Philosophy 051-01
Introduction to Ethics
April 15, 2002
1. The good will. Recall how we talked about how Kant thinks that the only thing truly valuable is our will or reason, because that is the thing that gives value to everything else. (Not a very plausible thesis. Surely whales and dolphins would be valuable even if we did not value them.) In Section 1, Kant approaches this differently. He wants to look at what is unqualifiedly good. He will conclude that only the good will, namely the will that always acts from duty, is such.
· At the beginning of Section 1, Kant argues that only the good will is good without qualification. Kant thinks of qualities such as intelligence, courage, riches, power and perseverance, and says that these are not always good. Doesn’t the evil person’s intelligence, courage, riches, power and perseverance make him even worse?
o Aristotle would seem to disagree about courage and perseverance. Courage is fearing the things that should be feared. Thus, Aristotle’s courageous person does fear doing evil! And Aristotle would say that the virtue of perseverance is the mean between never giving up and always giving up, and the mean is when one perseveres in the things one should persevere in—e.g., not in evil!
o Probably, by “courage”, Kant just means “ability to stand fast in the face of danger”, and by “perseverance” just “ability not to give up”, rather than the Aristotelian virtues. So there really is no disagreement here. Aristotle builds in good will into his definition of courage, for instance.
o Recall C.S.L.’s idea that all instincts sometimes go wrong.
· Even happiness can lead to pride and arrogance, and this would be a bad thing. Moreover, the happiness of a bad person is a bad thing. Kant says that if someone is very bad, then his “uninterrupted prosperity can never delight a rational and impartial spectator.” Thus, happiness is not good without qualification.
o Obviously, Kant has a different notion of happiness than Aristotle or Aquinas. For Aristotle, happiness was the exercise of virtue, and the proud and arrogant person is not virtuous. For Aquinas, happiness was the vision of God, and Aquinas thought that having the vision of God makes one like God, i.e., a good person.
o Kant here defines happiness as the fulfillment of all of one’s inclinations.
· Thus, only the good will is good without qualification. Happiness is good, for isntance, with the qualification that it be deserved.
· “A good will is good and not because of what it effects or accomplishes, nor because of its fitness to attain proposed and; it is good only through its willing, i.e., it is good in itself.” (p. 7)
· Once again, Kant thinks that it does not matter what comes of an act of will, but the act of will is worthwhile on its own.
· Is this true? Is attempted murder just as big a crime as murder, say?
o Or take this. If one person intends only to beat up another, but kills him accidentally, he’ll be charged with manslaughter or second degree murder. But if he doesn’t kill him, he will be charged with much less. Does this mean that what results matters?
o Discussion.
§ Well, whether he kills him or not depends in part on how hard he hits.
§ Also, having the law set up this way encourages people to be more careful when fighting. And it encourages people not to finish off their victims if they change their minds about a murder.
§ Is one more guilty if one succeeds?
§ Certainly one owes more. If I am beating you up, and I intend only to break your arm, but I poke out your eye as well by accident, I ought to compensate you for your loss of vision. But am I more guilty?
· Second argument that happiness is not the one unqualified good that every reasonable person needs to seek. Kant first makes the assumption that everything in nature has a purpose. He then asks why we have reason. Reason can lead us to unhappiness. Reason can, after all, easily be deluded. If nature’s purpose for us was our happiness, then nature would not have given us reason, but simply an instinct that leads us to becoming happy. Reason sets goals for us. Thus, it can set a goal for us that does not involve happiness.
· This argument works a little better if instead of “reason” we talk about free will. If nature’s purpose for us was to be happy, why would we be able to choose unhappiness?
· But if our purpose is to gain a good will, then it makes sense for us to have reason, since for Kant, will is very closely tied to reason. Good will just is reason’s control over our actions.
o Recall how action worked for Aristotle. The intellect chose what things we should have desires for, and the appetitive part followed this, and the appetitive part then caused our actions. For Kant, the intellect directly makes us act when we have a good will. But we can also act from inclinations such as fears or desires. So each of these two aspects of us (reason and inclination) can cause action separately. [[Thus, Kant can say that we are only truly free when reason causes our action. And he thinks that when reason causes the action, the action accords with the CI. (Problem: Didn’t he just tell us that reason can be deluded? Or is he using “reason” in two different senses?) Thus only the right actions are truly free.]]
3. So now we need to figure out which actions have moral worth, i.e., are worthy or deserving of esteem. Well, Kant tells us that it is those actions done solely from motive of duty. Kant now wants to make a distinction between actions done from duty and actions done merely in accordance with duty. An action is done merely in accordance with duty if it is the kind of action that duty requires. An action is done from duty if it was right to do it. (p. 10ff)
· The shopkeeper. Doesn’t cheat customers because cheating customers is bad for business. No moral worth in this. Merely in accordance with duty.
· Self-preservation. Normally we preserve our lives out a direct inclination to preserve our lives, a self-preservatory instinct. There is no moral worth in this. But, Kant says, imagine a man in distress who loses taste for life in “adversity and hopeless sorrow”. He “wishes for death and yet preserves his life without loving it—not from inclination or fear, but from duty—then his maxim indeed has a moral content.”
· The beneficent person. Imagine someone who enjoys spreading joy. Helping people in this case has no moral worth. But imagine that one loses all sympathy with others and still helps them, or one has always been “by temperament cold and indifferent to the sufferings of others”. Then there is moral worth in helping others.
o What would Aristotle say to this? [A person who does not enjoy helping others is not virtuous.]
· Happiness. We have a duty to promote our happiness, because discontent can lead us to many temptations to go against other duties. (p. 12) But if we have, as we usually do, the inclination to promote our happiness, this, then, lacks moral worth.
· Love of neighbor. Kant distinguishes “practical” and “pathological” love. By “pathological” he doesn’t mean “sick and demented”, but simply “purely emotional” (from pathos, emotion). He says that the commandment to love your neighbor cannot refer to emotional love, since emotions are not under our (direct) control. So it must refer to practical (from praxis, action) love, namely love-in-action, namely helping others.
· Discussion.
o Note: An action done merely in accordance with duty is better than action contrary to duty. And the action done merely in accordance with duty should be praised (p. 11), though not esteemed.
· There are two interpretations of what Kant is saying:
o The strong reading: An action never has moral worth if there is an inclination in favor of it.
§ In favor of this: This is what the examples sound like.
§ Against it: This is a crazy view, and maybe Kant wasn’t crazy. Surely if we have a kind, compassionate character, we shouldn’t try to get rid of this.
o The weak reading: There can be inclinations in favor of the action, but they cannot contribute to the action. The actions must be done from duty, and the inclinations must be irrelevant.
§ In favor: “an action done from duty must altogether exclude the influence of inclination” (p. 13). But Kant doesn’t say it must exclude the inclination. Also, this is a more reasonable view.
§ Against: There is no example like this given. But examples need not cover everything. Moreover, does this really help? Can one have an inclination without them influencing one?
· Is the weak reading good enough? Discussion.
o Kant is concerned that if inclinations motivate us, they could also motivate us to something bad. E.g., helpfulness can make one help a thief carrying pictures out of an art gallery at night. So if an action is motivated by something that can make one do bad things, can the action be fully esteemable?
4. Imagine you have a friend in the hospital and you visit. She asks you why you visited and you say you did it solely out of duty. You don’t actually enjoy visiting her. Is this what Kant is saying? On the strong reading, yes.
· On the weak reading, no. But it is still true that duty must be your motivator. You can enjoy being with your friend, but this can’t be what motivates you. One might think this is still wrong. Discussion.
· Problem: All this talk of duty seems to leave out something crucial. The other person. Surely, the reason you visit should be the other person, and not duty! It almost seems like the other person is a means to the end of promoting your virtue.
· This problem is present in Plato’s ethics and perhaps in utilitarianism. In Plato’s ethics, the other person does not matter—you’re just supposed to maximize your own virtue. In utilitarianism, the other person does not matter as an individual, as your friend, but only as someone providing one summand in the sum of total happiness.
· Aquinas has more hope there, because he can say that we should pursue basic goods, wherever they are to be found, and in particular in the other person. He thinks love is a duty, and when we love the other person, we make her goods our own goals. Aristotle, too, believes in the virtue of friendship. If it is friendship that motivates one, all is well. Unlike Aquinas, Aristotle does not extend this love to everyone, though.
5. We’ve seen a lot of moral systems. All of them agree on various everyday actions. They all agree that at least most of the time lying, stealing, murdering, committing adultery, etc., are bad. They disagree on the reasons these things are bad. Perhaps Lewis would take this as a sign that there is a Law of Human Nature which informs us that some things are wrong, and then we differ on details and reasoning. And perhaps there are many reasons why these things are wrong, and so different philosophers focus on different such reasons.
· I myself accept a variant of the Natural Law view of Thomas Aquinas, and I think it has all the advantages of other views. Roughly, it recognizes basic goods that we do not decide on ourselves—thus, unlike in Kant, a whale or a dolphin is a good thing, regardless of whether one values them or not. I will then take love to be one of the basic goods (cf. Thomas’s basic good of community). Our function as human beings is to love. But love is not a feeling: it is a determination to will the good to other people, and we need the other basic goods to figure out what is objectively good for other people. E.g., we might feel it would be loving to kill someone who is suffering, but because in doing so we would be taking away their life, which is a basic good, this is not loving. Or, e.g., we might feel that adultery with someone is a loving thing for that person, but it’s not, because sexual acts of their nature communicate formal life-long commitment, and so the extra-marital sex is deceitful (since there is no formal life-long commitment, as there is in marriage), and lying to someone is contrary to the basic good of communication between people.
· It is not a trivial question to figure out what exactly is a basic good. But I think it can be done with some reflection. Certainly, at least, people will have certain human rights, because we can’t act directly against basic goods, since we should love people, i.e., will good things to them and refrain from willing basic evils to them.