Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T15:45:36.734Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Problems for Perfectionism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2016

GWEN BRADFORD
GWEN BRADFORD*
Affiliation:
Rice [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Perfectionism, the view that well-being is a matter of developing characteristically human capacities, has relatively few defenders in the literature, but plenty of critics. This article defends perfectionism against some recent formulations of classic objections, namely, the objection that perfectionism ignores the relevance of pleasure or preference for well-being, and a sophisticated version of the ‘wrong properties’ objection, according to which the intuitive plausibility of the perfectionist ideal is threatened by an absence of theoretical pressure to accept putative wrong properties cases. The article argues that these objections are unsuccessful, but introduce a new worry, the deep problem: perfectionism fails to offer a satisfying foundational justification for why developing the human essence is valuable. The article responds to the deep problem, ultimately arguing that it is a puzzle put to all theories of well-being to provide a justification for their normative significance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 344 - 364
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Precise details differ across various conceptions of perfectionism, but for now, I will take perfectionism as the view that the exercise and development of characteristically human capacities is good. The most extensive articulation of perfectionism is Hurka, Thomas, Perfectionism (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar. See also Brink, D. O., Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T. H. Green (Oxford, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sher, George, Beyond Neutrality (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kraut, Richard, What is Good and Why (Cambridge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bradford, Gwen, ‘Perfectionism’, Routledge Handbook for the Philosophy of Well-Being, ed. Fletcher, Guy (London, 2016), pp. 124–34Google Scholar.

2 For a discussion of Mill, see Brink, , Mill's Progressive Principles (Oxford, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Hume, see Dorsey, Dale, ‘Objectivity and Perfection in Hume's Hedonism’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 53 (2015), pp. 245–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, 1984), p. 499 Google Scholar.

4 Hurka, Perfectionism, p. 3.

5 See Hurka, Perfectionism, p. 17 and Kraut, What is Good, p. 6.

6 Haybron, Daniel, The Pursuit of Unhappiness (Oxford, 2010), pp. 161–2Google Scholar.

7 Haybron, Pursuit, p. 161.

8 Dorsey, Dale, ‘Three Arguments for Perfectionism’, Noûs 44 (2010), pp. 59–79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Indeed, perfectionists have already made headway here, in particular Hurka, Perfectionism, pp. 84–98 and Kauppinen, Antti, ‘Working Hard and Kicking Back: The Case for Diachronic Perfectionism’, Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy (2009), pp. 1–9 Google Scholar.

10 A perfectionist might simply reject monism, as Hurka does, in Perfectionism and The Best Things in Life (Oxford, 2011), and hold that perfectionism gives an account of some of our good, while pleasure, preference, and perhaps some other goods are explained in a different way. But rejecting monism robs perfectionism of its most attractive feature: its unifying appeal. The superiority of perfectionism over objective list theory is its unification of the elements of well-being.

11 Aristotle, who is often read as a perfectionist, holds that the truly excellent exercise of our capacities is very pleasant. The truly virtuous enjoy deploying their virtues. But this Aristotelian approach doesn't resolve the Angela case, since passive, creature comforts, such as those enjoyed by Angela in her retirement, are not valuable on this view. Perhaps she does also enjoy exercising her perfectionist capacities in her diplomatic duties, but in this case what's at issue is the relevance of the pleasure of the creature comforts of retirement.

12 Kraut, What Is Good, p. 137.

13 Kauppinen, ‘Working Hard’, p. 1. Kauppinen's insight is that ‘it is not only the present and future exercise of capacities that matters for perfection, but also their past exercise’ (‘Working Hard’, p. 2). He provides two different rationales for this approach (both equally good on his view): first, the ‘star turn’ view, according to which a life is better when it is well-rounded, meaning that each of our various capacities has its moment in which it excels, including the capacities for social and emotional activity that Angela would exercise during her retirement; second, the ‘animal nature’ view, which holds that the nature of our species has a ‘natural rhythm’, and so it is better for us to exercise certain capacities at certain times. This would indeed capture the intuition that Angela fares just as well or even better in retirement, but the concern about the details of affective capacities that I consider next raises questions for this approach, since presumably our capacities for pain and sadness have their due time as well.

14 George Sher makes this suggestion in Beyond Neutrality, p. 229.

15 Of course, such a capacity is not unique to human nature, but there is very little reason to adopt a perfectionist account that insists that the relevant capacities are those that are unique (see Hurka, Perfectionism, pp. 10–11).

16 Obviously the senses and digestion are relevant for well-being, but instrumentally so.

17 Hurka, Perfectionism, p. 86.

18 Brink, Perfectionism and the Common Good, p. 126. See also Brink, , ‘The Significance of Desire’, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 3, ed. Shafer-Landau, Russ (Oxford, 2008), pp. 5–45 Google Scholar.

19 See Hurka, Perfectionism, and Best Things, as well as Brink, Perfectionism and the Common Good.

20 For Green's account, see Brink, Perfectionism and the Common Good, and Green, T. H., Prolegomena to Ethics, ed. Brink, D. O. (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar. For a discussion of Mill, see Brink, Mill's Progressive Principles, and Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty (New Haven, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hurka, Perfectionism, p. 148.

21 Alternatively, if you reject the view that desires can generate reasons, as some do, presumably doing something one prefers will be more pleasant, and so the additional pleasure that Ronald will enjoy in being a farmer also gives him further reason to be a farmer, and so there is more reason to be a farmer. Indeed, if being a farmer weren't going to be more pleasant for Ronald than being a physicist, one might think his preference for it would be irrational, intelligible, or otherwise strange and in any case not the sort of preference that is relevant for well-being. Since there are perfectionist resources for capturing the relevance of pleasure, we now have a complete explanation of how Ronald fares better in perfectionist terms, in being a farmer, namely because in doing so he is responding to good reasons.

22 Dorsey, ‘Three Arguments for Perfectionism’.

23 Of course, if all possible particular conceptions of a general claim failed, this would be good evidence that the general claim is in trouble.

24 It is highly dubitable that these features are in fact unique to humans. So much the worse for this particular conception of perfectionism.

25 The capacity to suffer hypothermia is pretty much guaranteed not to be on the list of relevant features, largely because it results in death, which we would plausibly expect to be in tension, if not outright contradiction, with other features, seeing as this is a conception of what makes for a good life.

26 Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 494.

27 See Hurka, , Perfectionism as well as Drawing Morals (Oxford, 2011), pp. 12–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Although the structural approach can be fruitful, it is not a substitute for providing a foundation when pressing questions remain unanswered. No matter how compelling a structural analysis may be, it is not in a position to satisfy all curiosity. Indeed, there may be a danger of structural analysis in the absence of foundations: just how worthwhile is a structural analysis if the view that it develops is ultimately unsupportable?

29 Nozick, Robert, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, 1981), p. 517 Google Scholar. It's not clear that Nozick himself endorses this perfectionist account, but he gives an account according to which his theory of value would support perfectionism.

30 Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.

31 Nevertheless, bear in mind that, even though it is now traditionally seen this way, perfectionism as a view has taken many forms, and it isn't carved in canonical stone that it absolutely must have its roots in an account of human nature. In fact, one of the first discussions of perfectionism does not classify it in a way that involves human nature – Rawls. The key features of perfectionism here appear to be ‘achievement of human excellence’ and so forth, but there is no mention of human nature establishing anything about the view (Rawls, Theory of Justice (Cambridge, 1971), p. 285). Naturally one might very well wonder at this point just what are the key elements of perfectionism. That's a good question and I would like to know the answer as well.

32 Kraut defends this position extensively, and argues that ‘good’ can be analysed in terms of ‘good for’ (What is Good). See also Foot, Philippa, Natural Goodness (Oxford, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Thomson, Judith Jarvis, Normativity (Chicago, 2008)Google Scholar.

33 Kraut, What is Good, p. 131.

34 Here I'm taking the ‘biological realm’ to mean the subject matter of biologists.

35 Sher, Beyond Neutrality.

36 Brink, Perfectionism and the Common Good, Significance of Desire, and ‘Normative Perfectionism and the Kantian Tradition’ (typescript, 2015).

37 One might think that such an approach commits the crime of circularity that perfectionist accounts are prone to – namely by building in a normative element to what needs to be a strictly descriptive account of human nature – but this is not the sense in which normative perfectionism is normative. Rather, the normative component of the descriptive account emphasizes the centrality of rational agency in human nature.

38 Green, Prolegomena, p. 222.

39 Brink, Significance of Desire, p. 35.

40 Brink, Perfectionism and the Common Good, p. 20.

41 Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis, 2001), p. 35 Google Scholar.

42 I'm exceedingly grateful for discussion from David Brink, Dale Dorsey, Richard Kraut, Eden Lin, George Sher, Steven Skultety, and many others, as well as audiences at the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, the University of Mississippi and Rice University.