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Is Every Action Morally Significant?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2011

John Haldane
John Haldane*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

One form of scepticism about the possibility of moral theory does not deny that there is something describable as ‘the conduct of life’, but it argues that there is no special ethical account to be given of this since conduct has no identifiably moral dimension. Here I explore the possibility that the problem of identifying distinctively moral aspects of action is explained by the thesis that the moral is ubiquitous; that every human action is – not ‘may be’ – morally significant. To say, however, that morality is all pervasive is not to say anything about how demanding moral considerations may be. Reasons for action ultimately relate to promoting or protecting the human good, and their relative strength and urgency derives from the manner, extent and immediacy of their bearing upon this end and not from belonging to some logically distinct category.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 86 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 375 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2011

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References

1 Caputo, John D., ‘The End of Ethics’ in LaFollette, Hugh (ed.) The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 127Google Scholar. For an extended presentation see Caputo Against Ethics (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

2 For several discussions of positions of this sort see Hooker, B. and Little, M. eds. Moral Particularism, Oxford: OUP, 2000)Google Scholar and for some criticism of paticularists’ efforts to give an alternative account of generality in moral thought see Stangl, Rebecca Lynn, ‘Particularism and the Point of Moral Principles’ Moral Theory and Practice 9 (2006), 201–229CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5 The effect barely saves the phenomena, however, since it eliminates constraints that do not assume reciprocity and amounts to a change of subject - from morality to rational choice.

6 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Hollingdale, R.J. (London: Penguin, 1990), 63Google Scholar.

7 ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ Philosophy 53 (1958), 1–19;Google Scholar reprinted in Collected Philosophical Papers of G.E.M. Anscombe. Vol. 3 Ethics, Religion and Politics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981)Google Scholar.

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9 Op. cit. 196.

10 Op. cit. 174–5.

11 My use of the term ‘scepticism’ follows that of recent times in covering both claims about what exists as well about what can be known.

12 This then allows that actions may also be evaluable on other non-moral grounds, as efficient, effective, ingenious, fruitful, skilled, timely, and so on.

13 For general treatments of Aquinas's moral philosophy that are sensitive to analytical thought see Finnis, John, Aquinas: Moral, Political and Legal Theory (Oxford: OUP, 1998Google Scholar), Lisska, Anthony, Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996)Google Scholar, and McInerny, Ralph, Ethica Thomistica (Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 1982)Google Scholar, Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice (Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 1992Google Scholar). More specific and detailed studies are provided by Bradley, Denis, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Happiness in Aquinas's Moral Science (Washington DC.: CUA Press, 1997)Google Scholar, Brock, Stephen, Action and Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998)Google Scholar, Flannery, Kevin, Acts Amid Precepts: The Logical Structure of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theology (Washington, DC.: CUA Press, 2001)Google Scholar and Porter, Jean, The Recovery of Virtue (London: SPCK, 1994)Google Scholar. For an extensive treatment of Aquinas in the context of a magisterial account of the history of ethics see Irwin, Terence, The Development of Ethics: From Socrates to the Reformation (Oxford: OUP, 2007)Google Scholar. Aquinas's claim that every human action has worth is considered and defended by Ralph McInerny in ‘Ethics’ in Kretzmann, and Stump, Eleonore (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge: CUP, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ch. 7, and touched upon briefly and incidentally by Foot, Philippa in Natural Goodness (Oxford: OUP, 2001),CrossRefGoogle Scholar 76. The idea is discussed and defended, by Anscombe though without reference to Aquinas in ‘Good and Bad Human Action’ in Geach, M. and Gormally, L. (eds) Human Life, Action and Ethics: Essays by GEM Anscombe (Exeter: Imprint, 2005)Google Scholar.

14 Mill writes ‘does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire virtue, or maintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired? The very reverse. It maintains not only that virtue is to be desired but that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself.’ Utilitarianism, ch IV, para 5, various editions. Kant's Metaphysics of Morals was originally published in two separate volumes: The Doctrine of Right and The Doctrine of Virtue. In the latter, moral duties are treated teleologically, with a duty of virtue being an end which it is our duty to have. For an account of the relation of this to the more familiar parts of Kant's ethics see Allen Wood, ‘The Final Form of Kant's Practical Philosophy’, in Timmons, Mark ed. Essays on Kant's Moral Philosophy (New York: CUP, 2000)Google Scholar.

15 For a detailed discussion of Aquinas's account of the classification of actions according to their end, object, matter, circumstance, and motive, see Pilsner, Joseph, The Specification of Human Actions in St Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: OUP, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Foot, P., ‘Virtues and Vices’ in Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978)Google Scholar, 2. Foot's obliging references to Aquinas are cited and discussed by Fergus Kerr ‘Aquinas and Analytic Philosophy: Natural Allies?’ in Fodor, J. & Bauerschmidt, F.C. eds, Aquinas in Dialogue (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)Google Scholar.

17 Michael Stocker argues that ‘ethical theories can and should account for the existence of moral choices involving acts that are justified, even obligatory, yet nevertheless wrong, shameful, and regrettable’, see ‘Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life’ in Stocker, , Plural and Conflicting Values (Oxford: OUP, 1992),CrossRefGoogle Scholar 9.

18 See in this connection Williams, Bernard, ‘Persons, Character and Morality’, in Moral Luck (Cambridge: CUP, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Woolf, Susan, ‘Moral Saints’, Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982)Google Scholar. For a good discussion of the properties of stringency, pervasiveness and overiddingness as these may be thought to apply to morality see Scheffler, Samuel, ‘Morality's Demands and Their Limits: Competing Views’, ch. 2 of Human Morality (Oxford: OUP, 1992)Google Scholar. See also Mulgan, T., The Demands of Consequentialism (Oxford: OUP, 2001)Google Scholar who defends a hybrid theory combining rule consequentialism and a modified version of Scheffler's agent-centred prerogative.

19 This said the consequentialist is able to treat one kind of action as intrinsically right, i.e. that which constitutes the realisation of his favoured value. In this sense such varieties of consequentialism are deontological.

20 Summa Theologiae, Ia, IIae, q 94, a 2. References to the Summa (hereafter ST) are either to the older Dominican edition (London: Washbourne, 1912–15) or to the modern Blackfriars edition (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1963–75). The synderesis principle as Aquinas conceives of it seems to be jointly inspired by Aristotle, see Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. I, Ch.1 and Bk. VI Chs 11–13, and by scripture: Psalm 33: 14 reads: ‘turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and avoid evil’.

21 In this connection see Velleman, J. David, ‘The Possibility of Practical Reason’ Ethics 106 (1996), 694–726CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford: OUP, 2000); also the essays in Tenenbaum, Sergio (ed.) Desire, Practical Reason and the Good (Oxford: OUP, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar which explore the claim that desire, or intention, or intentional action aim at the good.

22 Ia, IIae, q 94, a 2. response.

23 For a recent discussion of these issues, not in relation to Aquinas, see Kraut, Richard, What is Good and Why (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard UP, 2007),CrossRefGoogle Scholar ch. 2.

24 Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, translated as The Moral Law by H.J. Paton (London: Hutchinson, 1948), 78–9. Compare the teleology of moral imperatives in Aquinas's scheme with that schematized in Kant's Doctrine of Virtue, see supra note 14.

25 This view is taken by Germain Grisez in the important and influential article ‘The First Principle of Practical Reasoning: A Commentary on The Summa Theologiae, 1–2, Question 94, Article 2’, Natural Law Forum, 10 (1965) 168–201Google Scholar, a shortened version of which appears in Kenny, A. (ed.) Aquinas (London: Macmillan, 1970)Google Scholar 340–82. Grisez's view is indirectly endorsed by Finnis, J. in Natural Law and Natural Rights, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980)Google Scholar Notes to III, p. 6.

26 ST, Ia, IIae, q1, a 3.

27 De Malo, q 2, a 5; see also: ST, Ia, IIae, q 17, a 9.

28 For further discussion of this issue see Haldane, John ‘Voluntarism and Realism in Medieval Ethics’, Journal of Medical Ethics 15 (1989)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

29 See again Anscombe ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’.

30 As by Williams’ in ‘Morality the Peculiar Institution’.

31 Quae shones Disputatae de Veritate, q. 17, a 3, and 4.

32 ST., Ia, IIae, q1, a1.

33 Op. cit.

34 ST., Ia, IIae, q 18, a. 8–9.

35 ‘If the object of an action includes something in accord with the order of reason, it will be a good action according to its species’ ST., Ia, IIae, q. 18, a. 8, responded.

36 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, (ed.) L.A. Selby-Bigge various editions, Book III, Part I, Section I.

37 ST Ia IIae, q. 1, a3

38 Interestingly, the example of picking a straw from the ground features as an instance of religious devotion in the work known as Le Practique de la Presence de Dieu. In it the Abbé Joseph de Beaufort reports Brother Lawrence as saying that ‘having taken as the end of all his actions, to do them for the love of God, he was well satisfied therewith. He was happy he said, to pick up a straw from the ground for the love of God, seeking him alone, purely, and nothing else, not even his gifts.’ Conversation Two, 28th September 1666, see Lawrence, Brother, The Practice of the Presence of God, trans. Blaiklock, E. M. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996)Google Scholar, 21. This comes in a passage that seems to bear the mark of the Abbé's interpolations and it may be that the example was suggested by him, recalling Aquinas's discussion. Br. Lawrence was unlikely to have read the Summa and says that he did not find his way of life in books. In the essay ‘Good and Bad in Human Action’ cited above Anscombe discusses actions presumed to be ‘morally neutral’ and gives as an example ‘picking a dandelion flower as I go along’. Although she does not refer to it, she knew of Aquinas's discussion and probably had it in mind.

39 Op., cit., a 9.

40 Op., cit.

41 Op., cit.

42 One has, however, to recall that the evaluation is of this sort as pertaining to the human good, as contrasted with ones of efficiency or effectiveness relative to some purpose that might itself be at odds with human well-being. Thus Aquinas observes ‘In this way good is found even in things that are bad of themselves: thus a man is called a good robber, because he works in a way that is adapted to his end.’ ST. Ia IIae, q. 92.

43 ST. Ia IIae, q.1, a.7.

44 See Bradley, Denis, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas's Moral Science (Washington, DC.: CUA Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

45 The terminology of ‘dominant’ and ‘inclusive’ ends was introduced via discussions of corresponding issues in Aristotle by Hardie, W.F.R. see his ‘The Final Good in Aristotle's Ethics’ Philosophy 40 (1965), 277–295CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 See also Ia IIae, q. 18, a. 4.

47 ST. Ia, IIae, q. 18, a. 4. This taxonomy also overlaps with and can be reformulated in terms of the four Aristotelian causes (formal, material, efficient and final). One important issue, which I do not discuss, save incidentally, here, is the basis on which one should determine what belongs to the form of an act, what to its end and what to its circumstances. Suffice it to say that Aquinas would not regard this as either arbitrary or up to us to decide. For some discussion of this issue see Stephen Brock, Action and Conduct, ch. 2 ‘Agency as Efficacy’ and for the general framework of determinants Pilsner, The Specification of Human Actions in St Thomas Aquinas.

48 ST IIa. IIae, q.64, a7, response: ‘Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is outside the intention [praeter intentionem]. Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is outside the intention, since this is accidental.’ This, of course, is the place cited in the Summa as the origin of the doctrine of double effect.

49 In saying this it is not being assured that prior to, or in the course of acting (or even subsequent to it) one must entertain some thought to the effect that the intended end is desirable. This may simply be presupposed, rather as one who addresses a stranger presupposes certain things about them without necessarily giving thought to these beliefs. Even so, a criterion of behaviour being intentional action is that an agent could identify with it as expressing his or her favourable view of the end towards which it is directed.

50 O'Connor, D. J., Aquinas and Natural Law (London: Macmillan, 1967), 40–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 The fact that Anscombe accepted the latter point should give reason to doubt that her criticism of the idea of morality, and her urging us to drop the moral ‘ought’, was essentially the same as Williams’ critique and recommendation.