Idealist Ethics

289 Pages·2016·1.55 MB·English

by  W. J. Mander

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/07/2015, SPi
Idealist Ethics
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/07/2015, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/07/2015, SPi
Idealist Ethics
W. J. Mander
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/07/2015, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© W. J. Mander 2016
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2016
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015945194
ISBN 978–0–19–874889–2
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/07/2015, SPi
For Samuel and Breesha
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/07/2015, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/07/2015, SPi
Preface
This is a book about ethics and idealism. It asks the question: If you were an idealist—if
you were to take the view that ideas are more real than things—what effect would that
have on your moral philosophy? I shall argue that there are two fundamental areas of
implication. In the first place idealism gives us a way to understand our own relation-
ship to value which avoids either excessive subjectivism or excessive objectivism. It
allows that values are nothing unless they connect with us, without at the same time
banishing them from the larger picture; without making them just a strange or indirect
fashion of talking about ourselves or our feelings. While from the other side, it offers us
a way to understand the unconditionally normative character of values which does not
simply attribute to them a mysterious or magical form of being completely unlike that
of everything else. The attraction of idealism in ethics lies in the fact that it is an orien-
tation which precisely rejects the distinction between ‘in-here’ and ‘out-there.’ In the
second place, idealism changes how we understand ourselves—it assures us that we are
more than just physical or biological creatures—and since ethical life is a form of
self-expression, that shift in self-conception inevitably affects the content of its guide-
lines. For instance, many idealist ethicists have argued that our identity is fundamen-
tally social. Others have stressed our continuity with the divine. And at the root of all
idealist ethics lies an intuition of the autonomous legitimacy of the ethical viewpoint.
There can be no acceptable world view not rooted in experience, but the appreciation
of value is a vital and pervasive aspect of our experience—as needful of recognition
and inclusion as any other—and no philosophy which turns its face from one half of
our being could ever hope to win more than one half of our conviction.
The book covers a great deal of ground both historically and thematically. It should
therefore be stressed that it does not aim to provide exhaustive coverage of any of the
figures or topics on which it touches. There exist many other detailed studies of the
ethical views of individual idealists. The study aims rather to take a broader perspec-
tive and, knitting together many different ideas, to bring out an underlying unity which
has hitherto been overlooked. It is an attempt to catch sight of a wood that has been
missed due to the brilliance of so many of its individually famous trees.
I have not attempted to disguise my allegiance to some form of Absolute Idealism—
and a fairly Hegelian one at that—but I have tried to avoid pushing too hard any one
specific line. Idealism is a broad church, and thus I have endeavoured throughout to
keep in view the full family of idealistic schemes, and to introduce the complete spec-
trum of possibilities for idealist ethics.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/07/2015, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/07/2015, SPi
Contents
Part I
1. What is Idealism? 3
1.1 Definitions and the Idealist Family 4
1.2 Idealism and Ideas 6
1.3 Idealism and Minds 10
1.4 Varieties of Mind 11
1.5 The Primacy of Ideas 13
1.6 Immaterialism 14
2. The Notion of Idealist Ethics 15
2.1 The Tradition of Idealist Ethics 16
2.2 Rationale and Methodological Preliminaries 21
2.3 An Overview 23
Part II
3. Idealism and the Fact–Value Distinction (I) 29
3.1 Plato’s Ethical Ontology 29
3.2 The Humean and Kantian Distinctions 30
3.3 Idealism and the Fact–Value Distinction 32
3.4 Fichte’s Response to Kant’s Dualism 34
4. Idealism and the Fact–Value Distinction (II) 42
4.1 Hegel’s Response to Fichte and Kant 42
4.2 Hegel on Reason and Desire 44
4.3 Fact and Value in British Idealism 46
4.4 The Presence of Desire in Belief 48
4.5 The Presence of Belief in Desire 51
4.6 Metaphysical Foundations 53
Part III
5. The Argument from Value and Valuing 59
5.1 Ideal Love 62
5.2 Ideal Desire 64
5.3 Ideal Choice 68
5.4 Issues of Idealization 70
6. The Kantian Argument from Autonomy 75
6.1 Autonomy as an Argument Against Moral Realism 75
6.2 Kantian Moral Realism 78