We are dying animals. We know that one day we shall be no more – well, no more on this mortal coil. Religious believers hope for life eternal, but few would be certain of that hope fulfilled. Certain or not, we may reflect upon life, upon our individual lives so fleeting: have we lived as we should? Have I lived as I should? I may wonder whether I have led a good life, whether I could or should have been morally more clear-sighted; perhaps I ought to have resisted morality – at least conventional morality – and lived very differently, with greater or less decorum, rebelliously even, even as an iconoclast. Morality most naturally concerns duties to others; we also have duties to ourselves, of how we should be.
We typically want to live well, yet we are creatures battered by events beyond our control, living within circumstances not of our making, finding ourselves with lusts, reflections and fears, often beyond our ken, our understanding. Sometimes whatever we do, we do wrong. The batterings, perils and seductions, vary from person to person. The way in which one person flourishes may differ radically from that of neighbours: the good life for one may be no good for another. The good life, for a few, may even be that of the silent cell, of earthly austerity, with eyes cast upward to the heavens or forwards to Heaven on Earth.
Being of the same species, we have needs in common. ‘Grub first, then ethics’ was Bertold Brecht’s realistic instruction. With life’s necessities settled – though we should rightly recoil from doing anything, just anything, for personal survival – we may try to determine how best to live. We may judge that things have gone well – until, on reflection, we realize we were blind to the good things in life. Those who grasped continually at worldly goods may later reflect how impoverished that grasp came to be. The quick response could be, ‘Do not reflect’ – but a life without reflection is no human life at all – and, however tightly closed our eyes, our life’s undesirable features would remain.
‘For every foot, its own shoe,’ wrote Montaigne. We may well see how that footwear difference could carry over to individuals’ flourishing. We may, though, wonder how far it carries, if far at all, regarding morality’s demands. We surely cannot select a morality at will. However hard some will it otherwise, killing Jews because they are Jews, or Palestinians because they are Palestinians, is morally wrong, deeply morally wrong – full stop.
In economics examinations, it is quipped, the questions each year are exactly the same; that helps candidates not at all because, each year, the correct answers are different. Regarding best ways of living, answers also seem to differ, from culture to culture, from generation to generation. That fails, though, to show differences in underlying moral anxieties; anxieties may remain constant and universal, yet because of surrounding differences they are manifested differently. In cultures without contraception, premarital sexual intercourse may be condemned, yet in ones with contraception, be permitted; the same moral concern is present for happiness and avoidance of unwanted children. You seek comfort when you walk outside; in winter you wear a coat, in summer no coat at all.
Differences in factual beliefs can lead to different moral practices, despite common underlying morality. Assume worry about human welfare: then, if you are sure that eternal damnation awaits women dressed immodestly, it is your moral duty to insist on modesty. If you are convinced that a fourteen-day-old foetus is en-souled and a person, then you should vehemently oppose abortion. Such cases do not support moral relativism; they should encourage reflection on the convictions, assessing whether justified. So far, we are not beyond morality.
Despite different practices, whether in ancient Athens, South America, or twenty-first-century Europe, most recognize the importance of human welfare, fairness, respecting (certain) others – and appreciation of sunset and song. That recognition, of course, does not prevent immoralities – of children in Victorian England being sent up chimneys, of US Southern states once clinging to racial segregation and of many desperate refugees today afforded no refuge at all.
‘Ethics’ and ‘morality’ have been used synonymously, but ‘ethics’ sometimes moves beyond the moral – to values that may even take precedence over the moral. An influential example is based on the painter Gauguin. Although historically inaccurate, it suggests challenges to both morality’s supremacy and its immunity to luck.
Gauguin, failing in business, convinced that he was an artist, a painter, deserted his wife and five children, escaped from the ‘artificial and conventional’ by sailing to Tahiti to paint – and, we should add, engage in dusky sexual exploits with dusky young maidens. His paintings, in due course, became much admired for their experimentation in colour; they were seen to possess considerable aesthetic merit, influencing twentieth-century art.
Here, morality – conventional morality at least – took second place to aesthetic values. The fictional Gauguin ignored his moral obligations, seeing his painterly work of greater significance.
For another example, consider again the biblical Abraham on the verge of sacrificing his son Isaac in accordance, it seemed, with God’s wishes. Whether it is a tortuous tale, showing God’s opposition to sacrifice – who knows? Such sacrifice, though, is deeply morally wrong. Abraham was prepared to undertake it, valuing the religious above the moral. With a country’s security at risk, political leaders may approve torturing suspected terrorists, despite knowing torture’s immorality. Recognizable moral duties – do not sacrifice; do not torture – are here, it seems, overridden by other values. That claim may be contested; divinity and state security readily possess moral aspects. Let us stay then with Gauguin and the aesthetic.
Kantian-inspired deontologists would insist that Gauguin acted as he ought not to have done – whatever the outcome for his life and art. Moral values override. Utilitarians could argue that Gauguin did the right thing because, as it transpired, greater overall happiness was achieved – via pleasures to art lovers – compared with the happiness, had he remained as loyal spouse, father and salesman failing to sell. That shoehorning of all values into pleasures disregards art’s intrinsic value; it has regard solely for pleasures garnered. Recall: if all value is grounded in pleasure, we could skip the paintings, music and poetry – the cherry blossom, love and conversation – and just seek injections that deliver required pleasurable sensations.
In contrast to utilitarian and Kantian lines, some, perhaps inspired by Socrates, could insist that even if Gauguin sincerely believed his life overall had gone well, justifying abandonment of his family, really it had not gone well. Flourishing necessarily requires embracing the moral virtues – in this case, not letting down his family, despite painterly talent. Moral failure contaminated his flourishing, his living well.
That we may be pleased about Gauguin’s commitment to art, accepting his immorality as justified, rests on the good luck of his painterly success. His venture could have gone wrong; his sailing could have ended in disaster or his work been tenth-rate. His bad behaviour towards his family would then have taken centre stage. His luck was an ethical rather than a moral luck. Had he been unsuccessful or successful, many, as said, would proclaim his actions immoral; but, according to some, any immorality here is overwhelmed by the good luck of artistic achievement. He can stand by his life, well-disposed to how it went. We may have a purchase on his values. His way of life – his ethos, his ethics – took him beyond morality. That still raises questions of whether he should affirm his earlier immorality even though it led to his life being fulfilled. Recall the Paralympics example.
How can we handle ethical dilemmas? Dilemmas often are far from the moral, the ethical, but simply the trivial of what to tick off next on the ‘to do’ list – no moral matter unless the ticking be by utilitarians, obsessed with calculating happiness.
Move to the moral. Both Abe and Zoe are dying; they will be upset if you fail to visit. Worse, they will be upset if you see the other. With such dilemmas, ignoring other factors, a principled answer may exist by way of distress calculation. Such a calculation, in practice, is, though, pretty mythical. In any case, whatever you do, you will do something wrong; you are morally ensnared.
Moral and ethical traps also arise when incommensurable values clash: if you tell the boss what really happened, you undermine your friendship with colleagues; if you work to become a great painter, you let down your family. Those dilemmas are profound, not mere utilitarian calculative difficulties; and they do not arise because alternative actions lead to the same quantity of hedonic outcomes, with resort to coin-spinning for solutions. They arise because ethics, including morality, attends to an eclectic collection of values.
No science, no accountancy, is available to resolve ethical dilemmas – to measure the value of family life against a career; or freedom of speech against the nation’s security. No calculation took place, leading E. M. Forster to conclude, ‘If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.’
LIVES – FOR THOUGHT
Socrates: His last days in 399 BC are described in Plato’s Phaedo. Plato tells of Socrates, having accepted the Athenian verdict condemning him to death, duly drinking the hemlock:
Such was the end of our friend, concerning whom I may truly say, that of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest and justest and best.
Pyrrhus: This King of Epirus, making plans for conquest, is speaking to his confidant Cineas:
‘We will first conquer the rest of Greece,’ he said. ‘And afterwards?’ said Cineas. ‘We will overtake Africa.’ ‘After Africa?’ ‘We will go on to Asia, we will conquer Asia Minor, Arabia.’ ‘And then?’ ‘We will go all the way to the Indies.’ ‘After the Indies?’ ‘Ah!’ said Pyrrhus, ‘I will rest.’ ‘Why don’t you,’ said Cineas, ‘rest to begin with?’
A rare being: Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1862–1932), Goldie, was a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, a humanist, yet no great philosopher, author or reformer. E. M. Forster wrote of him:
He was never shipwrecked or in peril, he was seldom in great bodily pain, never starved or penniless, he never confronted an angry mob nor was sent to prison for his opinions… From a material point of view, Fate gave him an easy time, which he frankly appreciated.
He was, though – and could one want for anything more? –
beloved, affectionate, unselfish, intelligent, witty, charming – qualities fused into such an unusual creature… He did not merely increase our experience: he left us more alert for what has not yet been experienced and more hopeful about other men because he had lived.
José Matada: In 2012 in Angola, he stowed in a plane’s undercarriage. Hours later, he fell from the sky, landing in a London street – dead. Brought up during Mozambique’s wars, suffering hardships unknown to us, yet kind and gentle, he sought a better life. Millions are as desperate, even more so, than Matada, though not so foolish. Can we live well only by closing eyes to such misery – and if we do close eyes, are we living well?
There is no formal deduction, no formal induction – and no voice from the heavens to guide in such matters. Rather, dialogue, comparisons and contrasts form the reasoning. In courts of law, as John Wisdom would stress, judges hear the evidence, bring together past cases, precedents and what the law says. They then ‘weigh’ matters, compare cases with cases, maybe concluding that the defendants were negligent or acted unreasonably; other expert judges may judge differently. Hence, majority votes often determine legal outcomes; that should remind us of the fragility of some verdicts of guilt or innocence – whether at local court level or the Supreme Court.
Regarding individuals’ dilemmas, majority votes have no foothold. Instead, we may discuss with others, with ourselves, coming to view matters anew, as in a drawing we can see a duck figure transformed into a rabbit, or landscapes as now conveying melancholy. Wisdom tells of a woman trying on a new hat, wondering if it is suitable for the occasion in mind. She is undecided. Her friend, gazing, suddenly announces, ‘The Taj Mahal!’ With that, the buying indecision vanishes. The hat is not right. That transformation, that knowledge, appears mysterious – but it happens. Comments can suddenly make us see differently.
Although considerations brought to bear lack formal structuring, they are not thereby to be dismissed as worthless. As the Cambridge literary critic F. R. Leavis would emphasize, in evaluations of novels – of any works of art – the dialogue is of the form, ‘This is so, is it not?’ met by ‘Yes, but…’ We draw attention to different features; they vie with each other for highest priority.
After discussion, after reflection, the right thing to do – you ought to do A, not B – may become clear, though often it will not. That does not mean a definitive right answer must exist, but we lack ability to find it. How can the factors on Sartre’s student even theoretically be measured against each other? How much ought caring for a mother to count compared with avenging a brother? Security of the state justifies detention without charge for how long? Is it for three days, three months or ten years? Does loyalty to a friend have greater value than loyalty to your country? If it does, to what extent? Decisions have to be made even though ‘we cannot decide’. So we decide – and what we do will be something wrong (say, abandoning the mother) and also something right (say, fighting in the Resistance). Later, we may admire the decision – or live with regret.
Iris Murdoch tells of a mother-in-law (M) and the daughter (D) married to her son. M behaves beautifully throughout the daughter’s stay with her, yet, from the start, M has a low opinion of D. Let us add: M made the decision to put up with D staying, though she could have said ‘no’. Murdoch’s tale continues:
M finds D quite a good-hearted girl, but while not exactly common yet certainly unpolished and lacking in dignity and refinement. D is inclined to be pert and familiar, insufficiently ceremonious, brusque, sometimes positively rude, always tiresomely juvenile.
Later, M discovers the daughter ‘to be not vulgar but refreshingly simple, not undignified but spontaneous, not noisy but gay, not tiresomely juvenile but delightfully youthful’. M has been engaged in active vision, paying closer attention to the daughter. She sees the daughter in a new light. Her decision to let the daughter stay has turned out right.
We can be helped to see – to deal with dilemmas – through the arts, through imaginative constructions of people’s lives, be they staged, on paper or in music. Some find help through faith. ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else,’ declared C. S. Lewis. Religious glasses are sometimes worn for the better; sometimes considerably for the worse. Witness Shia/Sunni conflicts within Islam; witness earlier crusades in the name of Christ.
Through the arts, be they plays, novels, operas or even television soap-operas, our emotions and perceptivity can be enriched; we may grasp people’s behaviour as far more nuanced than simply right or wrong, good or bad. We learn how people are churlish, spiteful or bumptious – couth, dignified, struggling to stand up for principles – serious, puckish or witty. We see the world normatively in shades of colour; we see behaviour from different perspectives of human consciousness. Scientific understandings are of no help with such shadings and perspectives; poetry, as John Stuart Mill found, can be of considerable help.
Music with words, by way of opera, sometimes offers sublime experiences in which our self-interest is lost – the self is lost – yet, back with oneself, those fictional worlds may play in the imagination and aid our grasp of everyday struggles, hopes and sorrows. Indeed, pure music – symphonies, sonatas, string quartets – music that cannot be put into words, may yet uplift and widen eyes on the world, on the ethos of living and upon how to be. That endorsement is no elitism, but a gesture against the mistaken portrayal of classical music and especially opera – and other cultures’ high art – as now out of bounds save for a select few. What may improve the ethos of a life, as Mill would argue, should be available to all. Excellence – be it at cooking, piano-playing or chess – rarely comes without a struggle; and time, careful listening and a generosity in spirit are needed to give ‘difficult’ music a chance to weave its influence and mysterious uplift. ‘All things excellent,’ wrote Spinoza, ‘are as difficult as they are rare.’ Well, we may aim to reduce that rarity.
That music uplifts, let it hastily be added, should not encourage the dewy-eyed. Although tempted to assert music’s civilizing power, we should remember those Nazis, appreciative of Mozart and Beethoven, who, incongruously, would force starving Jewish musicians, concentration camp inmates, to play the great works, those tributes to humanity. So committed were the cultured Nazis to their ideology, they could see no value in music composed with Jewish taints, such as the music of Mendelssohn and Schoenberg.
Two people in the same situation, agreed on the facts, engaging in the same moral musings and wider ethical reflections, reach opposing decisions, taking different paths. Is one right, the other wrong? In factual matters, if two people hold contradictory beliefs, then indeed one is right, the other wrong. If two people disagree over which horse will win the race, they cannot both be right. In matters of value, things are different.
Suppose two women, medical students, are in the same position regarding whether, ethically, they ought to go ahead with an abortion. Having a child will disrupt their studies, their plans to make their mark in the medical world; also, it looks as if the child will be born handicapped. They know that the decision is not to be treated frivolously. They have the same emotional pulls, anxieties and moral worries. If the right decision is to have the abortion for Andrea, then surely it should be the right decision for Bethany. To quote Sidgwick committed to morality’s universality:
We cannot judge an action to be right for A and wrong for B, unless we can find in the natures or circumstances of the two some difference which we can regard as a reasonable ground for difference in their duties. If therefore I judge any action to be right for myself, I judge it to be right for any other person whose nature and circumstances do not differ from my own in important respects.
In opposition, we recommend sympathy for the following thought: Andrea concludes that going ahead with the abortion is the right thing to do; Bethany concludes that continuing with the pregnancy is the right thing. There need be no contradiction. It is possible that they could both be right in their decisions. Of course, they could both be wrong – or one right, one wrong.
The two women have ended up differently. Many may insist, as Sidgwickians, that therefore a relevant difference must have existed in their values or circumstances. That insistence is ungrounded. Perhaps the sole ethically relevant difference is that they decide to act differently: one goes ahead; the other does not. The difference arises only because of what they do. We may say, flimsily, that they are making themselves different; that makes the difference.
The above is no recommendation for relativism or subjectivism. Andrea’s belief that abortion is the right path for her does not guarantee that it is right. Thinking something right, even after considerable reflection, does not usually make it right. That is readily shown.
First, people may have made decisions – be they concerning abortion, euthanasia, whistle-blowing – but not treated matters seriously enough; that very fact could paint their characters in unethical colours. Some matters matter; they are too important to solve by spinning coins. Secondly, people, seriously minded, earnest, may simply have seen things wrongly; recall Murdoch’s mother-in-law.
Returning to Andrea and Bethany, it may later become clear how they should assess their earlier decisions. An action being right need not depend solely on what led to the decision; it may rest on how things develop. The way things turn out could show the women that their different decisions were both right – or could leave them both uncertain or changing their assessments as the years pass. Those possibilities are inherent in many ethical dilemmas. Both Andrea and Bethany sought to do what was best. We may see them as both being drawn by the Good, though it is unlikely that they expressed matters that way.
Wittgenstein heard of a man who had decided that he must either leave his wife or abandon his cancer research. Wittgenstein’s reported response was:
Suppose I am his friend and I say to him, ‘Look, you’ve taken this girl out of her home, and now, by God, you’ve got to stick to her.’ This would be called taking up an ethical attitude. He may reply, ‘But what of suffering humanity? How can I abandon my research?’ In saying this he may be making it easy for himself: he wants to carry on that work anyway… And he may be inclined to view the effect on his wife relatively easily: ‘It probably won’t be fatal for her. She’ll get over it, probably marry again’ – And so on.
Wittgenstein goes on to note that it may not be that way at all.
It may be that he has a deep love for her. And yet he may think that if he were to give up his work he would be no husband for her… Here we may say that we have all the materials of a tragedy; and we could only say: ‘Well, God help you.’ Whatever he finally does, the way things then turn out may affect his attitude. He may say, ‘Well, thank God I left her; it was better all around.’ Or maybe, ‘Thank God I stuck to her.’… Or it may be just the opposite.
Empathy is appropriate here. People can find themselves in tragic ‘impossible situations’, sometimes of their own making; sometimes not. They have to do something – and what they do, they may later regret, feeling forever remorse, or later stand by, even proud. What, at a particular time, is viewed as an unfortunate path, in retrospect can have success writ large.
Baffling behaviour by characters in a play can become comprehensible by curtain fall. An apparently lousy formation for ‘white’ in chess becomes inspired, if leading to a win – though luck probably played a part. Developments in architecture and literature may only be properly understood once later artistic movements arise; as Jorge Luis Borges noted, ‘Every writer creates his own precursors.’ Similarly, whether an action was ethically right, or wrong, can rest on how life evolves and is shaped – though it may not. Perhaps Gauguin’s desertion is forever a blot.
Although deep puzzles exist concerning the nature of the ‘self’, we must grasp ourselves as continuing, as acting with a past and future, with things going well – or badly – as life unfolds. Kierkegaard summed this up in his 1843 Journal:
It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.
We are not inkwells, inert; we are not rivers that flow with no choice of direction. While alive, there exists the possibility of seeing or casting matters in new perspectives, acting afresh; our lives become understood differently, taking on different hues. We can re-form ourselves. As Kierkegaard wrote:
It becomes more and more evident that life can never really be understood in time simply because at no particular moment can I find the necessary resting place from which to understand it – backwards.
‘It ain’t over till the fat lady sings’ – well, so it is said. There is no resting place until death. To understand a life, we need sight of its contours, its development, of how past events influenced the later. We cannot grasp the nature of a chess game or even just of checkmate solely from seeing an end position of a checkmate; and a snapshot of a life, by the end, does not tell us how that life was.
A life overall is no sum of its parts independently assessed. Even if we judged a life solely by net pleasures, there would remain significant differences between a life that commenced high with pleasure but continually declined – and one with an opposite profile. Aware of life’s rises and falls, we may feel for the ancient Greek Mimnermos’s lamentation at losing golden Aphrodite. ‘Let me die when these things mean nothing to me, secretive lovemaking and sweet gifts and the bed.’ In old age, evil cares wear down the mind; God, says Mimnermos, has made old age a burden. The ethical regard for how to live must hence include regard for how to die.
When painful dying comes into view, some override any moral commitment to life being sacred, a gift from God, not to be taken; they may seek the courage to die with dignity, at the proper time for them – and they may seek help to do so. Others rage against death – ‘against the dying of the light’ – with courage and determination to remain alive as long as possible. Yet others, to quote Samuel Beckett, ‘have neither the courage to end it, nor the strength to go on’.
A life immortal, though, even un-ageing, everlasting here on Earth or in a celestial elsewhere – or be it eternal, nowhere and no-when – runs the risk of no coherent structure. It would scarcely be human living, if untroubled by dangers and the deaths of others – and if without awareness of eventual finality. No urgency would arise for the morrow, no fear of global warming, no need for physical courage. Were the immortality disembodied, numerous anxieties would be absent, as would be delights of feasting, ravishing smiles and seashore walks. With no end to our time, getting things done would have, it seems, reduced value. Arguably, we need mortality for life to have value, for life to have shape.
Although personal mortality appears essential to the ethos of a human life, perhaps we still need others to carry forward the human flame – after we have gone. Consider the P. D. James tale in which all humans become infertile: what values could then give meaning to life, when all humanity would soon be lost? Would research into cancer prevention, planning great architectural wonders, composing symphonies, planting trees, still be worthwhile? Do we need others to exist – ‘collective after-living’ – for our own mortal life, lacking any afterlife, to make sense?
A sting in death, with others surviving, is that we become, in Sartre’s bleak words, ‘prey to the living’, to the Other. Once deceased, we are impotent; others can sum up our lives, fix, classify and judge us. ‘It ain’t over even when the fat lady sits down.’
‘What a pity that he didn’t make more of his life.’ ‘She ought to have risked leaving her job and concentrated on her trumpet-playing.’ ‘Looking back, they were such bores and so pretentious.’ Despite being Sartre’s prey, post-death events can be of benefit. Given her particular interests, publication of her life’s work, although posthumous, is good; his loved garden continuing to be tended and cherished shows our respect for him. Our selves extend beyond our living skin to our interests, projects and reputation (recall betrayal); those interests et al. – and hence we – can be harmed or benefited even when we are no more.
Deaths of public figures these days are announced with, we may feel, unseemly haste: urgent newsflashes, commentators vying to be first to sum up the departed, often with exaggerated, obsequious praise almost as indecent as later attacks on reputations. Further, the privilege of ‘public innocence until found guilty in law’ evaporates, it seems, once deceased. Whatever wrongs in the lives of those now dead, there should still be space – ethical space – for some respect. There are good and bad ways of treating the dead.
A tragedy is not just that life may end too soon – or linger for too long – but that life can offer too much. ‘You can’t always get what you want’, pranced the Rolling Stones. The reasons differ. The good life of a faithful family man cannot exist with his engaging the good life as Casanova. That is a matter of logic. Saving the whale may upset a life devoted to research into medieval philosophy. That is a matter of time. And Gauguin’s quest for artistic success blotted his marriage – perhaps a matter of personality.
Tolstoy’s character Ivan Ilyich highlights an anxiety of mortality that we can and perhaps should confront. Nearing the end of life, worse than his physical sufferings were his mental sufferings:
‘What if in reality my whole life has been wrong?’ It occurred to him that what had appeared utterly impossible the night before – that he had not lived his life as he should have done – might after all be true.
Ilyich tried to defend his life, his reluctance to fight authority, yet his case was weak; Ilyich was leaving this life, aware that there was no putting it right. ‘What then?’ asked Ilyich.
LOSING THE SELF
Metaphysics into Ethics: We think of ourselves persisting into the future: we make plans for holidays and retirements; yet what constitutes being the same person months, or years, even just days, ahead?
Difficulties in answering can suggest that the persisting self is illusory. Your concern for your future ‘self’ is for someone bearing various psychological similarities with your ‘self’ now. Your concern for your future is, in a sense, concern for someone else. That metaphysical thought leads to the proposal that concern for others now is as rational as for your ‘future self’. Perhaps there is no great divide between self-interest and other-interest.
Loss of privacy – a malign loss: Invasions of privacy were once easily understood: people peered through keyholes or steamed letters open. Invasions now are ever invasive, via CCTV, tracking phone use and online searches. Soon, glasses, even tattoos, will reveal our locations, exposing us to buying pressures as we near stores eager for business. Still, our private thoughts remain distinct and safe – but wait… Why not play the ideas, temptations, desires, straight into our neurology – why stop at the skin? One day, shall we be at a loss over which thoughts and feelings are ‘our own’ – even over the very idea of a private life of ‘our own’?
Losing oneself – a benign loss: Activities are often just means to ends; we want to further a project, reduce our weight or give ourselves pleasure. In contrast, we can lose ourselves in games of chess, in playing tennis, where the value can be the good game played, set by its rules, not by external glows of winning or prizes received.
We can lose ourselves in conversation, in glancing at loved ones – in paintings, plays, novels – and especially in music, be it jazz, string quartets or opera. Losing oneself has no end in view. Returning to the world, we may, though, be emotionally enhanced, more perceptive of others. Curiously, we may be unable to put that into words; it may show in our sensitivity. Can we express in words what, say, Beethoven’s late string quartets mean?
Some people may feel for Ilyich’s plight; they worry whether they have obeyed God or obeyed the right god. For many, though, the Ilyichian question presupposes a detachment one giant leap too far: how could we assess a life, without using the values in our possession? In reply, here is at least a stab at some detachment.
We grant that things have not gone well for a young woman who, because of an accident, suffers severe brain damage. She is now perfectly content, unaware of her mental impairment, of her loss of bright future. She gets everything that she now values – warmth, food and repeated child cartoons playing – yet things have not gone well for her. Were she to detach herself from her condition, she would agree that things have gone badly.
A man once caring, kindly, with affection for others, because of a brain tumour and surgery becomes cold, indifferent, self-centred. If he could step outside and see the change, he would be appalled at the ethos of his new life; he would see it as tragic.
Reflect on the contented lives of some non-human animals. In cold Cambridge winters, the philosopher John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart would allow his cat Pushkin to sit close by the fire, while he, McTaggart, shivered at his desk, philosophizing. Why give the best place to the cat? Well, he would reply, warmth by a blazing fire is the best that it gets for a cat. We judge that a human life has more going for it than a feline’s.
Some people feel queasy about judging other people’s lives and values; yet we frequently do such judging, and often we ought. Judgment need be no elitist imposition of values, but acceptance that some things in life are good, some things bad – and encouragement for others to open eyes and see. We should, of course, also step back from our own life; we ought not to wait for an Ilychian deathbed scene. ‘Is the whole of my life wrong so far?’
Pretend that you must live your life again and again, without any difference whatever. Are you so proud of your life and its ways so far, asked Nietzsche, that you could embrace an eternal recurrence?
Eternal recurrence is nonsensical; if your repeated lives are exactly the same, they collapse into one life – this very one. Despite the nonsense, the eternal recurrence, this imaginative thought experiment, urges us to accept responsibility for what we do, for how we live, for how we die. As Nietzsche wrote: if told of such an eternal recurrence,
would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?… Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life – to long for nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
‘How should I fill my life?’ One person’s filling may differ from another’s: recall Andrea and Bethany. Morality demands a voice in any life; but life needs more – and less. Life completely engulfed in performing moral duties – dogged devotion to supporting the weak, always detached, always fair – would lack substance for most, and likely for us all, if those supported also lived solely for duty. To live only for others if those others also live only for others lacks ultimate substance. It is akin to the vacuity of commanding someone to follow this command when the command is nothing more than ‘Follow this command’.
Human living – to be human – involves attachments, accomplishments, diversities. We need time for our ‘selves’, our relationships, our projects, be they flute-playing, bird-watching or family life – be they talking the sun down with friends, smiling through repartee or participating in games and play. We have some options over dances and dance partners, but biology and common humanity ensure that, ethically, some we cannot refuse.
Typically, we value some arts: magnificent cathedrals, miniature gardens and being enraptured by song. We admire the Parthenon; we quietly forget the broken backs upon which it, and cathedrals and mosques, were built. We are probably pleased that certain artists closed eyes to the moral, producing arresting opera or finely crafted literature. We may admire cosmological explorations, defend nuclear defence upgrades and welcome prestigious City developments to the glory of developers; yet the vast sums allocated could have alleviated the anguished helplessness of millions.
Be the focus at the individual level or that of the community, there are, on the one hand, attachments to ‘those close to us’ and, on the other, awareness of those outside, those outside who have nothing, or virtually nothing, save despair. The ethical life, the eclectic ethical, with its mishmash of values, cannot ignore either; but how much devotion to one, when at the expense of the other? How much should we – our community, our country – spend helping others; how much to keep for ourselves? No formula exists to answer that question. Rest assured, though, we all know the direction of bias. The ethical life must surely make some correction for that.
*
‘All things conspire,’ wrote Hippocrates – all things are interconnected. In today’s world, that is easy to see, through rainforest destruction, gulf streams and butterfly wings that affect climates continents away. Indeed, interconnections are glaringly on view as these words are written, with poor African countries ravaged by the ebola virus: the US and Europe are now alert to dangers of widespread transmission; their decades of neglect of poor countries’ medical facilities, of letting ‘free trade’ rip to the West’s advantage, may after all not have been self-interestedly wise, let alone morally so.
Global communications ensure our easy awareness of tragedy: natural catastrophes, conflicts in war-torn lands, the destitute in poor countries scarcely scraping livings in producing cheap commodities for wealthy consumers elsewhere. Even were we not to be adversely affected, could we be well disposed to our lives, if blotting out that awareness?
Nietzsche, as earlier noted, asked: how can we affirm life, say ‘yes’ to life, when the ‘yes’ amounts to affirmation of worldly woes, woes interconnected with our own well-being? That is a deeper worry than we care to face. We benefit from the sufferings – present and historic – of others. Ought we not seriously to regret those sufferings, despite welcoming the benefits? At the very least, we should feel a moral ambivalence. Indeed, even if we do not benefit – ‘the sufferings have nothing to do with us, no business of ours’ – can we morally just stand aside and isolate ourselves? Should we not possess some human solidarity and act accordingly? It is surely a deceit to live a life – to be well disposed to that life – if in denial of a common humanity. My country, wrote Thomas Paine, is the world.
That we cannot do everything is no justification for doing nothing at all. Doing something is at least something – though it may too readily assuage our unease. We have justified concerns for ourselves and justified concerns for others; we muddle through.
‘How ought I to live?’ In answer, ethics opens up beyond morality, beyond moral duty, to aesthetics, religion, sensitivities, courtesies – and to muddles and mysteries. Our eyes therefore also need to open; they need to open to small matters of living, as well as to the large.
We should rightly have low opinions of those who snarl their way through life, crashing into passers-by without apology – or with dirty shoes on train seats – oblivious to the needs of others. We may yet feel compassion for them in their blindness, so closed are they to fellow-feeling. To whom do we, should we, warm? The young man who deliberately scares neighbours with his dogs, nurtured into savagery? Or the young man when not at home, who leaves classical music playing for pet guinea pigs? Whether the pigs of guinea possess classical appreciation – or musical ears at all – such sensitivity, creature-feeling, such awareness of the mystery of different lives, of radically different perspectives on the world, is, without doubt, valuable, belonging to an ethical ethos.
Can we truly value ourselves, if we turn away a buddy – an old friend, who has struck hard times – asking us to spare a dime? We surely cannot be proud of a life devoted solely to self-interested pleasures. If pleasure is all that matters, then, as Nietzsche quipped, the best life is to be tickled to death. Do people truly flourish if their lifelong passion is asset accumulation and tax avoidance – anything to escape solidarity with community welfare? Perhaps they need to recall King Midas’s plight. True, they may shrug their shoulders, insisting they live well – and that’s an end of the matter. That is, though, no end of the matter. With reflection, most should see that there is more to what counts than what can be counted.
Whether religious or atheist, optimist or pessimist, welcoming our biological life or not, many of us easily recognize the sense of Jesus’ words:
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gaine the whole world, and lose his owne soule?
There is no need to believe in the soul to warm to that sentiment, no requirement to believe in Judgement Day to grasp what is meant and sense its importance.
To live well is to acknowledge, even to embrace, our frailties, failures and foibles – and the mishmash of values in which we swim, often with the danger of drowning. To live well is yet to live with eyes uplifted, aspiring to what can be recognized as good, be it found shimmering in metaphorical heavens, in the Christian Eternity, or in soaring voices of choral music – be it found in the kaleidoscopic colours of the natural world, musings with friends, gambollings of humour, or observing the lives of pigeons.
The ethical life has many guises, yet underlying are some basic concerns, some pressing anxieties. With whom should we dance – and in which dance? We cannot sit through some dances of life; whatever we do – and fail to do – is an engagement with the lives of others, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
To live well is also to spread the word – to share what can be uplifting. For simple manifestations of aspiration, of eyes uplifted, whether believer or atheist, let us be lost, undisturbed for a while, in music that transcends the surrounding world. Few, once they attend, with or without hope in another, can be blind to the inspiring beauty of Thomas Tallis’s Spem in Alium.
Coming down to earth, we rightly challenge others over their greed, their delight in power and status – and still others over their cowardice, their waste of a life and lives of yet others. We should also challenge ourselves – even more so. It is wise to remember regarding others and regarding ourselves:
Before you judge a man, you must walk a mile in his shoes.
Understanding behaviour can lead to seeing characters in new lights, from different perspectives, perhaps with empathy, however disreputable they are on first appearances. We may grasp how they have been rocked by events not of their making.
Understanding, urged Spinoza, is key to the good life, to blessedness. In understanding, in explaining others as summations of causes, we may, though, end up treating them as no different from physical barriers to surmount; and barriers merit no sympathy, no empathy. Understanding, to speak paradoxically, is no guarantee of understanding.
Yet, I am certainly so very different from being an object that I ought not to be treated as if a mere object that gets in the way.
Reflecting thus, we should then see that we cannot in fact be so different from others; there exists a common humanity meriting fellow-feeling, sparkle, even sorrow – a humanity in want of cultivation, a humanity perhaps best appreciated when acting on Forster’s ‘Only connect’. That is far from implying resignation, that we should, with stoical calm, submit ourselves to whatever wrongs have been done. There are times to rage.
There are also times to appreciate tragedy. Recall the driver who killed a child – no fault of his own. He would love not to be that person, not to be a killer, even accidentally so – yet tragically he is. He needs the strength to live with it, to live on. It would be inhuman to shrug it off as just one of those things. Many lives are hit by misfortunes. Others have good fortunes, not least those of missing such tragedies. Humility is needed to recognize that good fortune. Sadly, humility is often lacking.
*
At the heart of Ethics is the feeling that we can and should do better. Ethics encourages us to stretch – to stretch our eyes, our imagination – to enhance lives and living. It provides an aspiration, of being at one with our way, or ways, of life, taking responsibility for what we have done and what we hope to do better.
Ethical reflections cannot provide a formula to save us from doing wrong or mistreating ourselves. Ethical reflections cannot shield us from surrounding sufferings and the melancholy of mortality. Their aim is not to blot out awareness of our shames, regrets and remorse over past doings. The reflections may, though, enable us to see our lives – and lives of others – in new and different colours, providing guidance for a well-disposed future.
The eclecticism of the ethics presented here, it is hoped, heightens awareness of incommensurable values with which we struggle and juggle – through which we muddle. Indeed, the backdrop to our reflections and actions should be sheer astonishment at our – so extremely unlikely, so highly improbable – existence. We are too familiar with being; we forget just how mysterious it is to be – and to be with others who also ‘be’.
Ethics should enhance sensitivities to the significance of ethics, to leading a life whose ethos causes us no shame – or at least, not too much shame – a life to which eventually we may be well disposed. It is an awareness, to quote Camus, that a man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world. We should add:
A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon himself.
Where references and quotations are readily available through online search engines or printed editions, these notes are uncluttered with details. For reason of space, quotations in the chapters are often abbreviated, but, I hope, provide an accurate sense of the thinking.
Prologue: the moral medley
For key readings, with valuable commentary, see Fricker and Guttenplan, eds, Reading Ethics (2009); for short extracts, Peter Singer, ed., Ethics (1994). Bernard Williams, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (1972) is a good beginning; for distinctive and advanced, try his Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985) and David Wiggins, Ethics, Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality (2006).
Thought-provoking works, not ploughing through theories, are Williams (again), Shame and Necessity (1993), Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception (1991), and Timothy Chappell, Knowing what to do: Imagination, Virtue and Platonism in Ethics (2014).
For lovers of screen reading, there is the reliable online Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. YouTube is a sometime good source for philosophy lectures, as are major university websites for lecture notes and readings. Very accessible is the website of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, London, its lectures and articles.
Exposure of business placing profits over well-being occurs in Jacques Peretti’s programmes The Men Who Made Us Spend (BBC, 2014). The postcard tale is sometimes told as cards to bishops; even Noel Coward as sender has been disputed.
Chapter One: How ought we to live?
For terms, see Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd edn (2008). Socrates appears in Plato’s dialogues as gadfly, questioning, challenging: see Apology and dialogues in Plato, The Last Days of Socrates. Extracts from Hobbes, Butler, Smith and Bentham are in D. D. Raphael, ed., British Moralists, 1650–1800 (1991). For detailed erudition on ancient Greeks’ ethics, try Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire (1994). For emphasis on falsifiability of empirical theories, Karl Popper is your man. Particularism is well represented in Jonathan Dancy, Ethics Without Principles (2004). For objective normative reasons, see T. M. Scanlon, Being Realistic about Reasons (2014).
It has been a commonplace to define man as a rational animal; for challenge, see Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels where the horses, the Houyhnhnms, live by reason, friendship and benevolence, manifesting decency and civility, in contrast to the uncouth physicality of the human-like Yahoos. Some have proposed man as the vain animal; others as the creature that can laugh.
Chapter Two: Utilitarianism: maximizing happiness
Recommended is Mill’s Utilitarianism (1861/93), Roger Crisp’s edition (1998). Mill on the dwarfing of men is in his highly influential On Liberty (1859). Jeremy Bentham’s extracts and Francis Hutcheson’s, in Raphael’s collection above, and Henry Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 7th edn (1907), are harder going. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics 3rd edn (2011), offers utilitarian approaches to equality, animals, the rich and poor.
‘Jim and the Indians’ appears in Smart and Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (1973). Peter Geach (his death occurred during my writing this book) gave a precursor of the Jim and Tram puzzles. Ten people are trapped in a cave, water rising: all will drown unless they escape. A bulky man, trying to escape, is stuck in the sole exit, blocking their way. The only solution is to blow him up (you happen to have explosives), enabling escape for others. Geach, a traditional Catholic, opposed using the man as means to life-saving ends. A variant: the man is stuck, face down in the cave; he will be drowned in any case – unless blown up.
Lover-ism derives from family-ism’s bondings: see Hursthouse, Ethics, Humans and Other Animals (2000). For moral paradoxes: Peter Cave, This Sentence Is False: an introduction to philosophical paradoxes (2009). I thank Mike Shaw for the Julian Barnes’ observation. Mill’s ‘ceasing to charm’ is from his autobiography.
Chapter Three: Deontology: ‘I must not tell a lie’
Kant’s works, not easy, are Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and The Metaphysics of Morals (1797). See the Cambridge 2012 edition of Groundwork, introduced by Christine Korsgaard. Extracts from Kant and contemporary discussions are in Stephen Darwall, Deontology (2002). Onora O’Neill’s Acting on Principle (2nd edn, 2013) takes us into reflective sympathetic detail. For Kant’s jokes – be prepared to be underwhelmed – see his Critique of Judgement (1790). Kant the great Enlightenment thinker is seen not to be that enlightened, once his views on, for example, sexuality are encountered: Kant argues that masturbation is a greater moral wrong than suicide for one gains pleasure from the wrong of the former.
Focus on prima facie duties is found in W. D. Ross, an Oxford philosopher, Aristotelian scholar, of the early twentieth century. Curiously, Ross maintained that virtue outweighs any pleasure, however great: see his The Right and The Good (1930). Apparently a major conference was held on the philosophical implications of Relativity Theory. Ross was later asked why he was absent. ‘Just hoping it will all blow over’, was his alleged reply.
Would Kant permit killing an innocent man? You are at the bottom of a well. An innocent man is hurled down, about to have a soft landing on you. He will live; you will be killed. You have a ray gun that you could use to disintegrate him. He is no aggressor, but are you within your rights to save yourself? Yes, another bizarre thought experiment – this time from Robert Nozick.
A non-Kantian and non-liar, the philosopher G. E. Moore was ensnared by his modesty. Bertrand Russell asked him, ‘Moore, do you always speak the truth?’ Moore’s response was ‘No’, saying in effect, ‘I do not always speak the truth.’ Assuming Moore until then had always spoken the truth (unlikely, it is true, if only because he was fallible), what he said may seem false, but then, if so, it is true; but if true, then false – thus, the Paradox of the Liar (see my This Sentence Is False).
Chapter Four: Virtue ethics: a flourishing life
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics arrives in many editions. For extracts and papers: Stephen Darwall, Virtue Ethics (2003). A contemporary line is Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, new edn (2001). I owe much to Rosalind on this topic through our Open University teaching. For a good man and harm: Peter Winch, Ethics and Action (1972). Terence Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (1995), offers rich material on Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
For cultural reflections, see Stefan Collini’s works, and for universities and business, his What Are Universities For? (2012). For culture affecting ‘truth’, regarding suffering, try Joanna Bourke’s The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers (2014). We may also wonder whether psychologically we can develop character traits that manifest what is morally required across a vast range of different circumstances; quite what makes a character trait so robust that it operates appropriately the same across very different situations?
The painter’s night off derives from Richard Wollheim’s The Thread of Life (1984), and Jonathan Katz helped with swallow (singular) and Greek Spring. Machiavelli’s The Prince has influenced politicians, ruthless business leaders and salespeople. Machiavelli shows the sexism of his times: when talking of Fortuna as a woman, he adds, that to control her, it is necessary to beat and coerce her.
Chapter Five: God: dead or alive?
Much written about God is obscure, certainly to non-believers – though thanks to Timothy Vince, Howard Conder and Arthur Roderick for trying to open my eyes to biblical truth. A few believers apparently worry whether Christian missionary work should extend to any rational beings in other galaxies. For the cool, see Christopher Lewis and Dan Cohn-Sherbok, eds, Sensible Religion (2014), which offers sense and humanity in its readings of the great religions’ holy texts – even in Jihadism properly understood. While writing this book, the not so cool was manifested by the new Islamic State in northern Iraq and Syria (ISIS), demanding that their Christians and Yazidis ‘convert’ to Islam or be killed: behaviour could convert; but belief?
Naturalist non-divine lines sometimes identify the good with what human beings, by nature, ‘truly’ desire or a ‘perfection’ being approached; but what constitutes such true desires or perfection neared? Try David Oderberg and Timothy Chappell, eds, Human Values: New Essays on Ethics and Natural Law (2004). Naturalist divine lines should be vexed by God’s mysterious moves. For the Good as creatively responsible for the universe, see John Leslie’s intriguing Infinite Minds (2001). For accessible details on the American Declaration: Danielle Allen, Our Declaration (2014). The Chateaubriand quotation is from David Wiggins, ‘Solidarity and the Root of the Ethical’ (2008); it promotes solidarity in splendid detail, linking with Simone Weil.
Classic scepticisms are: David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779); J. S. Mill, Three Essays on Religion (1850–70). Spinoza’s excommunication is in Steven Nadler, Spinoza’s Heresy (2004), his toleration and biblical criticism in Nadler’s A Book Forged in Hell (2011). For humanist papers, see Grayling and Copson, eds, The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Humanism (2015). For religion and suffering, see Peter Flood, ed., New Problems in Medical Ethics (1953) and Joanna Bourke mentioned above, reviewed by Gavin Francis, ‘How many speed bumps?’ (LRB, 21.08.2014). John Wisdom’s gardener is in his ‘Gods’ in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (1953).
Euthyphro is in, for example, Plato, The Last Days of Socrates. Benjamin Franklin wrote of how he originally saw virtue as a means to Heaven – and how he aimed, but failed, at perfection. See his The Art of Virtue (conceived 1732).
For this chapter’s quotations: Simone Weil, Waiting for God (1951); Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886). See also Michael Tanner’s short introduction Nietzsche (1994). ‘Übermensch’, untranslated, avoids the silliness of ‘superman’. For God in nature, try Roger Scruton, The Soul of the World (2014). Wittgenstein’s degeneration comment is in Rush Rhees, ed., Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections (1981). My Humanism: A Beginner’s Guide (2009) introduces critical assessment of God, religion and evil.
Chapter Six: Existentialism: freedom and responsibility
Sartre’s novel Nausea presents classic angst; the simplified philosophy is in his Existentialism and Humanism (1948), though partly repudiated; the major is Being and Nothingness (1943; Hazel Barnes, trans.1957), no light read. For papers, including references to de Beauvoir, see Steven Crowell, ed., Cambridge Companion to Existentialism (2012); also Peter Winch, Simone Weil: The Just Balance (1989) and Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil (1991).
Gary Watson, ed., Free Will (2003) contains Strawson’s reactive attitudes, intriguing thought experiments by Frankfurt and much more. Krupke appeared in West Side Story – without the judge’s response. Moral Luck, ed. Daniel Statman (1993), includes Williams and Nagel who set the topic going. A Jewish luck-orientated question is, ‘How do you make God laugh?’ The answer: ‘Tell him your plans’.
Chapter Seven: Morality: just an illusion?
The Dawkins is from his The Selfish Gene (1976/2006), p.3. A philosopher’s challenge to current scientific assumptions is Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (2012).
Moore’s classic is Principia Ethica (1903). For detail and erudition, try Alexander Miller, An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics (2003). Error theory was highlighted by J. L. Mackie, Ethics, Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). The Russell precursor is his ‘Is there an absolute good?’ (1922); his emotivism is in his Religion and Science (1935).
A little-known anti-scepticism, with considerable sense, using Sartre, Moore and John Wisdom is Renford Bambrough, Moral Scepticism and Moral Knowledge (1979). My thinking has mingled with Wisdom’s and Bambrough’s approaches over the years. A realist may describe ‘moral realism’ as ‘what you can get away with’; my thanks to Brian Gilmore for the quip.
Chapter Eight: Applying ethics: life and death dilemmas
Fine discussions are in Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives (1977). See too Steven Luper, ed., Life and Death (2014). The omelette quip is Glover’s. Glover is always a good read (see his website). Thomson’s violinist ‘A Defence of Abortion’ is in Peter Singer, ed., Applied Ethics (1986). The little-known Salt comment appears in Singer’s Practical Ethics (2011).
For commodification: Anne Philips, Our Bodies, Whose Property (2013) and Janet Radcliffe Richards, The Ethics of Transplants (2012). The former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (who died during the writing of this book) had been kept alive, well, his body had, for eight years, despite a persistent vegetative state. Was that the right thing to do – on the grounds of religion, morality, hope against hope – or what?
For enhancing, see Bostrom and Roache, ‘Ethical Issues in Human Enhancement’ in Ryberg, ed., New Waves in Applied Ethics (2007). It is observed: had genetic engineering been present in Victorian times, children might have been designed for piety and patriotism. Rationality, it has been suggested, suggests breeding and engineering should be for moneymakers – as they have better lives in our financially dominated world. R. Jay Wallace’s The View from Here (2013) illuminates the conflicts in affirming a life that yet rests on conditions meriting regret.
David Hume, in his essay ‘On Suicide’, draws attention to how people pick and choose regarding when to say we ought not ‘to play God’.
Chapter Nine: No man is an island: from community to ecology
G. A. Cohen’s appealing, very short, Why Not Socialism? (2009) should make us think – see also some Jerry (G. A. Cohen) performances on YouTube – as does the polemical attack on capitalist involvement in poverty, ecological raids et al., in Richard Walker’s Who Cares? (2011). An inn sign by D. J. Williams – The Four Alls (c. 1850) – shows one view of society: the King says ‘I govern you,’ the Bishop, ‘I pray for you,’ the soldier, ‘I fight for you’ – and the worker, ‘I pay for you.’
For ‘forced to be free’, see Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762). Rousseau was a major influence on the French Revolution and, it seems, not an appealing character; for how the good-humoured David Hume put up with him, see Edmonds and Eidinow, Rousseau’s Dog (2007).
Many unknown have been at the mercy of oppressive laws where, as E. M. Forster noted and endured, the private individual can suffer from the excessive demands imposed by the norms of the public world. Forster’s work as a novelist suffered because, in his day, he had to hide his sexuality from public gaze. Benjamin Britten was nervous of his. Maynard Keynes and others of Cambridge – King’s College, Trinity College – and Bloomsbury grew more sanguine.
For structured accessible survey, Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy, 2nd edn (2006) is excellent. Modern classics are John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971; revised 1999), no light read, and Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974). Rawls and Nozick, both of Harvard, put political philosophy back on the map later in the twentieth century. See G. A. Cohen’s works for challenges to Nozick. Books by and on Thomas Paine merit delving – for man’s rights and how Paine suffered promoting them. Burke is properly assessed in David Bromwich, The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence (2014). Liberty and property – ‘the two chief earthly Blessings of human Nature’ judged Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715) – have frequently been entwined; eyes are closed to how one person’s liberty of property ownership obstructs liberties of others. Behind Rawls’s veil, to take another example, one close to the author’s London heart and ears – and attempts to think – we may have no view on how noise may affect and distress many people; yet, once in today’s cities, we may be baffled as to why laws permit unsilenced drillings, noisy construction works, loud beat music in nearly every bar – and shrill burglar alarms to no purpose.
John Benson, Environmental Ethics (2000), is true to its title and includes Paul Taylor’s inherent worth and Routley’s ‘The last man’. Hursthouse (see Chapter Two’s notes) includes Tom Regan’s animal rights. Moore’s ‘Two Worlds’ is in his Principia Ethica (1903); Keynes’s description of the ethics, in his Two Memoirs (1949).
Salt (1851–1939) appears in Hendrick, The Savour of Salt (1989). For past craziness: Edward Payson Evans, Animal Trials (2013). Nicholas Humphrey tells of Saxon times when the Welsh village Hawarden allegedly sentenced a Virgin Mary statue because it fell on the Lady of the Castle, killing her (LRB, Letters, 19.12.2013). The Egyptologist, Petrie, spoke of the deliberate and casual destruction of archaeological remains as an immorality.
Chapter Ten: ‘For every foot, its own shoe’
Williams introduced Gauguin; see the Statman collection Moral Luck (1993) and R. Jay Wallace, The View from Here (2013). Peter Winch’s Ethics and Action (1972) resists Sidgwick, using Billy Budd; for Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (1970) and Justin Broackes ed., Iris Murdoch, Philosopher (2011) especially for Julia Driver, who also uses Montaigne’s ‘shoe’. John Wisdom, a twentieth-century jodhpur-wearing Cambridge philosopher, tells of the Taj Mahal in Paradox and Discovery (1965).
Sartre introduced the Other in Being and Nothingness (mentioned above). For Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence: The Gay Science (1887) and Michael Tanner’s Nietzsche (again). Bertrand Russell said he would welcome living his life again – but whether exactly the same, and repeatedly…? Some manage ‘yes’ to life through lust: according to Percy Grainger, Delius worshipped sex, practising immorality with puritanical stubbornness. Some feel battered by events as in Samuel Beckett’s The End (trans. Richard Seaver, 1977) – whence the chapter’s Beckett quotation.
Personal identity and death et al. are in Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (1984). Samuel Scheffler introduces collective after-living, using P. D. James’s story – The Children of Men (1992) – in Death and the After Life (2013). Privacy invasions are in Sophie Bolat, unpublished (2012) MA dissertation, who notes Virginia Woolf’s description of private life as ‘infinitely the dearest of our possessions’. Forster tells of Goldie in the biography (1934). For more on death, losing oneself and aesthetics, see my Philosophy: A Beginner’s Guide (2012) and Humanism (2009). The Epilogue notes below contain references to some artistic works to try.
Epilogue: ‘Buddy, can you spare a dime?’
The title’s song, written in the American Great Depression, initially condemned as anti-capitalist, lyrics by Harburg, music by Gorney, was based on a Jewish Russian lullaby. For solidarity and brotherhood, see Wiggins, ‘Solidarity and the Root of the Ethical’ – and thanks to Zeki Bolat for stimulating some examples.
For reflections on public and personal morality through the colourful life – bohemian yet also establishment – of John Maynard Keynes and his detestation of the love of money, his connections with Moore, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, his urging of social reforms and his questioning of family and business relations, see Backhouse and Bateman, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Keynes (2006) – especially papers by Baldwin and Goodwin. Writes Keynes (‘The Future’): ‘We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.’
Jesus’ words quoted are from Mark (8:36). With deference to tradition and charm, I have used the translation of the 1611 King James Bible.
Walking a mile in another man’s shoes provides the safety, of course, of leaving him a mile behind, barefoot – valuable, if you are going to judge him severely. I owe the quip to Ed Winters courtesy of Maltravers.
Life’s meaning can no doubt gain some exposure through film, paintings, even popular music and musicals – I bow to others – and certainly mis-meanings through splendid sitcoms such as Seinfeld and Curb. Schopenhauer emphasized music’s deeper value and mystery, found in the classical. I mention below some pieces, often available on YouTube, not as well known as the wonders of Monteverdi, Purcell and J. S. Bach’s passions and cantatas, as the achievements of Beethoven, Schubert and Wagner.
For beauteous melancholy, Richard Strauss, Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) and Mahler, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I am lost to the world); ageing and competing passions, Benjamin Britten, Death in Venice; mortality’s desirability, Janácek, The Makropulos Case; political controversy, John Adams, The Death of Klinghoffer. Mystery is found in Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question and Messiaen, Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time). Musical immersion, with political point – Gandhi and South Africa; Martin Luther King and Civil Rights – is via Philip Glass, Satyagraha (note the English National Opera/New York Met production). Life’s muddled narratives are present in Berio’s Sinfonia – note the palimpsest third movement. BBC Radio 3 is the place to go to understand, appreciate and enjoy such music as the above.
For some, possibly less well-known literary endeavours, with characters seeking to comprehend life, try Fallada’s novel Alone in Berlin (2010); especially Cavafy’s poems – Cavafy delightfully described by Forster as ‘a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe’ – and Samuel Beckett’s plays such as Rockaby, Happy Days and Play.
For an enigmatic ending, since set to music by Steve Reich in Proverb, there is Wittgenstein’s aphorism:
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life.
Through thousands of years of philosophical discussions – maybe an exaggeration – I am indebted to academic colleagues, friends and numerous students (not mutually exclusive), most recently associated with The Open University and New York University (London) and more distantly with City University London, University College London and King’s College, Cambridge. I am also indebted to numerous papers, lectures and conferences, some bright, some baffling, some silly, some all three; they have stimulated, often in forgotten ways. I apologize for the forgetting.
Philosophers and friends who have helped wittingly or unwittingly (in no special order) include Jeremy Barlow, Jonathan Wolff, Malcolm Bishop, Jerry Valberg, Jonathan Katz, Timothy Chappell, Martin Holt, Ray Tallis, Gerard Livingstone, John Shand, Kevin Grant, Peter Atkins, John Cottingham, Alison Fleming, Ben Beaumont, Jesse Tomalty and Michael Clark. Special thanks, for philosophical insight, early read throughs and encouragement, to Sophie Bolat and Derek Matravers.
For additional help, practical and motivational, I thank Oneworld’s Mike Harpley, Andrea d’Cruz and Paul Nash.
Because of the astonishing amount of noisy building and road works (possibly I have already alluded to such) in central London, often repetitious and unnecessary – lasers or similar silencing could be developed, together with appreciation of the shabby – I hid away in the relative calm of the Athenaeum’s library. I should also mention the pointless, repetitive loud mis-alarms of car and burglar alarms, always ignored (at least in London). I thank, therefore, the ever helpful staff of the club for library and archive support, coffee support and much else, including trips to the London Library, often undertaken by Laura Doran and Annette Rockall in good humour and bad weather.
The Algae, in particular Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Hazhir Teirmourian, often stimulated my thinking, as did other club members – and I thank Angela Joy Harvey for many years of encouragement and philosophical discussion.
My greatest philosophical indebtedness is to Ardon Lyon. If I keep saying this, one day he may feel that he really must get his fine and refined thoughts properly down on paper and published, to put the philosophical world to rights – well, at least pointing in the right direction of clarity and carefulness, not to be confused with ever-growing technical apparatus currently, it seems, in vogue.
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While completing this work, Laurence Goldstein died; an ‘out of the blue’ brain tumour arrived. Laurence devoted his life to philosophy, with splendid humour and fineness of touch – ever helpful, ever thoughtful, ever witty. Laurence was a close philosophical ‘buddy’ and stimulus; he would spare a dime.
Apparently, when interviewed for membership of an exclusive Hong Kong club, Laurence confessed to being a logician – ‘Splendid,’ came the reply, ‘We could do with a magician.’ Well, Laurence could work the magic in many ways; and philosophical reasoning, be its focus logic or ethics, can pull lost rabbits out of hats – and then lose them again.