide

 who will have medical treatment and who will not;

 What rights a person has to restrict access to their genetic information;

 Whether genetically engineered crops are ethically justifiable;

 Whether ‘living wills’ by patients who are terminally ill and in great pain can justify bringing their lives to an end;

 How and for what reasons criminals should be punished;

 Whether the powers of the media should be controlled;

 Whether animals have rights.

These and many similar issues will not go away and they need to be confronted and thought through. The aim of this book is to help you in this task.

TWO

Plato – Virtue and Knowledge

Plato was born in 427 B.C. and was a pupil of Socrates. In 367 B.C. he was invited to take charge of the education of the young ruler of Syracuse – Dionysius II – who controlled the most powerful state in Sicily. The experiment failed, although perhaps more due to Dionysius’ personality than to defects in Plato’s philosophy. However his legacy lives on and he has had the most profound influence on subsequent philosophy.

Plato takes a more systematic approach than Socrates – Socrates’ questioning method was aimed at showing those he talked to that their supposed knowledge was, in fact, shallow and vulnerable. Socrates certainly had positive views to which he tried to direct people, although he may have lacked the philosophic backing for them for which Plato argued. When the Delphi oracle proclaimed Socrates the wisest man in Athens, he came to think (after questioning many people who thought themselves wise but who, by their answers, quickly showed that they were not) that this was because he knew that he knew nothing and that ‘that man was wisest who knew that he knew little’. We do not know how much of the discussions attributed to Socrates actually came from Socrates himself and to what extent Plato was using Socrates as a vehicle for his own ideas, however Plato’s approach to morality certainly owes much, as we shall see, to his theory of knowledge.

i) The Euthyphro dilemma

In Plato’s book Euthyphro, a discussion occurs between Socrates and a young man, Euthyphro, who intends to prosecute his own father because his father tied up a peasant who was involved in a dunken brawl, intending to report him to the authorities. However, the father forgot about him and the peasant died. Euthyphro is horrified and instead of dining with his father, sets out to prosecute him. The discussion centres on whether what human beings are morally obliged to do rests on what the gods command or whether the gods only command what is good independent of their commanding it. There are problems whichever route is taken:

1 If one sides with Euthyphro and claims that whatever the gods command is obligatory just because they command it, then the commands of the gods (or God) are clearly absolute. The problem with this is that whatever God commands is good just because God commands it. God could then command vicious actions which would appear to us to be wrong (such as in the O.T. when God is recorded as commanding the slaughter of women and children) and we would have to call these good just because they are commanded by God. God then becomes a supreme power figure who has to be worshipped and obeyed whatever God may command.

2 If one sides with Socrates and claims that there is a standard of goodness independent of God, then God is no longer the ultimate standard of morality. Plato and Socrates’ views are the same here – Plato considered that the Forms (p. 11) provide the absolute standard of goodness and, therefore, the commands of the gods can be measured against this standard. This is attractive as it provides a reason for worshipping the gods or God (God is worshipped because God is good judged by this independent standard) but the problem is that God is no longer supreme – there is an independent standard against which God can be measured, namely the Form of the Good.

Euthyphro is effectively arguing, against Socrates, for a Divine Command theory of ethics – in other words he is taking the view that morality is based on what God commands or on what God wills. Paul Helm in the introduction to Divine Commands and Morality claims that the Divine Command Theory holds that ‘God does issue commands and that these commands are to form the basis of a believer’s morality’. Theologians such as Duns Scotus and William of Ockham have supported Divine Command theories of Ethics – effectively maintaining that if God commanded adultery or theft then these would then become good actions. Others have rejected this approach. Alasdair MacIntyre is a good example:

… We ought to do what God commands, if we are theists, because it is right in some independent sense of ‘right’, rather than hold what God commands is right just because God commands it, a view which depends on ‘right’ being defined as ‘being in accordance with what God commands’.

(The Religious Significance of Atheism, p. 33)

One can attempt to get round the problems on the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma by saying what is good is in accordance with the commands of a loving God. This would then appear to rule out some of the more objectionable commands in the Old Testatment as these could not, apparently, be commanded by a loving God. However this does not solve the problem as it is then necessary to determine what it means to be loving. This is far from clear, after all even loving human parents sometimes have to hurt their children (for instance by giving inoculations). The problem thus arises as to whether what is loving depends on God’s will or whether there is an independent standard of what it is to be loving – in other words the problem of the Euthyphro dilemma in relation to goodness is simply raised a level and arises again about the nature of love.

Plato opts for a standard of morality independent of God – and this he finds in the Forms (see p. 11). Plato was a realist as he held that moral statements were true or false in so far as they corresponded to an absolute moral order. His view can be rejected by maintaining that there is no absolute standard of morality – instead morality is relative. However, if one does not wish to take this approach, if one holds that there is an absolute standard of right and wrong and yet is unwilling to ascribe this standard to God, then Plato’s approach must still be taken seriously. Iris Murdoch (in The Sovereignty of the Good) and Stephen Clark (in The Parliament of Souls) are two modern philosophers who take a Platonic approach.

In the Theatetus, Plato sets out an alternative position which he then argues against – the position is set out by Protagoras who argues that all knowledge is relative to the individual and all morality is similarly relative. If this position is accepted, then neither horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is valid – there is no absolute standard of morality at all. Protagoras’ most quoted saying is that:

An individual human being is the measure of all things.

This used to be phrased ‘man is the measure of all things’, but the above is preferable today and is, in any case, probably a better translation. Plato sees this as referring to those things which human beings experience. Effectively Plato takes Protagoras to be arguing that things are as they seem to us that they are. There is no such thing as ‘being cold’ or ‘being hot’ independent of their relation to the observer, rather hotness and coldness are relative to the person who feels that the thing is hot or cold. ‘Really cold’ just means ‘cold for some person x’. There is no absolute standard of ‘coldness’ independent of the relation. Imagine two people – a young man and a young woman. The man says:

The Mona Lisa is ugly, the United Nations is corrupt, democracy is the best political system and it is windy today

while the woman says:

The Mona Lisa is beautiful, the United Nations is trustworthy, democracy is wrong and there is no wind today.

Protagoras’ view would hold that these statements do not contradict each other – rather both individuals are expressing their own point of view, their own way of looking at different things. It would make no sense to ask whether the Mona Lisa is beautiful in itself or whether the United Nations is corrupt in itself.

Plato asks Protagoras whether the same relativism holds true in the moral field. Protagoras has a problem here because he is a teacher and his role as a teacher would be undermined if everyone’s judgement is equally valid. If this was the case, then Protagoras has no right to teach his own doctrine (that the human individual is the measure of all things) – because this is his point of view which is no more right or wrong than anyone else’s. Protagoras’ answer to this is that some men produce better results by their judgements than others – however he still has the same problem. Is there some absolute sense of what is a ‘better result’? Protagoras’ own view means that he must deny this, but he needs to hold this position in order to answer Plato’s challenge.

Protagoras tries to argue not that what is right or wrong depends on the individual but that it depends on the state or city in which one lives. Thus he says:

Whatever in any city is regarded as just and admirable is just and admirable in that city for as long as it is thought to be so. (Theatetus, 167C)

This is an important view with great contemporary relevance. You cannot ask ‘What is good?’, but only ‘What is good in the United States?’ or ‘What is good to the Christian?’ or ‘What is good to the Hindu?’. If you would ask the question ‘How should I live?’, then the only reply on this basis is that you should live according to the rules, laws and morals of the state or society or community in which you live (this position is similar to that taken by the Victorian philosopher, F. Bradley, in his book Ethical Studies). On this basis, the conventions of our society rule. However, the problems in today’s multi-cultural society are all too evident – which community should one choose to belong to? Whose morals should I follow? Protagoras’ approach provides no satisfactory answer to these questions.

ii) The Forms and the task of the philosopher

There are many beautiful things in the world – the countryside, a baby’s first cry, the first rose of summer or a sunset. These things are all very different yet they may all be termed beautiful. Plato considered that if words like ‘beauty’, ‘justice’ or ‘good’ were applied in so many different situations, they must all have something in common. He argued that everything that we see in the world that we call beautiful in some way participates in or resembles the perfect Form of Beauty. The Form of Beauty (as of Justice, the Good, etc.) exists timelessly and spacelessly – the Forms are neither created nor do they create. Beautiful, just or good things or persons in some way, albeit imperfectly, resemble these Forms. The Forms represent Absolute Reality as opposed to the many particular things which in some small way resemble them.

If, therefore, we were to ask how it is that two people both know a carpet is red or that two people both know that the first rose of summer is beautiful, then Plato’s answer would be that since the redness of the carpet in some way resembles the perfect Form of Redness and the characteristic of the rose in some way resembles the perfect Form of Beauty, so the two people both rightly see the carpet as red and the rose as beautiful. Similarly, disputes about whether an action is good could be settled by determining whether the action can be compared with or participates in the Form of the Good.

We live in a spatio-temporal world. The whole of our world is dominated by space and time. The Forms, however, are timeless, spaceless, changeless and immutable. Plato considered that matter, the raw chaotic ‘stuff’ of the universe, is everlasting – without beginning and without end. The Demiurge, Plato’s God, took this chaotic matter and moulded or formed it into the orderly universe that we know – using the Forms as a model. However the Universe is not perfect because the Demiurge had to work with pre-existent matter which resisted his will and also because the Universe is temporal and spatial.

The world, for Plato, is a dance of shadows – we live in the shadows brought on by time and space and our task as human beings is to see beyond these shadows. Plato puts forward three famous analogies which express this view – the Sun, the Twice Divided Line and the Cave. The last will be dealt with here although the first is also important and worthy of reference (see The Republic p. 274 Penguin edition):

Imagine an underground chamber, like a cave with an entrance open to the daylight and running a long way underground. In this cave are men who have been prisoners there since they were children, their legs and necks being so fastened that they can only look ahead of them and cannot turn their heads. Behind them and above them a fire is burning, and between the fire and the prisoners runs a road, in front of which a curtain wall has been built, like the screen at puppet shows between the operators and their audience … Imagine further that there are men carrying all sorts of gear along behind the curtain wall, including figures of men and animals made of wood and stone and other materials, and that some of these men, as is natural, are talking and some not.

Socrates then says that the bound men would only see the shadows and they would assume that the shadows were the real thing and if the curtain wall reflected sound they would assume that the shadows were talking – in other words they would take the shadows to be real. Having established this scenario, Socrates continues:

Suppose one of (the men) were let loose, and suddenly compelled to stand up and turn his head and look and walk towards the fire; all these actions would be painful and he would be too dazzled to see properly the objects of which he used to see the shadows. So if he was told that what he used to see was mere illusion and that he was now nearer reality and seeing more correctly, because he was turned towards objects which were more real … don’t you think he would be at a loss and think that what he used to see was more real than the objects now being pointed out to him?

Socrates’ point is that if someone looked directly at the light of the fire he would be even more dazzled than if he looked at the objects on the road between the fire and where he was bound. If he was then dragged out of the cave and saw the sun for the first time, he would be more dazzled still. In fact he would not initially be able to see anything of those things which he was now told were real. Gradually he might become accustomed to shadows outside the cave, then to other objects and finally he might be able to look at the Sun itself. The Sun stands for the Form of the Good – which is the highest of the Forms. Socrates’ point is that the philosopher is like the man who has been untied – it is a singularly painful process to be freed from the delusion of supposed reality, from the ‘dance of shadows’ that represents the world as it appears to us. It is a long and painful journey out of the cave of misunderstanding before one can begin to see reality as it is. Once someone has done this, then those things that passed for knowledge and were most prized by those tied in the cave would no longer be of any importance. As he puts it:

There was probably a certain amount of honour and glory to be won amongst the prisoners, and prizes for keen-sightedness for anyone who could remember the order or sequence among the passing shadows and to be best able to predict their future appearance. Will our released prisoner hanker after these prizes or envy their power or honour? Won’t he be more likely to feel, as Homer says, that he would far rather be a ‘serf in the house of some landless man’, or indeed anything else in the world, than live and think as they do?

The philosopher, then, is the person who has freed himself or been freed from the prison of appearance and has begun to see things as they really are. To such a person all the things that this world values so highly will be of no importance. If he or she tries to communicate them to others (who are still locked in the prison of the cave) the response will not be gratitude but rather anger or resentment. Most people will be content with the dance of shadows, they will be content with appearances and will reject the philosophic path.

Plato was preoccupied with the distinction between appearance and reality – reality is difficult to discern and one has to pierce through the shadows of appearance to arrive at the reality that lies beyond (C. S. Lewis sometimes talks in these terms and the title of the play Shadowlands about his relationship with his wife is based on essentially Platonic ideas). We can see from the parable of the Cave that Plato thinks the task of the individual is to leave the darkness of the cave represented by our ignorance and to come out into the light of the Sun – which represents the Form of the Good. The philosopher should be the person who has done this and who can see reality as it is.

iii) Justice and goodness

Socrates took a practical attitude to ethics – he was concerned with the question of how an individual should live in order to achieve happiness. Happiness is perhaps the best translation for the Greek word Socrates used which was eudaimonia but it is still inadequate as the Greek word has more to do with an individual having that which is desirable in the form of behaviour rather than simply living what he or she considers is a fulfilled life. Warm toes in front of the television screen is not an adequate understanding of eudaimonia! Indeed Plato and Socrates specifically reject the idea that ‘The Good’ can be defined in terms of pleasure. It is worth remembering that Socrates died for what he believed in which would scarcely fit with the conventional understanding of happiness.

For Plato, for a person to act justly means having the three parts of their personality in proper balance:

 wisdom which comes from reason;

 courage which comes from the spirited part of man and

 self-control which rules the passions.

So a person cannot be just without being wise, brave and self-controlled – and only if this balance is maintained will a person be happy. Plato’s argument in favour of this last point rests on the claim that happiness depends on internal mental states. This seems an odd definition of justice (even from the individual’s point of view) as it defines justice in terms of a person’s mental states and not in terms of how we treat other people – although Plato would maintain that if the proper balance is maintained within each individual, then they would treat other people correctly.

Plato held that justice in the state mirrored justice in an individual (or, to put it another way, justice writ large in the state is analogous to justice writ small in the individual). In a just state the various parts co-operate harmoniously in their proper roles, just as, in an individual, the various faculties should also work together. The individual must rule himself, but state government is needed by properly trained philosopher-guardians, who are carefully educated and are not motivated by self-interest, to ensure that the proper balance essential to justice is maintained. If the majority of people live in the cave in the shadows of ignorance, they would not be in the best position to govern the state in the way it should be governed.

Plato was strongly opposed to democracy, as this gives power to the greatest number of people, because what the greatest number think may well not be correct. The mass of people are also easily swayed by rhetoric – as Socrates found to his cost when rhetoric persuaded the Athenian population to condemn him to death. Given the ease with which politicans and advertising can sway large groups of people today, Plato’s suspicion of democracy should, perhaps, be given more weight than it often is, although the dangers of those who think they know best and who decide to impose their will on others are probably greater than the dangers of democracy. However, Plato still provides a challenge to our accepted western liberal assumptions about government which is worthy of more consideration.

Plato’s approach is élitist – most people are in the shadows of ignorance and it is the philosopher who, after much study, can pierce through these shadows to see the world ‘rightly’.

On Plato’s view, virtue is knowledge – Plato did not think anyone willingly acted immorally. People acted wrongly due to ignorance and he effectively denies weakness of the will. If, therefore, people could be brought to understand their error and to appreciate what was right, they would then act accordingly. This approach is based on the Socratic idea that no one would voluntarily choose what was not good for him or herself. Once one comes out of the cave of ignorance and sees the truth or what is morally right, Plato assumes that one will act accordingly. This, however, rests on a considerable error. It is perfectly possible for a person to say:

1 I know that action X is wrong, yet

2 I choose to do action X.

There could be any number of examples of this. Smokers know that smoking will seriously damage their health – yet they go on smoking. St Paul put this point very well when he said:

For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. (Romans, 7:19)

Knowledge does not lead to virtue – and the whole of Plato’s moral philosophy rests on the claim that it does.

For Plato and Socrates behaving morally or justly is always better for the individual even though this may lead to suffering and even to death. This was based on their view that the soul is a prisoner of the body and survives death and that if one does a bad act then one harms one’s soul (which is one’s very self) most of all. This leads to Socrates’ view that it is better to suffer harm rather than to inflict it because if you inflict harm on others the person you are really harming most of all is yourself as you are adversely affecting your soul. In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates is portrayed as confronting Polus who holds that immoral acts can often bring an individual the greatest amount of pleasure or be in some way better for the person performing the action. Polus measures actions in terms of their material consequences for the person who performs them, Socrates measures actions by the effect they have on the soul of the individual. Effectively Socrates can be seen as saying:

Think hard enough and you will always find that doing the right thing is best for you

(Quoted in Peter Singer’s A Companion to Ethics, Blackwell, p. 125)

However, this will be easier to accept if one first agrees with the presuppositions of Socrates and Plato – particularly those governing the irnmortality of the soul.

One of the gravest problems in Plato’s approach is that individuals can never be sure that they have arrived at a correct understanding of virtue and the nature of the good – how does one know that one has emerged from the cave and is not still in shadow? In his own authorship Plato may have moved from seeing this process as involving the individual thinking by himself to the idea of arriving at these values by looking at the good for the community. However, no clear criteria are provided. The second major problem is that Plato’s approach is far from practical and gives no guidance as to how to act in the day-to-day situations which individuals face. However Plato’s realist understanding of the nature of moral claims is particularly important and still remains an important alternative to moral relativism that merits further consideration and development. As we shall see in a later chapter, an Aristotelian approach to virtue may once again be coming into vogue, but Plato’s understanding remains an alternative which needs to be taken seriously.

Questions for discussion

1 What do you consider to be the most satisfactory solution to the Euthyphro dilemma?

2 Socrates considered that he was ignorant and yet he was wise. How should this be understood?

3 What are the strengths and weaknesses of Plato’s understanding of morality?

4 If I hold that the grass is green and you believe the same thing, how can Plato’s approach help to explain that we are both correctly seeing the same thing?

5 What point does Plato want to make in his parable of the Cave?

6 Why did Plato reject democracy? Do you think he was right to do so and why?

THREE

Aristotle and Virtue Theory

It would be difficult to begin an account of Aristotle’s moral theory without first saying something about where he stands in relation to Socrates and Plato. Socrates (470–400 B.C.), as has already been suggested, is generally regarded as the founding father of western philosophy. Although Socrates never wrote anything, or at least there is almost no evidence to point to his having done so, we know of his existence chiefly through the works of the comic dramatist Aristophanes (448–380 B.C.), the writer and historian Xenophon (430–355 B.C.) and particularly through the philosophical dialogues of Plato (427–347 B.C.). Plato was Socrates’ pupil for approximately ten years prior to Socrates’ death, and Aristotle became Plato’s pupil for roughly twenty years, studying under him at the famous Academy which Plato had established in Athens. These three, then, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, may be referred to as the Three Greek Wise Men as, arguably, they laid the foundations for all philosophical inquiry. Although western philosophy has been described by A. N. Whitehead as merely footnotes to Plato, it is Aristotle to whom, perhaps, the greatest debt must be paid, for in Aristotle’s writings we find the rigorous and systematic treatment of philosophical questions in continuous prose argument, unlike the dramatic and often poetically beautiful dialogues of Plato. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is, effectively, the first major piece of sustained moral argument from a secular point of view.

Biography

Born in 384 B.C. in Stagyra, Macedonia, Aristotle was the son of Nicomachus, a wealthy and highly influential court physician to the king of Macedonia. At the age of eighteen Aristotle entered Plato’s Academy where he stayed for almost twenty years. Disappointed at not being given the leadership of the Academy upon Plato’s death, and becoming concerned for his own safety as a result of some racial hatred being whipped up against Macedonians, Aristotle left Athens and moved East. He found relative peace and security in the kingdom of Atarneus, in the Eastern Aegean. Here he married the king’s niece. In 343 B.C. he became tutor to Alexander, later Alexander the Great. According to Bertrand Russell it is inconceivable that Alexander thought anything of Aristotle other than that he was a ‘prosy old pedant’. Nonetheless, enjoying some political and financial support from the king, Aristotle returned to Athens in about 335 B.C. and founded his own school of philosophy, the Lyceum. However, upon Alexander’s early death in a far-flung Eastern campaign Aristotle went into voluntary exile ‘lest Athens should sin twice against philosophy’, that is, execute him as it had done Socrates. He died in Chalcis in 322 B.C. at the age of sixty-two, and his will, which survives relatively intact, suggests that he had led a happy and fulfilled life.

His influence has been enormous for he began sorting human knowledge and inquiry into the various categories and disciplines that we know and use today. He compiled the first ‘dictionary of philosophical terms’ and produced major works in logic (the Organon or Instrument), in the physical sciences (the Physics, On the Heavens), in the biological sciences (The History of Animals, On the Parts of Animals), in psychology (On the Soul), in politics (Politics, The Constitution of Athens) and in ethics (Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics).

Ethics

The Nicomachean Ethics, generally regarded as the most detailed and coherent of Aristotle’s works on moral philosophy, is a collection of lectures compiled and edited by his son, also called Nicomachus after his grandfather. Consisting of ten books in all it describes the purpose of life, the divisions of the soul, and the various qualities of mind and character that are supposed to be necessary for moral conduct. It continues with a detailed description of friendship before concluding with the view that contemplation of the Good (that is, the life of philosophic reflection) is the highest form of happiness. For those not fully committed or suited to the life of pure contemplation then friendship becomes the ideal forum in which to exercise all of the virtues; the virtues being those moral and intellectual characteristics which have been fashioned by habit and education. Morality finds part of its true expression in friendship.

The purpose of life

In Book 1 of the Ethics, Aristotle makes a number of points concerning the true object or purpose of life. Firstly, he makes the seemingly obvious point that everything a person or a group does is directed towards some kind of an aim.

Every art and every investigation and similarly every action and pursuit is considered to aim at some good (all references are to Nicomachean Ethics translated by J. A. K. Thomson and revised by H. Tredennick, 1976, Penguin, p. 63).

This, of course, makes complete sense. Whatever we do there is a purpose in doing it although sometimes, of course, the purpose may not seem immediately clear nor apparent. Alternatively, there may be a purpose to what we do, but we may want to object to that purpose. There is even a purpose in having no purpose! We might just want to sit and relax without having any particular aim in mind. But our purpose here is simply to enjoy doing nothing.

Secondly, there are, according to Aristotle, ‘superior’ and ‘subordinate’ aims. So, for example, writing the first philosophy essay is subordinate to obtaining the final A level or degree qualification, and sharpening the pencil or filling the ink cartridge are yet further subordinate aims to writing the essay. The point is that we do one thing in order to accomplish the aim of another more important thing, and so on, almost ad infinitum. We say ‘almost ad infinitum’ because there must be one overall or final aim towards which everything else is directed. For Aristotle, that final aim is the Good; not only the Good for oneself but the Good for all humanity.

If then, our activities have some end which we want for its own sake, and for the sake of which we want all the other ends … it is clear that this must be the Good, that is the supreme Good … (and) … Does it not follow then that a knowledge of the Good is of great importance to us for the conduct of our lives? (Moreover) … while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of an individual, to do so in the case of a people or a state is something finer and more sublime (pp. 63–4).

Thirdly, that Supreme Good, for Aristotle, is defined as ‘Happiness”:

… what is the highest of all practical goods? Well, so far as the name goes, there is pretty general agreement. ‘It is happiness’ say both ordinary and cultured people (p. 66).

This, however, presents us with a problem. The problem is that because people differ from each other, there are therefore differing conceptions or versions of happiness. At root, according to Aristotle, there are three broad categories of people:

 those who love pleasure;

 those who love honour,

 those who love contemplation.

There are, then, lives given over to wine, women (or men!) and song; lives expressed in constant service to the community; and lives devoted to thinking Aristotle places the life of the politician in the second category (as someone who is always trying to find practical solutions to large- and small-scale problems); the life of a philosopher inevitably falls in the third category whereas most people, it seems, would prefer to live a life of pleasure:

the utter servility of the masses comes out in their preference for a bovine existence (p. 68).

Aristotle was nothing if not blunt! His three-part classification leads on to two further points. Firstly, the one thing that distinguishes human beings from the rest of creation is the faculty of reason. We share the basic function of life with both plants and animals, and we share sentience or some form of conscious life along with animals. But only humans have the capacity to use reason in order to think about the quality of their lives. Therefore, if reason is the distinguishing mark of humanity, then happiness, logically, must consist in using that reason in order to work out what a good life is, and then to live it. The second and final point is equally important. For Aristotle, and for the Greeks in general, a person is primarily a member of a group, be it a family, a household, a village or a city state. There is no such thing as a purely free-thinking individual. Our individuality is already partly decided for us by the group or groups of which we are a part. Hence, the overall wellbeing of a group is far more important then the wellbeing of any single member within it.

For even if the good of the community coincides with that of the individual, it is clearly a greater and more perfect thing to achieve and preserve that of a community; for while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of an individual, to do so in the case of a people or a state is something finer and more sublime (p. 64).

And that, for Aristotle, is the major reason why politicians ought to study ethics, because they have the responsibility of ensuring that the good life is lived by all members of society, and not just by some of them.

The soul

Before any description of a truly ethical person can be given, an account of the soul needs to be offered, for

by human goodness is meant goodness not of the body but of the soul, and happiness also we define as an activity of the soul. (p. 88).

The accompanying diagram is an attempt to simplify Aristotle’s rather wordy account. As can be seen, the soul is divided into two major parts: the rational and the irrational. Whether these are actual divisions in the soul, or whether they are just helpful definitional differences is irrelevant for Aristotle. We cannot split open the person in order to examine the soul like we can a leg or an arm. Each of these two major divisions is also separated into two. The irrational part is divided into the vegetative and the desiderative. The vegetative part is the cause of nutrition and growth; that is, those basic instincts necessary for individual and collective survival, such as earing, drinking, resting and procreating.

The desiderative or appetitive part is associated with those many and varied desires and wants which can be channelled, controlled or made submissive. These are the desires not just for food (that is a need or a vegetative impulse), but for a particular kind of food – cheeseburger with all the relish plus chips and onions. The wants and desires will, of course, include all of those luxury goods and activities which are not strictly necessary for survival. The distinction is clearly between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’; and often what we want is not what we need. I might want another pint of beer after having already drunk three, but, physiologically it is clearly not what I need.

Next, the rational part of the soul is also divided into two: the scientific and the calculative. The scientific part is the bit of the mind which can grasp invariable first principles, that is, knowledge of physics, of mathematics, of geography and so on. It is the section which houses all the facts of the world which are not up for debate or dispute. The calculative part is the bit of the mind which deliberates, considers, weighs up or thinks about things in order to make a decision about what to do, what to choose, what to make, what to buy and so on. Instead of knowing facts, it is concerned with knowing how to choose or how to come to a decision. It allows us to weigh up the pros and cons of an argument or a situation.

The fruit cake example:

It must be stressed at the outset that this is not an example used by Aristotle. However, let us suppose that the vegetative part of me needs sustenance or nutrition and growth. Now, the desiderative part of me desires cake rather than fruit. However, the scientific part of me knows the fact that, given my current waist size, fruit will do me more good than cake will. So, finally, the calculative part of my mind thinks about the advisability of cake over fruit or vice versa, and comes to a decision: How about ‘fruit cake’? The scientific part of my mind will then be able to follow the precise instructions on how to make a reasonably respectable fruit cake of the health-food variety. Thus the vegetative, desiderative, calculative and scientific parts of my ‘soul’ have all come into play.

The virtues:

The reason why Aristotelian ethics is called Virtue Theory is because the virtues, those ‘excellences’ (Greek: arete) or qualities of mind and character, are at the heart of his argument. There are two sorts of virtues:

 moral virtues or qualities of character (such as courage, liberality, temperance, modesty and so on). These virtues are connected to the desiderative and hence, the irrational part of the soul. They can only be cultivated through habit.

 intellectual virtues or qualities of mind (such as wisdom, understanding and judgement). These virtues are connected to the rational half of the soul, and are to be cultivated through instruction.

1 Moral virtues

In Aristotle’s account there are twelve moral virtues which fall between two vices: the vice of excess or the vice of deficiency. So, for example, the moral virtue of courage would fall between its excess which is foolhardiness or rashness and its deficiency which is, of course, cowardice.

Excess | Virtue | Deficiency
rashness | courage | cowardice
licentiousness | temperance | insensibility
prodigality | liberality | illiberality
vulgarity | magnificence | pettiness
vanity | magnanimity | pusillanimity
ambition | proper ambition | lack of ambition
irascibility | patience | lack of spirit
boastfulness | truthfulness | understatement
buffoonery | wittiness | boorishness
obsequiousness | friendliness | cantankerousness
shyness | modesty | shamelessness
envy | righteous-indignation | malicious-enjoyment
|  | (p.104)

2 Intellectual virtues

There are nine intellectual virtues comprising five main or primary virtues, and four secondary virtues:

 Art or Technical Skill (techne): the practical skill of knowing how to bring something into existence. For example, knowing how to build a house or construct a bridge as well as knowing how to write a poem, paint a picture or sculpt a statue. For the Greeks all things had to meet two criteria: they had to be functional and they had to be aesthetically pleasing or decorative. Plays, poems and statues had a symbolic political, social or religious function as well as possessing what we might call ‘artistic or dramatic beauty’. Similarly, houses and bridges had not only to fulfil their obvious function, but they also had to be pleasing to the eye.

 Scientific Knowledge (episteme): This comprises the so-called ‘facts’ of the universe, that is, knowledge of all the objects in the universe as well as all the laws which govern them. Knowledge of biology, astronomy, geography and so on are all covered by this virtue.

 Prudence or Practical Wisdom (phronesis): This is one of the most important virtues which helps us to balance our interests with the interests of others. This is the virtue, for example, which helps us to make the decision whether or not to purchase the colour television with stereo sound, or whether to buy the small black and white portable and give the rest of the money to Oxfam. Arguably, without phronesis the remainder of the virtues revert to being mere skills.

 Intelligence or Intuition (nous): This is perhaps the basic intellectual virtue in the sense that without it probably few other intellectual virtues could get going. Arguably, without intelligence or intuition nothing else can happen in the mind!

 Wisdom (sophia): This is the finished form of all the virtues. Generally speaking, one must have lived to a good age, experienced many things and learned a number of lessons before wisdom is finally cultivated.

The four secondary intellectual virtues are:

 Resourcefulness or Good Deliberation (euboulia): This is a form of practical wisdom, and involves knowing where and how to enquire about something so that the best decision can be made. For example, suppose I need a new refrigerator. At the outset this seems to be a perfectly innocuous issue almost completely unconnected with moral concerns. Its relevance, however, will soon be made clear. Resourcefulness will prompt me to examine Which?, the popular consumer guide. This will help me to make a more informed decision about the best fridge to buy.

 Understanding (sunesis): This goes beyond the ability to know external facts about the world. To understand something is to recognise all the difficulties and perplexities associated with decision-making. I might choose the best fridge recommended by Which?, but when I get it home it may not fit into my kitchen! In order to understand things I am obliged to deliberate over many interrelated issues.

 Judgement (gnome): For a judgement to be a good one it has to take account of what is right and just for all concerned. Suppose, after examining all of the fridges on offer, after measuring my kitchen and so on, I find that my chosen fridge is called ‘The Philippino Special Exploiter’. Its high quality and low price depend upon the poverty and squalid conditions of the Third World workers who help manufacture it. My sympathetic judgement will be not to purchase the fridge and perhaps to begin campaigning on behalf of the exploited workforce.

 Cleverness (deinotes): the last of the secondary intellectual virtues. On its own, however, it can hardly be said to be a virtue in the true sense of the word. Cleverness unconnected with judgement can be unscrupulous. A shady second-hand car dealer may be said to be clever, but we would hardly say that he was in possession of a virtue.

Doctrine of the mean

According to the Aristotelian argument we all have the potential to develop these moral and intellectual virtues. However, it is likely that only a few people will be able to cultivate the potential virtues into actual virtues. Similarly, all acorns have the potential to become actual oak trees, but only some of them will become so. Moreover, if we are to cultivate our virtues, particularly our moral virtues, we must be aware of the doctrine of the mean. Put simply, we must regulate our emotions and responses to people and situations so that we are eventually able to conduct ourselves with dignity. We must try to ensure that we veer away from either the excess or deficiency, and so hit the ‘mean’ or midway point, although Aristotle is quick to mention that the midway point is not just a numerical halfway house.

For example, I have the clear capacity to feel intense anger at my computer when it fails to work. I accept my anger for what it is – a natural feeling or emotional response. However, it is my attitude towards that feeling which is crucial. I could, for example, set about my computer with a hammer in order to release my feelings. But this would be to exhibit a poorly developed virtue. On the other hand, I could simply not bother about the failure of my computer, do nothing about it and give up on writing altogether. This would be an equally poor response. The right response would be to control the anger, take the computer to a repair shop, and then hire or borrow another one for the intervening period. My feelings, no matter how overwhelming they are, should not drown my reason. Feelings are clearly important, but our virtues – our attitudes towards our feelings – are more important. What matters is what we do with our feelings so that eventually they can conform naturally to that which reason would advocate. Aristotle makes the point that children have to learn the virtues through habit. They must learn that they cannot simply give vent to all their feelings in whatever way they wish and whenever they want. Although the six-year-old may initially give vent to her emotions in the supermarket by screaming that she wants the chocolate bar, she must gradually learn that the feelings of anger and resentment at being denied it are perfectly natural. However, she must control that anger and resentment and develop a sense of patience instead. Arguably, adulthood is about learning to control and direct one’s emotions. In other words, it is about developing the moral virtues.

By constantly learning through habit to control our feelings we should, according to Aristotle, begin to:

have these feelings at the right times on the right grounds towards the right people for the right motive and in the right way … (this is) … to feel them to an intermediate, that is, to the best degree; and this is the mark of virtue (p. 101).

There is the obvious criticism that this approach to moral reasoning leads to a kind of blind uniformity of belief, desire and behaviour. The intention, it would seem, is to produce an automatic response in people to other people and to situations. This would perhaps be so, if Aristotle had not emphasised the importance of the intellectual virtues along with the moral virtues. Not only is it necessary for us to feel and behave in the right or appropriate manner, but we should also understand and know why it is important that we feel and act in these ways.

Friendship as the main aim of a moral life

Finally, without friendship none of the virtues – either moral or intellectual – would be of any value. For Aristotle, friendship is essential. We are social and political beings.

Nobody would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other good things (p. 258).

A community, a society, a state, any gathering of two or more people presupposes a notion of friendship, and depends upon it. Households, marriages, partnerships, clubs, societies, etc, all depend upon sustaining a forum within which friendships can be fostered and maintained. Again, Aristotle makes the point that:

Friendship also seems to be the bond that holds communities together … (p. 258).

Indeed, friendship is of such primary importance that it comes before justice itself. In fact without friendship there could be no sense of justice. The lawmaker, the lawgiver and the law-enforcer all derive their rationale from acting as the supposed legally-appointed ‘friend’ of everyone in the community, and of ensuring that the community fosters the right conditions under which friendship may flourish.

… lawgivers seem to attach more importance to it than to justice; because concord seems to be something like friendship, and concord is their primary object – that and eliminating faction, which is enmity … indeed friendliness is considered to be justice in the fullest sense (p. 258–9).

Briefly, there are three kinds of friendship, according to Aristotle: based on utility, pleasure and goodness.

 Utility friendships are those which are, as the name suggests, simply useful to us. Utility friends are those with whom we find ourselves in company at work, those next to us on the factory assembly line. It is convenient for both parties to engage in pleasant and friendly conversation in order to while away the time whilst doing something tedious and dissatisfying. The friendship is useful in that it is an aid to comfort. Moreover, there may be more than just pleasant mutual gain in the friendship; it may be useful for the completion of a game or a project. For example, it clearly helps if team members do actually get on with each other when a cricket or netball tour is arranged. Or the friendship may be formed deliberately to cater for plain personal need. Here Aristotle cites the elderly as a group who form utility friendships. For example, someone is needed to push the wheelchair or fetch the shopping. Or again, friendship may be sought in order to further one’s own personal advantage. Here it is the middle-aged who actively cultivate utility friendships – perhaps the businessman who purposefully cultivates a friendship with a local bank manager in order to secure a business loan. According to Aristotle, most friendships in the worlds of industry, business and commerce are utility friendships.

 Pleasurable or Erotic friendships are slightly better than the first type. Here, friends give us pleasure, and the friendship evolves through feelings and emotions. The relationship is governed more by the heart than by the head. Friends are pleasurable to be with because they may be witty, amusing or attractive. Friendships between the young are generally of this kind. They tend to be impermanent, and are often based on sexual attraction.

 Perfect friendships are based on goodness and are obviously the most valuable. Here friends care more about the other person than about themselves. Moreover, it means liking or loving the other person for what she/he is, not for any incidental quality that they might possess, such as beauty. Such friends have similar attributes, and such friendships only occur after a long while. The relationship needs time to develop. According to Aristotle, ‘You cannot get to know each other until you have eaten the proverbial quantity of salt together.’ This apparently is a medimnos or one and a half bushels. In other words, the friends need to share many meals together; mealtimes traditionally being times of social chatting, anecdote-telling and story-swapping. Finally, there are few truly good friendships for there are few truly good people.

Criticisms

According to some scholars (e.g. Ackrill 1981; Lloyd 1968; Taylor 1955), Aristotle’s account of ethics is, in fact, simply a detailed elaboration of a very orthodox Greek view of aristocratic living. It is easy to cultivate the virtues when the mortgage is fully paid up, the children are looked after by a nanny, and one’s inheritance pays for the daily needs and wants. Life for the Athenian (or Macedonian) aristocrat was relatively easy, being purchased with the help of a slave population and an underclass of women.

And so, from a singular and contemporary vantage point it would not be too difficult to savage Aristotle’s entire system by a process of selective analysis. Firstly, he is, through modern eyes, overtly racist. Any non-Greek is likely to be barbarous and sub-human, and therefore, a clear candidate for slavery. Friendships of utility are the only kinds of friendships one could have with ‘a foreigner’. Secondly, Aristotle appears blatantly sexist. He accepts unquestioningly the supposedly natural, paternalistic hierarchy of relationships in which ‘man rules by merit but hands over to his wife such duties as are best suited to her’(!) (p. 276). Thirdly, he is what Singer would call speciesist. Animals exist on an ontological level clearly below humans and barely above plants. ‘Animals have no share in happiness, being completely incapable of such activity’ (p. 333). According to Aristotle, animals cannot be happy because happiness depends upon the exercise of reason in order to pursue the virtuous life. As animals do not possess reason they, therefore, are incapable of achieving any happiness. However, what we now know of animals’ physiology and behaviour leads us to suspect that, to a degree, they can reason about their environment, and often do exhibit many of the signs of being happy. But, as with all issues in philosophy, it rather depends upon the meanings we wish to attach to words, in this case ‘reason’ and ‘happiness’. Fourthly, Aristotle is ageist given his clear dictum that no one would want to befriend the old and the sour-tempered, the one being synonymous with the other. And fifthly, his moral theory is élitist, in that only magnanimous men, honourable politicians and philosophers can truly know and exercise all of the virtues, and are therefore the only ones to appreciate fully the Good Life.

However, such a critique is unfair. Aristotle was ‘culture-bound’ and could not have transcended all of the conceptual constraints of his time and culture. Our criticism must be tempered by historical understanding. Such a defence cuts no ice with Russell, however, who stated:

The book (Ethics) appeals to the respectable middle-aged, and has been used by them, especially since the seventeenth century, to repress the ardours and enthusiasms of the young. But to a man with any depth of feeling it is likely to be repulsive … There is … an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind … do not move him … More generally there is an emotional poverty in the Ethics (B. Russell History of Western Philosophy, p. 195).

Questions for discussion

1 Argue either for or against the view that the moral life consists in ‘feeling the right things at the right times, on the right grounds, towards the right people for the right motive …’

2 What additions, subtractions and/or modifications would you wish to make to Aristotle’s list of intellectual and moral virtues?

3 Is happiness the Supreme Good? If so, in what does happiness consist?

4 How far does Aristotle’s classification of friendship correspond with what we know about human relationships?

5 Is Russell’s criticism of Aristotle fair? How might the criticism be rebutted?

6 Analyse critically Aristotle’s theory of the soul and his doctrine of the mean.

FOUR

Aquinas, Natural Law and Proportionalism

To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to condemning the command of God.

St Thomas Aquinas

The Natural Law approach to morality has a long history. Cicero in De Re Publica describes natural law as follows:

True law is right reason in agreement with nature. It is applied universally and is unchanging and everlasting … there will be no different laws in Rome and in Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God …

However, it was Aristotle who really developed this approach and Aquinas (1225–74) built on his thought. The writings of Aristotle had been lost in the West and preserved amongst the Islamic scholars of the East. They were reintroduced into Western thought shortly before Aquinas took up his position as a professor at the University of Paris.

Aquinas considered that natural law was the moral code which human beings are naturally inclined towards. God reveals specific commands but these do not go against natural law but rather further and develop it. This reflected Aquinas’ approach to theology generally by which natural theology (which was based on human reason) did not go against revealed theology (which was based on revelation by God). Aquinas said that the moral life is the life which is lived ‘according to reason’ and, indeed, acting in accordance with reason was the same as acting as a Christian would act. Aquinas’ main difference from natural law philosophers who did not believe in God was that he considered that human beings were immortal and any moral theory and understanding of natural law had, therefore, to take account of the belief that the purpose of human existence did not lie entirely in this life.

Aquinas argued that the first priority laid down by natural law was that the self had to be preserved not just in this life but beyond the grave. If the self gave in to non-rational desires, then it became enslaved. It was possible to arrive at the natural or cardinal virtues (prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice, taken from Aristotle) by the use of reason alone. The Ten Commandments (with the exception of the command to keep the Sabbath day holy) were held to be examples of natural virtues. These natural virtues are expanded by the revealed virtues (of faith, hope and charity – derived from St Paul, cf. 1 Corinthians 13:13) and Aquinas held that the greater the extent to which these are developed by the individual, the greater will be the obedience to natural law.

The starting point for all advocates of natural law is to work out the purpose of human life. For Aquinas, this purpose included to live, to reproduce, to learn, to have an ordered society and to worship God. Reason is used to find out God’s intention and the purpose of human existence and this will enable one to arrive at the principles of natural law.

Unlike Augustine and some of the later Christian reformers such as Calvin, Aquinas did not consider that human nature was totally corrupted. He considered that human nature, even though imperfect, was a reasonable guide to what human nature should be – since it was created by God. For Aquinas, there is no category of human beings that are in some way enslaved by a depraved nature – there is an equality of all human beings and in all human beings there is a necessary link between their happiness and their virtuous behaviour. Aquinas therefore starts from his experience of people and he expects to find natural law at work in every society in the world since all societies are made up of human beings who share a common nature. Natural law can be deduced from an examination of human nature and the ends for which human beings are created.

When we term God as good from our human perspective, Aquinas maintained that we name him as the goal of all desires or that to which all desires tend. Natural law can show all human beings what is good – religion is not needed for this and this is similar to St Paul’s claim that the law is written in the hearts of all men (Romans 2:14ff). Reason can bring people to act rationally to develop the virtues. For Aquinas, ‘God is good’ is analytic in that it expresses a truth about God (that God is fully whatever it is to be God), but it is also synthetic as God represents the goal and destiny of all human beings, even though human beings may not recognise this. Aquinas based this idea on ‘fitness for purpose’ – since he held that humans were made by God for fellowship with God it follows that God, as their creator, must be the means by which human happiness will be found. Aquinas did not consider that morality was based on commands from God – a position which William of Ockham held as he considered that morality was based on revelation – Ockham held that if God commanded adultery then this would be right because of the command. Aquinas considered that if this was the case then God’s commands could be irrational and arbitrary. Instead God makes human beings with a certain nature and this nature enables human beings to use their reason and their experience to understand what is right.

Aquinas considered, following Aristotle, that all men will the good. Human beings may seek some apparent good, but this is not a true good – it is only an apparent good because it does not conform to the perfection of the human nature which all human beings share. Aquinas considered that there is an ‘ideal’ human nature which we all have the potential to live up to or to fall away from and our moral actions are crucial in determining where we stand in this respect. If a person does something that is morally wrong, he or she will do this because they consider this to be a good although the possibility of the individual being mistaken certainly exists (examples might include smoking, drinking too much or even taking drugs). Aquinas says that: ‘A fornicator seeks a pleasure which involves him in moral guilt’ (Summa Theologica 1a, 19, 9). The fornicator seeks a pleasure which he thinks is a good, but this is only an apparent good as it diminishes a human being’s nature.

Sin, for Aquinas, involves a falling short from the good – it means a human being becoming less than he or she is intended by God for him or her to be. To pursue an apparent good rather than the real good is to fall short of our real potential – it is to ‘get it wrong’ and to be mistaken. No one seeks evil for itself, it is only sought as an apparent good and therefore rests on a mistake. Hitler and Stalin did not seek to do evil – they sought what they thought were goods but they were mistaken – they strove for apparent rather than real goods. Sin is a theological word but there is no real difference between this theological idea and acting against reason. Aquinas says: ‘the theologian considers sin principally as an offence against God, whereas the moral philosopher considers it as being contrary to reason’ (S. T. 1a, 11ae, 71, 6, ad 5).

Since Aquinas argued that it is possible to be mistaken in which goods are chosen, it is obviously necessary to determine what is the right thing for a person to aim for. In essence, this is what discussion of natural law is about – seeking to explore what is the right good to aim for. Human beings have the ability, using their will and reason, to make deliberate moral choices (S. T. 1a, 11ae, 1, 1) which Aquinas terms ‘human acts’ to distinguish them from those acts performed by a person which are based on instinct. However, human reason must be used correctly, which leads Aquinas to talk of the ‘right use of reason’ – reason may be used to plan a murder or to decide to be virtuous, but only in the second case is reason being used ‘rightly’. This obviously raises the problem of how one determines what is the ‘right’ use of reason when there are genuine differences of opinion as to what is good in a particular situation. A person’s reason and their will both work together to help determine the choice they will make – if a person uses their reason correctly to determine what is right and then wills to do it this is, according to Aquinas, a free choice.

A person may will to make a morally wrong choice which he or she does not carry through – perhaps because the choice is not available. A man may, for instance, decide to defraud his employer of a substantial sum of money but he never gets the chance because he is moved to a new job.

Aquinas distinguished ‘interior acts’ and ‘exterior acts’ and is clear that the former are the most important – indeed morally good or bad acts are generally interior acts. An act may be good in itself but done for a wrong intention – for instance giving to charity may be good in itself but if it is done in order to attract praise then there is a bad intention (‘for instance, we say that to give alms for the sake of vainglory is bad’ (S.T., 1a, 11ae, 20, 1)). This does not entail that intention alone is decisive. As Copleston says in his book Thomas Aquinas:

As Aquinas says, there are some things which cannot be justified by any alleged good intention … If I steal money from a man in order to give it to someone else, my action is not justified by my good intention … It is not possible to father on Aquinas the view that the end justifies the means … (p. 207).

In every act or proposed act, Aquinas considers that the will aims towards some end – in other words there is something which is considered to be a good (whether it is, in fact, a good or not). Aquinas needs, therefore, to establish the aim or end towards which human actions are to be directed.

Aquinas’ answer is, perhaps, not unexpected. Considering that he was a Christian theologian writing from a world that was steeped in Christian thought only one final end could possibly be posited – and that is God. This raises the obvious question of those people who do not accept the existence of God and it might seem that their ends or aims would be different from those of the believer. Aquinas is by no means the only advocate of a natural law approach to morality and his understanding differs from others such as Aristotle due to his belief in a personal God. This leads Aquinas to maintain that not only do human beings in general have a purpose beyond death, but each individual also has a particular purpose which is directly related to each person’s talents and abilities. Hugo Grotius claimed in 1625 (in Prolegomena II) that the foundations of natural law would be valid even if there was no God and Aristotle would have agreed with this, but in the absence of God the understanding of natural law would be significantly different as there would then be no life after death and thus the purpose of human existence would be changed. In addition, if God did not implant natural law in human beings then it might be argued that there was no reason why an individual should obey natural law.

Aquinas’ approach is sophisticated and he seeks to address the problem of those who do not believe in God. Even such an individual would seek to fulfil his or her nature and to make the most of individual potentialities – it will therefore follow that such individuals would still incline to obey natural law, as it is in obeying this natural law that human potential is fulfilled. However, the ends that people seek are different and it may be possible to tell what ends they seek by looking at how they live – they may, for instance, look for money, power or reputation as ends in themselves and, if they do so, they will be making a mistake as to where their true happiness lies.

Aquinas does not simply assert that God is the final end for human beings – he considers alternatives. If, for instance, it is suggested that some form of sensual pleasure should be the final aim or end in life, Aquinas would reject this as it is then only the body’s appetites and potentialities that are being satisfied and animals can seek the same thing. Similarly scientific knowledge cannot be the end as this good could only be sought by a small number of people who have the academic ability. Having said this, Aquinas’ view that God is the final end for human beings may be regarded as an assumption and it can, of course, be challenged. However, if the assumption is accepted and if there is, indeed, a God who created the world and human beings, then it is perfectly sensible to claim (although, of course, not necessarily true) that human beings were created for fellowship with this God.

It is interesting and important that Aquinas considers that all human beings share a single nature and, therefore, there should be a single aim or objective for all human beings – this justifies him in rejecting knowledge as an aim (as only some people have the ability to seek this knowledge). The one thing that every person can desire is the vision of God which is promised for the next life. It is only this beatific vision which will be fully and completely satisfying for every human being and humans can choose to seek this or to turn away from it.

The power of reason is vital for Aquinas – reason can determine what acts are necessary for the good of a human being whether this is taking food or drink or acting morally. Any act that furthers the end for human beings is morally good (whether this is eating or giving to charity). However, this is not to say that the acts are ends in themselves because means and ends are not separable. As Copleston says:

… in the teleological ethic of Aristotle morally obligatory acts are not means to an end which is simply external to these acts, since they are a partial fulfilment of it; nor is the end something external to the agent … Aquinas followed Aristotle in holding that the final end of man consists in activity, and activity is obviously not external to the human agent in the sense that a picture is external to the artist … God is glorified by the highest possible development of man’s potentialities as a rational being, and every moral act of man therefore has an intrinsic value (p. 211).

Both Aquinas and Aristotle maintained that a person can acquire a habit or disposition to either vice or virtue. Virtuous habits should be fostered by repeated acts of virtue and human beings should live without excess, according to the ‘mean’ (which can broadly be defined as that which is in accordance with right reason). Aquinas and Aristotle both deplored excess in any form – the classic example from Aristotle is that the brave man is neither cowardly (one example of excess) nor foolhardy (another example of excess). It might seem difficult to fit this Aristotelian notion with Christian figures such as Mother Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Lisieux or Teresa of Calcutta, and Aquinas does consider this point as he does ask whether giving one’s goods away to the poor might be considered excess. His conclusion is that it would not if this action was inspired by Christ (S.T. 1a, 11ae, 64, 1, obj. 3) although it is hard to see how Aquinas could then resist a similar argument by many fanatical religious figures who claimed loyalty to Christ.

We have seen that Aquinas considers that natural law can be deduced by experience from looking at human nature and its purposes. Human beings have a duty to preserve themselves in existence (by, for instance, eating and drinking), to be rational and even to preserve the species. The last may seem self-evident, but it does not appear to fit well with the celibacy of priests in the Roman Catholic Church and, of course, Aquinas was himself a priest. Aquinas meets this point by saying that the need to propagate the race applies to the race as a whole:

The natural precept about taking nourishment must necessarily be fulfilled by every individual; for otherwise he could not be preserved. But the precept about generation applies to the whole community, which not only must be multiplied corporeally but also make spiritual progress. And so sufficient progress is made if some only attend to generation, while others give themselves to the contemplation of divine things … (S.T. 1a, 11ae, 152, 2, ad 1).

This is a neat way of overcoming the problem, but it is not clear which ‘ends’ must be fulfilled by the individual and which by the group and there could be debate about the allocation between these headings. Also if only some attend to spiritual progress, does this help only those individuals or the community as a whole? This might also open debate about the possibility of only a number of individuals being homosexually inclined since only some need to be heterosexual in order to propagate the human race.

Aquinas considered that from a general principle, such as the need to propagate the species, detailed rules can be deduced such as the need for monogamy and the education of children. However, it would be possible to challenge Aquinas on the first of these – by saying that, for instance, it is not self-evident that monogamy is the best way of propagating the species. Aquinas’ method is to begin with a general injunction that good is to be sought and evil avoided and then to unpack these by means of subsidiary principles (or perhaps assumptions would be a better word – although some might challenge this) that become more and more specific. It is not, however, a mere deduction of specific principles from general ones – at each stage Aquinas considers that the contemplation of human nature and its ends is required.

The problem is that at every stage the judgements being made may be challenged and there may be assumptions that govern the law that is deduced which may not be generally accepted. As an example, one might start with the general principle of propagation and then move to monogamy (although even this step might be challenged). One could then look at genital organs and consider their purpose – if their purpose is decided to be for procreation, then any use of these organs for other purposes such as pleasure (through masturbation, genital homosexuality or conventional sex using contraception) would be held to be wrong because they go against the intended purpose for these organs. However, who is to define the purpose? If, as part of the function of genital organs, one included as the purpose ‘that they are intended so that two people who love each other should be able to express their love and obtain pleasure in doing so and that propagation might, when appropriate, thereby take place’ then one might rule out masturbation and homosexuality, but not sexual foreplay or even adultery. Other functions might give different purposes. For instance is the purpose of a mouth for eating or for kissing or for both? Who is to decide? If kissing is part of the function of mouths, then kissing would become a good rather than, arguably, an evil. The need to make assumptions which may be challenged is, therefore, implicit in Aquinas’ whole approach and weakens its effectiveness.

It may also be argued that Aquinas’ approach is not holistic – it fails to consider the human being as a psycho-physical unit. To separate, for instance, genitalia out as having a particular purpose on their own without considering the whole complexity of a person’s relationship to his or her body, psychology, sexuality in general, the ability of human beings as embodied persons to express and receive love and to come to their full humanity may be a diminution of human beings as people. We are not an accumulation of ‘bits’ – we are whole human persons and all moral judgements must take our complexity as human persons into account.

Aquinas considered that the feudal order of society of his time – with Kings, barons, knights, freemen and serfs – was the natural order. He was conditioned by his culture just as we may be conditioned by ours. It is far from easy to determine the function or purpose of different human organs or of society without being influenced by one’s own preconceptions.

Aquinas believed that all human beings have a fixed, uniform human nature – this led him to maintain that there was a fixed natural law (subject to the differentiation between primary and secondary precepts above) for human beings. It may be argued that human beings do not have a single human nature and that the moral law may vary over time – in this case the whole idea of natural law may be challenged (this goes against the quote from Cicero at the beginning of this chapter). As an example, if there is held to be a single human nature then all human beings ‘should’ (according to their nature if it is ‘correctly’ ordered) be heterosexually inclined. If, therefore, someone was homosexually inclined (say due to a difference in genetic make-up) then this would be a disorder in their nature – their nature would be ‘faulty’ in that it was not what it ‘should’ be. This is one reason why Roman Catholic approaches to homosexuality tend to be clear cut – although Catholic theologians draw a distinction between an inclination which may be due to faulty genetic make-up and practising homosexuality which is due to a free decision and is therefore morally blameworthy. Against this it may be held that there is no single human nature – that some people are, for instance, homosexually inclined and others are not and this in itself is neither right nor wrong. In this case the issue may be more about how individuals should use their sexuality given their make-up rather than conformity to a specific human nature. Recent scientific studies have shown that homosexual tendencies may well be genetic. It could be (and there is no evidence for this) that in the face of an overcrowded world, nature produces an increase in those genes which direct sexual activity away from procreation. Aquinas would have difficulty coping with such a possibility.

The natural law approach to morality is much more flexible than is generally supposed. M. J. Longford (The Good and the True – An introduction to Christian ethics, SCM Press, 1985, p. 204) puts it like this:

It is true that Aquinas did also appear to hold some absolute moral rules, such as the one that disallowed lying … but this is not what is stressed in the account of natural law … His overall position is that there are what are called ‘primary precepts’ which are exceedingly general (such as the duty to worship God, and to love one’s neighbour) and ‘secondary precepts’ which are more specific, such as the duty to have only one husband or wife. However, the secondary precepts all have to be interpreted in the context of the situation, and it is here that the flexibility of natural law arises. At one point [Aquinas] argues as follows: ‘The first principles of natural law are altogether unalterable. But its secondary precepts … though they are unalterable in the majority of cases … can nevertheless be changed on some particular and rare occasions …’ … Aquinas argues, ‘The more you descend into the details the more it appears how the general rule admits of exceptions, so that you have to hedge it with cautions and qualifications.’

This is an important qualification and shows that there may be more flexibility in the natural law approach than is often supposed. It may also open the door to a natural law approach to morality coming together with situation ethics (see ch. 10) – for instance through a form of proportionalism. Whereas Aquinas is firm in his insistence on the primary precepts of natural law, he seems to show more flexibility when discussing the secondary precepts which ‘unpack’ these and sometimes modern supporters of a natural law approach to ethics do not sufficiently recognise this.

It is, perhaps, important to recognise that although many Catholic theologians today tend to support Aquinas’ natural law approach, in the Middle Ages his was not the only view in the Church. It would be wrong to think, even today, that all Catholic moral theologians are Thomists – there is a real debate in the life of the Roman Catholic Church and this debate is an on-going process, although it is, perhaps, fair to say that Aquinas’ legacy of the view that there is a single moral law and later theologians’ opinions that the Church represents this view is still the orthodox Catholic position (put forward most strongly in recent Vatican documents such as Veritatis Splendor [October 1993]) – even if there is, arguably, no requirement to accept Aquinas’ philosophic position if one is a Catholic.

Aquinas is suitably modest when making claims about the ability of moral philosophers to determine which actions should be performed in particular situations. He was a philosopher as well as a theologian and recognised the need for reflection. Aquinas did not think moral problems could simply be settled, a priori, by deduction – ultimately each individual has to make his or her own decision (Ethics, 2, c.2, lectio 2) and the place of conscience will be vital in this. An action is either right or wrong in so far as it fosters or undermines the good for man and Aquinas would be the first to recognise that there may be disagreements as to what behaviour will foster this ‘good’. However, in spite of these disagreements Aquinas is firm in the view that there is an absolute natural law: Disagreements occur because of the difficulty of determining this.

At the end of the Second World War, Nazi war criminals were tried at Nuremberg according to what were claimed as universal moral laws which were closely modelled on natural law thinking. The phrase ‘natural law’ was avoided – instead reference was made to ‘crimes against humanity’, but the thinking behind the legal actions was clearly based on natural law. It is possible to develop a natural law approach to ethics which does not depend on the existence of God, but any such approach is inevitably going to involve the notion of purpose and this, in turn, is going to depend on particular metaphysical claims. Aquinas has to make assumptions at key points when developing his approach and any humanistic natural law alternative will have to make alternative assumptions (such as that there is no God or life after death) against which the purpose of human life should be measured.

Proportionalism

Proportionalism holds that there are certain moral rules and that it can never be right to go against these rules unless there is a proportionate reason which would justify it. The proportionate reason is based on the context or situation but this situation must be sufficiently unusual and of sufficient magnitude to provide a reason which would overturn what would otherwise be a firm rule. On this basis, moral laws derived from natural law or similar approaches can provide firm moral guidelines which should never be ignored unless it is absolutely clear that, in the particular situation, this is justified by a proportionate reason.

The position of proportionalism is well put in John Macquarrie’s A New Dictionary of Christian Ethics (Blackwell, 1991, p. 392):

Perhaps the most divisive debate in contemporary Catholic moral theology concerns the existence and grounding of universally binding moral norms. The Scholastic moral theology of the manuals held that certain acts were intrinsically evil on the basis of the act itself, independent of the intention, circumstances and consequences. Revisionists maintain that the evil in acts such as contraception or even direct killing is not moral evil but pre-moral evil which can be justified for a proportionate reason.

The distinction between pre-moral and moral evil is central to the proportionalist position. Bernard Hoose, the leading British advocate, in his book Proportionalism (Georgetown University Press, 1987, p. 51), says that:

An evil like pain, death or mutilation is, in itself, pre-moral or non-moral, and should never be described as ‘moral’. It is the act as a whole which is either right or wrong, and it is the person, or the person in his or her acting, who is morally good or morally bad.

A distinction has to be made between acts which are good and acts which are right – and this distinction, proportionalists maintain, is often not made. A person may have a good intention but may be able to achieve that intention only through an act which is considered to be, in itself, evil. The proportionalists hold that it is possible for an action, in itself, to be wrong, whilst based on the actual situation in which the action is done the action may be morally right.

The American proportionalist, Philip Keane, puts the position clearly:

When a truly proportionate reason is present in an action so that the action is morally good, the human will is clearly not morally intending the pre-moral evil in the action, even if the pre-moral evil must be done as a means to the pre-moral good. Hence proportionate reason is ultimately a more accurate indicator of what the person is actually doing in a complex human action than is the external relationship of the various pre-moral aspects of the action.

A separation is being made distinguishing the different intentions of a human being who acts:

Part of the issue here is whether psychological intention is to be distinguished from moral intention. Surely a doctor who amputates a limb to save a person’s life has to remove the limb. But does he or she morally intend the evil in the amputation? (Theological Studies, 42, 1981, p. 275)

Proportionalists seek the right thing to do in the particular circumstances. Unlike advocates of situation ethics, they affirm that there are non-moral goods and evils, but they maintain that the circumstances need to be taken into account in deciding whether a non-moral evil is also a moral evil. Killing, theft or contraception (if one is a Catholic) may be morally good in certain circumstances. As Bernard Hoose puts it:

If what is morally good is what is morally right and what is morally bad is what is morally wrong, we shall have to revise an awful lot of our thinking in moral matters. Some of the people who burned heretics were probably morally good in such actions. Are we to assume, therefore, that the burning of heretics was morally right? Must rich benefactors seeking admiration stop giving money to the poor? Surely they should change their attitude, but continue to give their money (p. 63).

Those who support situation ethics and proportionalism both maintain that love or agape is the only criterion for moral goodness or badness. However proportionalists refuse to accept the view of situation ethicists that love can make a wrong action right. As Bernard Hoose puts it:

An action born of love can be wrong, while an action not resulting from love can be right (p. 63).

Proportionalists have difficulty in determining how one judges whether a given situation is sufficient to generate a proportionate reason for performing what would otherwise be an evil act. It would appear that what is needed is something like the Utilitarian hedonistic calculus to try to calculate proportionality – yet proportionalists reject this. Nevertheless it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the choice lies between a form of calculus and individual intuition as to the ranking of various goods. Neither position seems satisfactory. Bernard Hoose maintains that the judgement is made taking the consequences into account but without any formal method of calculation; however, this approaches a form of intuitionism which can seem very individualistic. Generally we will know that there is no proportionate reason that will justify lying, theft, etc. and the proportionalist accepts this. However the proportionalist maintains that there may be such reasons and that the individual will recognise the situation when it occurs. He or she weighs up the intrinsic evil of lying, theft, etc. and balances this against the consequences.

Proportionalism has for long been in use in Catholic moral thinking in the issue of Just War, but as long as it remains condemned by the Vatican (as was re-confirmed in the document ‘Veritatis Splendor’ issued in October 1993) it is unlikely to make significant progress within the Church in other areas. However, as has been seen earlier in this chapter, it is clear that Aquinas does allow exceptions to the secondary precepts which are the basis for moral rules in the Catholic tradition, so it may be argued that proportionalism is closer to the mainstream Catholic tradition than the rather more conservative and restrictive view supported by this Church’s Magisterium at the present time.

Questions for discussion

1 What do you understand by the theory of a natural moral law?

2 Can the basis of natural law be located other than in social convention?

3 What are the strengths and weaknesses of basing ethics on natural law?

4 How might natural law be used to deal with the following ethical issues: (a) contraception, (b) abortion or (c) homosexuality?

5 On a natural law approach, how might it be argued that it would be wrong for a woman to make love after she had a hysterectomy or after her ovaries were removed?

6 Would Aquinas support the Divine Command theory of ethics?

7 ‘In the absence of any agreed view of human nature, natural law theory is useless.’ Do you agree with this statement and, if so, why?

8 Would the natural law approach maintain that if one uses reason then one is acting morally? What would be the arguments for or against such a view?

9 Can an action be wrong yet good? How?

10 What philosophic arguments might be used to reject proportionalism?

FIVE

Kant and the Moral Law

In the history of moral philosophy, few names deserve greater prominence than that of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). He lived a totally uneventful life in Königsberg, yet his small book Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) is of central importance for any serious student of ethics as is the Critique of Practical Reason. Kant says that his aim in The Groundwork was to establish

a completely isolated metaphysic of morals which is not mixed with any theology or physics or metaphysics.

First, some definitions are needed: A statement is analytic if the predicate is included within the subject – thus ‘all spinsters are female’ is analytic as the meaning of the subject (spinster) includes the predicate (female). Analytic statements are necessarily true – they must be true because their truth depends on the way words are used and it simply would not make sense to say they were not true. The statement is also a priori which means that its truth is known independent of experience – we do not have to undertake a survey to determine that ‘all spinsters are female’ is true.

A statement is synthetic if the predicate is not included in the subject and therefore it firstly tells us something about the subject which we would not otherwise know and secondly it may or may not be true – for instance ‘All bachelors are happy’. This statement is also a posteriori because it is based on experience, in other words we would have to undertake a survey of bachelors to decide whether it is true.

Kant maintained that all moral concepts have their origin a priori. Almost every statement is either a priori analytic or a posteriori synthetic, but Kant considered that statements about the moral law were very unusual in that they were a priori synthetic – in other words they were a priori (independent of experience) but they were synthetic (not analytically or necessarily true). Kant’s task in The Groundwork is partly to explore how this unusual situation can arise – Kant seeks to establish the a priori principles by which we make moral judgements, he wishes to establish the fundamental principle of action which underpins all moral decision-making. Kant thought these principles were inherent in the universe. Unlike Plato, Aristotle or Aquinas he is not concerned with some ‘good for human beings’. Kant is concerned with the fundamental principles of morals which form the basis for our moral choices. It might be thought that if Kant considered that the principles of morals were inherent within us, he would discuss psychology or human nature, but this is not the case. He considered moral principles to be an a priori given and therefore to be arrived at independent of experience.

Unlike Aquinas, Kant did not believe that morality should be founded on natural theology. He shared with Aquinas a commitment to reason as a guide to right action, although unlike Aquinas he did not bring in any assumptions which depended on belief in God as part of his approach to morality (Aquinas, as we have seen, was strongly influenced by his belief that human beings survive death and their destiny lies in God). Kant did not consider that God’s existence could be proved – he rejected the cosmological and ontological arguments – however he thought that God’s existence was a postulate of practical reason. Effectively Kant thought that, on the basis of morality, God’s existence could be arrived at as a necessary postulate of a just universe, however this is not to say that Kant thought that God’s existence could be proved. Part of Kant’s approach to morality was that individuals should act as if there was a God – but this is not the same as saying that there is a God.

Kant’s theory is deontological – that is it stresses duty or obligation (this comes from the Greek deon meaning duty). The opening words of the Groundwork provide a ringing declaration of Kant’s fundamental position:

It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgement, and any other talents of the mind we care to name, or courage, resolution, and constancy of purpose, as qualities of temperament, are without doubt good and desirable in many respects; but they can also be extremely bad and hurtful when the will is not good which has to make use of these gifts …

The goodness of a human being’s will does not depend on the results it produces since so many factors outside our control may determine the results:

A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes … it is good through its willing alone – that is, good in itself.

In fact, the more human reason ‘concerns itself with the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the farther does man get from true contentment’ (5). A good will is fostered by a human being acting rationally and eliminating those inclinations and desires which tend to undermine rational decision-making. This does not mean that inclinations are necessarily wrong – simpy that they are not a reliable guide to the rightness of moral conduct.

If the development of a ‘good will’ is the highest task for any human being, there is one essential precondition which Kant does not argue for but considers must be assumed even though it cannot be proved – that is that human beings are free. Without freedom, there can be no discussion of morality as morality necessarily presupposes the ability to choose right or wrong. If human choices are wholly determined – if we are not free – then we are not moral agents.

Kant’s method is to start by assuming that moral judgements are true. He then sets out to analyse the conditions which must be in force if these are to be true.

Kant distinguishes between two types of imperatives or commands under which human beings act:

 Hypothetical imperatives are imperatives that are based on an ‘if’, for instance: ‘If you want to stay healthy, take exercise’ or ‘If you want your wife to love you, remember her birthday’. We can reject the command (to take exercise or to remember birthdays) if we are willing to reject the ‘if’ on which the command rests. These imperatives bid us do things which are a means to some end. They are arrived at by the exercise of pure reason.

 Categorical imperatives, by contrast, are not based on any ‘if’, they do not depend on a particular end and, Kant considers, they would be followed by any fully rational agent. They are ends in themselves and not means to some other end. Moral duties are categorical because they should be followed for the sake of duty only, simply because they are duties and not for any other reason. Categorical imperatives are arrived at through practical reason and they are understood as a basis for action.

There is no answer to the question, ‘Why should I do my duty?’ except ‘Because it is your duty.’ If there was any answer it would represent a reason and would make the imperative hypothetical and not categorical.

Human beings, in Kant’s view, are not wholly rational – but they can strive to become so. Animals are dominated by desires and instincts and these are present in human beings as well. However Kant considers that humans also have the ability to reason and, through the exercise of reason, to act not in accordance with our inclinations but according to the demands that reason makes on us – in other words from a sense of duty. A categorical imperative is one that excludes self-interest and would be one that any fully rational agent (human or otherwise) would follow and if any command is held to be categorical, it is necessary to show that it fits under this heading.

It is not easy to separate actions done from an inclination and those done from a sense of duty – it is important to recognise that it is not the action which determines goodness but the intention, motive and reason lying behind the action. The businessman who is honest because it suits him or because he feels like being honest is not, according to Kant, acting morally because he is not acting rationally. The good person must act correctly, according to reason, no matter what the consequences and independent of his or her own feelings or inclinations. If a person wills to perform an act, and if this willing does not rest on a sense of duty, then it will not be a morally good action. An action which is not done from inclination at all but purely rationally, from a sense of duty, will be a morally good action. This does not mean that one has to act against one’s inclinations, but it does mean that one’s inclinations cannot determine one’s moral duty.

There are, of course, particular moral rules which are categorical and which everyone would agree to such as ‘Thou shalt not kill’, but Kant considers these to be derived from a more general principle and he seeks to determine what this is. He arrives at a number of different formulations of what he terms ‘The Categorical Imperative’ on which all moral commands are based. The best known are the three that Kant includes in his summary of the Groundwork (79–81) and which H. J. Paton (in The Moral Law, Hutchinson) translates as follows:

1 Act as if the maxim of your action was to become through your will a universal law of nature.

This is the Formula of the Law of Nature and is saying that we should act in such a way that we can will that the maxim (or general principle) under which we act should be a general law for everyone. Kant therefore aims to ensure that we eliminate self-interest in the particular situation in which we find ourselves. Kant considers that if we will to act wholly rationally according to such a principle, then we shall develop a good will. There are, however, other formulations, including what Kant terms the Practical Imperative –

2. Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.

This is the Formula of the End in Itself. Kant says that it can never be right to treat people just as a means to some end – human beings are always ‘ends in themselves’ and Kant describes human beings as ‘holy’ because of this. It can never be right, therefore, to use human beings as a means to the end of our own happiness or to treat any group of people as a minority that does not matter. This principle enshrines the idea of the equality of each and every human being irrespective of class, colour, race, sex, age or circumstance.

3. So act as if you were through your maxims a law-making member of a kingdom of ends.

This is the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends. Kant envisaged rational agents acting as if they were making laws for themselves based on the use of reason and, in so far as they do this, they will become ‘lawmaking members of a kingdom of ends’. The laws adopted by all members will coincide because they are all rational and if there are disagreements then rational arguments should be able to resolve these.

It is, perhaps, significant to note the similarities between Kant’s call to disinterested duty and Jesus’ call to ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Matthew 22:39). The love that Jesus had in mind was not based on emotion but on a call to right action towards every other human being (Kierkegaard, in Works of Love, describes this as non-preferential love) and this could be seen as very similar to Kant’s basic position – although it should be added that Jesus’s first commandment was the call to love God before anything else and this Kant rejected. For Kant, the only service to God comes in acting morally to other human beings according to the dictates of reason.

Kant considers that the highest aspiration of a human being is the development of a good will and such a good will is developed by acting rationally according to the principles laid down by the Categorical Imperative. Humans can, if they wish, think of their moral duties as if they were Divine Commands, but morality is specifically not based on such commands. If it was, it would then be arbitrary (cf. the Euthyphro dilemma p. 7).

God is largely peripheral for Kant although God is needed to underwrite Kant’s trust in the fairness of the Universe – particularly the idea that, after death, the virtuous and vice-ridden will be treated appropriately. Kant has a tremendous faith in the metaphysical fairness of the Universe – which is strange as he wished to bar the door to metaphysics because he did not think it was possible to argue from the world of experience (phenomena) to anything beyond this. However, he had faith in the justice of the Universe and he considered that mortality was a postulate of practical reason. Kant’s view can be taken as implying that if the Universe is fair, it follows that human beings must survive death as clearly in this life the virtuous are often treated very badly and those who pursue the path of vice all too often have an apparently happy and contented life.

Kant largely reduces religion to ethics – to be holy is to be moral. Religion is only valuable as a way of helping people to lead a moral life. He considered that philosophy had supremacy over theology as philosophy was based on reason without unsupported faith claims. Kant considered that religion had to operate within the bounds of reason alone and he reinterpreted the claims of Christianity so that they expressed a call to moral righteousness. Jesus was the perfect exemplar of the morally good life. As we have seen, Kant considered human beings and human reason to be autonomous and he thus rejected heteronomy (for instance using God’s will as a guide to what is morally right or wrong).

Kant has a problem at the heart of his whole enterprise which is often not recognised and which he did not fully resolve. Kant considered that human beings should aim to act wholly in accordance with the Categorical Imperative – the maxim of their action would then be good. However, he recognised that many people would fail to do this and they would become corrupt as they acted from an evil, false or irrational maxim. Once a person’s life had become dominated by such general principles, they would then be in bondage. The difficulty Kant had was how to explain moral regeneration or a turn around from the evil to the good when he also considered that human beings could bind themselves by their corrupt maxims. The alternatives were to either:

1 say that human beings were not bound by their corrupt maxims and Kant was quite clear that they were, or

2 to say that human beings, once bound, could not turn round from the corrupt to the good and this would have meant that the position of corrupt human beings was hopeless.

As Michalson points out (Fallen Freedom, pp. 125ff.), Kant’s response to this was a most surprising one given the peripheral place allotted to God in most of Kant’s philosophy. He maintained that it was only through the incarnation in which God became man in Jesus Christ that human moral regeneration can take place. In this one area, at this particular point (but not elsewhere) God was central for Kant, yet he did not face up to the consequences of this. It was Kant’s successors, Kierkegaard and Hegel (and, following Hegel, Marx) who were to take seriously the alternatives that Kant failed to grapple with. As Michalson says:

Kierkegaard and Marx represent what happens when just one of the two aspects of Kant’s account of moral regeneration is taken up and emphasised in isolation from the other aspect. As such, their positions shed light on Kant’s own effort to have it both ways.

In Kierkegaard’s hands, the muted Kantian appeal to grace is transformed into a full-blown ‘project of thought’ in which a transcendent act alone is the only antidote to our willed ‘error’, or sin. Contrary to our usual view of these matters, it is in fact Kierkegaard and not Kant who has the more ‘rational’ position here … Kierkegaard shows the only way to offset a willed error is through a reconciling act coming from the ‘outside’, producing the ‘new creature’ … Alternatively, Kant’s more characteristic tendency to locate our moral recovery in our own efforts – however impossible he has made it for himself fully to do this – leads in some sense to Marxism (which) … expels the last remnants of otherworldliness remaining in the position of the philosopher … (Fallen Freedom, pp. 129–30).

Kant represents a divide in the road in the history of moral and philosophic thought. The road that Kierkegaard takes firmly embraces the central importance of a personal God and the action of this God both in history and in the lives of individual human beings. Hegel takes the opposing path and rejects such a view of transcendence – Marx then takes Hegel’s view further and morality becomes entirely a social construct. These issues are still very much alive and the divide is still present today.

Questions for discussion

1 Suggest two moral maxims which would give rise to contradictory actions. How might the differences between these be resolved?

2 Could it ever be morally right, according to Kant, to torture one person in order to get information which would save the lives of a large group?

3 Describe the difference between a hypothetical and a categorical imperative. On what grounds might someone reject an imperative that was claimed to be categorical?

4 On Kant’s view, should the moral principles of intelligent green spiders differ from the moral principles of human beings?

5 What place does God have in Kant’s moral philosophy?

6 In Kant’s view, is saving the life of a child a morally good action? What are the difficulties from his viewpoint in answering this question in the affirmative?

SIX

Bentham and Mill – Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is generally thought of as a moral theory which can best be summed up by the phrase: ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’. However, in terms of its linguistic origins it may be more aptly described as a ‘theory of usefulness’, after the Latin root word utilis meaning useful. This, then, seems to imply that whatever is useful is moral. On a literal interpretation, therefore, my garden spade and fork are moral implements because they are useful. But clearly this is absurd. However, decisions and actions may be characterised as morally useful. Immoral decisions lead to useless or bad actions and amoral decisions are those which lead to no actions at all.

So, for example, the act of abortion is, in itself, neither good nor bad, neither moral nor immoral. However, it becomes so when we consider to what end the procedure of abortion is being used. If abortion is being used to save the mother’s life and restrict an already large family in a household where the husband is unemployed, and if the abortion is conducted in a humane fashion, then its use may, on utilitarian grounds, be justified, and the act itself becomes a moral one. The greatest happiness of the greatest number, that is, of the family unit, counts over and above the future possible happiness of the single unborn child. If, however, abortion is being used by a young married woman because the pregnancy may interfere with a planned skiing trip, then clearly it is difficult to see how it could be justified, unless a cynical vision of utilitarianism were to be employed in which the maximisation of immediate happiness for the young woman and her skiing party were to count for more than the future possible happiness of the unborn child and the future long-term happiness of the prospective family. To use Singer’s Practical Ethics (1993) argument a minor interest (the pleasure derived from the skiing trip) is placed above a major interest (the life of the child and the future possibilities of family life). Hence, we may justifiably conclude that, in this instance, abortion becomes ‘immoral’.

As we have already maintained, utilitarianism has come to be largely associated with the ‘greatest good or the greatest happiness for the greatest number’. Its links with majority rule in democratic politics is obvious. Here, it is assumed to be morally acceptable for there to be government by the majority without the consent of the minority. Unfortunately, all too often, particularly given the voting procedures in the democratic nations of the world, there is government by the minority without the consent of the majority!

It was David Hume (1711–76) the Scottish philosopher who first introduced the concept of utility into ethics but he is not regarded as a utilitarian. Similarly, the phrase ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’ was first coined by Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) in a work entitled An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, although again Hutcheson is not considered to be a utilitarian in the strict sense.

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)

The theory of utilitarianism was first fully articulated by Jeremy Bentham who not only wrote about ethics but about politics as well, his most famous work being A Fragment on Government. Because of his interests in both ethics and politics coupled with his desire to improve the social conditions of the masses he founded a movement known as The Philosophical Radicals. Arguably many of the reforms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly those to do with the treatment of criminals, were the result of Bentham’s efforts. Shy but extremely able, Bentham apparently began studying Latin at the age of three and received his degree when only fifteen. However, his friend and follower, James Mill (1773–1836) fathered an even greater child prodigy, John Stuart Mill (1806–73). By all accounts John Stuart Mill began with Greek at the age of three, followed quickly with other languages by the age of eight and finally completed a rigorous classical education by the time he was fourteen. By this time he had become much influenced by Benthamite thinking as his father had been before him.

For Bentham, that which is good is that which equals the greatest sum of pleasure and the least sum of pain. Hence, a right moral decision followed by a truly ethical action would be one which produced the greatest pleasure. The way in which this was to be measured was through the application of the utility calculus, sometimes referred to as the hedonic calculus. Hedone is the Greek word for pleasure. Hence, Bentham’s version of the theory is occasionally called hedonic utilitarianism.

The hedonic or utility calculus

The utility calculus was supposed to measure the amounts of pleasure and pain according to seven criteria:

 intensity

 duration

 certainty

 extent

 remoteness

 richness

 purity.

The following example may help. Suppose you are a doctor driving to one of your patients, a young mother about to give birth. However, she is in great pain and difficulty and it looks as though she will need a Caesarian section. It is late at night and you come across a car accident down a country road. Two cars are involved and both drivers are injured and unconscious. You discover through trying to establish identities that one of them is the young pregnant woman’s husband. The other is an elderly man. You don’t quite know the extent of any internal injuries and are of the opinion that without immediate medical help one of them if not both may die. You are faced now with the moral decision of who to help first:

 the young mother about to give birth?

 the young woman’s husband?

 the elderly gentleman?

Any one of them may die if you do not attend to them immediately.

Leaving aside what we may actually feel or believe, the application of the utility calculus may go something like this:

 Attending to the young expectant mother first is the primary concern of the doctor. The death of both mother and child is almost a certainty if he does not act now, whereas the deaths of either of the two men is not certain. Moreover, the intensity of her pain is clearly greater at present than theirs. There is a greater richness and purity in saving the life of a young child who has, in all probability, a long and happy life ahead. Therefore, the duration and extent of the pleasures experienced by two people, the mother and child, is a clear likelihood.

 Attending to the young husband is the next priority. The pleasure of a new family, its intensity, duration, extent, richness and purity are all clear probabilities. If the doctor had attended to him first and neglected his expectant wife, she would probably have died, and the intensity, duration, extent etc. of the pain experienced by the widowed husband is likely to outstrip any pleasure to be gained from continued life without his loved ones.

 Attending to the elderly gentleman is the last priority. The duration and certainty of his future pleasure is under question owing to his age. He has all but lived his life; this is sometimes known as the ‘good innings argument’. According to this line, the value of his life is not now as great as the young married couple’s who have much of their lives ahead of them, nor of the young child who has yet to go in to bat, as it were.

Some problems:

One of the problems of Bentham’s theory and his hedonic calculus was that its results were based on a quantitative measure. That is, how much sheer quantity of pleasure can be gained from an action. Just by attending to one patient, the young mother, the decision has all but guaranteed that two people will be saved, and that the likely number of years in which they may experience pleasure is probably going to be a lot greater than the number of pleasurable years spent by the elderly gentleman. Moreover, the certainty of saving either the husband or the elderly gentleman is by no means guaranteed, whereas the death of the young mother and her child is almost guaranteed. So, although it may be a difficult decision, the doctor on strict utilitarian grounds would have to save the young mother and child because the quantity of pleasure is the important issue. But, can the quantity of pleasure actually be measured in numbers of years? Furthermore, who will do the measuring?

The second problem is that utilitarianism relies strictly on its predictive value. But who can predict that the child will grow up to be happy and productive, that the old man will soon die anyway, and that the sum total of pleasure to be gained by the young family is going to be greater than the old man’s? The child may grow up to be a mass-murderer, the family may then lead a collective life of guilt and misery, and the old man may, like Bertrand Russell, have been destined to make his major mark on political life in his eighties and nineties.

The third problem is to do with what counts as pleasure. Pure emotional and bodily pleasures are clearly quantifiable. But is it just pleasure that we wish to seek or increase and pain that we wish to avoid or minimise? I might be prepared to suffer a great deal of pain in order to gain a minimal amount of pleasure. The quick extraction of a painful tooth might, on the quantity of pleasure theory, be preferable to hours of painful dentistry involving excavating, filling and polishing the tooth, whilst simultaneously suffering the continuing pain of the tooth itself, all in order to satisfy some intangible desire to retain all my teeth. Or, supposing I wanted the pleasure of being thought slim, I could, like many slimming fanatics, put myself through continual painful exercises and diets in order to wear jeans one size smaller. Or, more importantly, I could forgo all obvious pleasures of the moment, practise continuously on the piano in order to lead a precarious existence as a second-rate concert pianist combined with the dubious pleasure of fame.

John Stuart Mill (1806–73)

John Stuart Mill understood the problems only too well. Mill wanted, therefore, to define pleasure a little more carefully, and this involved shifting the emphasis from quantity to quality. Mill distinguished between the higher pleasures, associated with the mind, and the lower pleasures, associated with the body. Clearly the two are linked. It is difficult to experience the pleasures of intellectual pursuits whilst remaining perpetually cold and hungry. But after the minimum requirements of the body have been satisfied, that is, after the lower pleasures have been attended to, then the real moral business involves pursuit of the higher goods: mental, cultural and spiritual. Arguably, on this view, the person who eats and drinks in moderation in order to spend more time designing elegant, ecologically-sound and inexpensive clothing is morally better than the person who is anxious to toss off quick, profit-making designs in order that he may then pursue the known bodily pleasures of sex, food and drink in large quantities. The higher pleasures of the mind are to be preferred to the lower pleasures of the body. As Mill states: ‘It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.’ (J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. by M. Warnock, 1962, Collins, p. 260).

Some criticisms:

There are still a number of problems associated with this view. Firstly, as Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900) pointed out, how in practice do we distinguish properly between higher and lower pleasures, and how do we distinguish one higher pleasure from another? If all cultural and spiritual activities provide the same sum of pleasure and happiness, presumably it does not matter which one we choose to undertake at any time. If reading Shakespeare, playing Bach, and painting watercolours all produce the same degree of pleasure, then there is nothing to choose between them. Sidgwick understood that life is just a shade more complex than that, for every activity and pursuit, whether physical or intellectual, is both quantitatively and qualitatively different. An hour’s reading of Shakespeare is just not equivalent to an hour’s playing of Bach, and so on. Moreover, where do physically and intellectually demanding pursuits such as sailing, play-acting and advanced kung-fu fit into the higher/lower pleasures distinction? Is the refined eating of a carefully planned foreign dish a higher pleasure, and the eating of a takeaway beef-burger a lower pleasure? The difficulties are endless.

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