Morals from Motives

233 Pages·2001·0.57 MB·English

by  Michael Slote

Morals from Motives
Michael Slote
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
morals from motives
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morals from motives
Michael Slote
1
2001
3
Oxford NewYork
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Copyright (cid:1) 2001 by Michael Slote
PublishedbyOxfordUniversityPress,Inc.
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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Slote,MichaelA.
Moralsfrommotives/MichaelSlote.
p. cm.
Includesindex.
ISBN0-19-513837-6
1. Virtue. 2. Ethics. 3. Agent(Philosophy)
4. Caring—Moralandethicalaspects. I. Title.
BJ1521.S5772000
171—dc21 99–088072
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For Rosy
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preface
C
Till very recently, most of the contemporary revival of virtue
c
ethics has led in the direction ofAristotle.Butinthepastfew
years, Stoic ideas have started to have an influence on current de-
bates, and the moral sentimentalism of Hume and Hutcheson has
also begun to be related to the themes and methods ofvirtueethics.
The present book deliberately avoids patterning its ideas on Ar-
istotle. Although my earlier book, From Morality to Virtue, works
in a neo-Aristotelian vein, the historical Aristotle seems irrelevant
tosomeofthemostimportantproblemsofcontemporaryethics,and
neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists have to take Aristotle in some un-
accustomednewdirectionsiftheywishtomakethatapproachcom-
pletely attractive. Let me be a bit more specific.
It has long and often been said (e.g., by Grotius) that Aristotle’s
doctrine of the mean has no way of dealing with virtues like truth-
telling and promise-keeping, and though I by and large agree with
this criticism, I believe there is a deeper problem with Aristotle’s
(own) ethical views. Although Aristotle mentions the fact that we
tend to praise lovers of humankind, his theory of morality doesn’t
seem to require a concern for human beings generally, and for any
moral philosophy seeking to deal with the increasingly connected
world we live in, this lack is very telling.
The moral philosophies that today dominate the philosophical
scene, (utilitarian) consequentialism and Kantianism,arebothready
with answers as to why we must be concerned, at least to some
viii preface
extent, with all other human beings. And it has become difficult to
accept any overall moral philosophy, like Aristotle’s, that offers no
defense of generalized concern for (other) people. Such a moral
philosophy now strikes most philosophers as retrograde, and, more
particularly, it seems to be unhelpful in regard to one of the great
and central moral issues of contemporary (or modern) life, namely:
how much concern or help do we owe to those, half a world away,
whose troubles or sufferings we hear about and can do something
to relieve. (However, the difficulty for Aristotle here also lies
partly in the factthathelacksourmodernnotionofsupererogation:
never distinguishes between what it would be morally good for us
to do for others and what we actually have an obligation to do for
them.)
Mainlyforthereason(s)justmentioned,therefore,arevivingAr-
istotelianism can seriously compete with consequentialist and Kan-
tian approaches to ethics and politics only if it offers some way to
defendobligationstohumanbeingsgenerally,andsomerecentneo-
Aristotelians—e.g., Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse—have
indeedmovedinthisdirection.Inanyevent,historicalStoicismvery
clearlydoesassertageneralconcernforhumanityonarational(istic)
basisthattosomedegreeanticipatesKant’sargumentsforsuchcon-
cern. So a reviving virtue ethics might well think of looking to
Stoicism for contemporary relevance, and some recent virtue ethi-
cists,notablyJuliaAnnas,LawrenceBecker,andMarthaNussbaum,
have been doing just that.
However,thereisanotherpossibility,anotherwaytomakevirtue
ethics relevant to and promising for current-day ethical theory.
Rather than follow, or try to update, Aristotle or the Stoics, virtue
ethics can look for inspiration to eighteenth-century British moral
sentimentalism. For both Hume and Hutcheson speakaboutandde-
fend generalized forms of benevolence, and Hutchesoninparticular
does so by reference to a motive, universal benevolence,conceived
as admirable and morally ideal independently of its consequences.
This is more like virtue ethics than likeutilitarianismorconsequen-
tialism more generally, and the idea of an agent-based virtueethics
thatgroundsitsevaluationsofactionsin(evaluationsof)sentiments
that reflect a general concern for humanity has recently seemed to
me to be a very promising way of reviving virtue-ethics into con-
temporaneous relevancy. Moral sentimentalism offers virtue ethics
some splendid opportunities it has previously, to a large extent, ne-
preface ix
glected, and it will be my primary aim in what follows to make
good on this claim. Thus the present work will focus less on criti-
cisms of other (virtue-ethical) views than on the attractive features
of a sentimentalism-inspired virtue ethics (and on the answers that
such an approach can give to criticisms directed at it).
Butthebook’sreliancetosomeextentoneighteenth-centurysen-
timentalism also relates to amorerecentdevelopment,theso-called
feminine ethic of caring. For like benevolence, caring is a natural
motive in Hume’s sense, one not presupposing any form of self-
consciousorexplicitmoralconscientiousness(orrationalargument).
It early on struck me that the morality of caring is like sentimen-
talism in the way it emphasizes and values motives, but that it is in
fact best understood or at least best defended as a form of agent-
based virtue ethics.
Via arguments to be advanced in later chapters, I have also be-
come convinced that an ethic of caring can take the well-being of
allhumanityintoconsiderationjustaseasilyasanagent-basedvirtue
ethics grounded in universal (i.e., impartial) benevolence. The only
difference,roughly,isthattheformerallowsforandmandatespref-
erence for those near and dear to one, whereas the latter rules that
out, at least at ground-floor level. But partiality toward near and
dear is quite compatible with substantial concern for all human be-
ings, whether known to one or not, and (like Virginia Held) I have
in what follows argued that the morality of caring can and should
take in a concern not just for those one intimately knows or may
come to know, but for those one cannot ever really become ac-
quainted with and whom one may learn about only as members of
some group or nation one has heard of.
Along the way, however, we shall also haveto examinethecon-
cept of love. We have a high opinion of love—of love for others
and even, under certain aspects, ofself-love;andIthinkweneedto
spend some time discussing (our) ideals of love if we are to attain
a proper understanding of the difference between loving particular
people and a more generalized or humanitarian concern for human
beings as such. It will turn out that love is morally distinctive in
ways that have not been previously considered, and that fact then
needs to be taken into account by the general, though partialistic,
ethic of caring this book is ultimately committed to.
However, agent-basingissufficientlyrareorunfamiliarasanap-
proach to ethics that the present book, especially in itsearlierchap-