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Making Morality Intelligible1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2015
Abstract
The demands of morality ought to be intelligible. However they are not always readily intelligible. Thus it is easy to see why we need good sense and courage, and why we should seek to live at peace with our neighbours. But moral necessity is not always that transparent. Furthermore the intelligibility we seek is perhaps not always of this kind. This paper illustrates these difficulties by considering certain basic and unshakable convictions we share about homicide and sexuality, two topics we tend to think badly about. And it explores a significant similarity in the moral philosophies of Anscombe and Kant.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2015
Footnotes
1
A paper written for a conference on the moral philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe, Oxford, September 2013. References to Anscombe will be abbreviated as follows: CPP3 is for Collected Philosophical Papers, Vol.3, Blackwell, 1981, HLAE for Human Life, Action and Ethics, Imprint Academic, 2005, and FIHG is for Faith in a Hard Ground, Imprint Academic, 2008.
References
2 Elizabeth Anscombe certainly insisted on this, FIHG, 177–8. In particular she wanted to say that a moral teaching, even a specifically religious moral teaching, could not be a revealed mystery, like the Trinity. If you became a Christian, she said, you found that ‘the Christian life simply imposed these restrictions on you’, FIHG, 171. But all the same there had to be some sense to them all. ‘Reason demands that there be an account’ FIHG, 200. See also HLAE, 265. (My sentence ‘It is easier to see…’ a few lines further up the comes from CPP3, 83. Anscombe was thinking here about Catholic teaching in regard to contraception, but this kind of knowing and yet not-knowing is common.)
3 The question at issue was not in the least ‘academic’ as we know from Wittgenstein's family history. An argument relying on such an ‘if’ can also be found in Elisabeth Anscombe's own writings, for she suggested that if someone judged contraception to be permissible he would have also to accept as permissible all manner of sexual goings-on, FIHG, 172, 181, 183, 197, 201, 210–1.
4 The Human World (November 1972), 42.
5 Compare Lord Mansfield's well known remark: ‘Decide promptly, but never give your reasons. Your decisions may be right, but your reasons are sure to be wrong’. Outrageous if taken generally but good sense perhaps in context.
6 It is possible to think that a measure of wisdom is necessary even if not sufficient. Anscombe robustly asserted the necessity. ‘A fool can hardly be just or brave’, HLAE, 197. See also CPP3, 65.
7 Anscombe, CPP3, 29 and 39. See also her remark: ‘The notion of a right is very fundamental and philosophically very intractable…. But how to explain it? No one has succeeded in this.’ CPP3, 138. And Geach, The Virtues (Cambridge University Press, 1977), 120 Google Scholar,
8 Compare Geach's amusing parable of Socrates and the ingenuous youth, Logic Matters (Blackwell, 1972), 35 Google Scholar.
9 I am thinking of course of the story about the origins of justice in the Protagoras at 322b. In including Mill I rely on the account of the requirements of justice in Chapter 5 of Utilitarianism, initially conceived as a separate essay. This account has nothing particularly to do with ‘maximizing happiness’. Mill himself translated or paraphrased the Protagoras as a young man.
10 That Hobbes did not accuse man's nature, see Leviathan, Ch.13, and better, De Cive, Preface. That Hobbes does not believe cruelty possible, is from Leviathan, Ch. 6; For Kant's demand that all must live under the gaze of a supervisor, see ‘The Idea of a Universal History,’ Proposition 6. Kant, as Plato had done before him at Republic 359c, here mentions human egoism, and not at all of the ‘idle wheel’ variety. This reference to egoism in Plato and Kant is quite unnecessary. Altruism, and especially non-tuistic altruism, constantly prompts conflict and wronging. (A non-tuist altruist cares for others, but not necessarily for thee. This useful term was introduced by Wicksteed.)
11 This is a perfectly mundane ‘ought’, not an ‘ought’ in some supposed moral sense (CPP3, 29).
12 On this view of natural law see also the clear account in Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law (Clarendon Press, 1961 Google Scholar), Ch. IX, §2. Hart aims to disclose ‘the core of good sense in the doctrine of natural law’ (194), claims to have given a ‘simple version’ of it (195), and naturally invokes Hobbes and Hume (254). My sentence ‘We might well distrust…’ is a near-quote from Peter Geach, The Virtues, 144.
13 Leviathan, Ch.15, last paragraph. Anscombe would surely agree. But it is possible to misinterpret ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’. The entry Anscombe in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Audi, Robert, ed., Second Edition (Cambridge University Press, 1999))Google Scholar takes her to be saying that ‘ought-statements make sense only in the context of a moral theology that grounds morality in divine commands’. Not so – as several pages in that article attest (see e.g. CPP3, 38, 41).
14 In ‘Contraception and Natural Law’, New Blackfriars, June, 1965, Anscombe said that the notion ‘against the natural law’ was simply equivalent in extension to the notion ‘what is wrong’ (517). Hence there was no such thing as the natural law argument against X-ing, where this would be an argument purporting to distinguish this wrongful action from others. In her view the italicized phrase could only mean, quite uninformatively: the argument against X-ing to the effect that it is wrong! (518, her exclamation mark). See also FIHG, 178–9. She wished in particular to counter the idea that one could object to X-ing by saying that X-ing was somehow unnatural. Some unnatural actions (standing on one's head, let us say) are consonant with the natural law, some perfectly natural actions (picking a pocket, for example) are opposed to it.
15 This was an essay much admired by Foot, Philippa, Natural Goodness (Clarendon Press, 2001), 15 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 45.
16 Dialectics and Humanism (1979), 47.
17 Not Paul, But Jesus, Vol. 3, Chapter 4, ‘Evils produced by the pleasures of the bed in ordinary mode – Remedies to them interdicted by Asceticism’, §2, www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/publications/npbj/npbj. Bentham views on such matters, as one may read on a Bentham-Project webpage, ‘were many decades ahead of their time’. It is hard to think of Bentham and Nietzsche in the compass of a single sentence. But Bentham frees us from certain inhibitions and Nietzsche from others. Taken together, true liberty is to be found.
18 I say ‘our’. But of course it has by no means been the universal conviction of mankind. Rather the reverse is true; Nuer would routinely kill Dinka, etc. And I imagine we would not be able to prove to the satisfaction of a patient Nuer philosopher that we are in the right. (Compare the interesting passage about Wittgenstein and witchcraft, FIHG, 58.) Incidentally, the somewhat dodgy claim that with the invention of the aeroplane and the telephone ‘we are all one community now’ is just be a distraction. It would be unconscionable to send those chocolates even if we were not ‘one community’.
19 The quotation attributed to Bentham by Peter Singer comes, via Westermark, from a English translation of a translation into French by Etienne Dumont. Dumont attempted both in this work and elsewhere to improve both the style and content of the original. (See the entry for Dumont in DNB.) Dumont also has his Bentham say at this place that infanticide ought to be punished by branding the crime with disgrace, seeing that ‘it is not possible to fortify too strongly the sentiments of respect for humanity’. Theory of Legislation (Kegan Paul, 1911), 264–5Google Scholar. This latter remark is not to my knowledge quoted by Peter Singer.
20 In my days as a teacher a certain solution to the controversy over abortion was popular. All one had to do was to state why it would be bad to kill one's aunt, let us say – not much difficulty there, surely – and then ask oneself whether the same considerations would apply when it came to the killing of one's unborn child. Job done, outcome doubtless satisfactory.
21 Dawkins, Richard, Unweaving the Rainbow (Allen Lane, 1998), 1 Google Scholar.
22 There is a political dimension to this last. According to the Beijing Workers' Daily, ‘love between man and woman … consumes energy and wastes time. On the other hand, love of the party and of the chairman, Mao Tse-tung, takes no time at all and is in itself a powerful tonic.’ (Culled, with gratitude, from Honoré, Tony, Sex Law (Duckworth, 1978), 3 Google Scholar).
23 I owe the attractive phraseology in this sentence to a piece in The Guardian by Margaret Corvid, July 31st, 2014. Ms Corvid describes herself as a kinkster.
24 Williams, Bernard, Morality (Cambridge University Press, 1972), 40 Google Scholar, eight lines, appearing in parentheses; Singer, Peter, Practical Ethics, 1st edn., (Cambridge University Press, 1979), 2 Google Scholar. For the remark about sexual morality being too unimportant, see 3rd edn., 2011, 2. Sex is not indexed in Williams's Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, though of course sexism is. The description ‘of a different feather’ finds its most evident support in Williams's essay ‘The Human Prejudice,’ in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.
25 Add a reference to love and we have the Revised Standard (Christian) Version.
26 This is an idea whose time has come. Within hours of my writing this passage there appeared a piece in The Telegraph sub-headed: ‘Judge in Australia says incest may no longer be a taboo and the only reason why it is criminal is potential birth abnormalities, which can be solved by abortion’, 9th July 2014.
27 Clinical Psychiatry, 2nd ed., (Cassell, 1960)Google Scholar, ‘Judgment and self-control are impaired [as a result of dementia], so that sexual assaults on young children or exhibitionism may bring formerly blameless characters to the attention of the police’, 422. The quoted characterization of the textbook comes from the obituary of Sir Martin Roth in The Independent, 2006.
28 Sex Law (Duckworth, 1978). See also fn. 43 below.
29 A. Kosnik et al, eds, (London: Search Press), 1977. The ‘new directions’ of the title point us towards freedom. Celibates in particular do well on occasion to ‘obtain reasonable relief from excessive sexual tension’, 227. Several clerical readers appear to have said Amen to that.
30 Foot, Paul, Who Framed Colin Wallace? (Macmillan, 1989), 132 Google Scholar. William McGrath was eventually sentenced to four years in 1981. (The relevant chapter, ‘Kincora’, can be found at http://ianpace.wordpress.com/tag/paul-foot/). I do not want to make fun of Ian Paisley. Christians have long recognized that detraction – the wanton spreading of derogatory truth – is a failing, often a serious failing.
31 Prominent feminist Kate Millett claimed in an interview in 1980 that children had an ‘essential’ right ‘to express themselves sexually, probably primarily with each other but with adults as well’. Admittedly the relationship should not be ‘exploitative’, an ever present danger to children in a society like ours seeing that ‘their personhood is not acknowledged’ (Interview by Blasius, Mark, reprinted in The Age Taboo, Tsang, Daniel, ed. (Gay Men's Press, 1981), 80 Google Scholar). My use of ‘molestation’ would itself have come under scrutiny. ‘“Child molestation” is really a code word for the fears of straight men and women that their children might escape the prisons built for them’. Tom Reeves, ‘Loving Boys’ 1978, also reprinted in The Age Taboo, 28.
32 For some background, see ‘Investigation launched over German Green party's support for paedophiles in the 1980s’, The Independent, 18th May, 2013. See also ‘Calls for legal child sex rebound on luminaries of May 68’, Jon Henley, The Guardian, 24th Feb. 2001.
33 Help rather than hatred is called for. In the USA, the UK and Ireland there is a confidential helpline for those troubled by their inclinations or behaviour, called ‘Stop It Now’. Callers are asked not to supply details which could identify them. The organizers thus evade the inevitable complaint of ‘cover up’ by choosing voluntary ignorance. I should perhaps say that I am not concerned in these pages with human attachment as such between those sexually attracted. This in itself is something amiable and commonplace, though it often of course calls for self-control. Our new word ‘relationship’ blurs necessary distinctions.
34 To be sure, something might independently be said about the lack of consent. I consider this possibility in Section 10 below.
35 The first list comes from the website of the Labour MP Tom Watson who has long manifested an admirable concern with this issue. The second, rather more academic, list comes from Caffaro, John V., Sibling Abuse Trauma, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2014), 80 Google Scholar. Psychiatrists who find it difficult to cope with all these variations may sometimes have recourse to a catch-all diagnosis of DESNOS, ‘disorders of extreme stress not otherwise specified’.
36 I owe this apt description of our times to Frances Wilson, ‘How sexual perversion became the new norm’, New Statesman, December 19th, 2013.
37 ‘The Underwear Rule,’ a guide for parents, specifically for those with children aged 5–11, www.nspcc.org.uk This is a useful unacademic source.
38 I quote from an interview with Mr McFadyen on Channel 4 News, 8th July, 2014.
39 It is very misleading to refer to sexual abuse as a violent crime. It is done for effect – a resort to red ink. The Centre for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy group in New York who appear to have the ear of the United Nations, would seem to be a serial red-ink offender, at least to judge by various documents they have put out about sexual abuse on the part of Catholic clergy.
40 ‘More than one in three cases of sexual assault against children are committed by other minors… A 2002 study by the US Department of Health and Human Services found that at least 2.3 percent of children have been sexually victimized by a sibling. By comparison, 0.12 percent are sexually abused by an adult family member’. John V. Caffaro, ‘Sibling Sexual Assault is Epidemic’, Washington Post, November 6th, 2014.
41 For some discussion and quoted opinion, see Clancy, Susan, The Trauma Myth (Basic Books, 2009), 56–74 Google Scholar. I should remark that the catchy title of her perfectly serious study was something wished on her by her publishers.
42 If someone argues, against a certain expectation, that the evil of a practice cannot be accounted for in a certain way he will be taken, even perhaps by philosophers, to be defending the practice in question and harsh words will be said.
43 Jenkins, Philip, Moral Panic (Yale University Press, 1998)Google Scholar, Chapter 5, significantly entitled ‘The Liberal Era,’ describes the unbothered attitude of psychiatrists in the mid-twentieth century. Jenkins's book, subtitled ‘Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America’, is an exhaustively researched chronicle of unreason. A relaxed attitude was also in evidence in the UK. The National Council for Civil Liberties said in a submission to The Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1976: ‘Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage ... the real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of paedophilia result in lasting damage’ (quoted by Damian Thomson, Telegraph, October 19th, 2012). Tony Honoré wrote in 1978, ‘Whether and to what extent … sexual contacts by older people … harm young children is debated. Often, it is said, they are soon forgotten unless the child's parents or other adults attach a great deal of importance to them’ (Sex Law, 177. Three references). Bishop John Robinson, the Anglican author of the much discussed Honest to God, wrote briefly about ‘the effect of sexual experience on children’ in his 1972 Beckly lecture to the Methodist Conference: ‘The Place of Law in the Field of Sex’. He suggested that to introduce the scrutinies and intrusions of the law ‘might do more harm than good’. Some research has apparently shown that ‘the subsequent parental horror, police investigation, etc’ had been ‘significantly more disturbing than the offence’.
44 We should learn from the troubles psychiatrists have had with the notion, first introduced in the 1970s, of post-traumatic stress disorder. For a vivid summary see Gerald M. Rosen, Robert L. Spitzer and Paul R. McHugh, ‘Problems with the post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis and its future in DSM-V’, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2008. (Available on the web.) And we might usefully remember how usual it once was to attribute lasting psychological damage not to molestation in early years but to maternal deprivation and how difficult it had eventually been to establish such a thing in the face of critical scrutiny. See the well-known critique of the deprivation thesis mounted by Wooton, Barbara in her Social Science and Social Pathology (Allen and Unwin, 1959 Google Scholar), Chapter 4.
45 Those wishing to consult a Victorian authority on the harmfulness of self-abuse might turn to William Acton, The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs, 1875, by then in its sixth edition, available on the web.
46 On the effects of exposure to pornography see The Williams Report (1979), largely written up by its chairman, Bernard Williams. The committee noted (6.16) that the United States Commission on Obscenity and Pornography had reached a skeptical conclusion: that ‘empirical research has found no evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behaviour among youth or adults’ (quoted from the US report). The Williams committee, examining this American report in the light of hostile reactions to it, itself concluded: ‘that there does not appear to be any strong evidence that exposure to sexually explicit materials triggers off anti-social sexual behaviour’. The legal historian A. W. B. Simpson notes that he and the other members of the committee had to see a huge amount of ‘material’, and reassuringly suggests that none of them were ‘depraved or corrupted’ by it ( Pornography and Politics (Pergamon Press, 1983), 28 Google Scholar). These earlier investigators into the effects of pornography, it might be said, cannot have envisioned the kind and the quantity of contemporary porn that is now so easy for children to find. However there has been further research. See for example the Ofcom report ‘Sexually Explicit Material and Video On Demand Services’ of August, 2011, available online, which comments on the difficulty researchers still have in uncovering evidence of harm caused to children.
47 The paper that caused the upset is Bruce Rind et al. ‘A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child abuse among college samples’, Psychological Bulletin, 1998. The follow-up study I mentioned which largely confirmed Rind findings is Heather Ulrich et al, ‘A replication of the meta-analytic examination of child sexual abuse by Rind, Tromovitch and Bauserman’, The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 2005–6. Both articles are easy to find on the web, even, with a little encouragement, by challenged US Congressmen.
48 Wilson, G. and Cox, D., The Child Lovers: A Study of Paedophiles in Society (Peter Owen, 1983), 129 Google Scholar: ‘Numerous empirical attempts to demonstrate that lasting psychological harm is done to a child through sexual contact with adults … have generally failed to adduce any such evidence’ (three references). The authors here exclude ‘physical assault against an unwilling child (tantamount to rape)’. This research might perhaps be considered out of date. But Professor Wilson said much the same recently on Channel 4 News, 11th July, 2014.
49 Pedophiles and Priests (Oxford University Press, 1996), 15 Google Scholar, see also 85–8.
50 ‘Experience shows that “traumatologists” can confuse an open airing of issues with the abandonment of victims’. Gerald M. Rosen and Robert J. Spitzer, ‘VA Disability Policies and Posttraumatic Morbidity’, Am. J. of Public Health, May 2008.
51 See ‘The Myth of the Harmless Wrong’, New York Times, 30 January, 2015, and the corresponding article, ‘The Myth of Harmless Wrongs in Moral Cognition’, Gray, Kurt, Schein, Chelsea, and Ward, Adrian, Journal of Experimental Psychology, General. 2014, Vol. 143, No 4, 1600–1615 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. The message is simple: people who think that a kind of action is wrong pretty well automatically conclude that it is harmful, succumbing (I assume) to the myth that there is no such thing as a harmless wrong. A curious case of earnest research in pursuit of the obvious.
52 Purity and Danger (Routledge, 1966), 166 Google Scholar.
53 ‘Numerous studies investigating clinical judgment have demonstrated that when clinicians are give identical sets of information, experienced clinicians are no more accurate than less experienced clinicians’. Howard Garb and Patricia Boyle, in Lilienfeld, Scott et al. , Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology (Guilford Press, 2003), 18 Google Scholar, seven references.
54 We should distinguish harm from the mere presence, or the harbouring of, a lingering grievance – based on the exceedingly common thought that one has not ‘had justice’ until the abuser (and perhaps others, the incompetent local police perhaps) have been punished. This is a primitive but unfortunate thought, which in addition tends to darken our understanding of the very concept of justice.
55 Susan Clancy argues for example that the harm done depends, or largely depends, on the memory of what was done. (The polarization seen among the 60 ‘reviewers’ of her book on Amazon.com is instructive.)
56 This is as reported in Radio Times, 20th March, 2013. The final ellipsis clearly represents a shrug rather than a cut.. Significantly however, when this material was then reprinted in the Independent, their article was headed (italics added) ‘Alan Bennett reveals he was “interfered with” as a child, but he plays down the trauma’. Trauma? What trauma? The scientific-sounding word ‘trauma’, which seems to exert a certain fascination, seem to straddle in meaning an unpleasant experience and actual damage and is popular no doubt for that very reason. Compare the account given by Richard Dawkins's of being fondled by his Latin master as a nine year old. ‘As soon as I could wriggle off his knee, I ran to tell my friends and we had a good laugh’. Anyone looking for an example of really damaging child abuse, Dawkins claims, must consider the misfortune of being taught Catholic doctrines. Some children never recover from it. Space unfortunately does not allow me to reproduce the whole of this article in this footnote. I can only direct you to ‘Religion's Real Child Abuse’ (Richard Dawkins Foundation web site).
57 Evans-Pritchard, Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer (Clarendon Press, 1951), 56 Google Scholar. I should mention here, as it might be thought to tell against me, that it was the combined opinion of eminent psychiatrists Mayer-Gross, Slater and Roth that children should not be allowed to witness their parents ‘connubialities’, op. cit. p.557. They did not hazard a reason.
58 The excitement over ‘the recovering of memories’ well serves to illustrate the irrational thought which seems so often to surround this topic. See Frederick Crews, ‘The Trauma Trap’, NYRB, March 11th 2004, available on the web and indispensible.
59 ‘In an FBI affidavit given before he killed himself in March, Vahey claimed “he never hurt any of the boys” as “they did not know what happened to them; they were completely asleep.”’ (Telegraph, 31st July. 2014.)
60 The mere raising of a doubt about the harmfulness of child sexual abuse in the cases mentioned might seem to deprive us of a useful stick with which to beat the Catholic Church, and to rob us of an effective way of impoverishing it by insisting on compensation for the harm done. As it happens clerical abuse has not on the whole involved the molestation of the very young; it has tended to involve post-pubescent children. Still, the question of harm is important in these cases too. If the harm done happens often to be somewhat notional, people should not be as shocked by stories of clerical ‘cover up’ as it has become conventional to be. If an academic colleague of mine had become entangled in abusing in such circumstances, and had called on me in distress and shame at what he had done, would I have engaged in ‘cover up’? I rather hope so. And this would not have been to make light of his action. ‘There is a Russian saying, “For every sin of another which we conceal, three of our own are forgiven.”’ ( Dorothy Day, The Duty of Delight, Marquette University Press, 2008, 174Google Scholar).
61 The Virtues, 8.
62 The Guardian, 20th Oct. 2013.
63 In ‘What's Wrong with Adult-Child Sex?’, Journal of Social Philosophy, 2002, the well-regarded philosopher Claudia Card explores the objection we might make to sexual activity with a child, however considerate of its feelings the procedures might be. It might do the child ‘a disservice’ she explains. The child could be quite overcome with the delight of it all and might ‘bond’ with the all-too playful adult concerned. Eventually of course such a bond will need to be broken as the child grows up and it can be difficult for it to make the break. Unusually among philosophers, Professor Card can speak from personal experience of the child's point of view. She tells us that she herself was interfered with as a child.
64 Attempted murder is harmless save per accidens. And it is wrong to do what you think it is wrong to do, even when your belief is mistaken and the action is beneficial. But these are special cases, cases of secondary wrongfulness so to speak, showing evil in the will.
65 Reprinted in his collection Offences and Defences (Clarendon Press, 2007 Google Scholar). The essay was written in collaboration with Stephen Shute.
66 The Trauma Myth, 185–6. Elizabeth Wilson also raises a doubt about the sufficiency of the harm objection in relation to child abuse in her important article ‘Suing for Lost Childhood’, UCLA Women's Law Journal, 2003, esp. 204–210 (on the web). She does not suggest that there is never any harm done.
67 Article 12, UN Convention of the Rights of the Child in Child-Friendly Language. UNICEF website.
68 Consider Richard Farson's ‘Child's Bill of Rights’. It has acquired a certain status among equalizing liberationists. Item 7 of his Bill proclaims a ‘The Right to Sexual Freedom’: ‘Children should have the right to conduct their sexual lives with no more restriction than adults.’ ( Farson, Richard, ‘Birthrights’, reprinted in The Children's Rights Movement, Overcoming the Oppression of Young People, Beatrice, and Gross, Ronald, eds. (Anchor Press, 1977), 327 Google Scholar.)
69 ‘When Luther came to translate the salutation of the Angel to Mary, Ave gratia plena, he used a popular phrase from the marketplace, equivalent in English to something like “Mary you little dear”.’ Wittgenstein as recalled by Drury, , ‘Conversations with Wittgenstein’, Rhees, R., ed., Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections (Blackwell, 1981), 157–8Google Scholar, tense changed.
70 The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, Vol. 3, Harm to Self (Oxford University Press, 1986), 331 Google Scholar.
71 Think again of the case of ‘organ donation’ by a baby. A new-born baby's kidney can apparently be very useful. And here the language of giving is freely used. ‘It is very rare for babies to donate organs in this country.’ ‘This child will have done something very generous.’ A fiction of consent is here regarded as perfectly acceptable. How can this be? (The quoted remarks come from a BBC Radio Four programme, ‘Inside the Ethics Committee’, 24th July, 2014.)
72 Feinberg, to return to his discussion, talks of ‘pre-rational’ judgment (332), but does not elaborate or index the term. An unexpected and transitory congruence of mind perhaps.
73 Nussbaum, Martha, Hiding from Humanity (Princeton University Press, 2004), 155Google Scholar. These harmed relatives and friends are regarded here as the owners of the bodies affected, and if there are none of them extant, the state is deemed the owner: corpses are then like respected public buildings, items ‘that we have agreed as a society to protect’ (155). Yet this is not by any means the whole account, as evidenced by her use of ‘primarily’. There is another reason for prohibiting sexual interference, which turns on a failure to obtain consent (156). True enough, a woman might have given consent to be treated in this way after her death. But Nussbaum, I suspect, would not want to rely on that. Then was then and now is now. Intercourse even within marriage must surely be consented-to each time: there can be no simple-minded relying on the marriage vows. And the dead manifestly lack any opportunity to change their minds. (Nussbaum does not consider the possibility that necrophilia might be defended. For some people might be hated by their loved ones, who might indeed be glad to sell ‘their’ body to necrophiliacs. Surely, we might say, people may do what they like with their own bodies.)
74 First mentioned by Anscombe in ‘Authority in Morals’ (CPP3, 50, unindexed).
75 I do not discuss the legal aspects of what is judged degrading, let is say the merits of the Buggery Act of 1533, surely Thomas Cromwell's most significant contribution to English law.
76 Mention of Christianity in connection with ‘the giving up of the good for the better ‘can mislead. The value of virginity was not something with an exclusively Christian or Biblical root, Anscombe said. Even the Greeks were aware of it (FIHG, 210).
77 The phrase comes from Ruskin, , Modern Painters, Vol. II (George Allen, 1906), 148 Google Scholar. Ruskin may not have had sexual delight in mind. He appears to have not been very capable of it. Deuteronomy, so often castigated, is attractively humane. ‘When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up the wife which he hath taken’. Compare the stiff opinion of Cicero that ‘sensual pleasure is quite unworthy of the dignity of man,’ (De Officiis, I, 30).
78 In my exposition I talk of usefulness. Anscombe's choice of the adjective ‘utilitarian’ in this connection is unfortunate. As individuals we all need the virtue of courage. Collectively, we need people to pay their bills without undue delay. The matter in either case is transparent. But this reference to need has nothing particularly to do with maximizing-the-good, or with ‘satisficing’ in this regard, or with thoughts of an impartial concern for the welfare of every sentient being.
79 Adultery, perhaps surprisingly, would seem to be a case in point. The avoidance of adultery is mentioned by Anscombe alongside our duty not to steal or ‘to keep a rule of the road where there is traffic’(HLAE, 266). Adultery as such, even if always wrong, would not, we may suppose, be hateful in the way lasciviousness is so often recognized to be (FIHG, 188) – as recognized for instance by G. E. Moore, alongside cruelty, Principia Ethica, 209–10.
80 I am not sure how this comes about. It looks as if we first recognize our own mystical value and hence assume that others have it too. However I know of nowhere where Anscombe says such a thing.
81 A man is kind of animal, let us say a rational animal. Aquinas (and indeed Augustine) taught that a man's soul is not him. See the passages discussed in Kenny, Anthony, Aquinas on Mind (Routledge), 1993, 136–9Google Scholar.
82 When Miroslav Bulesic , murdered at the age of 27, was beatified, Cardinal Angelo Amato is said to have said that although every life is precious beyond price, Fr Miroslav's life, as a good man, was ‘twice as priceless’. Catholic Herald, 1st October 2013. That rather illustrates the difficulty we are in.
83 Several pages of Anscombe's book Intention take up the question: what can intelligibly be said to be wanted (Blackwell , 2nd ed., 1963, 67–72). An issue of this kind surely arises here.
84 Could the fact that someone merely clever might also be able to see without connaturality what is seen by the honest person connaturally (HLAE, 60) provide such a test? See also HLAE, 66 (the end of the article).
85 Sometimes in Anscombe's writing, there is no suggestion of deeming. The existence of a living man, his being a man rather than an ex-man, is said to have value, where this is offered to us as a truth, there before us to be acknowledged. And significantly one would have to say the same about a tree or a slug, and perhaps about sticks and stones. So long as they exist they have the good of existence (FIHG, 140, See also Summa Theologica, I, Q20, A2). It is possible that this value would count too as mystical. But if so that would seem quite to undo the distinctiveness of mystical value. Characteristically, the destruction of items of this value would be of little account.
86 Four times in her article ‘The Dignity of the Human Being’ (HLAE). And in another article in the same volume we have ‘… has a connatural knowledge of the worth of a human being, of the dignity of human nature’ (HLAE, 63). That comma rather suggests ‘… or in other words’.
87 ‘Alaska and Florida consider bans on bestiality’ (AP, 21st March 2009).
88 ‘Heavy Petting,’ Nerve, March 12th, 2001.
89 ‘The Truth About the Porn Industry’, The Guardian, 2nd July, 2010. The remark is attributed to Gail Dines. The stress on women in particular must come from a fear of appearing ‘conservative’: as if it were fine to be disgusting so long as one was not discriminating. The Yale Philosophy Department's introductory web-page tells us: ‘The Department takes concerns about sexual misconduct and other forms of discrimination very seriously’ (italics added). One must presume that this was thoughtfully written, and endorsed by a number of philosophers.
90 Ronald Dworkin, in an interesting late section of Life's Dominion headed ‘Dignity’ (Harper-Collins, 1993) claimed that to be treated with indignity was to be harmed in a special and important way, and that to treat oneself with indignity was a corresponding sort of self-harm (235). This last could properly be called ‘self-betrayal’ (237) and one could be quite unconscious of it (235). He clearly thinks this kind of harm to be quite independent of distressing symptoms or subsequent handicaps. We need not quarrel with this extension of the notion of harm. It might even be called ‘mystical harm’. Our discussion hitherto has concerned the unextended notion.
91 …though not impossible. The Manicheans took this view (FIHG, 174).
92 M. O'C. Drury, in R. Rhees, ed. Ludwig Wittgenstein. 162.
93 Talk of death with dignity is especially unfortunate and confusing. I have sought to explain why in ‘Death with Dignity’, Hastings Centre Review, 1997.
94 ‘…with other kinds of bad conduct’. This talk of murder and molestation should not lead us to think that violation is essentially concerned with respect for the body. ‘If a state makes it illegal to teach some men to read, that is also an offence to human dignity’ (HLAE, 70). Anscombe makes interesting reference to mystical value in her remarks on the recognition afforded by being allowed a vote, even when in practice one's vote is never in the majority (CPP3, 124–5. Mary Geach drew my attention to this passage). This does seem to involve a recognition of one's dignity. Anscombe here significantly corrects herself, preferring to say on second thoughts that such recognition is ‘a value’ rather than saying this it is ‘valuable’. I should add that Anscombe did not believe democracy to be the sole legitimate form of government (CPP3, 123).
95 If dignity were foundational, rather than something invoked by belief-in-search-of-understanding, we might have to consider the possible dignity of other organisms. Think of the frivolous names people tend to choose for their pets – most disrespectful to them. Or think of flea circuses – a flea is surely an end in itself. There is a rich field of enquiry here. The perceptive Martha Nussbaum, always in tune with the times, urges us to recognize ‘a wide range of types of animal dignity’ (Frontiers of Justice, Harvard University Press, 2006, 327). As for plants, it is surely an offence to the dignity of a box tree to have it clipped into the shape of Mickey Mouse.
96 And towards one and the same individual in different ways. Toscanini: ‘When I think of Richard Strauss the musician I take my hat off. When I think of Richard Strauss the man I put it on again’.
97 See Anscombe’s strictures against making someone a ‘vile spectacle’, HLAE, 69–70. And compare Kant’s comments that ‘there can be disgraceful punishments that dishonour humanity itself’ such as quartering and mutilation, and that punishment must ‘be freed from any mistreatment that could make the humanity in the person suffering it into something abominable’. The Metaphysics of Morals, Gregor, Mary, trans. (Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, 255 and 142.
98 The phrase made famous in 1920 by the eminently respectable academics Binding and Hoche.
99 ‘For the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century, all members of society have dignity, but their dignity consists in their playing a role appropriate to their station within a hierarchical social order…’, Rosen, Michael, Dignity (Harvard University Press, 2012), 49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. If this means that the Church did not have (or did not yet have) the basic conception of equal human dignity we find described in Anscombe's FIHG I can only say that his quotations hardly bear this out. That said, there are many good things in Rosen's book.
100 Rawls could only achieve a modest degree of inclusion by stipulating that children are to be ‘counted in’. A Theory of Justice, §77, ‘The basis of equality’. Avoiding embarrassment by adding emergency ad-hoc extensions to one's explanatory account weakens any theory.
101 Child sexual abuse ‘is the robbing of something uniquely precious – the child's freshly minted, untarnished outlook on the world’. This represents ‘perhaps the most unforgivable violation of all – next to the taking of a life’. So say Silverman, Jon and Wilson, David in their Innocence Betrayed (Polity Press, 2002), 48 Google Scholar. I suggest that this should read ‘… is the removal of the child's illusory outlook on the tarnished world, which is no violation at all but rather a blessing.’
102 Much of Steven Pinker's article ‘The Stupidity of Dignity’ (The New Republic, May 2008, available on the web) takes dignity, unstupidly considered, to be a matter of how one appears to others. ‘Dignity’, he says ‘is skin deep’. He cites two purported examples of dignity-failure, ‘licking an ice cream cone in public’ (a suggestion he derides), and ‘getting out of a small car’ (a suggestion which he then, rather oddly, adopts).
103 Nussbaum, Hiding From Humanity, 17. In Frontiers of Justice she is tempted to be bolder: ‘There seems no respectable way to deny the equal dignity of creatures across species’, she says, finding the idea ‘attractive’, 383–4. Perhaps she draws the line at actually constructing this myth.
104 Or perhaps I should say, a useless category unless interpreted in terms of dignity. ‘Merely disposing of’ might be the significant phrase. See HLEA, 68.
105 That moral considerations are the same for all rational beings is listed no. 6 in Anscombe's syllabus of errors, ‘Twenty Opinions Common among Anglo-American Philosophers’ (FIHG, 67).
106 The Metaphysics of Morals, 98. See also 218, Kant's passing remark on suicide during pregnancy.
107 ‘If this really is a matter of respecting the free will of the one who dies’. In ‘Murder and the Morality of Euthanasia’ Elizabeth Anscombe expresses a doubt about this (HLAE, 269). For people would not, in her view, go along with someone's choice to die if they did not independently think that his life had lost its worth and was better ended, so that the killing would not be respectful of human dignity after all. Killing as a vet might kill would be the real objective. But things need not be like this. Someone might administer a lethal injection while vehemently disagreeing with the patient's articulate judgment that his life is worthless, respecting the patient's autonomy as if the patient had refused life saving treatment for this reason. And in any case there is always the possibility that people who perceptively value their life might ask for death for altruistic reasons.