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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
In moral as in other branches of philosophy good examples are indispensable: examples, that is, which bring out the real force of the ways in which we speak and in which language is not ‘ on holiday’. Peter Winch, ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgments.’
1 I am indebted to Oswald Hanfling, David Cockburn, Olli Lagerspetz and Ilham Dilman for their comments on this argument, and to the Philosophical Society of Swansea University College for a helpful discussion.
2 The analogy between unquestionable certainties and instances of evil should not be made to bear too much weight. Moore's certainties are very queer cases, falling outside the grammar of ‘ certain’ as we ordinarily use it: Wittgenstein made that abundantly clear in On Certainty. But evil deeds and evil beings are not in that way queer: they surely exist and as surely fall within the moral province.
3 One may argue that as gross offences become more common, our attitude toward them changes, and terrible deeds and their perpetrators evoke reactions once inappropriate to them. Thus, in times of internecine warfare (e.g. as recently seen in Bosnia) horrific actions may become commonplace, and people's sensibilities may be dulled. I do not deny the possibility of such a change; however it doesn't affect my argument.
4 Holland explains that neither he nor Gaita arrived at their examples through any process such as I describe; I do not claim that they did. My account of why one might want to employ such examples is not central to my objection to them or germane to their implications.
5 Against Empiricism (Totawa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble, 1980), 117Google Scholar
6 Good and Evil (London: Macmillan, 1991), 92, 94. Commenting on the film Schindler's List Jason Epstein says that ‘a dramatic representation of Hitler's crime should leave us shaken and humiliated on behalf of our species, for the Holocaust raises the most serious questions about our collective sanity,’ The New York Review of Books, April 21, 1994, 65.Google Scholar
7 Good and Evil, 94.Google Scholar
8 From Fantasy to Faith (N.Y.: St Martins, 1991), 193Google Scholar
9 Holland has protested in correspondence that he knew many like Iago in the military; I have nothing other than my understanding of Shakespeare's play and my experience with people to contradict him. Another and more striking example of destructiveness is Claggart in Melville's ‘Billy Budd,’ whom Peter Winch describes as ‘satanic’ in contrast to the ‘angelic’ Billy; ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgments,’ in Ethics and Action (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), 155. But that metaphysical contrast is precisely what Melville set out to create, and the characters are arguably less real, more symbolic as a consequence. This fits well with my argument.Google Scholar
10 Gary Wills, writing of Dorothy Day, the social reformer in The New York Review of Books, April 21, 1994, 36. Wills also quotes William James, who said of such figures that 'they often seem in the midst of the world's affairs to be preposterous'.Google Scholar
11 I discuss such ‘dead certainties’ and their implications in Chapter 7 of Paradoxes of KnowledgeGoogle Scholar
12 A comic discussion of human immorality is given in Mark Twain, (‘How I Told My First Lie’).
13 The Human Condition, (University of Chicago Press, 1958), 241Google Scholar
14 Gaita, perceiving this sea change, asks about ‘the modal implications of the judgment that Hitler did evil’. He answers that ‘they might find expression in the realization that he had to be stopped, and if they do, then they will also find expression in the realization that he could not be stopped as though he were not a human being... He (morally) cannot be shot in the spirit of ridding the world of vermin,’ Good and Evil, 95. Thus Gaita recognizes both the temptation to de-humanize Hitler and the dangers of doing so both of which agree with my characterization of the grammar of evil.
15 Granta, 37 (Fall 1991)Google Scholar
16 Such a sea change also occurs when one understands the childhood abuse suffered by the self-centred and taunting Nastasya, in Dostoyevsky's The Idiot.
17 Good and Evil, 206Google Scholar
18 In a sense I am objecting to treating goodness and badness in their ordinary applications as absolutes. But my objection has nothing to do with whether these are divorced from consequences, which is what prompts both Holland and Gaita to call good and evil absolutes.
19 Wittgenstein discusses the various ways situations are interpreted in Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, I, (Blackwell: Oxford, 1982), 910–912.Google Scholar
20 In ‘Sheer Wickedness,’ an unpublished paper, Joel Feinberg once argued that as wickedness becomes more extreme it progressively loses its ability to exemplify moral badness. That observation seems right when understood within the framework I propose.
21 ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgments, in Ethics and Action, Routledge: London, 1972; 155.Google Scholar
22 I'm indebted to both Oswald Hanfling and David Cockburn for their remarks on this point.
23 The Sovereignty of Good (N.Y.: Shocken, 1971) 17–18.Google Scholar
24 Loc. cit.
25 An excellent example of persuading as ‘getting another to see’ is to be found in Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, in Archer's attempt to dissuade Irene from seeking a divorce. He succeeds in getting her to see such a divorce, not as a personal matter, but as inimical to a whole estimable way of life–a view which ironically Archer himself later comes to reject.