Philosophy

Ethics is traditionally a department of philosophy, and that is my reason for discussing it. I hardly think myself that it ought to be included in the domain of philosophy, but to prove this would take as long as to discuss the subject itself, and would be less interesting.

As a provisional definition, we may take ethics to consist of general principles which help to determine rules of conduct. It is not the business of ethics to say how a person should act in such and such specific circumstances; that is the province of casuistry. The word “casuistry” has acquired bad connotations, as a result of the Protestant and Jansenist attacks on the Jesuits. But in its old and proper sense it represents a perfectly legitimate study. Take, say, the question: In what circumstances is it right to tell a lie? Some people, unthinkingly, would say: Never! But this answer cannot be seriously defended. Everybody admits that you should lie if you meet a homicidal maniac pursuing a man with a view to murdering him, and he asks you whether the man has passed your way. It is admitted that lying is a legitimate branch of the art of warfare; also that priests may lie to guard the secrets of the confessional, and doctors to protect the professional confidences of their patients. All such questions belong to casuistry in the old sense, and it is evident that they are questions deserving to be asked and answered. But they do not belong to ethics in the sense in which this study has been included in philosophy.

It is not the business of ethics to arrive at actual rules of conduct, such as: “Thou shalt not steal”. This is the province of morals. Ethics is expected to provide a basis from which such rules can be deduced. The rules of morals differ according to the age, the race, and the creed of the community concerned, to an extent that is hardly realised by those who have neither travelled nor studied anthropology. Even within a homogeneous community differences of opinion arise. Should a man kill his wife’s lover? The Church says no, the law says no, and common sense says no; yet many people would say yes, and juries often refuse to condemn. These doubtful cases arise when a moral rule is in process of changing. But ethics is concerned with something more general than moral rules, and less subject to change. It is true that, in a given community, an ethic which does not lead to the moral rules accepted by that community is considered immoral. It does not, of course, follow that such an ethic is in fact false, since the moral rules of that community may be undesirable. Some tribes of head-hunters hold that no man should marry until he can bring to the wedding the head of an enemy slain by himself. Those who question this moral rule are held to be encouraging licence and lowering the standard of manliness. Nevertheless, we should not demand of an ethic that it should justify the moral rules of head-hunters.

Perhaps the best way to approach the subject of ethics is to ask what is meant when a person says: “You ought to do so-and-so” or “I ought to do so-and-so”. Primarily, a sentence of this sort has an emotional content; it means “this is the act towards which I feel the emotion of approval”. But we do not wish to leave the matter there; we want to find something more objective and systematic and constant than a personal emotion. The ethical teacher says: “You ought to approve acts of such-and-such kinds”. He generally gives reasons for this view, and we have to examine what sorts of reasons are possible. We are here on very ancient ground. Socrates was concerned mainly with ethics; Plato and Aristotle both discussed the subject at length; before their time, Confucius and Buddha had each founded a religion consisting almost entirely of ethical teaching, though in the case of Buddhism there was afterwards a growth of theological doctrine. The views of the ancients on ethics are better worth studying than their views on (say) physical science; the subject has not yet proved amenable to exact reasoning, and we cannot boast that the moderns have as yet rendered their predecessors obsolete.

Historically, virtue consisted at first of obedience to authority, whether that of the gods, the government, or custom. Those who disobeyed authority suffered obvious penalties. This is still the view of Hegel, to whom virtue consists in obedience to the State. There are, however, different forms of this theory, and the objections to them are different. In its more primitive form, the theory is unaware that different authorities take different views as to what constitutes virtue, and it therefore universalises the practice of the community in which the theoriser lives. When other ages and nations are found to have different customs, these are condemned as abominations. Let us consider this view first.

The view we are now to examine is the theory that there are certain rules of conduct—e.g. the Decalogue—which determine virtue in all situations. The person who keeps all the rules is perfectly virtuous; the person who fails in this is wicked in proportion to the frequency of his failures. There are several objections to this as the basis of ethics. In the first place, the rules can hardly cover the whole field of human conduct; e.g. there is nothing in the Decalogue to show whether we ought to have a gold standard or not. Accordingly those who hold this view regard some questions as “moral issues”, while others have not this character. That means, in practice, that in regard to “moral issues” we ought to act in a certain way, regardless of consequences, while in other matters we ought to consider which course will do the most good. Thus in effect we are driven to adopt two different ethical systems, one where the code has spoken, the other where it is silent. This is unsatisfactory to a philosopher.

The second objection to such a view is suggested by the first. We all feel that certain results are desirable, and others undesirable; but a code of conduct which takes no account of circumstances will have sometimes the sort of consequences we think desirable, and sometimes the sort we think undesirable. Take, e.g. the precept “Thou shalt not kill”. All respectable people hold that this does not apply when the State orders a person to kill; on this ground among others, the New York School Board recently refused to sanction the teaching of the Decalogue in schools.

A third objection is that it may be asked how the moral rules are known. The usual answer, historically, is that they are known by revelation and tradition. But these are extra-philosophical sources of knowledge. The philosopher cannot but observe that there have been many revelations, and that it is not clear why he should adopt one rather than another. To this it may be replied that conscience is a personal revelation to each individual, and invariably tells him what is right and what is wrong. The difficulty of this view is that conscience changes from age to age. Most people nowadays consider it wrong to burn a man alive for disagreeing with them in metaphysics, but formerly this was held to be a highly meritorious act, provided it was done in the interests of the right metaphysics. No one who has studied the history of moral ideas can regard conscience as invariably right. Thus we are driven to abandon the attempt to define virtue by means of a set of rules of conduct.

There is, however, another form of the view that virtue consists in obedience to authority. This may be called “the administrator’s ethic”. A Roman or Anglo-Indian pro-consul would define virtue as obedience to the moral code of the community to which a man happens to belong. No matter how moral codes may differ, a man should always obey that of his own time and place and creed. A Mohammedan, for instance, would not be regarded as wicked for practising polygamy, but an Englishman would, even if he lived in a Mohammedan country. This view makes social conformity the essence of virtue; or, as with Hegel, regards virtue as obedience to the government. The difficulty of such theories is that they make it impossible to apply ethical predicates to authority: we cannot find any meaning for the statement that a custom is good or that the government is bad. The view is appropriate to despots and their willing slaves; it cannot survive in a progressive democracy.

We come a little nearer to a correct view when we define right conduct by the motive or state of mind of the agent. According to this theory, acts inspired by certain emotions are good, and those inspired by certain other emotions are bad. Mystics hold this view, and have accordingly a certain contempt for the letter of the law. Broadly speaking, it would be held that acts inspired by love are good, and those inspired by hate are bad. In practice, I hold this view to be right; but philosophically I regard it as deducible from something more fundamental.

All the theories we have hitherto considered are opposed to those which judge the rightness or wrongness of conduct by its consequences. Of these the most famous is the utilitarian philosophy, which maintained that happiness is the good, and that we ought to act so as to maximise the balance of happiness over unhappiness in the world. I should not myself regard happiness as an adequate definition of the good, but I should agree that conduct ought to be judged by its consequences. I do not mean, of course, that in every practical exigency of daily life we should attempt to think out the results of this or that line of conduct, because, if we did, the opportunity for action would often be past before our calculations were finished. But I do mean that the received moral code, in so far as it is taught in education and embodied in public opinion or the criminal law, should be carefully examined in each generation, to see whether it still serves to achieve desirable ends, and, if not, in what respects it needs to be amended. The moral code, in short, like the legal code, should adapt itself to changing circumstances, keeping the public good always as its motive. If so, we have to consider in what the public good consists.

According to this view, “right conduct” is not an autonomous concept, but means “conduct calculated to produce desirable results”. It will be right, let us say, to act so as to make people happy and intelligent, but wrong to act so as to make them unhappy and stupid. We have to ask ourselves how we can discover what constitutes the ends of right conduct.

There is a view, advocated, e.g. by Dr. G. E. Moore, that “good” is an indefinable notion, and that we know a priori certain general propositions about the kinds of things that are good on their own account. Such things as happiness, knowledge, appreciation of beauty, are known to be good, according to Dr. Moore; it is also known that we ought to act so as to create what is good and prevent what is bad. I formerly held this view myself, but I was led to abandon it, partly by Mr. Santayana’s Winds of Doctrine. I now think that good and bad are derivative from desire. I do not mean quite simply that the good is the desired, because men’s desires conflict, and “good” is, to my mind, mainly a social concept, designed to find an issue from this conflict. The conflict, however, is not only between the desires of different men, but between incompatible desires of one man at different times, or even at the same time, and even if he is solitary, like Robinson Crusoe. Let us see how the concept of “good” emerges from reflection or conflicts of desires.

We will begin with Robinson Crusoe. In him there will be conflicts, for example, between fatigue and hunger, particularly between fatigue at one time and foreseen hunger at another. The effort which he will require in order to work when he is tired with a view to providing food on another occasion has all the characteristics of what is called a moral effort: we think better of a man who makes the effort than of one who does not, and the making of it requires self-control. For some reason, this sort of thing is called, not morals, but “morale”; the distinction, however, seems to me illusory. Robinson Crusoe is bound to realise that he has many desires, each of which is stronger at one time than at another, and that, if he acts always upon the one that is strongest at the moment, he may defeat others that are stronger in the long run. So far, only intelligence is involved; but one may assume that, with the progress of intelligence, there goes a growing desire for a harmonious life, i.e. a life in which action is dominated by consistent quasi-permanent desires. Again: some desires, in addition to the desire for a harmonious life, are more likely to lead to harmony then certain other desires. Intellectual curiosity, e.g. affords a mild diffused satisfaction, whereas drugs provide ecstasy followed by despair. If we arrive unexpectedly in Robinson Crusoe’s island and find him studying botany, we shall think better of him than if we find him dead drunk on his last bottle of whisky. All this belongs to morals, although it is purely self-regarding.

When we come to considering men in society, moral questions become both more important and more difficult, because conflicts between the desires of different persons are harder to resolve than internal conflicts among the desires of one person. There are some distinctions to be made. First, there is the difference between the point of view of the neutral authority contemplating a squabble in which it is not interested, and the point of view of the disputants themselves. Then there is the distinction between what we wish people to do, and what we wish them to feel in the way of emotions and desires.

The view of authority everywhere is that squabbles to which it is not a party are undesirable, but that in the squabbles to which it is a party virtue consists in promoting the victory of authority. In the latter respect, it is acting, not as an authority, but merely as a combination of quarrelsome individuals who think it more profitable to quarrel with outsiders than with each other; we will therefore ignore this aspect of authority, and consider its action only when it is a neutral. In this case, it aims at preventing quarrels by punishing those who begin them, or sometimes by punishing both parties. Monsieur Huc, the Jesuit missionary who wrote a fascinating account of his travels in China, Tartary, and Tibet about eighty years ago, relates an amusing conversation he had with a mandarin. Monsieur Huc had remarked that Chinese justice was dilatory, expensive, and corrupt. The mandarin explained that it had been made so in obedience to an Imperial edict, setting forth that the subjects of the Son of Heaven had become too much addicted to litigation, and must be led to abandon this practice. The rescript then proceeded to suggest to magistrates and judges the desirability of the above defects as a means of diminishing the number of law-suits. It appeared that the Emperor’s commands had been faithfully obeyed in this respect—more so than in some others.

Another method adopted by public authorities to prevent the impulse towards internal quarrels is the creation of esprit de corps, public spirit, patriotism, etc., i.e. a concentration of quarrelsome impulses or persons outside the group over which it rules. Such a method, obviously, is partial and external; it would not be open to a world-wide democratic authority, should this ever come into existence. Such an authority would have to adopt better methods of producing harmony; it would also have a higher claim to the obedience of citizens than some authorities have at present.

What can we say from the point of view of the disputants themselves? It is of course obvious that there will be a greater total satisfaction when two people’s desires harmonise than when they conflict, but that is not an argument which can be used to people who in fact hate each other. One can argue that the one who is going to be beaten would do well to give way, but each will think that he himself is going to be victorious. One can argue that there is more happiness to be derived from love than from hate, but people cannot love to order, and there is no satisfaction to be derived from an insincere love. Nor is it always true in an individual case that love brings more happiness than hate. During and immediately after the war, those who hated the Germans were happier than those who still regarded them as human beings, because they could feel that what was being done served a good purpose. I think, therefore, that certain departments of morals, and those the most important, cannot be inculcated from a personal point of view, but only from the point of view of a neutral authority. That is why I said that ethics is mainly social.

The attitude of a neutral authority would, it seems to me, be this: Men desire all sorts of things, and in themselves all desires, taken singly, are on a level, i.e. there is no reason to prefer the satisfaction of one to the satisfaction of another. But when we consider not a single desire but a group of desires, there is this difference, that sometimes all the desires in a group can be satisfied, whereas in other cases the satisfaction of some of the desires in the group is incompatible with that of others. If A and B desire to marry each other, both can have what they want, but if they desire to kill each other, at most one can succeed, unless they are Kilkenny cats. Therefore the former pair of desires is socially preferable to the latter. Now our desires are a product of three factors: native disposition, education, and present circumstances. The first factor is difficult to deal with at present, for lack of knowledge. The third is brought into operation by means of the criminal law, economic motives, and social praise and blame, which make it on the whole to the interest of an individual in a community to promote the interests of the dominant group in that community. But this is done in an external way, not by creating good desires, but by producing a conflict of greed and fear in which it is hoped that fear will win. The really vital method is education, in the large sense in which it includes care of the body and habit-formation in the first few years. By means of education, men’s desires can be changed, so that they act spontaneously in a social fashion. To force a man to curb his desires, as we do by the criminal law, is not nearly so satisfactory as to cause him genuinely to feel the desires which promote socially harmonious conduct.

And this brings me to the last point with which we are concerned, namely, the distinction between feeling and doing. No doubt, from a social point of view the important thing is what a man does, but it is impossible to cause a man to do the right things consistently unless he has the right desires. And the right desires cannot be produced merely by praising them or by desiring to have them; the technique of moral education is not one of exhortation or explicit moral instruction.

We can now state the ethic at which we have arrived in abstract terms. Primarily, we call something “good” when we desire it, and “bad” when we have an aversion from it. But our use of words is more constant than our desires, and therefore we shall continue to call a thing good even at moments when we are not actually desiring it, just as we always call grass green though it sometimes looks yellow. And the laudatory associations of the word “good” may generate a desire which would not otherwise exist: we may want to eat caviare merely because we are told that it is good. Moreover the use of words is social, and therefore we learn only to call a thing good, except in rare circumstances, if most of the people we associate with are also willing to call it good. Thus “good” comes to apply to things desired by the whole of a social group. It is evident, therefore, that there can be more good in a world where the desires of different individuals harmonise than in one where they conflict. The supreme moral rule should, therefore, be: Act so as to produce harmonious rather than discordant desires. This rule will apply wherever a man’s influence extends: within himself, in his family, his city, his country, even the world as a whole, if he is able to influence it.

There will be two main methods to this end: first, to produce social institutions under which the interests of different individuals or groups conflict as little as possible; second, to educate individuals in such a way that their desires can be harmonised with each other and with the desires of their neighbours. As to the first method, I shall say nothing further, since the questions that arise belong to politics and economics. As to the second, the important period is the formative period of childhood, during which there should be health, happiness, freedom, and a gradual growth of self-discipline through opportunities for difficult achievement of a sort which is useful and yet satisfies the impulse towards mastery of the environment. The desire for power, which is present in most people and strongest in the most vigorous, should be directed towards power over things rather than over people.

It is clear that, if harmonious desires are what we should seek, love is better than hate, since, when two people love each other, both can be satisfied, whereas when they hate each other one at most can achieve the object of his desire. It is obvious also that desire for knowledge is to be encouraged, since the knowledge that a man acquires is not obtained by taking it away from some one else; but a desire for (say) large landed estates can only be satisfied in a small minority. Desire for power over other people is a potent source of conflict, and is therefore to be discouraged; a respect for the liberty of others is one of the things that ought to be developed by the right kind of education. The impulse towards personal achievement ought to go into such things as artistic creation or scientific discovery or the promotion of useful institutions—in a word, into activities that are creative rather than possessive. Knowledge, which may do positive harm where men’s desires conflict (for example, by showing how to make war more deadly), will have only good results in a world where men’s desires harmonise, since it tends to show how their common desires are to be realised.

The conclusion may be summed up in a single phrase: The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.11