Practical Ethics

‘Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. ‘Tis not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. ’Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter.

Extreme as it is, Hume's view of practical reason has stood up to criticism remarkably well. His central claim – that in practical reasoning, we start from something we want – is difficult to refute; yet it must be refuted if any argument is to succeed in showing that it is rational for all of us to act ethically irrespective of what we want.

In an attempt to refute Hume, several writers start by asserting that it is rational to take one's own future desires into account, whether or not one now happens to desire the satisfaction of those future desires. In The Possibility of Altruism, Thomas Nagel argued forcefully that not to take one's own future desires into account in one's practical deliberations would indicate a failure to see oneself as a person existing over time, with the present being merely one time among others in one's life. So it is, on Nagel's view, my conception of myself as a person that makes it rational for me to consider my long-term interests. This holds true even if I have ‘a more ardent affection’ for something that I acknowledge is not really, all things considered, in my own interest.

Derek Parfit provides a striking illustration of someone who fails to consider his or her interests over time in a way that strikes most of us as obviously irrational. He asks us to imagine someone with a condition he calls ‘Future Tuesday Indifference’:

This man cares about his own future pleasures or pains, except when they will come on any future Tuesday. This strange attitude does not depend on ignorance or false beliefs. Pain on Tuesdays, this man knows, would be just as painful, and just as much his pain, and Tuesdays are just like other days of the week. Even so, given the choice, this man would now prefer agony on any future Tuesday to slight pain on any other future day.

About such a person, Parfit comments:

That some ordeal would be much more painful is a strong reason not to prefer it. That this ordeal would be on a future Tuesday is no reason to prefer it. So this man's preferences are strongly contrary to reason, and irrational.

He adds that although no one has this attitude, it is similar to the bias many people have towards the near. It would be similarly irrational, he suggests, for anyone to postpone a minute of agony today, knowing that this would mean an hour of the same degree of agony tomorrow. Less extreme departures from a position of temporal neutrality – that is, an attitude of equal concern for all moments of time, putting aside uncertainties about the future – are also, in Parfit's view, irrational.

Whether Nagel's or Parfit's arguments succeed in vindicating the rationality of prudence, or of temporal neutrality, is one question; whether a similar argument can also be used in favour of a form of altruism based on taking the desires of others into account is another question altogether. Nagel attempted this analogous argument in The Possibility of Altruism. The role occupied by ‘seeing the present as merely one time among others’ is, in this argument for altruism, taken by ‘seeing oneself as merely one person among others’. The problem is that whereas it would be extremely difficult for most of us to cease conceiving of ourselves as existing over time, with the present merely one time among others that we will live through, the way we see ourselves as a person among others is quite different. Henry Sidgwick's observation on this point seems exactly right:

It would be contrary to Common Sense to deny that the distinction between any one individual and any other is real and fundamental, and that consequently ‘I’ am concerned with the quality of my existence as an individual in a sense, fundamentally important, in which I am not concerned with the quality of the existence of other individuals: and this being so, I do not see how it can be proved that this distinction is not to be taken as fundamental in determining the ultimate end of rational action for an individual.

So it is not only Hume's view of practical reason that stands in the way of attempts to show that to act rationally is to act ethically; we might succeed in overthrowing that barrier, only to find our way blocked by the commonsense distinction between self and others. Nagel no longer holds that the argument in The Possibility of Altruism succeeds, and Parfit is largely in agreement with Sidgwick about the rationality of acting to further one's own interests, even when this is contrary to the greater interests of others. Largely, but not entirely, because he thinks that it is irrational to act on your own interests where you have only minor interests at stake and others have a great deal at stake. So if you could save yourself one minute of discomfort by doing something that would inflict an agonizing death on a million people, this would, on Parfit's view, be an irrational thing to do, even if it were in your own interests. Still, this is very far from establishing that doing what is impartially good, or what is right, is required by reason.

Hence, even if Hume's view of reason is wrong, the next most defensible view of reason – Sidgwick's, perhaps as modified by Parfit – does not enable us to conclude that reason requires us to act morally.

If practical reasoning begins with something wanted, to show that it is rational to act morally would involve showing that by acting morally we will achieve something we want. If, agreeing with Sidgwick rather than Hume, we hold that it is rational to act in our long-term interests irrespective of what we happen to want at the present moment, we could show that it is rational to act morally by showing that it is in our long-term interests to do so. There have been many attempts to argue along these lines ever since Plato, in The Republic, portrayed Socrates as arguing that to be virtuous is to have the different elements of one's personality ordered in a harmonious manner, and this is necessary for happiness. We shall look at these arguments shortly; but first it is necessary to assess an objection to this whole approach to ‘Why should I act morally?’

People often say that to defend morality by appealing to self-interest is to misunderstand what ethics is all about. F. H. Bradley stated this eloquently:

What answer can we give when the question Why should I be Moral?, in the sense of What will it advantage Me?, is put to us? Here we shall do well, I think, to avoid all praises of the pleasantness of virtue. We may believe that it transcends all possible delights of vice, but it would be well to remember that we desert a moral point of view, that we degrade and prostitute virtue, when to those who do not love her for herself we bring ourselves to recommend her for the sake of her pleasures.

In other words, we can never get people to act morally by providing reasons of self-interest, because if they accept what we say and act on the reasons given, they will only be acting self-interestedly, not morally.

One reply to this objection would be that the substance of the action, what is actually done, is more important than the motive. People might give money to help those in extreme poverty because their friends will think better of them if they do, or they might give the same amount because they think it is their duty. Those helped by the gift will benefit to the same extent either way.

This is true but crude. It can be made more sophisticated if it is combined with an appropriate account of the nature and function of ethics. Ethics is a social practice that has evolved among beings living in social groups, and it promotes ways of living that are in the interests of individuals living in groups. Ethical judgments can do this by praising and encouraging actions in accordance with these values. Ethical judgments are concerned with motives because this is a good indication of the tendency of an action to promote what is considered desirable or undesirable, but also because it is here that praise and blame may be effective in altering the tendency of a person's actions. In this respect, conscientiousness (that is, acting for the sake of doing what is right) is a particularly useful motive. People who are conscientious will, if they accept the values of their society (and if most people did not accept these values, they would not be the values of the society), always tend to promote what the society values. They may have no generous or sympathetic inclinations, but if they think it their duty to help the poor, they will do so. Moreover, those motivated by the desire to do what is right can be relied on to act as they think right in all circumstances, whereas those who act from some other motive, like self-interest, will only do what they think right when they believe it will also be in their interest. Conscientiousness is thus a kind of multipurpose gap-filler that can be used to motivate people towards whatever is valued, even if the natural virtues normally associated with action in accordance with those values (generosity, sympathy, honesty, tolerance, humility, etc.) are lacking. (This needs some qualification: a conscientious mother may provide as well for her children as a mother who loves them, but she cannot love them because it is the right thing to do. Sometimes conscientiousness is a poor substitute for the real thing.)

On this view of ethics, it is still results, not motives, that really matter. Conscientiousness is of value because of its consequences. Yet, unlike, say, benevolence, conscientiousness can be praised and encouraged only for its own sake. To praise a conscientious act for its consequences would be to praise not conscientiousness but something else altogether. If we appeal to sympathy or self-interest as a reason for doing one's duty, then we are not encouraging people to do their duty for its own sake. If conscientiousness is to be encouraged, it must be thought of as good for its own sake.

It is different in the case of an act done from a motive that people act on irrespective of praise and encouragement. The use of ethical language is then unnecessary. We do not normally say that people ought to do, or that it is their duty to do, whatever gives them the greatest pleasure, for most people are sufficiently motivated to do this anyway. So, whereas we praise good acts done for the sake of doing what is right, we withhold our praise when we believe the act was done from some motive like self-interest.

This emphasis on motives and on the moral worth of doing right for its own sake is now embedded in our notion of ethics. To the extent that it is so embedded, we will feel that to provide considerations of self-interest for doing what is right is to empty the action of its moral worth.

My suggestion is that our notion of ethics has become misleading to the extent that moral worth is attributed only to action done because it is right, without any ulterior motive. It is understandable, and from the point of view of society perhaps even desirable, that this attitude should prevail; nevertheless, those who accept this view of ethics, and are led by it to do what is right because it is right, without asking for any further reason, are falling victim to a kind of confidence trick – though not, of course, a consciously perpetrated one.

That this view of ethics is unjustifiable has already been indicated by the failure of the argument discussed earlier in this chapter for a rational justification of ethics. In the history of Western philosophy, no one has urged more strongly than Kant that our ordinary moral consciousness finds moral worth only when duty is done for duty's sake. Yet Kant himself saw that without a rational justification this common conception of ethics would be ‘a mere phantom of the brain’. This is indeed the case. If we reject – as in general terms we have done – the Kantian justification of the rationality of ethics but try to retain the Kantian conception of ethics, ethics is left hanging without support. It becomes a closed system, a system that cannot be questioned because its first premise – that only action done because it is right has any moral worth – rules out the only remaining possible justification for accepting this very premise. Morality is, on this view, no more rational an end than any other allegedly self-justifying practice, like etiquette or the kind of religious faith that comes only to those who first set aside all sceptical doubts.

Taken as a view of ethics as a whole, we should abandon this Kantian notion of ethics. This does not mean, however, that we should never do what we see to be right simply because we see it to be right, without further reasons. Here once again, we need to appeal to the distinction Hare has made between intuitive and critical thinking. When I stand back from my day-to-day ethical decisions and ask why I should act ethically, I should seek reasons in the broadest sense and not allow Kantian preconceptions to deter me from considering self-interested reasons for living an ethical life. If my search is successful, it will provide me with reasons for taking up the ethical point of view as a settled policy, a way of living. I would not then ask, in my day-to-day ethical decision making, whether each particular right action is in my interests. Instead, I do it because I see myself as an ethical person. In everyday situations, I will simply assume that doing what is right is in my interests; and once I have decided what is right, I will go ahead and do it, without thinking about further reasons for doing what is right. To deliberate over the ultimate reasons for doing what is right in each case would impossibly complicate my life; it would also be inadvisable because in particular situations I might be too greatly influenced by strong but temporary desires and inclinations and so make decisions I would later regret.

That, at least, is how a justification of ethics in terms of self-interest might work, without defeating its own aim. We can now ask if such a justification exists. I will here put aside one ancient justification that is still significant for many religious believers: the belief that virtue will be rewarded and wickedness will be punished in a life after our bodily death. To rely on such a justification, one would first have to show that we do survive death, in some form, and secondly that we will be rewarded and punished in accordance with the extent to which we have lived an ethical life. I do not know how this could be demonstrated.

In The Republic, Plato portrays Socrates as debating with skeptics who ask why they should be just and eventually reaching the conclusion that ‘the just man is happy and the unjust man miserable.’ Socrates’ argument convinces few readers today, however, as he seems to operate with a concept of leading a good life that assumes that to live well is both to do what is right or just and to prosper and be happy. That may have been what it meant to live a good life in ancient Greece, but today we are sharply aware that living ethically is one thing and being prosperous and happy is another – even if we remain open-minded on whether there is a link between them. Many other philosophers have followed Socrates and Plato in trying to show that the good man will be happy: Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, Butler, Hegel and even – for all his strictures against prostituting virtue – Bradley. These philosophers made broad claims about human nature and the conditions under which human beings can be happy. Philosophers are not empirical scientists, of course, and many of the factual claims made by past philosophers lack any sound basis in evidence. But at this point it is relevant to draw on the growing body of modern research in what is sometimes called ‘positive psychology’ – the part of psychology that explores the sources of happiness.

Here we do find evidence for at least a correlation between some aspects of living ethically and happiness. Americans who give to charity were, in one large survey, 43 percent more likely to say that they were ‘very happy’ about their lives than those who did not give. Those who did voluntary work for charities were similarly more likely to say that they were happy than those who did not. In a separate study, those who give were 68 percent less likely to have felt ‘hopeless’ and 34 percent less likely to say that they felt ‘so sad that nothing could cheer them up’. Giving blood, another altruistic act, also makes people feel good about themselves. Volunteering actually seems to improve the health of elderly people and help them live longer. Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology and author of The Happiness Hypothesis, comments: ‘At least for older people, it really is more blessed to give than to receive.’

Is this more than just a correlation? Perhaps. In one experiment, researchers gave $100 to each of nineteen female students and gave them the option of donating some of the money to a local food bank for the poor. To ensure that any effects observed came entirely from making the donation, and not, for instance, from having the belief that others would think they were generous, the students were informed that no one, not even the experimenters, would know which students made a donation. While the students were deciding what to do, the researchers were using magnetic resonance imaging, which shows activity in various parts of the brain. The research found that when students donated, the brain's ‘reward centres’ – the caudate nucleus, nucleus accumbens and insulae – became active. These are the parts of the brain that respond when you eat something sweet or receive money. This is a small-scale experiment and only more research will show whether this is a widespread phenomenon, and whether it is part of the explanation for why those who give are more likely to say that they are happy.

The research cited focuses on giving and helping behaviour. Would something similar apply to living ethically in general? There seems to be little or no research on this broader topic. A. H. Maslow, an American psychologist, asserted that human beings have a need for self-actualization that involves growing towards courage, kindness, knowledge, love, honesty and unselfishness. When we fulfill this need, we feel serene, joyful, filled with zest, sometimes euphoric and generally happy. When we act contrary to our need for self-actualization, we experience anxiety, despair, boredom, shame, emptiness and are generally unable to enjoy ourselves. It would be nice if Maslow should turn out to be right; unfortunately, the data Maslow produced in support of his theory consisted of very limited studies of selected people and cannot be considered anything more than suggestive.

Human nature is so diverse that one may doubt if any generalization about the kind of character that leads to happiness could hold for all human beings. What, for instance, of those we call ‘psychopaths’? Psychiatrists use this term as a label for a person who is asocial, impulsive, egocentric, unemotional, lacking in feelings of remorse or shame or guilt, and apparently unable to form deep and enduring personal relationships. Psychopaths are certainly abnormal, but whether it is proper to say that they are mentally ill is another matter. At least on the surface, they do not suffer from their condition, and it is not obvious that it is in their interest to be ‘cured’. Hervey Cleckley, the author of a classic study of psychopathy entitled The Mask of Sanity, notes that since his book was first published he has received countless letters from people desperate for help – but they are from the parents, spouses and other relatives of psychopaths, almost never from the psychopaths themselves. This is not surprising, for although psychopaths are asocial and indifferent to the welfare of others, they have an inflated opinion of their own abilities. When interviewed they say things like:

A lot has happened to me, a lot more will happen. But I enjoy living and I am always looking forward to each day. I like laughing and I’ve done a lot. I am essentially a clown at heart – but a happy one. I always take the bad with the good.

There is no effective therapy for psychopathy, which may be explained by the fact that psychopaths see nothing wrong with their behaviour and often find it rewarding, at least in the short term. Of course, their impulsive nature and lack of a sense of shame or guilt means that some psychopaths end up in prison, though it is hard to tell how many do not, because those who avoid prison are also more likely to avoid contact with psychiatrists. Studies have shown that a surprisingly large number of psychopaths are able to avoid prison despite grossly anti-social behaviour, probably because of their well-known ability to convince others that they are truly repentant, that what they did will never happen again, and that they deserve another chance.

The existence of psychopaths – or more broadly, of people with psychopathic tendencies – counts against the contention that benevolence, sympathy and feelings of guilt are present in everyone. It also appears to count against attempts to link happiness with the possession of these inclinations. Let us pause before we accept this latter conclusion. Must we accept psychopaths’ own evaluations of their happiness? They are, after all, notorious liars. Moreover, even if they are telling the truth as they see it, are they qualified to say that they are really happy when they seem unable to experience the emotional states that play such a large part in the happiness and fulfillment of others? Admittedly, a psychopath could use the same argument against us: how can we say that we are truly happy when we have not experienced the excitement and freedom that comes from complete irresponsibility? We cannot enter into the subjective states of psychopathic people, nor they into ours, so the dispute is not easy to resolve.

Cleckley suggests that the behaviour of psychopaths can be explained as a response to the meaninglessness of their lives. It is characteristic of psychopaths to work for a while at a job and then, just when their ability and charm have taken them to the crest of success, commit some petty and easily detectable crime. A similar pattern occurs in their personal relationships. They live largely in the present and lack any coherent life plan. Sometimes their failure to consider the future consequences of their acts – even to themselves – is breathtaking. Here is an example from a study by R. D. Hare:

One of our subjects, who scored high on the Psychopathy Checklist, said that while walking to a party he decided to buy a case of beer, but realized that he had left his wallet at home six or seven blocks away. Not wanting to walk back, he picked up a heavy piece of wood and robbed the nearest gas station, seriously injuring the attendant.

We can find support here for Thomas Nagel's account of imprudence as an irrational failure to see oneself as a person existing over time, with the present merely one among other times one will live through. Psychopaths have an extreme form of this failure. Cleckley explains their erratic and inadequately motivated behaviour by likening the psychopath's life to that of a child forced to sit through a performance of King Lear. Children are restless and misbehave under these conditions because they cannot enjoy the play as adults do. They act to relieve boredom. Similarly, Cleckley says, psychopaths are bored because their emotional poverty means that they cannot take interest in, or gain satisfaction from, what for others are the most important things in life: love, family, success in business or professional life and so on. These things simply do not matter to them. Their unpredictable and anti-social behaviour is an attempt to relieve what would otherwise be a tedious existence. These claims are speculative, and Cleckley admits that it may not be possible to establish them scientifically. They do suggest, however, an aspect of the psychopath's life that undermines the otherwise attractive nature of the psychopath's free-wheeling life. Most reflective people, at some time or other, want their life to have some kind of meaning. Few of us could deliberately choose a way of life that we regarded as utterly meaningless. For this reason, most of us would not choose to live a psychopathic life, however enjoyable it might be.

Yet if we are to reject the psychopath's claim to be living an enjoyable life on the ground that it is a meaningless life, we have to face the question of whether we can find meaning in our own lives. If we are not religious believers, don't we have to accept that life really is meaningless, not just for the psychopath but for all of us? And if this is so, why should we not choose – if it were in our power to choose our personality – the life of a psychopath? Is it true, though, that, religion aside, life is meaningless? Now our pursuit of reasons for acting morally has led us to what is often regarded as the ultimate philosophical question.

In what sense does rejection of belief in a god imply rejection of the view that life has any meaning? If this world had been created by some divine being with a particular goal in mind, it could be said to have a meaning, at least for that divine being. If we could know what the divine being's purpose in creating us was, we could then know what the meaning of our life was for our creator. If we accepted our creator's purpose (though why we should do that would need to be explained), we could claim to know the meaning of life.

When we reject belief in a god, we must give up the idea that life on this planet has some preordained meaning. Life as a whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell us, in a chance combination of molecules; it then evolved through random mutations and natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen for any overall purpose. Now that it has resulted in the existence of beings that prefer some states of affairs to others, however, it may be possible for particular lives to be meaningful. In this sense, atheists can find meaning in life.

Let us return to the comparison between the life of a psychopath and that of a more normal person. Why should the psychopath's life not be meaningful? We have seen that psychopaths are egocentric to an extreme: neither other people, nor worldly success, nor anything else really matters to them. Why is their own enjoyment of life not sufficient to give meaning to their lives?

Most of us would not be able to find full satisfaction by deliberately setting out to enjoy ourselves without caring about anyone or anything else. The pleasures we obtained in that way would seem empty and soon pall. We seek a meaning for our lives beyond our own pleasures and find fulfilment and happiness in doing what we see to be meaningful. If our life has no meaning other than our own happiness, we are likely to find that when we have obtained what we think we need to be happy, happiness itself still eludes us.

That those who aim at happiness for happiness's sake often fail to find it, whereas others find happiness in pursuing altogether different goals, has been called ‘the paradox of hedonism’. It is not, of course, a logical paradox but a claim about the way in which we come to be happy. Like other generalizations on this subject, it lacks empirical confirmation. Yet it matches our everyday observations and is consistent with our nature as evolved, purposive beings. Human beings survive and reproduce themselves through purposive action. We obtain happiness and fulfillment by working towards and achieving our goals. In evolutionary terms, we could say that happiness functions as an internal reward for our achievements. Subjectively, we regard achieving the goal (or progressing towards it) as a reason for happiness. Our own happiness, therefore, is a by-product of aiming at something else and is not to be obtained by setting our sights on happiness alone.

The psychopath's life can now be seen to be meaningless in a way that a normal life is not. It is meaningless because it looks inward to the pleasures of the present moment and not outward to anything more long-term or far-reaching. More normal lives have meaning because they are lived to some larger purpose.

All this is speculative. You may accept or reject it to the extent that it agrees with your own observation and introspection. My next – and final – suggestion is more speculative still. It is that to find an enduring meaning in our lives it is not enough to go beyond psychopaths who have no long-term commitments or life plans; we must also go beyond more prudent egoists who have long-term plans concerned only with their own interests. The prudent egoists may find meaning in their lives for a time, for they have the purpose of furthering their own interests; but what, in the end, does that amount to? When everything in our interests has been achieved, do we just sit back and be happy? Could we be happy in this way? Or would we decide that we had still not quite reached our target, that there was something else we needed before we could sit back and enjoy it all? Most materially successful egoists take the latter route, thus escaping the necessity of admitting that they cannot find happiness in permanent holidaying. People who slave to establish small businesses, telling themselves they would do it only until they had made enough to live comfortably, keep working long after they have passed their original target. Their material ‘needs’ expand just fast enough to keep ahead of their income.

In recent years, we have had plenty of examples of the insatiable nature of the desire for wealth – and where it leads. For the 1980s, it was summed up in Oliver Stone's movie Wall Street starring Michael Douglas as a convincingly unpleasant Gordon Gekko, a financial wheeler-dealer whose manner of operation resembles that of the real-life financier Ivan Boesky who famously pronounced ‘Greed is good.’ The critical voice in the film is provided by Bud Fox, played by Charlie Sheen. While Gekko attempts his usual takeover and asset-stripping procedure on the airline for which Fox's father works as a mechanic, an angry Fox asks: ‘Tell me, Gordon, when does it all end, huh? How many yachts can you water-ski behind? How much is enough?’ For Boesky, it seems, $150 million was not enough, because his fortune was at least that when he sought to boost it even further by insider trading, a crime for which he eventually lost his fortune, his reputation and his liberty. With the man who had given the decade its tagline in prison, people began talking about finding fulfilment and satisfaction rather than just accumulating wealth. When economic good times returned in the first decade of the twenty-first century, however, ostentatious spending reached new heights, with the founders of equity firms competing to throw lavish birthday party bashes that cost upwards of $5 million. When the global financial crisis hit in 2007, and Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme became the equivalent of Boesky's insider trading, the talk once again turned to finding meaning and fulfilment – and it seems safe to predict that, in time, the cycle will repeat itself.

For anyone seeking to escape this cycle of accumulation and ruin, ethics can provide a more durable alternative. If we are looking for a purpose broader than our own interests, something that will allow us to see our lives as possessing significance beyond the narrow confines of our wealth or even our own pleasurable states of consciousness, one obvious solution is to take up the ethical point of view. The ethical point of view does, as we have seen, require us to go beyond a personal point of view to the standpoint of an impartial spectator. Thus, looking at things ethically is a way of transcending our inward-looking concerns and identifying ourselves with the most objective point of view possible – with, as Sidgwick put it, ‘the point of view of the universe’.

The point of view of the universe is a lofty standpoint. In the rarefied air that surrounds it, we may get carried away into talking, as Kant does, of the moral point of view ‘inevitably’ humbling all who compare their own limited nature with it. I do not want to suggest anything as sweeping as this. Earlier in this chapter, in rejecting Thomas Nagel's argument for the rationality of altruism, I agreed with Sidgwick and Parfit that there is nothing irrational about being concerned with the quality of one's own existence in a way that one is not concerned with the quality of existence of other individuals. Without going back on this, I am now suggesting that rationality, in the broad sense that includes self-awareness and reflection on the nature and point of our own existence, may push us towards concerns broader than the quality of our own existence; but the process is not a necessary one, and those who do not take part in it – or who, in taking part, do not follow it all the way to the ethical point of view – are not irrational or in error. Some people find collecting stamps or following their favourite football team an entirely adequate way of giving purpose to their lives. There is nothing irrational about that; but others again seek something more significant as they become more aware of their situation in the world and more reflective about their purposes. To this third group, the ethical point of view offers a meaning and purpose in life that one does not grow out of. At least, one cannot grow out of the ethical point of view until all ethical tasks have been accomplished. If that utopia were ever achieved, our purposive nature might well leave us dissatisfied, much as egoists might be dissatisfied when they have everything they need to be happy. There is nothing paradoxical about this, for we should not expect evolution to have equipped us, in advance, with the ability to find satisfaction in a situation that has never previously occurred. Nor is this going to be a practical problem in the near future.

I will conclude by making these abstract speculations more personal and concrete. Henry Spira was one of the most effective twentieth-century American activists for animals. (To give just one example, it is due to Spira more than anyone else that the words ‘not tested on animals’ appear on so many cosmetic products today.) In addition to his many campaigns that saved an immense amount of animal suffering, Spira marched for civil rights in the South, fought against corruption in the National Maritime Union, and taught underprivileged kids in New York high schools. I had the good fortune to count him as my friend, staying with him many times in the sparsely furnished, rent-controlled New York apartment that served as his home and his office. When he had cancer and knew that the end was not far away, I asked him what had driven him to spend his life working for others. He replied:

I guess basically one wants to feel that one's life has amounted to more than just consuming products and generating garbage. I think that one likes to look back and say that one's done the best one can to make this a better place for others. You can look at it from this point of view: what greater motivation can there be than doing whatever one possibly can to reduce pain and suffering?

That answer will not provide everyone with overwhelming reasons for acting morally. It cannot be proven that we are all rationally required to reduce pain and suffering and make the world a better place for others. Ethically indefensible behaviour is not always irrational. We will probably always need the sanctions of the law and social pressure to provide additional reasons against serious violations of ethical standards. On the other hand, those reflective enough to ask why they should act ethically are also those most likely to appreciate the reasons Spira offered for taking the ethical point of view.

Reason and ethics

Ethics and self-interest

Has life a meaning?

12 Why Act Morally?

Understanding the question