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The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study. Vol. 1: from Socrates to the Reformation

2013; Duke University Press; Volume: 123; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00318108-2366545

1558-1470

Marco Zingano,

Classical Philosophy and Thought

This volume, the first of a series of three, is an outstanding example of high scholarship combined with deep insight in ethics as a philosophical discipline. Terence Irwin has published several books and papers on Plato and Aristotle that have become central to academic reflection on Ancient philosophy in the last three decades. This new work is a landmark in academic reflection on ethics, ranging from Socrates to Reformation (vol. 1), from Suárez to Rousseau (vol. 2), and from Kant to Rawls (vol. 3), thus embracing in a single undertaking the main ethical doctrines that Western philosophers produced over many centuries. This is such a formidable task that almost no one would think of carrying it out, but a task that in the current case pays off awfully well—or so I want to argue in what concerns the first volume, which is focused on Ancient and Medieval philosophy.What looks fearsome is not exactly the huge number of books, texts, and doctrines one needs to go through. What is really frightening is the search for a common thread, einroter Faden so to say, by means of which the whole discipline of ethics would be unified as a long but single conversation that can be evaluated in terms of a set of tenets being discussed and developed in all these thinkers. This was done for logic by Kneale and Kneale in the 1960s, and it is understandable that they succeeded in finding such a thread, for contemporary logic, the logic stemming from Frege's work, allows us to see and evaluate its history from Aristotle onward as steps to, or deviations from, what counts as a sound logic theory. One has thus a development of logic—but is there something similar in ethics? One may reasonably doubt this and think instead of ethics as a discipline full of controversies, perhaps even as being forever controversial, as no resting point is ever to be found in it, so long as (moral) values are in a relevant way subjective or historical, quite the opposite of what happens in natural science, let alone in logic or mathematics. Now, Irwin has a clear answer to this worry. Irwin's roter Faden is what he vindicates as “Aristotelian naturalism”:[Aristotle] defends an account of the human good as happiness (eudaimonia), consisting in the fulfillment of human nature, expressed in the various human virtues. His position is teleological, in so far as it seeks the basic guide for action in an ultimate end, eudaemonist, in so far as it identifies the ultimate end with happiness, and naturalist, in so far as it identifies virtue and happiness in a life that fulfils the nature and capacities of rational human nature. This is the position that I describe as ‘Aristotelian naturalism’, or ‘traditional naturalism’. We can follow one significant thread through the history of moral philosophy by considering how far Aristotle is right, and what his successors think about his claims. (4)One has thus a thread, and a very significant one; but is this the thread, that roter Faden by means of which we will be able to construe the entire history of ethics as the development of a basic moral position? As significant as it may be, it cannot work as the dividing line as in the case of the development of logic, for such a position will not be fair to many moral doctrines that react against Aristotle's naturalism on ethics—and sometimes react very strongly against it, as in the case of Hobbes. But the idea is precisely to invert the claim: with Aristotelian naturalism we have such a robust moral theory that the history of ethics may be seen as the unfolding of different reactions to it, either in developing it and building on it, or in rejecting it in many ways. Ethics becomes, so to say, a history of putting Aristotelian naturalism to the test, and somehow it must withstand the test—but this belongs to the third volume to show. What is crucial is that, even though there is no unique point from which we can adjudicate the past, there is a moral position that stays salient enough to make all other moral doctrines turn in some way around it. The history of the unfolding of these reactions may be seen as the development of an ethical position that gets stronger by eliminating weak parts, as well as by taking on accretions—or so is the bet.To get there, three moves at least seem necessary. First, Aristotelian naturalism should be construed in a quite generous way. That is, commitments to teleology, for instance, must be weakened as far as possible, such that attacks on teleology—and the fatal blow thrust by Darwin—will not be lethal to it. Only teleology in action is to be preserved. But this is no desperate task, as Aristotle himself was eager to avert explicit dependence of his ethics on metaphysics or natural teleology. A second move is to strengthen parts of Aristotle's ethics. Some notions seem to be lacking in his ethics, such as the notion of will, or not clearly presented, as the notion of intention, and these notions play a crucial role in our discussions on moral responsibility. Aquinas is one of the privileged authors in this sense—actually, he gets the biggest part of this volume. And this is no coincidence, for Irwin takes Aquinas as offering the best reformulation of Aristotle's naturalism: “The best way to examine this [Aristotelian] approach and this naturalist position is to reflect on Aquinas' version of them. For this reason, my chapters on Aristotle omit some questions that one might expect to see discussed there; I postpone them until I discuss Aquinas and his critics” (4).It may well be the case that Aquinas's reading of Aristotle's ethics gives (Aristotelian) naturalism its strongest version—taking for granted that Aquinas's own religious compromises have no direct effect on it. But a third move is still necessary: to smooth down those reactions that look rather as outright rejections of Aristotelian naturalism. Eudaimonism is central to Aristotelian naturalism; but Kant argued bitterly against it, as he took it that any eudaimonism is the euthanasia of all morality. There has been recently an attempt to bridge the gap between Kant and Aristotle, and there are good reasons to do so. Still, it demands a good deal of argumentation not to see them as conflicting ways of explaining the phenomenon of morality. Nietzsche and his genealogy of morals should also figure prominently in such a list.Granted all these moves, the outcome of volume 1 is an extraordinary critical analysis of Ancient ethics, beginning with the predecessors of Aristotelian naturalism (such as Socrates and Plato) and going through its legacy, as well as with those doctrines that found in Socrates or Plato reasons to resist some Aristotelian tenets, or those that brought about new topics. Irwin displays a superb knowledge of sources, conducting the discussion in chapters according to a historical line, but always with an eye to the conceptual formulation and evolution of ethical notions. There is so much scholarship, subtlety, and ingenuity in Irwin's analyses that I can only mention them here. I will focus on three points that seemed to me central to Irwin's strategy of positing Aristotelian naturalism (as seen by Aquinas) right in the center of moral reflection. By doing so, I hope to give the reader a slight idea of the richness of this book.The first point concerns the Aristotelian notion of prohairesis and its rival Stoic notion of sunkatathesis. According to the Stoics, after apprehending an object by phantasia, the agent gives or refuses his or her assent, and from this assent an impulse is generated leading to action. Now, human assent is based on reasoning, and this reasoning may contain deliberations about how to act. Stoics do not seem to have put much emphasis on deliberation, but deliberation is expected to occur whenever the agent has to give his or her assent to an impression and look to put the resulting impulse into practice. Deliberation is at the center of Aristotle's reflection on human action. Deliberation concerns what is up to us to do or not to do, and one may construe this notion basically in two different ways: either in a libertarian way, as Alexander of Aphrodisias did, in the sense that what is up to us to do now is also up to us not to perform; or in a compatibilist way, in the sense that it is determined now, given the circumstances and the desires we have, that we will do what we are about to do, albeit, if the circumstances are altered, or our desires, we can act otherwise. In this latter sense, the agent has a general capacity of acting otherwise, whereas in the former sense, the agent has the specific capacity of acting otherwise in these precise circumstances, hic et nunc, as he is about to act. The libertarian reading is incompatible with the Stoic notion of fatum and makes Stoic assent a rival to Aristotelian prohairesis, thus proposing a competing conception of moral responsibility. Since Richard Loening's Die Zurechnungslehre des Aristoteles (1903), and notably after Susanne Bobzien's Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (1998), there is a strong tendency among commentators to saddle Aristotle with a compatibilist version of what is up to us. This is the way Irwin reads this notion:Aristotle's account of responsibility is closer to the Stoic position than to Alexander's. While he affirms the conditions that Alexander interprets in an indeterminist sense, he does not interpret them in this sense. He argues that rational agents are rightly held responsible for their voluntary actions because these are actions of agents who are capable of rational deliberation and election. The Stoics go further, and insist that we are responsible for those actions that actually express—either by reflexion on appearances or by simply going along with them—the outlook that is embodied in the agent's elections (as Aristotle understands them). This further element in the Stoic position modifies and develops Aristotle, but it does not depart sharply from his position. Later expositors of Aristotle's position are right, therefore, to mention assent. (308)This reading may well be right and has recently been favored by important commentators (see, for instance, Michael Frede's A Free Will [2011]). I don't want to discuss it as such; my point is that such a reading gives support to, but is also supported by, the main idea of a sort of continuity throughout ethical thought. Alexander's libertarianism is thus put aside as a divergent interpretation of Aristotle's thesis—but there goes with him the Principle of Alternate Possibilities as central to moral responsibility—and this is a crucial move.A similar attitude is taken concerning the connected idea of will. This notion has not been introduced by Augustine in a sheer break with Ancient thought; quite the contrary, Augustine “does not commit himself to any claims about the will that are inconsistent with the Stoic view of assent” (411). Augustine is rather on the track of intellectualism: “The will is free in relation to the passions in so far as it is capable of consenting or not consenting to the actions suggested by the passions. The will is not similarly free in relation to the apparent good, but Augustine does not suggest that this lack of freedom involves any lack of the freedom relevant to responsibility” (412). Or, as Irwin said some lines before: “We have no reason, therefore, to attribute voluntarism to Augustine. He emphasizes the role of the will in free and responsible action because he believes that non-rational desires can move us to free action only with our consent; he does not claim that the will moves us independently of the greater apparent good. He accepts Stoic intellectualism and avoids voluntarism” (412).Again, there is continuity; and this may well be right. But continuity may look a bit Procrustean. Let me bring in my second point to elaborate this idea. Aristotelian prohairesis is chiefly concerned with the means to an end, or so insists Aristotle. But we think rather that it should be mainly concerned with establishing the ends we pursue, and only subsequently with the means to reach these ends. There are different strategies to cope with the restriction of deliberation to means in Aristotle. Aquinas has convincingly argued that the final ends (or pleasure, honor, and knowledge, according to the Aristotelian tripartition) may be taken as means to (in the sense of components of) happiness. In this way, one may have different ends materialiter speaking, but only one formaliter, namely, happiness. This point is highlighted by Irwin in the following way: “Rational agents accept an ordered plurality of ends, and want the satisfaction of their desires to correspond to the comparative value they attach to each end.… To adjust one end to others is to recognize the structure of an ultimate end embracing them all; hence the rational pursuit of any particular end for its own sake requires its subordination to an ultimate end” (496).Aquinas pursues further the idea of practical wisdom not only in the subordination of our ends to the ultimate end, but also in determining those ends that are final to our actions. These will be the first practical principles, in relation to which practical wisdom is also expected to fix the right means to achieve them. Irwin claims that Aquinas provides the best reformulation of Aristotle's ethical thought; we have thus to reconcile this double role of practical wisdom with the Aristotelian doctrine of deliberation as the central practical usage of reason. As there are passages in Aristotle that point in this direction, continuity seems to be on the right track. But continuity here means bringing in the notion of synderesis, and synderesis is what corresponds, in practical reason, to the noetic apprehension of first principles in knowledge. So we now have apprehension of ethical first principles, and these principles are universal and apprehended by all of us. This gives the ultimate end much more definite content than one would suspect it may have in Aristotle; moreover, deliberation, which was the central aspect of practical reasoning in Aristotle, has no significant role to play in the apprehension of these practical principles. The universal conscience, claims Aquinas, is indestructible, for it defines the human agency in itself. That goodness is to be pursued and evil to be averted is a mark of human rationality and not a psychological or anthropological outcome, as Irwin highlights. There are huge consequences here. Malignity is now out of human reach, as Kant will claim later; and we as rational agents can do evil only as deviation from the moral rule, which at the same time we recognize. Cruelty becomes a sort of stepping aside from moral law and not an object of choice by itself. Moreover, we are heading to universal laws in morality: “This division between two roles of practical reason has no explicit Aristotelian support, but it is a reasonable expansion of Aristotle. For we need some account of how we can form the ends that are characteristic of the virtuous person. To answer this question, Aquinas introduces synderesis (‘universal conscience’), which is the specific disposition of practical reason that grasps the first principles. He claims that these principles are the first principles of natural law” (573).Is Aristotelian naturalism still there, with universal natural laws (Aristotle thought of natural justice as a case of political justice), or has it been so altered by these accretions that it is barely recognizable, somewhat like the sea-god Glaucus in Republic 10? I come to my third and last point. As Aristotelian eudaimonism is self-centered, one may ask how to incorporate into it the notion of altruism, which seems to be so central to moral thought. Now, Aristotle's doctrine of friendship does have such a notion, for a friend looks after other people for the sake of themselves, and not because his or her doing so may be good, useful, or pleasing to himself or herself. This is altruism, but limited in that that these other people are restrictedly his or her friends. Worse, your friend is, according to Aristotle, another yourself, albeit separate: altruism is severely restricted to replication of one's own self. Compare Aristotle's altruism to the New Testament's parable of the Good Samaritan: we seem to be poles apart. One may extend Aristotelian altruism toward all the members of the polis, but there still seems to be lacking a requirement of impersonality and detachment, which stands out so prominently in that parable. Irwin is well aware of this:The more we are inclined to associate morality with impartiality, impersonality, and detachment, the more surprised we will be by Aristotle's treatment of it. For while he takes seriously the requirements of justice and fairness, he tries to derive them from self-regarding and self-centered concerns; the close connexion between friendship, the common good, and justice shows his preferred direction of argument and justification. This is not merely a theoretical difference from other ways of thinking about morality; it also affects the moral principles that Aristotle accepts and emphasizes. Duties are owed to other people as friends and fellow-citizens sharing goals and interests with the agent, not simply as other people. Non-members of a community have no clear moral claims on me. The human beings or nearly-human beings who cannot be fellow-members of a community are legitimately treated as natural slaves and used as instruments for my benefit rather than theirs. (231)Let us say that Aristotelian altruism goes for a possible altruism whenever other people are somewhat like us, whereas the Good Samaritan imposes a necessary altruism, whoever happens to cross our way. This possible altruism seems hard to reconcile with Kant's universal human agent, or even with utilitarian rules of maximizing the benefits for everyone, for both of them respond to the generalized claim of (necessary) altruism. Is there a way to see here some continuity nonetheless, or do we face a break in ethical thinking, a new basic requirement being introduced that has no trace in Aristotle's thought? Here Irwin seems to me to make an excellent point. First, he shows how this idea goes back to the Stoic notion of honestum and how the Aristotelian notion of acting tou kalou heneka may be seen as the origin of it. But second, he shows also why we should be attentive to what looks at first glance as an unwarranted restriction of altruism in Aristotle: “This egocentric aspect of Aristotle's view does not necessarily indicate an error in it; indeed, it may be a theoretical advantage. For it explains why we might recognize a more stringent requirement corresponding to our closer connexion with some people than with others” (232).There are now features of a moral action, such as detachment, impartiality, universality, that have to be coordinated, and may occasionally conflict, with others—like pursuing one's own interests—all under the heading of one's doing well, instead of taking some of them as more basic and explaining away the others in terms of them. Let me quote Irwin again:We probably cannot decide unequivocally that Aristotle's conception of morality does or does not match ours; for we probably lack any pre-theoretical conception of morality that is definite enough either to agree or to disagree with Aristotle, or with Bentham or Kant. Rather, our beliefs about morality include some that Aristotle may plausibly claim to explain, as well as others that do not fit his account. Aristotle's conception of morality is not inaccessibly remote from ours. His explanation of morality may advance our understanding of it. (232)We are thus back to our initial issue: continuity, or breaking point? One may also ask: Is this expansion toward universality and impartiality an outcome somehow in agreement with ethical naturalism, or is it a requirement derived from a theological perspective, according to which we are all members of one big family, and thus hard to square with Aristotelian doctrine? Does moral discourse make for a coherent language, or is it a quilt made up from different threads? Irwin argues strongly for a coherent, evolving language that starts with Aristotelian naturalism and develops toward more sophisticated thinking as it incorporates notions that strengthen that original position. He argues brilliantly for this position, displaying an enviable scholarship, a sharp analytical account, and such a mastery of sources and texts that make this book a wonderful and indispensable reference for any work in ethics as a philosophical discipline.