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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
The conscientious are morally conflicted when their moral dilemmas or incommensurabilities, real or apparent, have not been resolved. But such doublemindedness need not lead to ethical disintegration or moral insensitivity. For one may develop the moral virtue of doublemindedness, the settled power to deliberate and act well while morally conflicted. Such action will be accompanied by both moral loss (perhaps ‘dirty hands’) and ethical gain (salubrious agental stability). In explaining the virtue's moral psychology I show, among other things, its consistency with wholeheartedness and the unity of the virtues. To broaden its claim to recognition, I show the virtue's consistency with diverse models of practical reason. In conclusion, Michael Walzer's interpretation of Hamlet's attitude toward Gertrude exemplifies this virtue in a fragmentary but nonetheless praiseworthy form.
1 Aquinas, Thomas, On Law, Morality, and Politics (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2002), 2nd ed., Regan, Richard J. trans., 166 (ST II-II, Q. 40, A. 1)Google Scholar. Aquinas is quoting Augustine. Kant, Immanuel, ‘Perpetual Peace’, in Political Writings (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 2nd ed.), Nisbet, H.B., trans., Reiss, Hans, ed., 96Google Scholar.
2 Williams, Bernard, ‘Conflicts of Liberty and Equality’, in Williams, B., In The Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 126Google Scholar.
3 Carr, David, ‘Virtue, Mixed Emotions and Moral Ambivalence’, Philosophy 84:327 (January 2009), 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Carr does not say, nor should he, that single-mindedness as such is vicious.
4 Ibid., 44.
5 Ibid.
6 MacIntyre, Alisdaire, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 208Google Scholar; Nussbaum, Martha, ‘Flawed Crystals: James's The Golden Bowl and Literature as Moral Philosophy’, in Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 137Google Scholar.
7 Gowans, Christopher W., Innocence Lost: An Examination of Inescapable Moral Wrongdoing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 97Google Scholar. DM's markers 1–3 are obviously present.
8 To simplify discussion I will refer only to these two forms of deterioration. Nothing about DM requires restriction to these two, although they do seem to me to be primary.
9 Carr, op. cit., 46.
10 It is not a problem for my existential claim for DM that Carr's context for this conclusion does not include the continent.
11 Frankfurt, Harry G., ‘The Faintest Passion’, in Necessity, Volition, and Love (Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1999), 104Google Scholar.
12 Ibid., 100.
13 NE I.13.1102b. I cite Martin Ostwold's translation, Nichomachean Ethics (Englewood Cliffs: Library of Liberal Arts, 1962), 31Google Scholar.
14 Frankfurt, op. cit.
15 Ibid., 103.
16 McDowell, John, ‘Virtue and Reason’, in Virtue Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), Crisp, Roger and Slote, Michael, eds., 162Google Scholar.
17 Ibid., 156.
18 Ibid., 157.
19 Ibid., 144.
20 Ibid., 144n6 and 161. Here I avoid certain issues that, while important in their own right, would unduly complicate my exposition. I made a similar but simpler assumption at n8. Thus, I now refer to good persons rather than more narrowly to McDowell's fully virtuous persons so as to include the firmly continent. As McDowell's emphasis on ‘full possession’ implies, the firmly continent are not utterly lacking all semblance of all virtues. Their firmness reflects some degree of unity of their less-than-fully virtuous but otherwise praiseworthy traits.
21 Ibid., 158.
22 McDowell, John, ‘Eudaimonism and Realism in Aristotle's Ethics’, in The Engaged Intellect: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 38Google Scholar.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., 35.
25 Rorty, Amélie, ‘Self-Deception, Akrasia and Irrationality’, in The Multiple Self, Elster, Jon, ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press 1986), 119Google Scholar.
26 Ibid., 120.
27 Wiggins, David, ‘Incommensurability: Four Proposals’, in Wiggins, D., Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 3rd ed.), 377fGoogle Scholar.
28 Nagel, Thomas, ‘The Fragmentation of Value’, in Mortal Questions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 136Google Scholar.
29 Nagel, Thomas, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 163Google Scholar.
30 Ibid., 16.
31 Ibid., 117.
32 Cf. Kant: ‘[I]f someone is aware that he has acted in accordance with his conscience, then as far as guilt or innocence is concerned nothing more can be required of him’. The Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Gregor, Mary J., trans. and ed., 530Google Scholar.
33 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 63–64Google Scholar.
34 Bratman, Michael, ‘Taking Plans Seriously’, in Varieties of Practical Reasoning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), Millgram, Elijah, ed., 203–219Google Scholar.
35 It must remain for another occasion to determine whether the later Rawls could acknowledge DM.
36 Slote, Michael, Beyond Optimizing: A Study of Rational Choice (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 106CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The idea for an omniscient and benevolent agent is borrowed from Slote.
37 Ibid., 158.
38 Wiggins, op. cit., 374.
39 Ibid., 372.
40 Ibid., 370.
41 Ibid., 377.
42 Ibid., 373.
43 Ibid., 374.
44 Cf. McDowell on Aristotle: he ‘does not say that a rational animal can always integrate its conceptions of the apparent good, in a given situation, into a unified practical verdict [. . . Aristotle supposes] that some situations may defeat the integrative efforts of practical reason. This is a good thing [for otherwise] Aristotle would here be casting doubt on the very possibility of tragic predicaments’. ‘Incontinence and Practical Wisdom in Aristotle’, in The Engaged Intellect, 73, original emphasis. If McDowell is right, then DM would prevent such defeat of practical reason. McDowell misses this, probably, because in this context he conflates logical consistency and practical stability in his understanding of ‘integrative’.
45 Wiggins, ‘Deliberation and Practical Reason’, 237.
46 Ibid., 233.
47 Hart, W. A., ‘Nussbaum, Kant and Conflicts Between Duties’, Philosophy 73.286 (October 1998), 615CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 Ibid., 616.
49 A related problem is that Hart, perhaps like McDowell, seems to conflate logical consistency and practical stability in his analysis of practical deliberation. This may explain his fallacy of composition. For this conflation fails to distinguish an agent concluding A + B from an agent concluding both A and B. The former reaches one conclusion, the latter two. Hart takes it that there is not really a difference, that the two must be identical in practical deliberation (613f). But that ignores the difference between an observer's point of view, for whom A + B = A and B, and the agent's point of view, for whom the difference between the single conclusion (A + B) and the two conclusions (both A and B) may remain real. Were that not the case, then the agent should reject any claim B might continue to have on her, pace Hart, having concluded to A.
50 Ibid., 618.
51 Wiggins, ‘Postscript to Essay X: Reasoned Choice, Freedom, Utility’, in Needs, Values, Truth, 381.
52 McDowell, ‘Aristotle's Ethics’, 53.
53 McDowell, ‘Incontinence and Practical Wisdom in Aristotle’, 61.
54 Walzer, Michael, ‘Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 2.2 (Winter 1973), 174Google Scholar.
55 Ibid., 170; Hamlet 3.4.178.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., 171.
58 Ibid., original emphasis.
59 Wiggins, op. cit., 233.
60 Walzer, op. cit., 17.