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Questioning Moral Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2010

Amelie Rorty
Amelie Rorty
Affiliation:
Boston University and Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
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Extract

Not a day passes but we find ourselves indignant about something or other. When is our indignation justified, and when does it count as moral indignation rather than a legitimate but non-moral gripe? You might think that we should turn to moral theories – to the varieties of utilitarian, Kantian, virtue theories, etc – to answer this question. I shall try to convince you that this is a mistake, that moral theory – as it is ordinarily presently conceived and studied – does not have a specific subject matter, a specific aim, scope or boundaries. You might think that the difference between echt moral indignation and other forms of disapproval is their relative strength or the importance of their target; but moral indignation can be quite faint, directed to a relatively minor transgression and a strongly felt gripe may be directed to a serious but presumptively non-moral infraction. I shall try to persuade you that morality does not constitute an important and distinctive domain with a distinctive set of over-riding norms or a privileged mode of reasoning: morality is everywhere or nowhere in particular. Radical as this claim may sound, I am not a complete Luddite about the matter. Traditional moral theories nevertheless have important functions. But rather than being competing ‘winner takes all’ explanatory and normative theories, OldSpeak moral systems function heuristically. They offer a heterogeneous set of reminders, questions, advice, ideals, warnings, considerations for deliberation. While we try to integrate and systematize them, there is no single overarching organizational plan.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 85 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 29 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2010

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References

1 Though I do not believe that morality does not constitute a distinctive domain, I shall use OldSpeak to refer to morality and moral practices de dicto, without using shudder quotes. See ‘The Many Faces of Morality’, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, 1994; reprinted in Mid-West Studies in Philosophy, 20, 1996, ed. Peter French and Howard Wettstein.

2 See Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1971) 20–21, 48–50Google Scholar. Platonic dialogues, Aristotle's ethical treatises, Hume's experiments and Kant's transcendental arguments all exemplify Rawls' method: they begin with descriptions of what passes for moral experience, attempt to explain and reconcile conflicts in the phenomena and move to a theory that first explains, and then provides norms for moral judgment and deliberation, norms that reinterpret and sometimes realign the phenomena with which they began.

3 For the time being and for the sake of argument, I shall speak indifferently about the concerns of moral agents engaged in deliberation and those of moral theorists engaged in moral judgment.

4 I am grateful to Robert Frederick for pointing out that states of affairs can also be the targets of moral indignation. Because I believe that the real but latent targets for this kind of moral indignation are those presumed to be responsible for such states of affairs, I shall focus on agents as the targets of appropriate moral indignation. Frederick also remarked on the oddity of focusing on indignation – a non-voluntary emotion – as a moral emotion. My question could equally have focused on distinction between moral and non-moral blame. Although my concerns are quite different from his, I think they are compatible with Thomas Scanlon's subtle revisionary characterization of blame: ‘To blame someone for an action … is to take that action to indicate something about the person that impairs one's relationship … and to understand that relationship in a way that reflects this impairment.’ I take it as significant that Scanlon's account applies indifferently to presumptively moral and non-moral blame. (See Moral Distinctions, 122–3. Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2008).

5 See Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics VI and my ‘What It Takes To Be Good’, Morality and the Self, ed. Wren, Tom, Noam, Gil and Edelstein, Wolfgang (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 28–55.Google Scholar

6 See ‘King Solomon and Everyman: A Problem in Conflicting Moral Intuitions’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 1991, 181–194.

7 See Abelard, , Ethics: Know Thyself (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995).Google Scholar

8 The scope of the morality of decency also varies culturally. Cultures that stress strong individual autonomy tend to distinguish the strict requirements of moral obligations from admirable but supererogatory non-moral ‘neighborly’ outreach activities. By contrast, the obligations of neighborliness in tightly knit ‘no man is an island’ communities tend to become a central part of morality, the focus of a good deal of education and evaluation. When such communities are homogeneous and relatively stable, the morality of decency can be readily conveyed by imitation, without recourse to moral theory.

9 See Nagel, Thomas, ‘Moral Luck’, Mortal Questions, Cambridge University Press, 1979Google Scholar; Williams, Bernard, ‘Moral Luck’, Moral Luck, (Cambridge University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Statman, Daniel, ed. Moral Luck, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993).Google Scholar

10 See Fricker, Miranda, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for an account of the ways that elistist practices affect epistemic access … and epistemic access in turn reinforce elitist power.

11 Hillis Miller remarks ‘[T]here is an ethical moment in the act of reading as such, a moment neither cognitive, nor political, nor social … but properly and independently ethical’ The Ethics of Reading (Columbia, 1987), 1. See also Booth, Wayne, The Company She Keeps: An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley, 1988)Google Scholar; and Amelie Rorty, ‘The Ethics of Reading’, Educational Theory (1997).

12 See Kamm, Frances, Intricate Ethics:  Rights, Responsibilities and Permissible Harm (Oxford, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 See Murphy, Jeffrey and Hampton, Jean, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Morris, Herbert, On Guilt and Innocence (University of California Press, 1976).Google Scholar

14 I am grateful to David Wong for this point.

15 See ‘The Many Faces of Morality’ loc. cit.

16 See Rawls, , A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971), 20–21, 48–53Google Scholar.

17 I am grateful to Catherine Elgin for raising this point.

18 See, for instance, controversies among commentators on Plato's Republic, as they range from Allan Bloom and Stanley Rosen to Julia Annas, Richard Kraut and Malcolm Schofield. Even the most scholarly and responsible interpreters of Hobbes – Quentin Skinner, John Pocock, Richard Tuck, Tom Sorell and Susanne Sreedhar – find one another's interpretations questionable.

19 See Rawls, , ‘The Independence of Moral Theory’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association XLVII (1974/5), 5–22, 8Google Scholar and Daniels, Norman, ‘Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics’, Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979), 256–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 See Williams, Bernard, ‘Political Philosophy and the Analytic Tradition’ and other essays in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (Princeton, 2006)Google Scholar.

21 Aristotle, ‘We investigate what excellence is not in order to know it, but in order to become good.’ NE II.2. 1103b27–9); Hume, ‘Philosophy is commonly divided into speculative and practical; and as morality is always comprehended under the latter division, ‘tis supposed to influence our actions [and] to go beyond the calm and indolent judgments of the understanding.’ Hume, Treatise, 3.1.1.1.

22 See my ‘Educating the Practical Imagination’, Oxford Handbook on the Philosophy of Education, ed. Harvey Siegel (Oxford, 2009) 195–210, Lovibond, Sabina, Realism and Imagination in Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983)Google Scholar and Murdoch, Iris, ‘The Idea of Perfection’, The Sovereignty of the Good (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970).Google Scholar

23 Bernard Williams provides a model of the use of imaginative reflection in his discussion of why the life of the amoralist is not worth living. Williams invites us to imagine the details of amoralist's endlesss and distancing calculations in his relation to his friends and family. Filling in the picture is the best – and in the end – the only convincing demonstration of the poverty of such a life. (See Morality (New York: Harper and Row, 1972.) I am grateful to A.W. Eaton for suggesting a parallel between the role of pluralistic imaginative reflection in moral choice and its role in interpreting and constituting the composition of artworks.

24 I am grateful to M.R. Amiran, Melissa Barry, Matthew Carmody, Catherine Elgin, Robert Frederick, Steven Gerrard, Susan James, Genevieve Lloyd, David Lyons, Richard Schmitt, Daniel Star, Paul Voice, Susan Wolf and David Wong for helpful conversations and to participants in colloquia at Duke University, the National Humanities Center, The University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Elon, and the University and the University of Illinois-Chicago for lively discussions.