Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T H Green

Perfectionism and the Common Good Themes in the Philosophy of T. H. Green David Brink presents a study of T. H. Green’s classic Prolegomena to Ethics (1883) and its role in his philosophical thought. Green is one of the two most important figures in the British idealist tradition, and his political writings and activities had a profound influence on the development of Liberal politics in Britain. The Prolegomena is his major philosophical work. It begins with his idealist attack on empiricist metaphysics and epistemology and develops a perfectionist ethical theory that aims to bring together the best elements in the ancient and modern traditions, and that provides the moral foundations for Green’s own distinctive brand of liberalism. Brink aims to restore the Prolegomena to its rightful place in the history of philosophy by providing a prolegomenon to the Prolegomena—one that situates the work in its intellectual context, sympathetically but critically engages its main themes, and explains Green’s enduring significance for the history of ethics and contemporary ethical theory. Brink examines Green’s life and work, his idealist attack on empiricism, his conception of agency, his perfectionist ethics of self-realization, the connections he draws between perfectionism and the common good, his conception of the differences between perfectionism and utilitarianism, and the connections between his perfectionism and his defense of a new form of political liberalism. Because Green develops his own views out of an examination of other traditions in the history of ethics, a fair assessment of Green’s own contributions must compare his claims with the traditions that he examines and sometimes criticizes. Brink’s study examines Green’s relation to Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Butler, Mill, Kant, Hegel, Bradley, and Sidgwick, and concludes by examining Green’s legacy for ethical theory. Perfectionism and the Common Good will be of substantial interest to students and scholars of the history of ethics, ethical theory, political philosophy, and nineteenth century philosophy. David Brink is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego.

Lines of Thought

Short philosophy books General editors: Peter Ludlow and Scott Sturgeon Published in association with the Aristotelian Society

Humean Variations Jerry A. Fodor Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T. H. Green David O. Brink

Perfectionism and the Common Good Themes in the Philosophy of T. H. Green

David O. Brink

CL A R E N DO N PRES S . OXF O RD

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © David O. Brink 2003 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2003 First published in paperback 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by T. J. International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall ISBN 978–0–19–926640–1 (Hbk.) ISBN 978–0–19–922805–8 (Pbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2



This book began life as an editor’s introduction to a new edition to T. H. Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics, which is also being published with Oxford University Press. In 1997 I suggested to my editor, Peter Momtchiloff, that he consider bringing out a new edition of the Prolegomena. Because of its neglect, it seemed advisable to get someone to write a rather substantial introduction that would situate the Prolegomena in its intellectual context, sympathetically but critically engage some of its main themes, and explain Green’s enduring significance for students of the history of ethics and ethical theory. I had in mind that he would find an established historian of ethics who knew British idealism quite well. Peter was enthusiastic about the idea, but suggested that I undertake the introduction and new edition. It was with both excitement and trepidation that I agreed to this proposal, because this was an area in the history of ethics about which I did not have a great deal of expertise but about which I was eager to learn. Writing the introduction took longer than either Peter or I expected, largely because the scope and detail of the project kept growing, and work on Green kept getting interrupted by other philosophical commitments. When I finally completed the material for the introduction, it seemed substantial enough in content and scope to justify publishing as a self-contained discussion of Green’s ethical theory. Doing so opened up the possibility of abridging the material for purposes of the introduction to the new edition of the Prolegomena. So even

though that introduction remains quite substantial in its treatment of the context, content, and significance of Green’s ethical theory, the present book extends that discussion in various ways. It engages Green’s texts more fully, and it examines several aspects of Green’s ethical theory and his relation to other traditions in the history of ethics in greater detail. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that this book does not pretend to be a comprehensive or definitive examination and assessment of Green’s practical philosophy. Rather, my aim has been to contribute to a re-examination of Green’s ethical theory by reconstructing some of the main themes of the Prolegomena and beginning to assess his significance for the history of ethics and systematic ethical theory. Because of Green’s comparative neglect within the tradition of analytical ethical theory, it seemed not unreasonable to begin to remedy this neglect with a sort of prolegomenon or primer to Green’s Prolegomena and its role in his ethical theory. I would be pleased if in spite of the inadequacies of the present study (or perhaps because of them), some readers were prompted to read or re-read Green and develop more adequate interpretations and assessments of his ethical thought. I would like to begin my acknowledgements by thanking Peter Momtchiloff for suggesting that I do these two projects on Green, for having more confidence in my ability to carry them out than I had, and for his patience during the process. My greatest intellectual debts are to the written work of Terence Irwin and Peter Nicholson on Green, British idealism, and related matters. Anne Margaret Baxley, Evan Tiffany, and Jeffrey Stedman provided useful research help during various stages of the process. I would like to thank Peter Nicholson for useful information about Green’s unpublished materials and the Balliol College Library—and especially Dr Alan Tadiello—for helping me sort through Green’s papers there. Earlier versions of some ideas here were presented at the universities of Southern California, Michigan, and Wisconsin and at the 2000 International Society for Utilitarian Studies at Wake vi ~ Acknowledgements

Forest University and the 2002 conference on T. H. Green and Contemporary Philosophy at Harris Mansfield College, Oxford University. I am grateful to audiences on those occasions for helpful discussions, especially to Stephen Darwall, Maria DimovaCookson, Avital Simhony, David Weinstein, Ben Wempe, and Gideon Yaffe. Tom Hurka made several useful suggestions about the project on different occasions. I would especially like to thank Anne Margaret Baxley, Fred Neuhouser, Peter Nicholson, John Skorupski, and Ben Wempe for reading the penultimate version of this material and providing detailed constructive commentary. Some work on this book was done with the support of a Presidential Research Fellowship in the Humanities from the University of California, Academic Senate grants from the University of California, San Diego, and a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Acknowledgements ~ vii

This page intentionally left blank



List of Abbreviations

xi

I.

Introduction

1

II.

Green’s Life and Work

4

III.

Green’s Metaphysics and Epistemology

8

IV.

The Attack on Empiricism and Atomism

9

V.

Idealism

13

VI.

Absolute Idealism

17

VII.

Non-naturalism

19

VIII.

Self-Consciousness and Epistemic Responsibility

20

IX.

Self-Consciousness and Practical Responsibility

21

X.

Desire, Intellect, and Will

24

XI.

Pursuit of a Personal Good

26

XII.

Psychological Hedonism and the Good

29

XIII.

Mill and Evaluative Hedonism

31

XIV.

Self-Realization as the Good

40

XV.

Self-Realization and the Common Good

42

XVI.

Aristotelian Friendship

44

XVII. Intrinsic Concern for Others

50

XVIII. The Scope of the Common Good

52

XIX.

Impartiality and the Common Good

55

XX.

Moderate and Extreme Harmony of Interests

60

XXI.

Liberalism and Extreme Harmony

62

XXII.

Absolute Idealism and Extreme Harmony

63

XXIII.

Self-Realization vs. Utilitarianism

69

XXIV.

From Perfectionism to Liberalism

77

XXV.

Influences on Green

88

XXVI.

Green and Kant

92

XXVII. Green’s Impact

107

XXVIII. Green and Bradley

110

XXIX.

Green and Sidgwick

114

XXX.

Green’s Legacy

124

Bibliographical Essay

131

Index

135

x ~ Contents

  

Aristotle DA EE MM NE Pol

De Anima Eudemian Ethics Magna Moralia Nicomachean Ethics Politics

Aristotle’s works are contained in the Revised Oxford Translation of The Complete Works of Aristotle, 2 vols., ed. J. Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). Some references are to natural divisions in the texts (e.g. book and chapter in NE); page references employ Bekker pagination. Translations from the NE are from Nicomachean Ethics, tr. T. Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999). All other translations are from The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes.

Bradley, F. H. Ethical Studies Ethical Studies [1876], 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927)

Butler, Bishop Joseph Sermons Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel [1726] in The Works of Bishop Butler, 2 vols., ed. J. H. Bernard (London: Macmillan, 1900). References by sermon and paragraph number.

Green, T. H. PE Prolegomena to Ethics , ed. A. C. Bradley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1883). References by section number. Works Collected Works of T. H. Green, 5 vols., ed. P. Nicholson (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997). References by volume and page. ‘Freedom’ ‘On the Different Sense of “Freedom” as Applied to Will and the Moral Progress of Man’, in Works, ii. Lectures Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, in Works, ii. ‘Liberal Legislation’ ‘Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract’, in Works, iii.

Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology

Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], tr. A. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). Reference by section number. Philosophy of Right Philosophy of Right [1821], tr. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952). Reference by section number. Philosophy of History Philosophy of History [compiled 1840], tr. L. Rauch (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988).

Hume, David Treatise A Treatise of Human Nature [1739], ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). References by book, part, and section.

Kant, Immanuel Anthro Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht [1798]; Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, tr. M. Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974). G. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [1785]; Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, tr. M. Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

xii ~ List of Abbreviations

KpV

Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [1788]; Critique of Practical Reason, tr. M. Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). KrV Kritik der reinen Vernunft [A:1781/B:1787]; Critique of Pure Reason, tr. N. K. Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1963). MS Die Metaphysik der Sitten [1797]; The Metaphysics of Morals, tr. M. Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). References employ pagination in the Prussian Academy edition of Kant’s collected works, Kants gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902).

Locke, John Essay An Essay Concerning Human Understanding [1690], ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). References by book, chapter, and section.

Mill, John Stuart A System of Logic A System of Logic [1881] ‘On Bentham’ ‘On Bentham’ [1838] OL On Liberty [1859] U. Utilitarianism [1861] References are to chapter and paragraph number, or other natural divisions in the text, in the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963–91).

Plato Protagoras Gorgias Republic Phaedrus Theaetetus Philebus These and other Platonic dialogues are collected in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997). References are to Stephanus’ pagination.

List of Abbreviations ~ xiii

Ritchie, D. G. The Principles of State Interference The Principles of State Interference: Four Essays on the Political Philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer, J. S. Mill, and T. H. Green (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1891).

Sidgwick, Henry Lectures Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and J. Martineau (London: Macmillan, 1902). Methods The Methods of Ethics [1874], 7th edn. (London: Macmillan, 1907).

xiv ~ List of Abbreviations

I. INTRODUCTION Thomas Hill Green (1836–82) was one of the most important and influential of the nineteenth-century British idealists at Oxford. The Prolegomena to Ethics, published posthumously in 1883, is Green’s major philosophical work.1 It begins with his idealist attack on empiricist metaphysics and epistemology and develops a perfectionist ethical theory that aims to bring together the best elements in ancient and modern traditions in the history of ethics. Sadly, the Prolegomena has been out of print with any major press for over thirty years and has become a neglected classic in the history of ethics. This neglect can be explained. The Prolegomena is a long, dense, and systematic work. The fact that its first part consists in an introduction to idealist metaphysics and epistemology that the modern reader may find difficult to understand and sympathize with has no doubt limited its appeal, especially to recent readers. Also, Green’s Prolegomena has been to some extent eclipsed by F. H. Bradley’s Ethical Studies. Bradley is the other major figure within the tradition of British idealism. Defending some related doctrines, Ethical Studies has a breezier style and is more polemical than the Prolegomena, which no doubt explains why some readers have been willing to view it as expressing the essentials of the ethical theory of British idealism. Moreover, the Prolegomena has to some extent languished in the shadow of Green’s political writings, especially his Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, whose greater readership is due primarily to the influence that Green’s political writings and activities exerted on the development of liberalism in late nineteenth-century Britain. But even if these facts help explain current neglect of the Prolegomena, they do not justify it. Green’s criticism of empiricist 1

References to the Prolegomena to Ethics (PE) will be by section number. References to Green’s other writings will be to volume and page numbers in the five-volume edition of the Collected Works of T. H. Green, ed. P. Nicholson. References to section numbers using arabic numerals are to sections of Green’s PE; references to section numbers using roman numerals are to other sections of this book.

metaphysics and epistemology is broadly Kantian in character and has had a lasting impact on our understanding and assessment of early modern empiricism. Moreover, while important parts of Green’s perfectionist ethical theory do reflect Kantian or idealist theses about the nature of theoretical and practical knowledge, many aspects of Green’s ethical theory can be appreciated independently of idealist metaphysics and epistemology. Furthermore, Green’s own brand of perfectionism weaves together a rich and varied tapestry of ideas from different parts of the history of ethics. Green paves the way for his own form of perfectionism by criticizing various naturalistic strands in ethics. After a general attack on empiricist metaphysics and epistemology, he criticizes forms of ethical naturalism that attempt to ground morality in a science of desire and pleasure. In particular, he targets those in the utilitarian tradition who defend hedonism. Green rejects the hedonist conception of motivation, arguing that moral agents have capacities for practical reason that allow them to distinguish between the intensity and authority of their desires, to deliberate about their desires, and to regulate their actions in accordance with their deliberations. Agents need not act on their strongest desires; they can and should act on the basis of a judgement about what it is best for them to do. This, Green claims, is to act on a conception of one’s own overall good. In so doing, Green aligns himself with the Greek eudaimonist tradition, which he interprets in terms of selfrealization. Because Green derives the demand for self-realization from an understanding of agency itself, he regards its demands as categorical, rather than hypothetical, imperatives. Self-realization for Green requires self-consciousness, which requires proper cognizance of others. In this way, he agrees with those Greeks, such as Aristotle, who claim that the proper conception of the agent’s own good requires a concern with the good of others, especially the common good. However, Green thinks that the Greeks had too narrow a conception of the common good. It is only with 2 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

Christianity and Enlightenment philosophical views, especially Kantian and utilitarian traditions in ethics, Green thinks, that we have recognition of the universal scope of the common good. This leads Green to claim that full self-realization can take place only when each rational agent regards all other rational agents as ends in themselves on whom his own happiness depends. In such a state, there can be no conflict or competition among the interests of different rational agents. The achievement of this non-competitive common good constitutes, for Green, a distinctive and distinctively valuable form of freedom. Like Hegel, Green thinks that moral progress consists in the gradual recognition and advancement of this sort of freedom, which for Green requires the progressive realization of the common good. Moreover, in combining these disparate traditions, Green aims to reconstruct the essential elements of moral progress within the Western tradition. This style of argument makes for interesting perspectives on a variety of influential figures in the history of ethics and a systematic proposal that deserves anyone’s serious consideration. When these aspects of the Prolegomena are duly appreciated, I think that it will become clear that reading Ethical Studies is no substitute for reading the Prolegomena. Unlike Bradley, Green articulates his own ethics of self-realization within a rich discussion of different historical traditions, and his careful and systematic argumentation contrasts favourably with Bradley’s highly polemical style. Indeed, when the ideas and arguments of the Prolegomena are properly understood, I think that readers will also appreciate that it is a far more systematic work than Green’s more influential political writings. In part, I mean that there is more systematic foundational argument in the Prolegomena than in Green’s political writings. But also I mean that we cannot hope to understand and assess Green’s own distinctive form of political liberalism (discussed below in §XXIV) without first understanding the kind of perfectionist ethical theory on which it rests. Introduction ~ 3

The neglect of the Prolegomena means that Green’s ethical theory is not widely understood or appreciated. My primary aim is to help renew interest in and appreciation of Green’s ethical theory. To do this, I need to focus on the main arguments in the Prolegomena. The variety and difficulty of some of the traditions on which he draws and the density of his own argument and prose pose challenges to the reader approaching the Prolegomena for the first time. In an effort to facilitate this encounter, my discussion will attempt to place the Prolegomena within Green’s life, work, and intellectual context and to examine some of the main themes of the Prolegomena in some detail. In doing so, I will focus on the Prolegomena, but I will discuss Green’s other works and his relation to other philosophers when this helps us better to understand the Prolegomena or its significance.

II. GREEN’S LIFE AND WORK Green was born in Birkin, Yorkshire, on 7 April 1836. His mother died when he was 1 year old, and he was educated by his father, Valentine Green, until he attended Rugby School in 1850. There he met Henry Sidgwick, though it is not clear how close their relationship was during this period. Rugby was an intellectually and morally serious institution, but Green struck many teachers and classmates as shy, unhappy, and indolent. He entered Balliol College, at Oxford University, in 1855, where he was taught by Benjamin Jowett and Charles Parker. Though their relationship was not free of conflict, Jowett served as Green’s most important intellectual mentor. Jowett was an influential proponent of liberal reforms within Oxford University at the time. He encouraged Green to work up to his potential, eventually earning a First in Greats, and he trained Green in both classical Greek and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy. Green remained at Oxford after receiving his degree. He was appointed as a lecturer in ancient and modern history at Balliol in 4 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

1860 and was re-elected in 1872. Green was elected Whyte’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford in 1877, taking up the chair in 1878, a position which he held until his death. Green was the first layman appointed as a tutor at Oxford, and he was among those responsible for reforming the philosophical curriculum to include the study of modern as well as ancient sources. Green’s influence on undergraduates was considerable—inspiring many students by his intellectual, moral, and spiritual seriousness. Green became active in Liberal Party politics in the mid-1860s. In 1876 he was elected to the Oxford town council; he was the first don to serve as a representative of the citizens rather than the University of Oxford. His principal policy reforms concerned land reform, labour regulation, education, and temperance. He supported the Irish Land Act of 1881, which sought to secure property rights for peasant farmers in Ireland. In education, he argued that primary education should be compulsory and state-financed and served as an assistant commissioner on the Taunton Commission on Secondary Education in 1865–6, vigorously arguing for significant reforms in secondary education that tended to equalize opportunity for higher education. He was a member of the Oxford School Board and played a part in the foundation of the Oxford School for Boys. He was an important factor in the university extension movement, he sought to open university education to women, and he advocated the use of scholarships and other subsidies to make a university education available to the working classes. Green also supported temperance legislation; he became vice-president of the United Kingdom Alliance and served in various temperance organizations within Oxford. However, Green’s political contributions were not limited to these policy initiatives. He articulated a political philosophy that conceives of the state as having an obligation to promote the common good of all citizens. This requires government to ensure various social, economic, cultural, and intellectual conditions essential to the self-realization of its citizens. While this perfectionist Green’s Life and Work ~ 5

approach to politics certainly called for state intervention and egalitarian reforms in certain matters, Green also thought that the goal of self-realization constrained the appropriate forms of state intervention. If citizens are to improve themselves, there must be limits on paternalistic and moralistic legislation. A liberal government should arrange institutions and laws with an eye not towards perfecting its citizens but towards facilitating their own selfimprovement. Green is often credited with a significant role in the development of a New Liberalism within the British Liberal Party towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries that emphasized this delicate blend of progressive reform and legislative restraint. Green was a deeply religious person, who provided spiritual inspiration to many students and acquaintances. But his conception of Christianity was unorthodox and animated by moral and humanistic principles. He was raised in the Evangelical faith by his father, who was an Evangelical minister. At Balliol, his religious sensibility was shaped in part by Jowett. Like other Broad Churchmen, Jowett sought to present fundamental Christian principles in a contemporary and rational idiom, free of superstition, ritual, and dogma. Jowett’s example shaped Green’s developing conception of a form of Christianity that admits of rational philosophical reconstruction and that finds its best expression in social and political service in pursuit of a common good. Green refused to assign literal significance to miracles or other supernatural events described in the Bible. He saw God as immanent in individuals and in history. The higher principle of practical reason within each person that regulates his desires and makes him a moral agent is a divine principle, the common good is the proper object of the divine principle in humanity, and its progressive realization in human laws and institutions is how God manifests himself in the world. Because of the unorthodox character of Green’s Christianity, it is difficult to separate his religious views from his idealist philosophy and his ethical demand that individuals 6 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

subordinate their lower selves to the pursuit of a higher, common good. Green was married in 1871 to Charlotte Symonds, who was the sister of John Addington Symonds, one of his oldest friends. The Greens had no children. Never a man of robust health, Green fell ill in 1882, with what his doctors diagnosed as blood-poisoning, and died on 15 March, just a few days before his forty-sixth birthday. Much of Green’s influence on his contemporaries is to be attributed to his teaching, his lectures, and his political activities. He published a fairly small number of articles, reviews, and pamphlets during his lifetime. His principal publications during his lifetime were his influential critical commentary on Hume and British empiricism, ‘Introductions to Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature’, published in 1874, as part of the edition of Hume’s works edited by Green and T. H. Grose, and his ‘Lecture on Liberal Legislation and the Freedom of Contract’, published in 1881. Green’s other main philosophical works were published posthumously. These include his essay ‘On the Different Senses of “Freedom” as Applied to Will and to the Moral Progress of Man’, his lectures on Kant, the Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, and the Prolegomena to Ethics. The Prolegomena was substantially completed prior to Green’s death, except for 20–30 pages which he had hoped to add.2 At Green’s instructions, A.C. Bradley oversaw the Prolegomena’s publication with the Clarendon Press in 1883.3

2 Green left no indication about the contents of this projected addition to the Prolegomena, though it may have included a further discussion of Kant’s ethics, apparently advertised in §156. 3 Bradley divided the text into books, chapters, and sections, supplied minor notes (e.g. explaining references and providing translations), and constructed a very useful analytical table of contents.

Green’s Life and Work ~ 7

III. GREEN’S METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY Green attacks empiricism and defends idealism in the first book of the Prolegomena. This is perhaps the most difficult part of the Prolegomena; the content of idealism, its justification, and its role in his ethical theory are rather obscure and require reconstruction. Green introduces his metaphysical and epistemological inquiries in response to what he regards as a naturalistic approach to ethical theory that he thinks is prominent in British moral philosophy. Green seems to have in mind Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill (in some moods), and Henry Sidgwick. Here, Green seems to associate ethical naturalism with hedonism. Securing pleasure and avoiding pain are the object of desire and action; prudence consists in learning and practising the reliable means to promoting one’s own pleasure; and moral virtue consists in learning and practising the reliable means to promoting pleasure, as such (§2). Green associates naturalism with a kind of empiricism that attempts to construct knowledge—moral or otherwise—solely on the basis of the senses. But he thinks that the idea of knowledge based on the senses and uncorrupted by the understanding is impossible; a purely naturalistic or empirical science of morals is impossible for quite general reasons (§8; cf. Works, ii. 83–5). Green appears to have four main aims in the first book of the Prolegomena. (1) He wants to reject the common-sense view, inherited from the empiricists, that knowledge can be analysed into two separable components—the deliverances of the senses and the operations of the understanding—in which what is given by nature is real and the contributions of the understanding are not (§§9–10, 20, 70). By contrast, Green wants to argue, there is no such thing as deliverances of the senses that do not reflect operation of the understanding. Even the simplest experience, he thinks, presupposes relations to other elements of a self-conscious mind. (2) The attack on empiricism and atomism is supposed to support the idealist claim that in some sense nature is the product of the 8 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

understanding (§20). Green’s attack on empiricism is clearly indebted to Kant’s claims in the Critique of Pure Reason, especially Kant’s account of the synthetic unity of apperception in the Transcendental Analytic. But, in defending idealism, Green argues that Kant did not carry his idealist principles to their logical conclusion (§41); he rejects the Kantian dualism of appearances and things-in-themselves (§§11, 30–41). (3) In order for the idealist to distinguish between appearance and reality, it is necessary to posit an ‘eternal’ and ‘unalterable’ system of relations in a selfconscious corporate agent that includes the finite systems of relations contained in the self-conscious minds of individual agents (§§13, 26, 69). (4) Much of the first book of the Prolegomena is concerned with the role of self-consciousness in the possibility of apparently discrete episodes of experience. But Green is also concerned with the role of self-consciousness in knowledge. Knowledge requires more than acting on appearances; it involves assenting to true appearances for good reasons. This requires the ability to distance oneself from appearances and assess the evidence for appearances, especially their congruence with other elements of consciousness. This sort of epistemic responsibility requires self-consciousness.

IV. THE ATTACK ON EMPIRICISM AND ATOMISM Green is concerned with a form of empiricism that he finds in common sense, as well as philosophical thought (§20). Though Green believes that John Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding was largely responsible for making empiricism philosophically influential, he thinks that only David Hume adheres to empiricist principles consistently (Works, i. 1–5, 132) and that, as a result, the full metaphysical and epistemological difficulties with empiricism become clear only in Hume’s work, especially his Treatise of Human Nature. The empiricist programme on which Green focuses sees all knowledge as resting on the deliverances of The Attack on Empiricism and Atomism ~ 9

the senses. On this view, knowledge is built up from a foundation of simple discrete sensory experiences. In this sort of experience, the mind is supposed to play a purely passive role. The mind can then play an active role by performing various operations on these simple experiences, such as combining simple experiences to form complex ideas, comparing simple experiences for similarity and dissimilarity, and abstracting the common elements out of distinct ideas (whether simple or complex). In this tradition, reality is associated with simple ideas delivered to the senses and contrasted with the workmanship of the understanding and relations, which are in some sense illusory or conventional. Green thinks that this empiricist programme suffers rot at the foundations, for he thinks that simple sensory experience that is not relational and in which the mind plays a purely passive role is impossible. All experience presupposes certain formal conceptions that the subject of experience employs—those of subject and object, substance and quality, cause and effect, spatiality, and temporality (Works, i. 12–13, 16–17, 40–1, 43–50). Some sensory judgements are clearly relational, as when we perceive one event A to be the cause of another B. To say that A is the cause of B is clearly to relate one event to another. Similarly, to say that A is a brittle thing is to say that A does or would stand in relations of a certain sort to other things. But this may just show that such relational judgements are products of the understanding and not proper sensory judgements. Pure sensory judgements would be simple and would not reflect the operation of the understanding. Perhaps they include only reports of current experience, such as ‘This thing appears red’. But Green believes that even these judgements are implicitly relational—‘imply sequence and degree’—and require comparison of one element of experience with another (§46). To judge that something is a thing or substance in which properties may inhere presumably requires assigning it some diachronic stability, however limited, and this requires seeing it as persisting through some changes—as a part of some series of 10 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

events and not others. And to judge something red is to predicate a property of an object, but properties or universals are, for the empiricist, ideas formed by abstraction from our ideas of simple experiences. For Green, it is hard to see how there could be any mere or pure sensation that was not at least implicitly relational and, hence, the product of the understanding (§§44–8). He thinks that this conclusion about the relational character of experience has important implications for scepticism. Empiricists tend to think that knowledge must rest on experience untainted by the understanding or to contrast what is real with what is relational, as when Democritus concludes that only atoms are real (§25) or Hume concludes that secondary qualities are not real features of objects (§20). If the empiricists were right, then recognition of the relational character of experience would imply total scepticism (§§20, 25, 30). At points, Green does not rule out the possibility of pure sensation; for instance, he allows that some brutes may have bare sensations (§48). But he wants to claim that this sort of bare sensation would not amount to the sort of experience that might be the object of consciousness and the basis of knowledge (§§45, 56). Here he seems to saddle the empiricist with the following sceptical argument. 1. If experience is to be the basis of knowledge, it must involve the application of concepts. 2. All concepts are relational. 3. Relations are the workmanship of the understanding. 4. Hence, all experience is the workmanship of the understanding. 5. What is given in experience is real; what is the workmanship of the understanding is not real. 6. Hence, there can be no empirical knowledge. Green is perhaps least explicit about premiss (1). But this premiss explains his reasoning and is familiar from other criticisms of empiricism, including Stoic criticisms of Epicurean empiricism. The Attack on Empiricism and Atomism ~ 11

It is not clear how pure sensations would ever be related to each other for similarity and dissimilarity or as instantiating patterns, much less provide evidence of objective facts and events that cause these experiences. This suggests a different way in which empiricism might lead to scepticism. Even if there are bare sensations, this is not the sort of experience that might provide the basis for empirical knowledge. Green himself accepts the sceptical conclusion in so far as he denies the possibility of empirical knowledge of objects independently of how they appear to us. There can be no knowledge of perceiver-independent reality. But there can be knowledge of perceiver-dependent reality. As we will see, Green’s idealism implies that this is the only defensible conception of reality that allows us to avoid the sceptical conclusion. So Green himself avoids the sceptical conclusion by denying (5)’s assumptions about what is real. However, we can avoid scepticism without endorsing idealism if we abandon (3)’s claim that relations are the workmanship of the understanding, rather than given in experience. Here, Green appeals to features of Locke’s and Hume’s empiricism. This may give him a decent ad hominem argument against some forms of early modern empiricism, but it makes the case for (4) vulnerable to someone who denies (3). In particular, Green’s case for idealism is undermined if, as Moore and Russell will later claim, relations can be given in experience and are not the product of the understanding.4 Green argues that the relational character of experience implies that experience depends upon the activities of a self-conscious agent (cf. §70). Rejecting Hume’s conception of the self as illusory or no more than a bundle of sensations (Treatise, I. iv. 6), Green argues that cognition requires a self that is independent of and prior to experience (§16). 4 See, e.g., Peter Hylton, Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 110–12.

12 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

Thus, in order that successive feelings may be related objects of experience, even objects related in the way of succession, there must be in consciousness an agent which distinguishes itself from its feelings, uniting them in their severalty, making them equally present in their succession. And so far from this agent being reducible to, or derivable from, a succession of feelings, it is the condition of there being such a succession. . . . If there is such a thing as connected experience of related objects, there must be operative in consciousness a unifying principle, which not only presents related objects to itself, but at once renders them objects and unites them in relation to each other by this act of presentation. (§32)

Green thinks that experience of the world presupposes the operations of a self-conscious agent. Could the world itself be the product of a self-conscious mind?

V. IDEALISM Green thinks there are obstacles to this idealist conclusion that account for the plausibility of empiricist and Kantian dualisms between the world of appearances and things as they are independently of appearance. We seem to need nature, as distinct from appearances, in order to account for the source or causes of our appearances and to account for the possibility of error, which seems to be a precondition of objectivity (§§13, 69). By contrast, the idealist, who denies a reality independent of appearances, seems unable to explain from whence appearances come or how they might be in error, apparently claiming that thinking makes it so. This, Green thinks, is what leads Kant, who insists on the relational character of experience (§33), to distinguish between phenomena—things as they do or can appear to us—and noumena—things as they are in themselves, independently of how they appear to us (§§11, 21–2, 30, 34). To think of ourselves as knowing something involves thinking of us as correctly representing the world. Getting it right would seem to imply the possibility of getting it wrong. We certainly do not think that believing it makes Idealism ~ 13

it so or that individual cognizers are infallible. So we find ourselves distinguishing the world as it is independently of our consciousness of it and the world as we conceive it (§34). But like Kant’s idealist critic J. G. Fichte, Green thinks that this Kantian dualism is an unstable resting point between empirical realism and idealism; he believes that the consistent application of Kant’s principles should lead to the rejection of things-inthemselves (§41).5 Kant’s dualism is both unacceptable and unnecessary. It is unacceptable, because it leaves cognitive success a mystery. ‘It renders knowledge, as of fact or reality, inexplicable. It leaves us without an answer to the question, how the order of relations, which the mind sets up, comes to reproduce those relations of the material world which are assumed to be of a wholly different origin and nature’ (§34). Indeed, Green thinks that the notion of things-in-themselves is empty, because we can have no conception of things-in-themselves. To claim even that cognitive success depends upon things-in-themselves in some way is already for the mind to try to bring them into relations with other elements of consciousness (§40). We may wonder whether cognitive success is inexplicable without resort to idealism. Perhaps evolutionary theory provides one account of how it is that we come to conceive of the world as it is, that is, of how we come to carve nature at its joints. But Green may think that any such explanation already brings what would otherwise be things-in-themselves into relation to an intelligent subject. Green also thinks the Kantian dualism is unnecessary. Error is not only possible but ascertainable. But, of course, we can never 5 In his memoir Nettleship mentions Fichte’s influence on Green (Works, iii. pp. xxv, cxxv). Much of Fichte’s idealist reaction to Kant can be found in J. G. Fichte, The Science of Knowledge (originally pub. 1794), ed. and tr. P. Heath and J. Lachs (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). A useful discussion of Fichte’s idealism and his relation to Kant is Frederick Neuhouser, Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

14 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

have access to things-in-themselves. What we can have access to is other appearances that, in various ways, might represent a particular appearance as anomalous. Here, we check one appearance by appeal to others (§§12–13, 64). On this view, we can distinguish between individual appearances or clusters of experiences and reality but not between reality and the entire system of appearances entertained by a particular mind (§13). We avoid answering the question of how our conceptions of the world come to match a world that is independent of them by identifying reality and objectivity with the way it is conceived by a self-conscious mind (§§10, 13, 36–7, 63). In exactly what sense does this form of idealism imply that reality is the workmanship of the understanding? Though he is keen to avoid certain misunderstandings about idealism, Green sometimes appears to make the idealist metaphysical claim that reality is the workmanship of the understanding. For instance, he writes: ‘The terms “real” and “objective”, then, have no meaning except for a consciousness which presents its experiences to itself as determined by relations, and at the same time conceives a single and unalterable order of relations determining them, with which its temporary presentation, as each experience occurs, of the relations determining it may be contrasted’ (§13). Similarly, he writes: ‘nature is the system of related appearances, and related appearances are impossible apart from the action of an intelligence’ (§36). And: ‘It thus appears that the common objects of experience . . . this flower, this apple, this dog . . . have their being only for, and result from the action of, a self-distinguishing conscience’ (§63). But he also says that reality and the system of appearances are equally dependent on each other (§36) and warns against the misunderstanding of idealism that results from thinking that it reduces facts to ideas (§37). And in the discussion of the possibility of bare sensations, he does not deny that they would be facts but insists that they would be facts that would not exist for consciousness (§§48–9). This suggests, not the metaphysical claim that facts Idealism ~ 15

are mind-dependent, but the epistemic claim that only structured experience can be the basis of knowledge. However, this epistemological claim is much less radical than the metaphysical claim. Nor is it clear how it is inconsistent with Kantian dualism; it appears simply to reaffirm that we can have knowledge only of appearances and not to deny that there are things-in-themselves. Perhaps Green’s claim is only that we are unable to say anything about things-in-themselves, even to say of them that they exist, without bringing them in relation to a conscious subject. But it is not even clear that Green can distinguish himself from Kant in this way. For Green treats the subject of consciousness as noumenon (§§51, 52, 65); the subject of consciousness is a precondition of experience but is completely distinct from any element of experience (§32). Because the self is not given in experience, it is, Green thinks, outside space and time (§§52, 65): ‘Now, if the foregoing analysis be correct, the ordinary perception of sensible things or matters of fact involves the determination of a sensible process, which is in time, by an agency that is not in time—in Kant’s language, a “combination of empirical and intelligible characters” . . . ’(§65). This dualism between elements of conscious experience that are in space and time and the bearers of conscious experience that are outside of space and time resembles Kant’s own dualism between appearances and things-in-themselves. And it is this dualism that makes naturalism and, in particular, a naturalistic science of man and morals impossible (§54). But these claims about the self are unjustified. Particular episodes of conscious experience presuppose a subject of consciousness that is prior to and independent of those episodes of consciousness. But this does not imply that the self is prior to and independent of a series of conscious experiences. Nor does it imply that the self cannot be an object of consciousness, thought, or knowledge. Indeed, as we will see, Green’s entire theoretical and practical philosophy turns crucially on the possibility of selfconsciousness (§§VII–VIII). Furthermore, important aspects of 16 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

Green’s views about moral responsibility presuppose that the self is not outside space and time but rather plays a crucial role as the cause of responsible action.

VI. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM So far, Green’s idealism involves a plurality of local idealisms. Reality (or knowable reality) is the product of finite self-conscious minds, with the result that there would be as many realities (knowable realities) as there are finite consciousnesses. Green finds such a conception of objectivity insufficiently robust; objectivity requires a single, transhistorical (indeed, eternal) self-consciousness (§§26, 67, 69; Works, ii. 85): ‘We must hold then that there is a consciousness for which the relations of fact, that form the object of our gradually attained knowledge, already and eternally exist; and that the growing knowledge of the individual is a progress towards this consciousness’ (§69). How are we to understand this transhistorical corporate agent? Though we will get a better sense of Green’s views about corporate agency when we see its role in his ethical argument, it may help to invoke an intrapersonal– interpersonal analogy. A corporate agent stands to persons much as stages or parts of a person’s life stand to the person; persons are proper parts of a corporate agent, just as one’s past or future selves are part of one’s life as a whole. Green’s main argument for this form of absolute idealism seems to be his concern with the possibility of error (§26).6 Just as we must make room for the possibility of local error in an individual’s conscious experience, so too we have to allow for the possibility of systematic error within an individual’s conscious experience. But just as 6 Green also defends absolute idealism in much the way Berkeley introduces God. He reasons that (a) things exist only as objects of consciousness; (b) things continue to exist while finite minds sleep or are otherwise not conscious; hence (c) there must be some eternally conscious mind to which these objects are always present (§69). It is not clear why the idealist need concede (b).

Absolute Idealism ~ 17

the idealist explains the possibility of local individual error against the background of larger patterns in the individual’s experience, so too she must explain the possibility of systematic individual error against the background of some larger pattern of experience. In order to find a larger pattern of experience, we must go outside individual consciousness. But the experiences of other individuals cannot, as such, form part of a common and larger set of experiences. If the content and truth conditions of an individual’s thoughts are dependent on the relations between those thoughts and other elements of his consciousness, then individuals, as such, would have incommensurable experiences and thoughts. We can block this relativistic conclusion if there is a single transhistorical corporate mind of which particular finite minds are proper parts. For then there will be a common determinant of the content and truth conditions of the experiences and thoughts of different finite agents. Green’s view seems to be that knowledge and, hence, inquiry presuppose absolute idealism: ‘[T]hat there is an unalterable order of relations, if we could only find it out, is the presupposition of all our enquiry into the real nature of appearances; and such unalterableness implies their inclusion in one system which leaves nothing outside itself ’ (§26). Green recognizes that this may not seem to answer the sceptic who doubts that there is such a system of relations. But he insists that in doubting that there may be an order of relations underlying our individual appearances the sceptic necessarily presupposes the existence of such an order: ‘But as the sceptic, in order to give his language a meaning, must necessarily make the same supposition—as he can give no meaning to reality but the one explained—his suggestion that there really may not be such an order of nature is one that conveys nothing at all’ (§26). This argument aims to show that attempts to articulate scepticism are self-refuting. However, even if Green could show this, it seems he would not have shown that the absolute idealist precondition for inquiry is satisfied. If so, we have no guarantee that scepticism is not true. 18 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

VII. NON-NATURALISM We saw that Green’s non-naturalism commits him to his own dualism, inasmuch as he seems to think that a precondition of conscious experience is an active self-conscious mind that is prior to and independent of experience and so outside space and time. Green’s dualism includes not only individual self-conscious agents but a corporate agent that includes individual agents as proper parts. But Green’s non-naturalism is problematic. One problem, as we will see, is that Green is critical of Kant’s dualistic response to worries about determinism and freedom (§§VIII, XXV). On the one hand, Green is a non-naturalist about the self, treating it as outside time and space. On the other hand, he maintains that the self acts in time and is a proper subject of ascriptions of responsibility. It is hard to see how individual agents can be simultaneously immanent and transcendent. In fact, this makes his own view about freedom hard to distinguish from Kant’s. Green’s non-naturalism about the self threatens to reintroduce the very dualism for which he criticizes Kant. A related problem afflicts Green’s view of the Absolute. Whereas the metaphysical and epistemological arguments of the first part of the Prolegomena seem to demand a single transcendent selfconsciousness that is outside space and time, much of Green’s ethics, political philosophy, and theology seems to treat the corporate spiritual principle as a transhistorical agent that is immanent in the lives of individual agents and progressive social institutions. Green must choose whether the Absolute is transcendent or immanent. One solution might be for Green to distinguish two claims that seem to be part of his understanding of non-naturalism. He might maintain the claim that conscious experience presupposes the operation of a self-conscious mind, whether individual or corporate, which is independent of and prior to experience, without concluding that such selves are outside space and time. This would involve representing individual and corporate agents as immanent, Non-Naturalism ~ 19

rather than transcendent. If Green were to do this, his criticisms of empiricism and his defence of idealism would not require commitment to a dualism.

VIII. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND EPISTEMIC RESPONSIBILITY Much of the first book of the Prolegomena is concerned with the role of self-consciousness in the possibility of apparently discrete episodes of experience. But Green is also concerned with the role of self-consciousness in knowledge. For the most part, brutes accept the way things appear to them—their doxastic impulses. If they reason, they select instrumental means to the satisfaction of their desires, but they do not reason about their appearances. They lack the capacity to distance themselves from their appearances, to assess the credentials of their doxastic impulses, and to assent to their appearances for good reasons. Brutes may often have true appearances, but they are not epistemically responsible about their appearances. On the not unreasonable assumption that knowledge requires something like epistemic responsibility, and not just true belief, Green is in a position to argue that knowledge requires selfconsciousness, inasmuch as epistemic responsibility seems to presuppose self-consciousness. For epistemic responsibility requires a cognizer to be able to distinguish and distance an appearance from herself, to frame the question of whether she should assent to the appearance, and to assess the reasons for assent by relating this appearance to other elements of her consciousness. Indeed, any extended piece of reasoning requires consciousness of different appearances as parts of a single system. For instance, I recognize and trust the results of previous deliberations as premisses in my present deliberations. All this requires a self that is conscious of and synthesizes a set of appearances. On this view, knowledge presupposes epistemic responsibility, which presupposes self-consciousness (cf. §§84, 120, 125). 20 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

It is this implicit line of argument linking knowledge and selfconsciousness via epistemic responsibility—perhaps more than any other part of Green’s idealist programme in the first book of the Prolegomena—that is important to understanding his ethical argument in the rest of the Prolegomena.

IX. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND PRACTICAL RESPONSIBILITY In the second book of the Prolegomena Green picks up this theme from the first book about the role of self-consciousness in epistemic responsibility and explicitly makes the parallel argument about the role of self-consciousness in practical responsibility or moral personality. In chapter 1 he denies that determinism is a threat to moral responsibility; responsibility presupposes selfconsciousness, not indeterminism. In chapter 2 he explains the role of desire, intellect, and will in responsible action. Though it is common to think that moral responsibility is threatened by determinism and requires indeterminism, Green denies this. Indeed, he thinks that indeterminism is a greater threat to responsibility, inasmuch as it is unclear why we should hold a person accountable for actions that are not due to his character (§110; Works, ii. 95). Responsibility neither is threatened by determinism nor requires indeterminism; it requires self-consciousness (§§87, 90, 106, 109–10). Moral responsibility requires capacities for practical deliberation, and practical deliberation requires selfconsciousness. Non-responsible agents, such as brutes and small children, appear to act on their strongest desires or, if they deliberate, to deliberate only about the instrumental means to the satisfaction of their desires (§§86, 92, 96, 122, 125). By contrast, responsible agents must be able to distinguish between the intensity and authority of their desires, to deliberate about the appropriateness of their desires and aims, and to regulate their actions in accord with these deliberations (§§92, 96, 103, 107, 220). Here, as Self-Consciousness and Practical Responsibility ~ 21

elsewhere, Green shows the influence of a long tradition of thinking about agency that extends back to the Greeks and is given forceful articulation by moderns, such as Butler, Reid, and Kant.7 This requires one to be able to distinguish oneself from particular desires and impulses—to distance oneself from them—and to be able to frame the question about what it would be best for one on the whole to do (§§85–6). Green thinks that the process of forming and acting on a conception of what it is best for me on the whole to do is for me to form and act from a conception of my own overall good (§§91–2, 96, 128). A man, we will suppose, is acted on at once by an impulse to revenge an affront, by a bodily want, by a call of duty, and by fear of certain results incidental to his avenging the affront or obeying the call of duty. We will suppose further that each passion . . . suggests a different line of action. So long as he is undecided how to act, all are, in a way, external to him. He presents them to himself as influences by which he is consciously affected but which are not he, and with none of which he yet identifies himself. . . . So long as this state of things continues, no moral effect ensues. It ensues when the man’s relation to these influences is altered by his identifying himself with one of them, by his taking the object of one of the tendencies as for the time his good. This is to will, and is in itself moral action... (§146)

In claiming that a moral effect ensues just in case the agent reflectively endorses his appetites, Green is not saying that reflective endorsement is sufficient for morally good action, rather that it is sufficient for morally assessable or responsible action (§§95, 115). In fact, it is not clear that he means to say that action is responsible only when it is the product of reflective endorsement. Presumably, we want to hold people responsible for those actions for which 7 Cf. Plato, Republic 437e–442c; Aristotle, De Anima, ii. 2 and Nicomachean Ethics, 1102b13–1103a3, 1111b5–1113a14; Cicero, De Officiis, tr. W. Miller (Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb, 1913), 6k. i, sect. 2. i.; Bishop Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel, i. 8, ii.12–15; Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, ed. B. Brady (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969), essay ii, sect. 2. ii; and Kant, G. 396, 437, 448; KrV A534/B562, A553–4/B581–82, A802/B830; KpV 61–2, 87.

22 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

they had the capacity for reflective endorsement, even if they did not exercise this capacity or exercise it well (cf. §154; see §XXVI). So responsibility or moral agency requires deliberative selfgovernment, and this requires self-consciousness. Self-consciousness involves the ability to represent these different impulses as parts of a single psychological system and the recognition of the self as extended in time and endowed with deliberative capacities (§220). Because what is not itself an element of consciousness is nonnatural (§§32, 51–4, 65), Green appears to agree with Kant that responsibility presupposes non-naturalism, even if his reasons for accepting non-naturalism are somewhat different (§§87, 90; cf. Works, ii. 92). We can accept Green’s claims about moral personality without endorsing his non-naturalism. We need only agree that responsibility presupposes deliberative self-government and, hence self-consciousness, rather than indeterminism.8 Green considers the apparent threat to responsibility resulting from the claim that agents necessarily act on their strongest desires (§§103–6, 139–42). He thinks that the threat is specious, because it rests on an ambiguity. The intensity of some desires is stronger than others; their force is stronger. The action of non-responsible animals is just the vector sum of these forces; they do act on their strongest desires, in this sense. But responsible agents, who can distinguish between the strength or intensity of desire and its authority and act on these judgements, need not act on their strongest desire. Green associates regulation of one’s action by such deliberations with strength of character and claims that strength of character can overcome strength of desire. But strength of character, Green thinks, is no threat to responsibility; rather, it is a precondition of it. It is only by failing to distinguish these two different 8 Green does discuss the relation between the self and its desires and seems to claim that the self is distinct from, but not independent of, its desires (§§100–1). This might be true if the desires were parts of the self but the self also included deliberative faculties that form, assess, and select desires.

Self-Consciousness and Practical Responsibility ~ 23

kinds of strength, he thinks, that one could see a threat to responsibility here. Another way to put Green’s point is this. The claim that one must act according to one’s strongest desire either (a) associates strength of desire with its felt intensity or (b) associates it with whatever desires move one to act after due deliberation. On the (a)-reading, the alleged necessity of acting on one’s strongest desires would threaten responsibility but is false; whereas, on the (b)-reading, the alleged necessity is perhaps true, but no threat to responsibility.

X. DESIRE, INTELLECT, AND WILL9 Responsible action involves desire, intellect or belief, and will. First, Green argues that desire and belief are distinct, though complementary, mental states (§§130–6). They are, in a way, parallel. Both involve a kind of ‘striving’ to overcome ‘alienation’ or ‘opposition’ with the world (§§131–3). Here, Green is drawing on a tradition of thinking about belief and desire that begins in Aristotle’s account of representation and motivation in De Anima (iii. 3–9) and that finds contemporary expression in accounts of belief and desire as dispositional states involving different ‘directions of fit’ to the world.10 In the case of desire, an agent represents a state of the world in consciousness, and in so far as she notices discrepancy between the state of the world so represented and the way the world appears to her, she tries to make the world as it appears to 9 Here, I depart from the Prolegomena’s order of presentation—postponing some of the discussion in II. i of responsible action and the pursuit of a personal good until later (§§XI–XIV), when we discuss related issues in III. i–ii about the proper objects of deliberative endorsement. 10 See, e.g., Elizabeth Anscombe, Intention (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957), 56; Dennis Stampe, ‘The Authority of Desire’, Philosophical Review, 96 (1987), 335–81; I. L. Humberstone, ‘Direction of Fit’, Mind, 101 (1992), 59–83; David Velleman, ‘The Guise of the Good’, Nous, 26 (1992), 3–26; and Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), ch. 4.

24 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

her conform to the way she represents it in consciousness. By contrast, in the case of belief, an agent represents a state of the world in consciousness, and in so far as she perceives a discrepancy between the state of the world so represented and the way the world appears to her, she tries to make the way she represents it in consciousness conform to the way it appears to her. In other words, beliefs are states that lead one to adjust them to conform to the world, whereas desires are states that lead one to adjust the world to conform to them (cf. Works, ii. 91).11 Beliefs and desires, on this view, are complementary states. Desires are dispositional states that tend to produce action but only in conjunction with beliefs, for instance, about the value of the objects of desire and about the causal means and necessary conditions for satisfying desire. Beliefs are dispositional states that tend to produce action, mental or bodily, but only in conjunction with desires about how the world should be, if only in the form of desires about how best to reason and form one’s beliefs. Moreover, normative beliefs and desires are importantly related. Beliefs about what is best normally produce desires to act. This is no mystery. Given Green’s account of the nature of beliefs and desires, one would expect that a representation of how the world ought to be (a belief ) would give rise to states that aim to adjust the world to make it correspond to this belief (desires). Having explained the distinction and connections between belief and desire, the question arises whether the will can be reduced to either or is some third state and what its role is in responsible action. Green thinks that willing is distinct from both 11 We might appeal to these ideas about two different directions of fit between psychological states and the world to make a more abstract distinction between something like cognitive or representational states, on the one hand, and motivational states, on the other hand. We might then treat belief as one kind of cognitive state among others (including, for instance, supposition and fantasy) and desire as one kind of motivational state among others (including, for example, wish and intention). Such a view, of course, would have to supply differentia within the families of cognitive and motivational states.

Desire, Intellect, and Will ~ 25

desire (§§139–42) and from belief (§§148–51) and from the simple combination of belief and desire (§151). Weakness of will—having belief about what is best without the will or without sufficient will—suggests that the will is distinct from the understanding. Strength of will—having a will that can control strong desires— suggests that the will is distinct from desire (§137). This last claim requires some qualification inasmuch as Green seems to think that the will involves desires or perhaps is a special kind of desire (§§139–42). We can understand these claims better if we attend to Green’s identification of the will with the man: ‘The will is simply the man. Any act of will is the expression of the man as he at the time is. The motive issuing in his act, the object of his will, the idea which for the time he sets himself to realise, are but the same thing in different words’ (§153). But here the man refers to the self or character that finds its expression in desires that are the product of deliberation. Green identifies the will with the motive and suggests that the will is a kind of desire. This suggests that the will is a desire that is the product of the right sort of deliberative endorsement. This still allows us to recognize strength of will, because the sense in which desires that are the product of deliberative endorsement are strongest is not the same sense of strength in which some pre-deliberative desires are stronger or more intense than others. This account also allows us to recognize weakness of will. Sometimes optimizing desires compete with and lose out to non-optimizing or good-independent desires. Here, there is a will, but it is weak. At other times, deliberation produces belief that does not generate desire, as usual. This is a failure of will.

XI. PURSUIT OF A PERSONAL GOOD Green claims that the responsible agent acts not simply on appetites or passions but as the result of ought judgements or in light of a conception of goods. But he also says that the deliberating agent takes the object of reflectively endorsed desire as his own 26 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

good (§§91–2), indeed, his own greatest good (§§96, 128), and that he aims at ‘self-satisfaction’ (§§89, 104). These further claims may initially seem strange or implausible for several reasons. We may wonder whether pursuit of something as appropriate or good implies pursuit of it as best or the greatest good. We may also wonder why pursuit of goods or the good has to be understood as pursuit of the agent’s own good. Surely an agent might conclude that he ought to sacrifice his own good for the good of others or for the sake of some larger cause. To some of these doubts Green may have answers. I think he supposes that the inference from pursuit of goods to pursuit of the greatest good is legitimate in so far as the agent’s deliberations, which form his will, are about what he ought to do all-thingsconsidered. As such, it is reasonable for him to will something not just as a good, but as what is best for him to do. Nor is the inference from good to good for the agent as problematic as might first appear. For one thing, Green explicitly allows that a person’s conception of his own good may require self-sacrifice. By an instinctive action we mean one not determined by a conception, on the part of the agent, of any good to be gained or evil to be avoided by the action. It is superfluous to add, good to himself, for anything conceived of as good in such a way that the agent acts for the sake of it, must be conceived as his own good, though he may conceive it as his own good only on account of his interest in others, and in spite of any suffering on his own part incidental to its attainment. (§92)

And, as we shall see and discuss later, Green thinks that the agent’s own good includes the good of others and that this undermines the popular contrast between self-love and altruism (§§191, 200, 244). If these claims can be defended, then we should not reject the egoist interpretation of the aim of responsible action on the ground that it is inconsistent with a concern for the good of others or a willingness to engage in self-sacrifice. But it still remains unclear why we should accept the egoist interpretation. Why must I conceive of goods or worthwhile Pursuit of a Personal Good ~ 27

actions as contributing to my own good? Part of Green’s reasons for the egoist interpretation may have to do with a further sense in which he thinks that responsible action expresses self-consciousness. He links responsible action not only with moral accountability (§96) but also with authorship (§96), character (§§105, 108, 114), and self-expression (§§94, 107). Part of Green’s idea seems to be that our deliberations and deliberate choices reflect the operation, perhaps implicit, of normative principles about what is worthwhile— that is, a conception, perhaps somewhat inchoate, about what makes a life well lived. We need not think of deliberation as simply revealing a latent conception of the good. We can also think of the patterns of one’s choices as forming or creating a conception of the good. In this way, responsible action might be claimed to be self-expressive as well as autonomous. My responsible actions may express my choices, commitments, and conception of the good. But why should I think that pursuing or achieving my conception of the good promotes my own interests? Isn’t this a confusion of the ownership and the content of my aims?12 It is my conception of what is good, but this need not be a conception about my good. Green does speak of pre-deliberative desires as ‘alien’ or ‘other’, and he regards deliberative endorsement as a process of ‘identification’ (§146). But does this amount to anything more than the claim that the objects of deliberative endorsement reflect my sometimes deeply held convictions about what is worthwhile? This may reflect how I think of myself and how I value myself. For example, if my conception of what is worthwhile reflects a self-conception as caretaker of my dependents, then I will identify with the well-being of my dependents, and this will colour my conception of what makes my life well lived. It will be hard for me to distinguish my doing well from my

12 Sidgwick is aware of a similar worry. See Sidgwick, Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and J. Martineau, 103.

28 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

serving my dependents. In so far as my views about what matters rightly affect my views about what make my own life go well, Green may be right that pursuit of a good or the good involves pursuit of one’s own good. However, it is not entirely clear that this would vindicate egoism, inasmuch as pursuit of the good would appear to be prior in explanation and justification to pursuit of my own good.

XII. PSYCHOLOGICAL HEDONISM AND THE GOOD Green’s account of responsibility in terms of the deliberative capacities of a self-conscious mind is common to both a good will and a bad will. As such, it does not provide an account of the good will or what distinguishes the good and bad will (§154). The quality of a person’s will depends upon the content of her will, the objects in which she seeks self-satisfaction (§154). In the third book of the Prolegomena Green addresses the content of the good will. Green spends considerable time explaining what the good is not. In particular, he is very concerned to reject the hedonism that he finds in the utilitarian tradition and that he associates with a naturalistic approach to ethics (§§2, 8). Green interprets Mill as a hedonist and focuses his criticism of hedonism on Mill’s claims in Utilitarianism. One of Green’s main complaints is that the plausibility of evaluative hedonism rests on a commitment (perhaps implicit) to psychological hedonism, which rests on the fallacy, which Butler exposed, of inferring that pleasure is the object of desire from the fact that it is expected that pleasure will attend the satisfaction of desire. In the next section, we will examine the way in which Green’s Butlerian doubts about psychological hedonism inform his criticisms of evaluative hedonism. In this section, we examine those doubts first. Green thinks that psychological hedonism is prima facie implausible. It seems we pursue many things other than our own pleasure and often at the expense of our own pleasure (§159). Psychological Hedonism and the Good ~ 29

But, on reflection, this apparent evidence against psychological hedonism may not seem compelling. After all, it seems that we always expect pleasure from the satisfaction of our desires and that the anticipation of this pleasure can make us desire it (§157). Butler thought this defence of psychological hedonism was fallacious. That all particular appetites and passions are towards external things themselves, distinct from the pleasure arising from them, is manifested from hence—that there could not be this pleasure were it not for that prior suitableness between the object and the passion; there could be no enjoyment or delight from one thing more than another, from eating food more than swallowing a stone, if there were not an affection or appetite to one thing more than another. (Sermons, xi. 6)

Butler’s point is that it is a fallacy to suppose that we aim at the pleasure that we expect to accompany the satisfaction of our desires (§158). The pleasure in getting x (P1) is predicated on the prior desire for x (D1); the desire is not predicated on that pleasure. And even if the anticipation of P1 produces a new desire for x (D2), that gives no reason to think that the original desire for x (D1) is predicated on the expectation of pleasure. As I think Butler recognizes, and as Green clearly does, exposure of this fallacy does not imply that psychological hedonism is false. Rather, it undermines one common source of support for that doctrine (§§158, 169). Butler’s point is that pleasure depends upon the satisfaction of desires for various things. If so, the immediate objects of many desires are things other than pleasure. But this does not show that we do not desire these things on account of their (expected) pleasurableness. If we distinguish between ultimate and proximate objects of desire, we can admit Butler’s point and still claim that pleasure is the only ultimate object of desire or, in Green’s terms, the only thing desired intrinsically or for its own sake. However, Green thinks that when this claim is clearly identified and stripped of fallacious defences, it will just seem implausible. Life is replete with examples of people choosing worthy 30 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

courses despite the expectation of securing the lesser pleasure (§159).13

XIII. MILL AND EVALUATIVE HEDONISM As I said, Green’s discussion of evaluative hedonism focuses on Mill’s (alleged) defence of that doctrine. He thinks that Mill rightly departs from hedonism at various points but fails to notice the inconsistency that this introduces into his views only because he fails to appreciate Butler’s point. Green’s critical discussion of Mill focuses on the doctrine of higher pleasures (Utilitarianism ii) and the ‘proof ’ of the principle of utility (U. iv). Green identifies things Mill says about value (the higher pleasures doctrine) and desire (the claim that we desire virtue for its own sake) that appear to be incompatible with hedonism. He explains Mill’s failure to see the inconsistency by appeal to the hypothesis that Mill fallaciously inferred that pleasure is the object of desire from the fact that pleasure is expected to attend the satisfaction of desire. Green’s interpretation and criticisms of Mill are interesting and deserve discussion. Let us begin with Green’s concerns about Mill’s ‘proof ’. Mill claims that the utilitarian must claim that happiness is the one and only thing desirable in itself (iv. 2); in so far as he is a hedonistic utilitarian, he must claim that pleasure is the only thing desirable in itself. He claims that the only proof of desirability is desire and proceeds to argue that happiness (pleasure) is the one and only thing desired. He argues that a person does desire his own happiness (pleasure) for its own sake and that, therefore, happiness (pleasure) as such is desired by and desirable for its own sake for humanity as a whole (iv. 3). He then turns to defend the claim that 13 This is one of many points on which Green’s view bears comparison with Bradley’s. While both are critical of psychological egoism, and, in particular, psychological hedonism, Green’s discussion is clearer, more sympathetic, and more trenchant than Bradley’s. See Bradley, Ethical Studies, 252–62.

Mill and Evaluative Hedonism ~ 31

happiness (pleasure) is the only thing desirable in itself, by arguing that apparent counterexamples are not inconsistent with his claim. So it seems that Mill wants to rest the proof of utilitarianism on a defence of psychological egoism (hedonism). Green is prepared to ignore worries about how one gets from claims about what is desired by or desirable for an individual to claims about what is desired by or desirable for a group.14 His concern is with Mill’s claim that persons desire only happiness (pleasure). Mill defends this claim by claiming that it does not force him to deny the common observation that individuals desire various items—such as virtue, health, or music—for their own sakes (iv. 4–5). But Green thinks that this concession is inconsistent with psychological hedonism. For psychological hedonism appears just to be the thesis that pleasure is the one and only ultimate object of desire—the one and only thing desired for its own sake—and this is inconsistent with the claim that virtue, for instance, is desired for its own sake (§169). Green thinks that Mill fails to see the incompatibility only because he fallaciously infers that we pursue virtue for the sake of pleasure from the fact that we anticipate pleasure from the practice of virtue. Mill makes a couple of claims that suggest possible replies. First, he suggests that we might initially pursue virtue as an instrumental means to pleasure but come, by a process of association, to value virtue itself, presumably independently of the pleasure it causes (iv. 6–7). Green remains agnostic about this aetiological claim. Even if it is true, it is of no help to psychological hedonism, because one cannot square its claim that pleasure is the only ultimate object of desire with the concession that virtue is desired for its own sake (§169). 14 I read Mill as moving from a claim about the proper object of prudential concern to one about the proper object of moral concern. On this reading, Mill is not trying to derive utilitarianism (hedonistic utilitarianism) from egoism (hedonistic egoism); rather, he is assuming that the moral point of view is impartial in a way that prudence is not. If so, just as prudence aims at the agent’s own happiness (pleasure), so too morality, which is impartial, aims at happiness (pleasure) as such.

32 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

But Mill makes another claim that might allow us to square these two claims. He suggests that we desire virtue as a component part of happiness (iv. 6, 8). ‘For the sake of ’ can, but need not, express an instrumental relation. If I pursue x for the sake of y, because x is a reliable causal means to y, then, in relation to y, x has purely instrumental value. But if I pursue x for the sake of y, because x is a constituent part of y, then x has contributory value. If y is intrinsically valuable, then x can be good for its own sake and for its constitutive contribution to y. Constructing a sound complex argument can be good in itself, and constructing sound subarguments is a proper part of this task; sound sub-arguments are good in themselves and for their contribution to the good of the larger argument of which they are proper parts. If so, it would seem that the contributory good can be desired for its own sake and for its constitutive contribution to a final good. Mill might be suggesting that a similar relation holds between virtue and happiness. Indeed, this would make Mill’s position like that of Aristotle, who thinks that virtue is a complete good choiceworthy both for its own sake and for its constitutive contribution to eudaimonia, which is the only unconditionally complete good (NE, 1094a18–19, 1097a27–b6). But whereas Mill might be able to reconcile the intrinsic value and pursuit of virtue with the ultimate value and pursuit of happiness, it seems he cannot reconcile the intrinsic value and pursuit of virtue with the ultimate value and pursuit of pleasure. Virtue might be part of a perfectionist conception of happiness as a complex whole that consists of the proper exercise of various essential or important human capacities. But virtue cannot be a proper part of a hedonist conception of happiness. Mill’s claim that there are a plurality of intrinsic goods, including virtue, is incompatible with the hedonist claim that pleasure is the one and only intrinsic good. The only way one could fail to see this is perhaps, as Green suggests, to think of virtue as a pleasure by attending to the pleasure the virtuous person expects from virtuous activity. Moreover, Mill and Evaluative Hedonism ~ 33

inasmuch as the hedonist thinks that the only thing that is intrinsically good is pleasure, she must conclude that all other things— including states of character—have value, if at all, only extrinsically, that is, in so far as they tend causally to produce pleasure. But this means that the hedonist must treat virtue as only extrinsically valuable, a claim that Mill denies here. This brings us to Green’s discussion of Mill’s doctrine of higher pleasures (§§162–7).15 Mill’s apparent sympathy with hedonism is clear. Early in chapter ii of Utilitarianism Mill appears to endorse both utilitarianism and hedonism about the good. The creed which accepts as the foundations of morals ‘utility’ or the ‘greatest happiness principle’ holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. (ii. 2; cf. ii. 1)

Different versions of hedonism correspond to different theories of pleasure and pain.16 But any form of hedonism implies that the mental state of pleasure is the only thing having intrinsic value— that is, the only thing good in itself, good whatever its consequences, or necessarily good (and the mental state of pain is the only intrinsic evil). All other things have only extrinsic value; they have value just in so far as they bring about, mediately or directly, intrinsic value (or disvalue). Moreover, it would seem that something’s extrinsic 15

Mill’s higher pleasures doctrine is another point at which Green’s discussion might be compared with Bradley’s less subtle criticisms of that doctrine. See Bradley, Ethical Studies, 116–22. 16 Consider two views of pleasure. According to simple hedonism, pleasure is a simple qualitative mental state or sensation that varies only in duration and intensity, and the same is true of pain. According to preference hedonism, pleasure and pain are functional states: pleasure is a mental state or sensation such that the person having it wants it to continue and will, ceteris paribus, undertake actions so as to prolong it, while pain is a mental state or sensation such that the person having it wants it to cease and will, ceteris paribus, take action to make it stop. There is no apparent reason why mental states having one of these functional profiles need be qualitatively similar or have the same feel.

34 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

value ought to depend entirely upon the quantity of pleasure that it produces, where quantity of pleasure is a positive function of both the pleasure’s intensity and its duration. So, as Bentham noticed, intellectual pursuits (e.g. poetry) are intrinsically no more valuable than voluptuary pursuits (e.g. push-pin). If the former are more valuable than the latter, it can only be because, as it happens, the intellectual pursuits tend in the long-run to produce a greater quantity of pleasure than voluptuary pursuits do. But in defending the value of higher pleasures against that of lower pleasures (ii. 4–8), Mill rejects these hedonistic claims. In discussing the greater value of intellectual pleasures, in comparison with voluptuary ones, he agrees with the strict hedonist that the former produce a larger quantity of pleasure and so are extrinsically more valuable, but he also insists that the greater value of intellectual pleasures can and should be put on a more secure footing (ii. 4). Mill explains these higher or more valuable pleasures, and links them with the preferences of a competent judge, in the following manner: If I am asked what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account. (ii. 5)

Indeed, Mill appears here to claim not just that these higher pleasures are more valuable than lower pleasures, but that their value is infinitely or perhaps lexically greater than that of lower pleasures, because he claims that no quantity of lower pleasures could ever outweigh the value of higher pleasures (cf. ii. 6). Mill’s position here is hard to pin down, in part because he uses the term ‘pleasure’ sometimes to refer to (a) a certain kind of mental Mill and Evaluative Hedonism ~ 35

state or sensation and at other times to refer to (b) non-mental items, such as actions, activities, and pursuits that do or can cause pleasurable mental states (cf. the way in which someone might refer to sexual activity as a bodily pleasure). We might call (a)-type pleasures subjective pleasures and (b)-type pleasures objective pleasures. What is unclear is whether Mill’s higher pleasures are subjective pleasures or objective pleasures. His discussion concerns activities that employ our higher faculties. It is unclear whether higher pleasures refer to mental states or sensations caused by higher activities or the activities themselves. One might interpret the higher pleasures to refer to objective pleasures. We saw that in the second part of the ‘proof ’ of the principle of utility Mill counts music, virtue, and health as pleasures (iv. 5). These seem to be objective pleasures. And elsewhere in his discussion of higher pleasures in chapter ii, Mill equates a person’s pleasures with his ‘indulgences’ (ii. 7) and with his ‘mode of existence’ (ii. 8). Here too he seems to be discussing objective pleasures. When Mill introduces higher pleasures (ii. 4) he is clearly discussing, among other things, intellectual pursuits and activities. He claims to be arguing that what the quantitative hedonist finds extrinsically more valuable is also intrinsically more valuable (ii. 4, 7). But what the quantitative hedonist defends as extrinsically more valuable are (intellectual) activities and pursuits, not mental states. Because Mill claims that these very same things are intrinsically, and not just extrinsically, more valuable, his higher pleasures would appear to be intellectual activities and pursuits, rather than mental states. Finally, in paragraphs 4–8 Mill links the preferences of competent judges and the greater value of the objects of their preferences. But among the things Mill thinks competent judges would prefer are activities and pursuits. And, in particular, in commenting on the passage quoted above (ii. 5), Mill writes: ‘Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence 36 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

which employs their higher faculties’ (ii. 6; emphasis added). Here Mill is identifying the higher pleasures with activities and pursuits that exercise our higher capacities. In so far as Mill’s higher pleasures doctrine concerns objective pleasures, it is anti-hedonistic for two reasons. First, he claims that the intellectual pursuits have value out of proportion to the amount of contentment or pleasure (the mental state) that they produce. This contradicts the hedonist claim that the extrinsic value of an activity is proportional to the quantity of pleasure associated with it. Second, Mill claims that these activities are intrinsically more valuable than the lower pursuits (ii. 7). But the hedonist must claim that the mental state of pleasure is the one and only intrinsic good; activities can have only extrinsic value, and no activity can be intrinsically more valuable than another. Green makes his criticism in terms of subjective pleasures. He allows Mill to distinguish pleasures (the mental states or sensations) by their causes. Higher pleasures are pleasures caused by the exercise of our higher faculties, whereas lower pleasures are pleasures caused by the exercise of our lower capacities. But conceding this difference among pleasures does not imply the qualitative superiority of the former. The pleasures, as such, should be of equal value, though some activities that produce pleasure may produce more intense or more durable pleasures (§§163–4). Green rightly focuses on Mill’s explanation of the preferences of competent judges for modes of existence that employ their higher faculties. Higher pleasures are those things (e.g. activities) that a competent judge would prefer, even if they produced less pleasure in her than the lower ‘pleasures’ would (ii. 5). But why should competent judges prefer activities that they often find less pleasurable unless they believe that these activities are more valuable? Mill explains the fact that competent judges prefer activities that exercise their rational capacities by appeal to their sense of dignity. We may give what explanation we please of this unwillingness [on the part of a competent judge ever to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of

Mill and Evaluative Hedonism ~ 37

existence] . . . but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties . . . (ii. 6)

But Green thinks that the dignity passage undermines hedonism (§164–6, 171). In claiming that it is the dignity of a life in which the higher capacities are exercised and the competent judge’s sense of her own dignity that explains her preference for those activities, Mill implies that her preferences reflect judgements about the value that these activities have independently of their being the object of desire or the source of pleasure. We take pleasure in these activities because they are valuable; they are not valuable, because they are pleasurable. I think that Green is right to see Mill’s claims in the ‘proof ’ and in the higher pleasures doctrine as requiring anti-hedonistic commitments.17 It is perhaps unfortunate that although Green claims to find the doctrine of higher pleasures uplifting and acknowledges a considerable debt to Mill (§162), he fails to do justice to significant similarities between Mill’s higher pleasures doctrine and his own perfectionist theory of the good. In On Liberty Mill claims that his defence of liberty relies on claims about the happiness of people as progressive beings (i. 11). He thinks that it is our deliberative capacities, especially our capacities for practical deliberation, that mark us as progressive creatures and that, as a result, the principal ingredient of our happiness or well-being must be the exercise of these deliberative capacities. At its most general, practical deliberation involves reflective decision-making. In On Liberty Mill thinks of practical deliberation 17 I think Green is right to argue that Mill is not a consistent hedonist. I am less confident of Green’s diagnosis of inconsistencies in Mill as due to his committing the psychological hedonist fallacy that Butler exposed. This is in part because I am not sure we have to attribute inconsistency to Mill. Mill’s anti-hedonistic claims make his overall position inconsistent only if he elsewhere commits himself to hedonism. However, I think that it is possible to offer a reasonably consistent perfectionist interpretation of Mill’s various claims about happiness. See my ‘Mill’s Deliberative Utilitarianism’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 21 (1992), 67–103, esp. 69–83.

38 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

in terms of capacities to form, assess, choose, and implement projects and goals (iii. 4). His discussion of responsibility in A System of Logic (‘Of Liberty and Necessity’) suggests that he thinks that deliberative capacities mark us as progressive beings, because of their role in responsibility. There he claims that capacities for practical deliberation are necessary for responsibility. In particular, he claims that moral responsibility involves a kind of self-mastery or self-governance in which one can distinguish between the strength of one’s desires and their suitability or authority and in which one’s actions reflect one’s deliberations about what it is suitable or right to do (SL: VI. ii. 3). This suggests that in the ‘dignity passage’ Mill is making the perfectionist claim that the preferences of a competent judge for the exercise of her deliberative capacities reflect her appreciation of the importance of these capacities in constituting her as a moral or progressive being. If Mill’s doctrine of higher pleasures rests on assumptions about moral personality similar to Green’s own, then it is unfortunate that Green allows his worries about Mill’s (alleged) hedonism to overshadow his agreement with perfectionist elements in Mill’s ethical and political views. Green not only criticizes the evaluative hedonism he finds in Mill; he also rejects evaluative hedonism outright. One argument he makes is that evaluative hedonism is actually inconsistent with psychological hedonism. Evaluative hedonism says that our ultimate aim ought to be to maximize net pleasure or to seek the largest sum of pleasures, whereas psychological hedonism claims that pleasurable experience is the ultimate object of desire. But a sum of pleasures is not itself a pleasure, and so, according to psychological hedonism, we could not act on the requirements of evaluative hedonism (§221).18 This is a problem for someone who combines both evaluative and psychological hedonisms. However, 18 Green’s complaint here about the incompatibility of evaluative and psychological hedonism bears comparison with Bradley’s related, though less trenchant, criticisms. See Bradley, Ethical Studies, essay III.

Mill and Evaluative Hedonism ~ 39

this is not a problem for the sort of evaluative hedonist, such as Sidgwick, who eschews psychological hedonism (§222; cf. §§334, 351).19 Green must offer some other argument against the person who thinks a self-conscious agent would identify his personal good with pleasure.

XIV. SELF-REALIZATION AS THE GOOD Green wants to argue not only against hedonism but also for selfrealization. He suggests that it is the very capacities that make moral responsibility possible in the first place that determine the proper end of deliberation (§176). Responsible action involves selfconsciousness and is expressive of the self. The self is not to be identified with any desire or any series or set of desires; moral personality consists in the ability to subject appetites and desires to a process of deliberative endorsement and to form new desires as the result of such deliberations. So the self essentially includes deliberative capacities, and if responsible action expresses the self, it must exercise these deliberative capacities. This explains why Green thinks that the proper aim of deliberation is a life of activities that embody rational or deliberative control of thought and action (§§175, 180, 199, 234, 238–9, 247, 283). One can ask about any conception of the good why one should care about the good, so conceived. Why should the good, so conceived, be normative? Green’s defence of self-realization makes the content of the good consist in the exercise of the very same capacities that make one a rational agent, subject to reasons for action, in the first place. This promises to explain why a rational agent should care about the good conceived in terms of self-realization. This justification of self-realization also explains why Green treats the imperative of self-realization as a categorical imperative. Like Kant, Green seeks an account of the agent’s duties that is 19

See Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, esp. I. iv.

40 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

grounded in her agency and does not depend upon contingent and variable inclinations. The goal of self-realization, Green thinks, meets this demand. At the same time, because it [self-realization] is the fulfilment of himself, of that which he has in him to be, it will excite an interest in him like no other interest, different in kind from any of his desires and aversions except such as are derived from it. It will be an interest as in an object conceived to be of unconditional value; one of which the value does not depend on any desire that the individual may at any time feel for it or for anything else, or on any pleasure that . . . he may experience. . . . [T]he desire for the object will be founded on a conception of its desirableness as a fulfilment of the capabilities of which a man is conscious in being conscious of himself. . . . [Self-realization] will express itself in [the] imposition . . . of rules requiring something to be done irrespectively of any inclination to do it, irrespectively of any desired end to which it is a means, other than this end, which is desired because conceived as absolutely desirable. (§193)

Because the demands of self-realization depend only on those very deliberative capacities that make one a responsible agent, they are categorical imperatives. Green recognizes that his conception of the good in terms of self-realization, perfection, or the exercise of deliberative capacities is abstract and perhaps vague in comparison with the apparent definiteness of the hedonist’s conception of the good (§193). Moreover, he thinks that one is unable to specify fully the content of self-realization independently of its embodiment (§193). This claim may reflect Hegelian themes about the form of an individual’s good being historically conditioned. It may also reflect the more familiar ideas that the perfection of one’s capacities is an ideal that one can at most hope to approximate and that any conception of perfection by imperfect beings must be defeasible. Nonetheless, Green’s conception of the good in terms of selfrealization is not empty.

Self-Realization as the Good ~ 41

XV. SELF-REALIZATION AND THE COMMON GOOD In particular, Green links self-realization and a common good. He believes that full self-realization can take place only in a community of ends (§§183–4, 190–1, 199, 232) in which each person cares about others for their own sakes (§199). I must view others as my ‘alter egos’ (§§191, 200) and aim at a common good (§§202, 236). But why? At one point, Green suggests that this concern for others, at least for those within one’s immediate circle, is given or natural. Now the self of which a man thus forecasts the fulfillment, is not an abstract or empty self. It is a self already affected in the most primitive forms of human life by manifold interests, among which are interests in other persons. These are not merely interests dependent on other persons for the means to their gratification, but interests in the good of those other persons, interests which cannot be satisfied without the consciousness that those other persons are satisfied. The man cannot contemplate himself as in a better state, or on the way to the best, without contemplating others, not merely as a means to that better state, but as sharing it with him. (§199)

Green might simply be invoking this familiar concern that one has for one’s intimate associates. But this would not justify the claim that another’s good is part of my own. He might be appealing to his account of the personal good. If I do care about the welfare of my associates, and these desires survive deliberative endorsement, then, according to Green, I make their welfare part of my own personal good (§§91–2). But this won’t do. As we have seen (§XI), it would be fallacious to draw conclusions about the agent’s own good from claims about the goods she pursues. This seems to conflate the content and ownership of desires. Moreover, it makes an agent’s interest in others dependent on her contingent desires; it does not explain why an agent who does not have such desires is making a mistake or why one who does have these desires should retain them. To explain how the demands 42 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

of the common good are categorical imperatives, we need to explain how pursuit of a common good is an ingredient in self-realization. We would do well to attend to Green’s claims that a rational agent’s interest in others is rooted in her search for a ‘permanent’ good (§§223, 229–32, 234). Rational action must be responsible action, ripe for assessment. This requires impulse control, which requires the ability to distinguish myself from my appetites and frame the question of what it would be best for me—a temporally extended agent—on the whole to do. This will involve endorsing some goals as good and as worth making short-term sacrifices or investments for. This is to value goals and projects in which I am involved that have some degree of permanence. Green seems to think that the right sort of association with others extends this permanence in a natural way—indeed, that it provides a kind of counter-balance to mortality or surrogate for immortality. That determination of an animal organism by a self-conscious principle, which makes a man and is presupposed by the interest in permanent good, carries with it a certain appropriation by the man to himself of the beings with whom he is connected by natural ties, so that they become to him as himself and in providing for himself he provides for them. Projecting himself into the future as a permanent subject of possible well-being or ill-being—and he must so project himself in seeking for a permanent good—he associates his kindred with himself. It is this association that neutralises the effect which the anticipation of death must otherwise have on the demand for a permanent good. (§231)

But whereas intrapersonal permanence is clearly in the agent’s interest, it is less clear that interpersonal permanence is. We are more likely to be sympathetic to Green’s claims if we attend to his ideas about self-realization. As we have seen, Green insists that the self is not exhausted by any set of beliefs and desires. A responsible self exercises deliberative capacities that assess beliefs and desires and regulate action in accord with these deliberations. On this view, the persistence of the self ought to involve the Self-Realization and the Common Good ~ 43

continuous employment of one’s deliberative capacities to regulate beliefs, desires, and actions. In the intrapersonal case, I preserve myself when the actions and intentional states of a future self depend in the right deliberative way on the actions and intentional states of my present and past selves. But interpersonal association involves deliberative connections between associates, in which the intentional states and actions of each depend on those of the other. This might explain why Green thinks that I more fully realize my capacities in association with others and why I should treat the good of my associates as part of my own good.

XVI. ARISTOTELIAN FRIENDSHIP To better understand and assess Green’s claims about selfrealization and the common good, it might be helpful to compare them with Aristotle’s claims about friendship and the way in which friendship contributes to the agent’s own eudaimonia. This is an appropriate interpretative aid in so far as Green thinks that Aristotle was right to ground an agent’s duties in an account of eudaimonia whose principal ingredient is a conception of practical virtue regulated by the common good (§§253, 256, 263, 271, 279), and Aristotle’s account of the common good rests on his account of friendship.20 Aristotle discusses friendship (philia) in books viii–ix of the Nicomachean Ethics.21 Initially, he suggests that all forms of friendship

20 The legitimacy of this interpretative aid is also suggested by Green’s ‘Notes on Moral Philosophy’ (Works, v. 188–90) and by his marginalia in his two copies of the Greek text of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, especially Aristotle’s discussion of friendship in books viii–ix, in which he comments favourably on how Aristotle’s conception of friendship allows for the reconciliation of self-love and altruism (NE, book ix, ch. 8) and relates Aristotle’s concerns to his own. Green’s copies of the Nicomachean Ethics are contained in the Green Papers in Balliol College, Oxford. For extracts from Green’s marginalia I am indebted to Peter Nicholson. 21 Unless I indicate otherwise, references to Aristotle are to the Nicomachean Ethics (NE).

44 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

involve reciprocal concern for the other’s own sake (1155b28–33). He then identifies three different kinds of friendship: (1) friendship for advantage found in associations for mutual advantage, (2) friendship for pleasure found in associations in which each takes pleasure in the qualities and company of the other, and (3) friendship for virtue found in associations between virtuous people, which he regards as the best or most complete kind of friendship (viii. 3–8). Both advantage-friendship and pleasure-friendship, Aristotle claims, involve something less than concern for the other’s own sake (1156a11–13). Both kinds of friendship are to be contrasted with virtue-friendship. This is friendship among people similarly virtuous in which each cares about the other for the other’s own sake. Despite these and other differences between virtue-friendship, on the one hand, and pleasure-friendship and advantage-friendship, on the other hand, Aristotle insists that virtue-friendship is the best or most complete kind of friendship. In doing so, he signals that it is friendship to the fullest extent and that other associations are friendships by virtue of their approximation to it (1157a26–32). Virtue-friendship cannot be widespread inasmuch as virtuous people are rare (1156b25) and that sort of friendship requires a degree of intensity that cannot be maintained on a large scale (1158a11–17, 1171a1–20). Complete friends share similar psychological states, such as aims and goals (1170b16–17) and live together, sharing thought and discussion (1157b8–19, 1159b25–33, 1166a1–12, 1171b30–1172a6). Virtue-friends care about each other for the other’s own sake. If complete friendship is a virtue, then, as a eudaimonist, Aristotle must think that it contributes to the lover’s, as well as the beloved’s, eudaimonia. Aristotle anticipates some of his claims about the justification of virtue-friendship (which begins at ix. 4) in viii. 12, where he suggests that we should take parental friendship as our model of friendship. The parent is concerned with the child’s welfare for the child’s own sake. This concern is appropriate on eudaimonist Aristotelian Friendship ~ 45

grounds, because the parent can regard the child as ‘another-self ’ (1161b19, 28). The child can be regarded as another-self of the parent, presumably because the child owes its existence and physical and psychological nature in significant measure to the parent. This both echoes and helps explain the common view that a parent’s interests are extended by the life of the child.22 Aristotle suggests that similar claims can be made about friendship between siblings. In virtue of living together, siblings causally interact in important ways and share many things in common and so can regard each other as other-selves (1161b30–5). Despite important differences between familial friendship and virtue-friendship, Aristotle’s account of familial friendship brings out clearly what is crucial to his justification of virtue-friendship. He explains the justification of virtue-friendship in terms of proper self-love (1166a1–2, 10, 1166a30–2, 1168b1–1169a12; EE 1240a22–b13): ‘The excellent person is related to his friend in the same way as he is related to himself, since a friend is another self; and therefore, just as his own being is choiceworthy for him, the friend’s being is choiceworthy for him in the same or a similar way’ [1170b6–9]. Aristotle believes that proper self-love requires a proper conception of the self and what is beneficial for the self. However, it is this [the virtuous person] more than any other sort of person who seems to be a self-lover. At any rate, he awards himself what is finest and best of all, and gratifies the most controlling part of himself, obeying it in everything. And just as a city and every other composite system seems to be above all its most controlling part, the same is true of a human being; hence someone loves himself most if he likes and gratifies this part. (1168b28–34; see also 1166a15–23)

22 In so far as this is true, Aristotle can provide further justification for his assumption that there are posthumous benefits and harms and that the welfare of one’s loved ones and the success of one’s projects, after one is dead, are part of a complete good (1100a10–31, 1101a23–30).

46 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

Here Aristotle identifies a person with the controlling part of his soul or his understanding. He thinks that a human being is essentially a psychophysical compound in which reason can regulate thought and action (1097b24–1098a16, 1102b13–1103a3). This explains why Aristotle thinks that proper love for oneself involves a concern for one’s practical reason and its virtuous exercise. This account of proper intrapersonal love suggests a plausible interpretation of Aristotle’s claims about the relation between interpersonal friendship and self-love. I preserve or extend myself by exercising my practical reason—forming beliefs and desires, deliberating about them, and acting as the result of deliberate choice. But the same sort of psychological interaction and interdependence can be found, presumably to a lesser extent, between two different persons. On Aristotle’s view, friends share similar psychological states, such as aims and goals (1170b16–17), and live together (1157b8–19, 1159b25–33, 1166a1–12, 1171b30–1172a6). Even if psychological similarity is necessary for friendship, it is clearly insufficient; it should be produced and sustained by living together and sharing thought and discussion (1157b5–12, 18–21, 1170b10–14).23 This account of interpersonal psychological dependence among friends allows us to see how Aristotle thinks we can view a friend as another-self and so how he can view the

23

Though Aristotle sometimes writes as if the relevant relations among friends must involve similar beliefs and values (1159b3–5, 1161b35, 1162a13, 1165b17, 1166a7, 1167a23–b10, 1170b16), it is not clear that this is an essential feature of his position. Within my own life, I exercise deliberative control and establish psychological connections with my future self when I intentionally modify beliefs, desires, or values, as well as when I maintain them unchanged. It may be that my successive selves will typically be fairly similar; perhaps wholesale and instantaneous psychological change is impossible or at least would involve a substantial change, which I would not survive. But intrapersonal psychological dependence is compatible with significant qualitative change. Our own persistence requires only continuous deliberative control, not fixity of character. If so, in the interpersonal case Aristotle can allow friends to be psychologically dissimilar provided the mental states and actions of each exert significant influence on those of the other. Indeed, much of the value of having friends depends upon them being different from oneself.

Aristotelian Friendship ~ 47

justification of friendship in terms of self-love. But then we can see how Aristotle can think that friendship involves concern for the friend’s own sake and yet admits of eudaimonist justification. If B extends A’s interests, then B’s interests are a part of A’s. This is true when A and B are the same person and when they are different people. My friend’s good is a part of my own overall good in just the way that the well-being of my future self is part of my overall good. This provides a eudaimonist account of why one should care about those with whom one is already friends. But it does not explain why one should cultivate friendships in the first place. Aristotle argues that it is in my interest to exercise those capacities that are central to the sort of being I essentially am; because I am essentially a rational animal, the principal ingredient in my eudaimonia is the exercise of my deliberative capacities. Interpersonal psychological interaction of the right sort promotes my eudaimonia by making possible the fuller realization of my deliberative capacities. The central premiss of Aristotle’s argument is that I am not self-sufficient at producing a complete deliberative good (1162a20–4, 1170a5–7; EE 1244b1–12; MM 1212b24–1213b2; Politics 1253a25–7, 1261b10–15): ‘For it is said that the blessedly happy and self-sufficient people have no need of friends. For they already have [all] the goods, and hence, being self-sufficient, need nothing added. But your friend, since he is another yourself, supplies what your own efforts cannot supply’ (1169b4–6). Aristotle focuses on the sharing of thought and discussion, especially about how best to live, as well as cooperative interaction. Sharing thought and discussion with another diversifies my experiences by providing me with additional perspectives on the world. By enlarging my perspective, it gives me a more objective picture of the world, its possibilities, and my place in it. Aristotle echoes Plato’s claim in the Phaedrus that part of the value of intimates, with whom one shares thought and conversation, consists in their providing a ‘mirror’ on the self (Phaedrus, 255d5; NE 1169b34–5). 48 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

Since then it is . . . a most difficult thing . . . to attain a knowledge of oneself . . . we are not able to see what we are from ourselves (and that we cannot do so is plain from the way in which we blame others without being aware that we do the same things ourselves; and this is the effect of favour or passion, and there are many of us who are blinded by these things so that we judge not aright); . . . when we wish to see our own face, we do so by looking into the mirror, in the same way when we wish to know ourselves we can obtain that knowledge by looking at our friend. For the friend is, as we assert, a second self. (Magna Moralia, 1213a13–24; cf. Eudemian Ethics, 1245a29–36).

In so far as my friend is like me, I can appreciate my own qualities from a different perspective; this promotes my self-understanding. Here Aristotle articulates an idea about the role of others in selfconsciousness that will figure prominently in Hegel and influence Green.24 But there are limits to the value of mirrors; interaction with another just like me does not itself contribute to selfcriticism. This is why there is deliberative value in interaction with diverse sorts of people, many of whom are not mirror images of myself. Different perspectives can correct for limitations in my own perspective. This suggests another way in which I am not deliberatively self-sufficient. Sharing thought and discussion with others, especially about how to live, improves my own practical deliberations; it enlarges my menu of options, by identifying new options, and helps me better assess the merits of these options, by forcing on my attention new considerations and arguments about the comparative merits of the options. Here Aristotle might appeal to Socratic claims about the deliberative value of open and vigorous discussion with diverse interlocutors. Moreover, cooperative interaction with others allows me to participate in larger, more complex projects and so to extend the scope of my deliberative control over my environment. In this way, I spread my interests more widely than I could by acting on my own. Here too 24 See, e.g., Hegel’s famous discussion in the master–slave passage in Phenomenology §§178–96.

Aristotelian Friendship ~ 49

diversity can be helpful; cooperation is improved and extends each participant further when it draws on diverse talents and skills. In these ways, interpersonal psychological relations arguably make for the fuller realization of my deliberative capacities. This may be part of what Aristotle has in mind in claiming that we are essentially political animals (NE 1097b9–12; Politics 1253a2) and that, as a result, the complete good for an individual can only be realized in a political community.

XVII. INTRINSIC CONCERN FOR OTHERS Both Aristotle and Green justify concern for the common good on individualist grounds; they argue that concern for others is justified, because associational bonds make the interests of one’s associates part of one’s own good. This justifies other-regarding concern in terms of self-love; I should be concerned for others because this contributes to my own good. But if justified concern for another is, as Aristotle and Green claim, a special case of selflove, then must not such concern be at bottom instrumental? If so, this is objectionable because it fails to justify concern for others for their own sakes and because it threatens to make the justification of other-regarding concern insufficiently stable. We might begin assessing this complaint as applied to Aristotle. On Aristotle’s view, a good is complete if it is chosen for its own sake, and a good is unconditionally complete if other things are chosen for its sake and it is not chosen for the sake of something else (1094a18–19, 1097a27–b6). Aristotle believes that eudaimonia is the only unconditionally complete good; all other goods are chosen for its sake. Some goods chosen for the sake of eudaimonia, though not choiceworthy in themselves, are choiceworthy as causal means to some ingredient of eudaimonia; these goods are incomplete, instrumental goods. But other goods—such as the virtues—that are chosen for the sake of eudaimonia are also choiceworthy in themselves. They are chosen for the sake of eudaimonia 50 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

in the sense that they are constituent parts of eudaimonia; they are valuable in their own right and for their constitutive contribution to a valuable life. Such goods are complete or intrinsic goods, not mere instrumental goods, though they are not unconditionally complete goods. If the lover treats the good of his beloved as a complete good that is also choiceworthy for the sake of his own eudaimonia, the lover is concerned for the other’s own sake while valuing his beloved’s well-being for the constitutive contribution this makes to his own eudaimonia. Similarly, in suggesting that interpersonal permanence is an extension of intrapersonal permanence, Green seems to be saying that the right sort of association makes the good of one’s associate part of one’s own good, much as one’s own future good is part of one’s overall good. When I undergo a present sacrifice for a future benefit I do so because the interests of my future self are interests of mine. The on-balance rationality of the sacrifice depends upon its promoting my overall good. But because the good of my future self is part of this overall good, concern for my overall good requires, as a constituent part, a concern for the good of my future self. In this way, concern for my future self for its own sake seems compatible with and, indeed, essential to self-love. If psychological relations extend an agent’s interests, then the good of others can be part of my overall good just as my own future good can be. Though the on-balance rationality of other-regarding action depends upon its promoting my overall good, concern for my overall good requires, as a constituent part, concern for the welfare of those to whom I am appropriately psychologically related. So both Aristotle and Green have the analytic resources to provide a eudaimonist justification of interpersonal concern that is derivative but not instrumental. This is why Green views interpersonal love as the next best thing to immortality (§231) and why Aristotle and Green both claim that a proper conception of how others figure in self-love undermines the popular contrast between self-love and altruism (NE ix. 8; PE §232). Intrinsic Concern for Others ~ 51

XVIII. THE SCOPE OF THE COMMON GOOD Green accepts Aristotle’s claims about the importance of the common good in self-realization; it is Aristotle’s conception of friendship that justifies his claims; and Green’s own justification parallels Aristotle’s in important respects. But Green does not accept Aristotle’s account of the scope of the common good. Whereas Aristotle recognizes significant restrictions on the scope of the common good, Green thinks its scope should be universal (§§205–17, 249, 253, 271, 285). Though there are important differences between virtuefriendship, which serves as Aristotle’s principal model for friendship, and political association, Aristotle can extend the central elements of his eudaimonist defence of friendship to political association, because political communities that are just have to a significant degree the two features that are crucial to the justification of virtue-friendship and familial friendship: there is commonality of aims among members of the political association, and this commonality is produced by members of the association living together in the right way, in particular, by defining their aims and goals consensually (1167a25–8, 1155a24–8). This establishes a common good among citizens, each of whom has a share in judging and ruling (Pol 1275a22–33). Justice aims at a common good (1129b15–18), and this is how Aristotle can construct a eudaimonist defence of justice. But this conception of the common good is still quite limited. Restricted as it is to those whom Aristotle thinks are fit for citizenship, it excludes women, barbarians, slaves, and manual labourers (1278a3–9). It is these restrictions on the common good that Green finds unacceptable. The idea of a society of free and law-abiding persons, each his own master yet each his brother’s keeper, was first definitely formed among the Greeks, and its formation was the condition of all subsequent progress in the direction described; but with them . . . it was limited in its application

52 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

to select groups of men surrounded by populations of aliens and slaves. In its universality, as capable of application to the whole human race, an attempt has first been made to act upon it in modern Christendom. (§271)

As the last part of this passage suggests, Green’s own conception of the common good is universal; full self-realization and the securing of a really permanent good occurs only when each person respects the claims made by other members of a maximally inclusive community of ends (§§214, 216, 244, 332).25 There are good eudaimonist reasons for recognizing a more inclusive common good than Aristotle does. For one thing, there already are significant forms of personal, social, and economic interaction and interdependence between Aristotle’s citizens, on the one hand, and women, slaves, manual labourers, and resident aliens, on the other. The arguments for recognizing a common good based on interaction and interdependence require including them in the common good. If they are part of the common good, it seems as though they ought to be given a share in ruling, inasmuch as Aristotle believes that political activity is part of the good of rational animals (Pol vii. 8–9, esp. 1329a35–8). So there appears no good reason for Aristotle not to recognize the claims to citizenship that existing patterns of interaction justify.26 25 In so far as he conceives the common good universally, Green’s view is perhaps closer to the Stoic than the Aristotelian view. See Cicero, De Finibus, tr. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb, 1914), bk. iii, sect. 63. This aspect of the Stoic view is emphasized in Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), ch. 12. 26 Perhaps Aristotle’s view is that they are part of a common good, but not of a political common good, because they are unfit for sharing in political rule. He thinks that some—such as slaves and, to a lesser extent, women—are naturally inferior (Pol ii. 4–7, 12–13). They are, he thinks, like the non-rational part of the soul: they can apprehend and follow the reason of another but they are incapable of the sort of deliberation which is involved in ruling and necessary for human happiness (1254b20–4, 1260a12–22). If so, these natural inferiors, even if part of a common good, are better suited to manual labour than citizenship. This argument clearly rests on the assumption of natural inferiority. Aristotle might think that he has empirical support for his position. His observations about women and slaves might lead him to suppose not simply that they had achieved less

The Scope of the Common Good ~ 53

This provides a backward-looking justification for recognizing a more inclusive conception of the common good. Moreover, as we have seen, interaction with others contributes to the full realization of my deliberative powers by diversifying my experiences, by providing me with resources for self-criticism as well as selfunderstanding, by broadening my deliberative menu and improving my deliberations, and by allowing me to engage in more complex and varied activities. Furthermore, the deliberative value of this interaction is enhanced when others have diverse perspectives and talents. This provides a forward-looking justification for recognizing a more inclusive conception of the common good. In so far as this push towards a more inclusive conception of the common good is motivated by Aristotelian considerations, it could be viewed as just the sort of friendly amendment to Aristotle that Green offers elsewhere in his sympathetic reconstruction of the contributions of his predecessors. But can the common good be genuinely universal in scope, as Green wants it to be, if it is the result of interpersonal interaction? For then there must be someone—the proverbial remotest Mysian (Plato, Theaetetus, 209b8)—with whom one has no previous relation, however indirect.27 Should it somehow come within my power to help the remotest Mysian, at little or no cost to myself, it might seem the eudaimonist cannot explain justified concern for him. by way of individual and civic accomplishments than full-fledged citizens but also that they were, in one sense, capable of less. But this sort of incapacity is presumably the product, rather than the cause, of being denied citizenship. Aristotle realizes that capacities must be cultivated and stimulated in order to develop properly. If I have not been given a proper education and training or suitable deliberative opportunities and responsibilities at various points in my development, I won’t be prepared for proper deliberation about the management of my own affairs or those of the community. So even if everyone had equal innate capacities, we should expect the unequal development of deliberative capacities in systems where education and deliberative opportunities and responsibilities are distributed unequally. But then the unequal capacities that discriminatory practices and institutions produce cannot be appealed to as justification for those practices and institutions. 27 The introduction of the proverbial remotest Mysian into discussions of the scope of ethical concern is discussed by Annas, The Morality of Happiness, ch. 12.

54 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

If the remotest Mysian and I stand in no relations of psychological connection, then his good is not already part of mine. So I can have no backward-looking eudaimonist reason to be concerned about him. But I can have forward-looking reasons. For it is now within my power to interact with him, and all the reasons for cultivating interpersonal self-extension apply and provide a forwardlooking rationale for concern. Even when the remotest Mysian and I have no prospect of further interaction, my assistance will enable or facilitate his pursuit of his own projects, and this will make his subsequent actions and mental states dependent upon my assistance. Indeed, other things being equal, the greater the assistance I provide the greater is my involvement in his life. To the extent that another’s actions and mental states are dependent upon my assistance, I can view the assistance as making his good a part of my own. Assistance to the remotest Mysian earns me a share, however small, of his happiness, much as care and nurture of my children ground posthumous interests I have in their continued well-being. This is why Green thinks that self-realization involves contributing to a larger, more permanent, and comprehensive good (§§229–32). If so, it explains how a eudaimonist can legitimately seek a universal common good, of the sort Green contemplates.

XIX. IMPARTIALITY AND THE COMMON GOOD Green’s conception of the common good is impartial in so far as it is universal in scope; it includes all rational agents. Is it impartial in the further sense that it demands an equal weighting of everyone’s good? Some such conception of impartiality is plausible in special contexts; for instance, we expect governments to be impartial in the sense of treating all their citizens with equal concern and respect, and we expect parents to be impartial in the treatment of their children, not favouring Dick over Jane. But, of course, it is common to think that parents can and should be partial to their own children, in relation to the children of others, and that Impartiality and the Common Good ~ 55

governments can and should give higher priority to their own citizens than to citizens of other countries. C. D. Broad provides one intuitive conception of moral impartiality in which moral concern has universal scope but variable weight. In ‘Self and Others’ he argues that common-sense morality recognizes both impartiality and partiality; this is the view he calls self-referential altruism. On the other hand, the altruism which common sense approves is always limited in scope. It holds that each of us has specially urgent obligations to benefit certain individuals and groups which stand in certain special relations to himself, e.g. his parents, his children, his fellow-countrymen, etc. And it holds that these special relationships are the ultimate and sufficient ground for these specially urgent claims on one’s beneficence.28

Broad seems here to conflate issues of scope and weight. I think that what he means to say is that the altruism that common sense approves is of variable weight, rather than limited scope. On this reading, self-referential altruism is impartial in one sense—in so far as it recognizes non-derivative reason to benefit others—but it is partial in another sense—in so far as the weight or strength of the agent’s reasons is a function of the relationship in which she stands to potential beneficiaries. Green’s attitude towards this familiar and attractive kind of partiality is ambivalent. He regards the philosophical and political influence of utilitarian and Kantian conceptions of impartiality as progressive influences (§§213–14). According to the utilitarian conception, everyone should count for one and no one for more than one (§213). According to the second main formula of Kant’s categorical imperative, one must treat humanity, whether in one’s own person or in others, always as an end in itself and never merely as a means (§214). 28 C. D. Broad, ‘Self and Others’, in D. Cheney (ed.), Broad’s Critical Essays in Moral Philosophy, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971) 280.

56 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

Does this sympathy for utilitarian and Kantian conceptions of impartiality force Green to deny partiality? While acknowledging the progressive influence of the utilitarian conception, Green argues in favour of the Kantian conception, chiefly on the ground that the latter is distributionally sensitive in ways that the former is not (§§215, 217). This preference for Kantian impartiality may seem significant in so far as only the utilitarian conception is clearly hostile to partiality. Whereas the utilitarian can justify some forms of partiality as the most reliable way of promoting total happiness, it seems that she cannot attach intrinsic significance to special relationships.29 By contrast, Kant may be able to accommodate partiality, as he hopes to in the Metaphysics of Morals (451–2). The Formula of Humanity requires only that rational agents treat one another as ends, and not merely as means. So long as one has intrinsic and not merely instrumental concern for all rational agents, it may be permissible for one to have greater concern for those to whom one stands in special relationships. However, this appears not to be how Green understands the implications of Kantian impartiality. The essential thing is that he [the just man] applies no other standard in judging of the well-being of others than in judging of his own, and that he will not promote his own well-being or that of one whom he loves or likes, from whom he has received service or expects it, at the cost of impeding in any way the well-being of one who is nothing to him but a man...(§213).

Here Green apparently claims that I should not discriminate between my self, my intimate associates, and the remotest Mysian.30 29

See my ‘Impartiality and Associative Duties’, Utilitas, 13 (2001), 152–72. There are at least two ways of interpreting this passage so that it is consistent with partiality. (1) It may be significant that Green characterizes the just man impartially. Perhaps justice requires impartiality but other virtues do not. However, this way of saving partiality may require a kind of separation of the virtues that may be hard to square with Green’s sympathy for an Aristotelian account of the virtues that unifies them by the way in which they are all regulated by the common good. (2) It might be claimed that Green here condemns only those forms of partiality that 30

Impartiality and the Common Good ~ 57

This apparent denial of partiality is not only counter-intuitive but is also in tension with some of Green’s other commitments. For one thing, Green appears to think that the common good does not demand disinterested benevolence but can and should be pursued by focusing on one’s own circle of associates and one’s own station and its duties (§183).31 Provided that this kind of partiality is not merely instrumental to advancing impersonal values, it requires moral concern with variable weight. Moreover, Green’s account of the agent’s interest in the common good, like the Aristotelian account on which it is modelled, seems committed to a form of partiality of the sort contained in self-referential altruism. The Aristotelian argument, with which Green is sympathetic, claims that the agent is justified in caring for others in so far as they stand to him in the same relations of psychological interdependence that he stands to himself. But the strength of associational ties varies. It might be useful to distinguish between psychological connectedness and continuity. Connectedness obtains between people who influence each other psychologically; continuity obtains between people who are linked by chains of connected people. Both connectedness and continuity are matters of degree. Normally, there are more numerous and direct psychological connections among successive stages within a single life than between lives. And where the connections among links in a chain are all weaker, continuity between any points in the chain will also be weaker. If so, we can see how I am more weakly continuous with my intimates than I am with myself. We can also see how I might be continuous with others, besides my intimates. I interact directly with others, such as colleagues and neighbours, ‘impede’ the good of others. In order for this to help, Green would apparently have to be marking some important distinction between doing and allowing harm to another’s good. Of course, there are doubts about how to draw this sort of distinction and about whether partiality should operate only when there is no prospect of harming another. 31 Here Green seems to echo an important theme in Bradley’s version of idealist ethics. See Bradley, Ethical Studies, esp. essay V.

58 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

and this interaction shapes my mental life in certain ways, even if the interaction in such cases is less regular than is my interaction with intimates and even if the effect of such interactions on my mental life is less profound than is the effect produced by interaction with my intimates. Moreover, I interact with a much larger net of people indirectly, when our psychological influence on each other is mediated by other people and complex social institutions. We can think of the degrees of connectedness and continuity in terms of a set of concentric circles with myself occupying the inner circle and the remotest Mysian occupying the outer circle. As we extend the scope of psychological interdependence, the strength of the relevant psychological relations appears to weaken and the weight of one’s reasons to give aid and refrain from harm presumably weakens proportionately. Despite the wide scope of justified concern, it must apparently have variable weight. This interpersonal discount rate justifies partiality at a fundamental level.32 Partiality of variable weight is consistent with impartiality of universal scope. Moreover, it fits the common view that, even if morality has universal scope, the demands that it imposes are a function not simply of the amount of benefit that one can confer but also of the nature of the relationship in which one stands to potential beneficiaries. If we fill in the details of Green’s claims about the role of the common good in self-realization with the help of Aristotle’s eudaimonist justification of virtues that aim at the common good, then it is hard to see how Green can avoid endorsing this sort of partiality.33 32 The degree of partiality depends, in part, on the precise shape of the interpersonal discount rate. As long as psychological continuity is one of the relations that matter, a significant threshold of concern can be justified for others occupying the outer circles. But as long as psychological connectedness is also one of the psychological relations that matter, there will nonetheless be significant differences in the degree of concern that can be justified, above this threshold, in different circles, because an agent will be differentially psychologically connected to others. 33 Aristotle clearly accepts this sort of partiality; he thinks that, all else being equal, it is better to help and worse to harm those to whom one stands in special relations than it is to do these things to others (NE 1160a1–6, 1169b12; Pol 1262a27–30).

Impartiality and the Common Good ~ 59

XX. MODERATE AND EXTREME HARMONY OF INTERESTS On Green’s view, proper self-realization implies that the good of each includes in part the good of others. This conclusion, he thinks, undermines the popular contrast between self-love and benevolence (§232). We should view those with whom we participate in such associations as ‘alter egos’, for whom we care as we care about ourselves (§§191, 200). We should weigh their interests with our own, and see ourselves as compensated when we make what would otherwise be sacrifices to them and to our common projects (§376). Indeed, Green goes so far as to claim that when each is engaged in proper self-realization, there can be no conflict or competition of interests (§244). How can this be? Green treats this claim as true by definition if he simply defines the common good as that set of goods for individuals in which the size of one individual’s share in no way diminishes the size of others’ shares and in which all must participate equally.34 But this approach to the common good would raise two worries. First, is there actually a common good? Are there goods that are non-competitive? Moreover, if there are such goods, why or how much should we care about them? If it is only some special class of goods that are common in this way, why should we be especially concerned to promote them, rather than familiar potentially competitive goods? Non-competitive goods might be easier to secure, more stable, and less subject to loss. But these pragmatic virtues of non-competitive goods do not show that potentially competitive goods are not worth wanting, and Green shows no signs of valuing a common good for these pragmatic reasons. By contrast, my interpretation of Green’s conception of the common good does not define it as non-competitive; rather, it 34 I think that Nicholson favours this interpretation of the common good. See Peter Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 58–9, 80.

60 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

seeks to explain how it is that the goods of distinct individuals, when conceived in perfectionist terms, can be shown to be substantially interdependent. Only if he argues in this way is Green entitled to claim that a common good, which includes the good of others, is part of self-realization. This interpretation of Green’s account of the role of the common good in self-realization models interpersonal relations and concern on intrapersonal relations and concern and thereby extends the boundaries of self-interest and self-love so as to include the good of others. This view implies a conception of interpersonal relations that should lead us to see people’s interests as metaphysically, and not just instrumentally, interdependent. This allows Green to claim that there is a substantial harmony between the agent’s own interests and those of others. Call this moderate harmony. Important as these claims are, they do not yet establish the strong thesis, which Green sometimes embraces, that there can be no conflict or competition of interests among people (§244). Call this extreme harmony. Even if, as moderate harmony insists, the good of others is a necessary and distinctively valuable part of an agent’s overall good, it can only be a proper part of the agent’s good and cannot exhaust his good. For if the good of each consisted only in the good of others, there would be nothing to ground anyone’s good. A’s good would refer to the good of B–D, B’s good would refer to the good of A and C–D, and so on. To make sense of the good of each being part of the good of each, there must be some part of the good of each that can be characterized independently of the good of others. But then even if the good of others is part of an agent’s overall good, it appears to be one aspect of an agent’s overall good that must interact and may compete with more selfconfined aspects. When I expend intellectual, emotional, and financial resources on meeting the legitimate claims of others, this may contribute to my overall good in distinctive ways. But it also consumes resources that might have been spent on my own education, vocation, or avocations. There are opportunity costs to Moderate and Extreme Harmony of Interests ~ 61

every commitment, even especially important commitments, and sometimes the opportunity costs of important commitments are themselves important.35

XXI. LIBERALISM AND EXTREME HARMONY One prospect that Green sees for accommodating partial and impartial demands lies in his liberal political commitments. We will examine Green’s political commitments and their relation to his ethical theory in greater detail later (§XXIV). For present purposes, we might note that Green’s brand of liberalism mixes egalitarian social and economic reforms with a commitment to democratic institutions and a system of personal and civic liberties and opportunities. Egalitarian reforms establishing a decent minimum standard of living and a system of state-sponsored education provide each citizen with resources with which to pursue his own self-realization; democratic procedures allow for individual participation in collective decision-making; and individual liberties create space for individual self-determination. This kind of liberal regime would effect a division of moral and political labour that might accommodate the potentially conflicting demands of partiality and impartiality. For individuals would be free to express partial commitments to themselves, their intimates, and their immediate associates provided that the political community they live in ensures each the resources, education, and opportunities necessary to pursue his own self-realization effectively. Partiality would be legitimate in a liberal political system, once an individual had met his responsibilities of democratic citizenship. 35 Bradley is perhaps clearer than Green about recognizing personal or non-social components to self-realization that have the potential for conflicting with the demands of a common good. See Bradley, Ethical Studies, 219, 222. But Green faces this potential conflict as well. This worry about extreme harmony underlies Sidgwick’s worries that Green (a) conflates moral and non-moral forms of perfection and (b) fails to recognize the conflict between the agent’s own perfection and perfection generally. See Sidgwick, Lectures 65–72, 106. For discussion of Sidgwick’s concerns, see §XXIX below.

62 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

But notice two things. First, harmony or accommodation is possible only in suitable liberal regimes. Just as Hegel thought that an individual’s reconciliation to the social world was possible only in the modern social world he found in nineteenth-century Germany, so too Green would have to regard the sort of non-competitive common good he seeks as a political good and achievement, not fully within any one individual’s control. In fact, Green would have to view a perfectly harmonious common good as an unrealized ideal. One reason for this is the simple fact that some of the requisite liberal reforms had yet to take place in Britain, the United States, and other Western democracies. But another reason for the failure of extreme harmony is the universal character of the common good. Even if extreme harmony would (otherwise) obtain among the members of a suitable liberal regime, it would not obtain for members of non-liberal regimes. But Green believes that the common good is maximally inclusive of all rational agents and that a good cannot be common in which some do not share. Of course, members of liberal regimes may be closer to securing a share of the common good than others, but as long as there are non-liberal regimes, no one—including members of a suitable liberal regime—can enjoy the common good.36 Requiring, as it would, the universal establishment of liberal institutions, Green’s political defence of extreme harmony cannot be judged successful.

XXII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM AND EXTREME HARMONY But Green has available a metaphysical, as well as a political, defence of extreme harmony. 36

In ‘Liberal Legislation’ Green claims that even aristocrats in ancient Greece lacked true freedom inasmuch as their position depended on the slavery of others (Works, iii. 371–2). Cf. President John F. Kennedy’s speech in West Berlin about the Berlin Wall in which he says, ‘Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free’ (quoted in Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists, 272).

Absolute Idealism and Extreme Harmony ~ 63

Scepticism about extreme harmony is plausible as long as we rely on individualist assumptions about an agent’s interests. But on some versions of the sort of social organicism to which Green is attracted, the prospects for extreme harmony might look brighter. If there were a corporate agent of which individual persons were organic parts and the good of the parts had to be understood in terms of the contribution those parts make to the good of the whole, then it would be harder to see how there could be any genuine sacrifices that individuals might have to make for the sake of the common good. To appreciate this defence of extreme harmony, it might be helpful to return to the intrapersonal–interpersonal analogy. The common good certainly requires some kinds of impartiality that demand what we would pre-theoretically describe as interpersonal balancing and sacrifice. Even self-referential altruism would require one to bear a small cost so that others might receive a significant benefit. This sort of interpersonal balancing is parallel to the sort of intrapersonal balancing that prudence demands within a single life. But intrapersonal and interpersonal balancing may seem, on reflection, importantly disanalogous.37 Diachronic, intrapersonal balancing (now-for-then sacrifice) is acceptable, because the person who makes the sacrifice is later compensated; benefactor and beneficiary are the same. So, in one sense, prudence demands no genuine or uncompensated intrapersonal sacrifice. By contrast, interpersonal balancing may seem problematic, because interpersonal compensation is not automatic; benefactor and beneficiary are distinct. Unless interpersonal sacrifice is reciprocated, it would seem to be genuine, uncompensated sacrifice. But some interpretations of absolute idealism might make the intrapersonal–interpersonal analogy more robust. If there is a 37

Worries about the lack of compensation in interpersonal balancing are connected with the separateness of persons and forcefully articulated by John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 23–4, 26–7, 29, 187–8, 191, and Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 31–4.

64 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

single corporate agent of whom individual agents are organic parts, then there is a corporate agent in the interpersonal case that is both benefactor and beneficiary, much as we take the individual to be both benefactor and beneficiary in the normal diachronic intrapersonal case. This would apparently show that the common good demands no genuine sacrifice of the corporate agent. By itself, it would not show that the common good demands no genuine sacrifice of individual agents. They are distinct parts of the whole; their sacrifices are not automatically compensated. But parallel claims can be made about the intrapersonal case. The temporal parts of a single life are distinct; whereas I am compensated later for sacrifices I make now, me-now is not compensated for its sacrifices for me-later. We can reject this challenge to prudence if we can argue either that temporal parts are normatively less important entities than whole persons or that their interests must be understood in terms of the interests of the whole of which they are parts.38 But the absolute idealist might offer a similar response to the challenge to extreme harmony, arguing either that individual persons are normatively less important entities than the corporate agent or that the interests of individual persons must be understood in terms of the interests of the corporate whole of which they are parts. We know that Green accepts some of the premisses of this idealist defence of extreme harmony. We know that in the first book of the Prolegomena he claims that empiricist and Kantian dualisms between things as they appear and as they are in themselves are untenable (§41). He thinks that realism is untenable, because it cannot explain how the order of appearances comes to correspond to the order of nature (§31). He thinks that realism is unnecessary, because the idealist can account for fallibility (and hence objectivity) by finding local anomalies within a larger pattern of an individual’s 38 For some discussion, see my ‘Rational Egoism and the Separateness of Persons’ in J. Dancy (ed.), Reading Parfit (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 96–134.

Absolute Idealism and Extreme Harmony ~ 65

appearances (§§12–13, 64). In order to account for common empirical content among different cognizers and to explain the possibility of systematic individual error, Green argues that we require the idea of a single transhistorical consciousness of which individual consciousnesses are proper parts (§§26, 67, 69). Sometimes Green claims that this corporate agent has no existence over and above that of the individual agents who exist at different places and times (§184), as someone might claim that an individual agent is nothing over and above the temporally dispersed selves that compose her life. But this is hard to square with Green’s insistence that the corporate agent is eternal (§§67, 69). Unless Green is willing to assume that there have always been and always will be individual agents, he cannot recognize an eternal corporate agent who is nothing over and above individual agents. In any case, Green recognizes a corporate agent that is distinct from particular individual agents. But how credible is absolute idealism and its commitment to corporate agency? Many readers will remain unpersuaded by these metaphysical and epistemological arguments. If relations are given in experience, and are not the workmanship of the understanding, then the relational character of experience does not support idealism. Moreover, some might find the arguments against realist explanations of cognitive success unpersuasive. And even if absolute idealism was a precondition of the possibility of knowledge, without some independent evidence of the existence of such a corporate agent, one might find scepticism easier to accept than absolute idealism. These are large topics that deserve fuller discussion. However, I want to suggest that Green’s theory of moral personality and his claims about the role of the common good in self-realization, rather than his views about objectivity or epistemology, provide the resources for his best defence of the sort of corporate agency required to maintain extreme harmony. Our reconstruction of Green’s argument for thinking that the common good is part of self-realization appeals to the fact that the relations of 66 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

psychological—especially deliberative—interdependence that unify the temporal parts of a single life also obtain to a significant degree in interpersonal associations. But then Green can argue that just as there is an individual agent that spans temporally dispersed selves in the intrapersonal case, so too there is a corporate agent that spans spatially and temporally dispersed selves in the interpersonal case. We can flesh out this argument with the help of ideas about personal identity. In Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding, he insists that the concept of a person is a forensic or (as we might say) normative concept (II. xxvii. 8, 15, 17–21, 23, 26). In morality and law, Locke claims, persons are the bearers of rights and responsibilities. What makes persons responsible, Green insists, is their possession of deliberative capacities—their ability to distinguish between the intensity and authority of their desires and the ability to regulate their appetites, emotions, and ultimately their actions in accordance with their deliberations. It is natural to combine this deliberative conception of personhood with a suitable mentalistic view about personal identity over time. On one such mentalistic view, what makes persons at different times the same person and, hence, what unites different parts of a single life is psychological continuity.39 A series of persons is psychologically continuous in so far as contiguous members in the series are psychologically well connected. A pair of persons are psychologically connected in so far as the intentional states (e.g. beliefs, desires, and intentions) and actions of one are causally dependent upon those of the other. Of particular importance—if persons are essentially responsible agents—are deliberative connections that hold among actions, intentions, and prior deliberations in the deliberate maintenance and modification of intentional 39 Similar mentalistic views are defended by Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pt. III and Sydney Shoemaker, ‘Personal Identity: A Materialist’s Account’, in S. Shoemaker and R. Swinburne (eds.), Personal Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 69–132.

Absolute Idealism and Extreme Harmony ~ 67

states and in the performance of actions that reflect these prior deliberations. On this view, personal identity consists in maximal (non-branching) psychological continuity.40 Normally, we find maximal continuity within single lives. But, as Aristotle’s account of friendship and Green’s account of the common good show, there are significant forms of continuity across individual lives. Interpersonal, as well as intrapersonal, psychological continuity is quite common. Interpersonal connections and continuity can be found among intimates who interact on a regular basis and help shape each other’s mental life; in such relationships, the experiences, beliefs, desires, ideals, and actions of each depend in significant part upon those of the other. We can see this in the familial friendships that Aristotle and Green take as their model. Similar relations hold among spouses and friends who share experiences, conversation, and plans. They can also be found, to a lesser extent, among partners in cooperative ventures where the deliberations, desires, plans, and expectations of each are formed together and conditioned by each other. More generally, membership in various sorts of associations will affect the beliefs, desires, expectations, and plans of members so as to establish significant interpersonal psychological continuity among the association’s members. In these ways, interpersonal psychological connectedness and continuity can extend broadly, even if the degree of connectedness (and sometimes continuity) often weakens as these relations extend further. This argument for corporate agency relies on a familiar mentalistic conception of personal identity, not on idealist metaphysics.41 It may be sufficient to deliver moderate harmony, which would be 40 Because personal identity is a one–one relation and psychological continuity can be one–many, personal identity must consist in non-branching maximal psychological continuity. 41 For further discussion of corporate agency, within a mentalistic conception of personal identity, see Carol Rovane, The Bounds of Agency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

68 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

no small feat. However, it does not justify extreme harmony. To do that, it would not only have to recognize a maximally inclusive corporate agent but also have to privilege this agent in relation to all other agents, corporate or individual, in just the way that absolute idealism does. But the argument for corporate agency does not establish this. It establishes a great many corporate agents, corresponding to various interpersonal associations. There will be a maximally inclusive association, perhaps one that includes everyone as a member, but that association will not be the most normatively significant association to which each person belongs. For the normative significance of membership in an association varies directly with the strength of the interpersonal bonds among members. We said that we can think of the degrees of connectedness and continuity in terms of a set of concentric circles with myself occupying the inner circle and the remotest Mysian occupying the outer circle. As we extend the scope of psychological interdependence, the strength of the relevant psychological relations appears to weaken and the weight of one’s reasons to give aid and refrain from harm presumably weakens proportionately. Despite the wide scope of justified concern, it must apparently have variable weight. This sort of partiality ensures that there can be genuine conflicts of interest between different people. This means that Green’s most interesting and plausible arguments for corporate agency do not support the demands of extreme harmony.

XXIII. SELF-REALIZATION VS. UTILITARIANISM In the fourth book of the Prolegomena Green asks how moral philosophy might serve as a guide to conduct. In particular, he is interested in comparing and contrasting the guidance offered by utilitarianism and by his own ethics of self-realization. Unfortunately, the fourth book is in some ways the least satisfying part of the Prolegomena. The argument is repetitive and non-linear, Self-Realization vs. Utilitarianism ~ 69

often leaving the reader feeling that issues have not been properly joined or resolved. I shall try to focus on Green’s main line of argument. Green claims that a moral theory or moral ideal ought to address the practical question ‘What ought I to do?’ But he suggests that this could be interpreted in two different ways, though he uses various terms to distinguish these two interpretations of the practical problem. Initially, he suggests that the contrast is between (1a) the action one ought to do as determined by its effects, and (2a) the action that one ought to do ‘with reference to’ the character or motives that it expresses (§291). Later, he contrasts (1b) what ought to be done, and (2b) how it ought to be done (§295). Still later, he contrasts (1c) what ought to be done, and (2c) what ought I to be (§304). I think that Green takes these to be related, if not equivalent, distinctions. He thinks that (1) asks a narrower question than (2) and that (2) includes (1) as a proper part (§291). Part of the contrast between perfectionism and utilitarianism is that whereas the utilitarian conceives of the practical problem only or principally in the narrow way, the perfectionist conceives of it in the broader way (§292). Green suggests that the perfectionist view will seem superior in so far as we often think that an agent’s motive is relevant to the assessment of his act (§294). We may think that an act of charity is morally better if it is motivated by sympathy than if it is motivated by the desire for a tax deduction. But even if the utilitarian must assess acts independently of motives, she can assess motives as well as acts. Indeed, in so far as we want to claim that agents can perform the right acts from bad 70 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

as well as good motives or the wrong acts from good as well as bad motives, it might seem a virtue of the utilitarian account to separate the two kinds of assessment. Green goes on to focus on perfectionist and utilitarian accounts of (1). He thinks that there are two main issues here: effects on whom and which effects. On the first issue, Green thinks utilitarianism got it right. Its impartiality—in particular, its wide scope— requires that we consider the effects of our actions on all parties, and not just some select few. It is this impartiality, rather than a specifically hedonistic conception of the good, that accounts for the progressive influence of the social and political aspects of utilitarianism (§§329, 331–3). Though the perfectionist and utilitarian agree about the wide scope of morality, they disagree about which effects are morally significant, because they disagree in their conceptions of the good. In criticizing hedonistic utilitarianism, Green raises a new worry about the compatibility of hedonistic utilitarianism and psychological hedonism. Hedonistic utilitarianism tells each person to do that action with the best consequences for human happiness, in particular, pleasure. But psychological hedonism, of the sort that Green associates with Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill, says that each person acts only so as to promote his own (perceived) pleasure. But as long as what promotes the pleasure of each is different from what promotes the pleasure of all, hedonistic utilitarianism will demand that agents perform actions that they are psychologically incapable of performing (§§340, 346–51). This is bad enough. If we further assume the voluntarist principle that morality can only demand things that we are capable of doing, it appears that psychological hedonism requires rejecting hedonistic utilitarianism. Whereas I doubt that John Stuart Mill can reasonably be regarded as a psychological hedonist,42 perhaps Bentham and 42 Mill remains agnostic about whether all desires originate in desires whose ultimate object is the agent’s own happiness or pleasure (A System of Logic, VI. ii. 4),

Self-Realization vs. Utilitarianism ~ 71

James Mill can be. Of course, it was a significant part of their political philosophies to try to arrange political and legal institutions and their associated sanctions so as to change people’s incentives so that prudence would be harnessed in ways conducive to the general happiness.43 But Green can still argue that unless and until this political and legal reformation is complete, psychological hedonism must act as an anti-utilitarian constraint on what morality can demand. Of course, this argument doesn’t touch someone, such as Sidgwick, who wants to defend hedonistic utilitarianism without psychological hedonism (§§334, 351; cf. §222). Green requires different arguments against a pure evaluative hedonism. He acknowledges that hedonism appears the more definite and scientific standard (§§193, 315, 337, 358). But he thinks that this appearance is deceiving. In part, he seems to think that calculations of the

but he is quite clear that at any given time many of an agent’s desires, including many of his altruistic desires, do not have the agent’s own happiness or pleasure as their ultimate object. See, e.g., Mill’s notes to his edition of his father’s Analysis of the Phenomena of Mind, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, 1869), ii. 307–9. One reason Mill offers appeals to associationist psychology. Even if the agent initially cares about things only as a means to his own happiness or pleasure, he comes, by a process of association, to care about these other things for their own sake. They become autonomous ends in the sense that they have motivational force in their own right that can conflict with and override the influence of the self-interested desires from which they arose. This associationist criticism of psychological egoism or hedonism is at work in Mill’s ‘proof ’ in Utilitarianism (iv. 5–7) and in A System of Logic (VI. ii. 4). 43 Both Bentham and James Mill appeal to democratic institutions as a way to harness psychological egoism in the service of the common good. The argument is roughly as follows: (1) Each acts only in order to promote his own interest. (2) The proper object of government is the interest of the governed. (3) Hence, rulers will pursue the proper object of government iff their interests coincide with those of the governed. (4) A ruler’s interest will coincide with those of the governed only if he is politically accountable to the governed. (5) Hence, rulers must be accountable to the governed. See Jeremy Bentham, Constitutional Code and Plan for Parliamentary Reform in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. J. Bowring (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962) and James Mill, Essay on Government (originally pub. 1824), reprinted in Utilitarian Logic and Politics, ed. J. Lively and J. Rees (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). Cf. J. S. Mill, ‘On Bentham’ and A System of Logic (VI. viii. 3).

72 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

expected long-term pleasure and pain associated with different options, both for a single individual and for humanity at large, are just too uncertain for hedonism to offer a practical and reliable guide (§§316, 344). Green also thinks that evaluative, without psychological, hedonism is coherent but implausible (§357). Here he may mean that inasmuch as pleasure is normally associated with the satisfaction of desires for things other than pleasure, the real question is which things ought I to take pleasure in. This would show hedonism not just as comparatively indefinite but as false. Green seems somewhat ambivalent about the amount of guidance provided by his own perfectionist conception of the good. On the one hand, he seems to think that self-realization can provide a guide to conduct, provided we do not require to know the absolute value (in terms of self-realization) of all alternatives; it is enough for me to know of a contemplated action whether or not it will bring me closer than I would otherwise be towards an ideal of perfection (§§306, 353). At other times, Green seems to think that the precepts of conventional morality and one’s own conscience are adequate guides to conduct and that the goal of moral philosophy should be not so much to reform or to resolve perplexity but to provide understanding of familiar moral precepts (§§308, 313, 327, 382). This second strand in Green’s thought is troubling. It displays a disappointing form of moral complacency that is hard to square with his admiration for the progressive influence of utilitarianism as well as his own calls for liberal reform. Indeed, one would think that Green’s own calls for reform—for instance, extending the franchise, establishing state-mandated and state-financed elementary education, and making higher education available to those who are qualified, regardless of economic background—would be plausible examples of the sort of guidance that a perfectionist ethical theory can provide. Presumably, perfectionism also favours poetry over push-pin and soap operas, and meaningful work over drudgery, even well-paid drudgery. Self-Realization vs. Utilitarianism ~ 73

Somewhat surprisingly, Green suggests that there isn’t likely to be much difference in the real-world applications of perfectionism and hedonistic utilitarianism (§§332, 356). This may reflect confidence in the extensional adequacy of the quantitative hedonist defence of higher pleasures. But it is not hard to think of possible circumstances in which felicific and perfectionist paths would diverge. Robert Nozick questions whether we would really choose to hook up to an experience machine that provides experiences of any life we would enjoy; he assumes that we want to be the authors of our own lives, make real differences in the world, and sustain meaningful relations with others, and not merely have experiences as if we were doing these things, no matter how pleasant such experiences might be.44 In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World we are invited to contemplate a world in which genetic engineering is used to restrict artificially the capacities of the working classes (Deltas and Epsilons), social and psychological training inhibits them from wanting to develop those capacities they do have, and recreation and drugs (soma) are readily available to keep them content.45 The perfectionist seems much better placed than the hedonist to explain what is wrong with Nozick’s Experience Machine and Huxley’s Brave New World. Nor are comfortable but shallow and undemanding forms of life confined to science fiction. Even if a certain amount of realism in one’s aims is often a good thing, we do not (in general) increase the value of our activities by lowering our aspirations, even if by so doing we increase the prospect of contentment. So I think that Green’s perfectionism about the good compares more favourably with hedonism than he himself allows. However, inasmuch as the perfectionist critique of hedonism is not a critique 44

Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 42–5. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 2nd edn. (New York: Harper & Row, 1946). I take Huxley’s Brave New World to be not merely a dystopia but an allegory for certain aspects of modern life. Interestingly, Huxley suggests that the proper lesson to be drawn from such a dystopia is recognition of a higher (perfectionist) form of utilitarianism. See ibid., pp. viii–ix. 45

74 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

of utilitarianism’s consequentialist structure, it is not clear that Green wants to reject utilitarianism or consequentialism as such. Hedonism is only one conception of happiness. It is open to the utilitarian to adopt some other conception of happiness. In particular, it is unclear why a utilitarian could not be a perfectionist about happiness.46 If Green’s main complaints about utilitarianism are really complaints about hedonism, then he may have no objection to utilitarianism, as such. Much of Green’s own ethical theory might plausibly be interpreted as reflecting a perfectionist form of utilitarianism.47 Nonetheless, there are at least two significant qualifications that must be made to the case for reading Green as a perfectionist utilitarian. The first qualification concerns the status that such a commitment to utilitarianism would have to have within Green’s theory. Traditional utilitarians view utilitarianism as the ultimate rightmaking factor. But Green’s utilitarianism, on this reading, is a derived, rather than ultimate, commitment. For he is a utilitarian in so far as this is compatible with his interpretation of the common good, but the common good, as I understand it, is itself an ingredient in the more basic demand for self-realization. Green could perhaps defend a form of perfectionist utilitarianism, if at all, only as a subordinate aspect of self-realization. Sidgwick sees an ultimate conflict between utilitarianism and egoism.48 Whereas Green would accept the incompatibility of hedonistic versions of egoism and utilitarianism, perhaps he thinks that his perfectionism allows a reconciliation of the two in which the demands of perfectionist utilitarianism would be a proper part of the demands of selfrealization. Our doubts about extreme harmony suggest that even 46 For a useful discussion of how we can understand perfectionist conceptions of the concept of happiness, see Richard Kraut, ‘Two Conceptions of Happiness’, Philosophical Review, 88 (1979), 176–96. 47 Cf. Bradley’s combination of harsh criticism of hedonistic utilitarianism and sympathy for non-hedonistic utilitarianism in Ethical Studies, esp. pp. 140–1. 48 See Methods, esp. pp. 496–509.

Self-Realization vs. Utilitarianism ~ 75

if perfectionism can reduce the dualism, it cannot eliminate it entirely. A second qualification on reading Green as a perfectionist utilitarian concerns his views about impartiality. Utilitarianism is attractive to Green because of its insistence on impartiality. But utilitarianism is doubly impartial. Christian and Enlightenment moral conceptions are impartial in the sense of insisting on the wide scope of moral concern. The utilitarian conception of impartiality embodies wide scope, because it insists that the scope of moral concern should be universal, extending to all human or rational (or sentient) beings. But utilitarianism is impartial in the further sense that it assigns equal weight to everyone’s good. And it insists on this equal weighting of everyone’s interests not just in special contexts—for instance, demanding that governments weigh the interests of their citizens equally—but of all agents in all contexts. The utilitarian can justify deviations from this second sort of impartiality only on pragmatic grounds as an effective strategy for actually better meeting the demands of equal concern. We saw that Green seems ambivalent about this second sort of impartiality (§XIX). Sometimes he seems to endorse the demands of equal concern. But we also saw that his argument for claiming that the common good is a central ingredient of self-realization requires him to claim that an agent’s concern for others should be proportional to the strength of the associational ties that bind them. We said that this justification of the common good underwrites moral concern of universal scope but variable weight, of the sort embodied in self-referential altruism. But self-referential altruism embodies partiality at a deep level that is incompatible with the utilitarian conception of impartiality that requires equal concern. We can see this point in terms of the distinction that some have drawn between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons. The general form of agent-relative reasons makes essential reference to the agent in some way, whereas the general form of agent-neutral 76 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

reasons does not.49 Utilitarianism is an agent-neutral form of consequentialism, because it says that an agent has the same reason to be concerned about anyone independently of the relationship in which he stands to that person. By contrast, both Green’s ethics of self-realization and self-referential altruism are agent-relative in so far as they claim that an agent’s reasons to be concerned about someone depend essentially on the nature of the relationship that exists between the agent and that person.50 If so, then even if much of Green’s perfectionist critique of hedonistic utilitarianism is compatible with a perfectionist utilitarianism, there are important strands in his conception and justification of the common good that do not admit of utilitarian interpretation.

XXIV. FROM PERFECTIONISM TO LIBERALISM Green’s perfectionist principles led him to defend a distinctive form of political liberalism. Like most liberals, Green is committed to a largely secular state, democratic political institutions in which the franchise is widespread, private property rights, market economies, equal social and economic opportunity, and a variety of personal and civic liberties. Like Mill, Green’s interest in such liberal essentials was not purely theoretical. He was active in local and national politics, pushed for a variety of reforms in property law, labour law, and education, and exerted significant influence on the direction of the Liberal Party in Great Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century. Perhaps Green’s most widely studied work is his Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (published posthumously in Works, ii). This work contains interesting discussions of a number of issues in political philosophy and 49

Cf. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 152. 50 I discuss these issues at greater length in ‘Some Forms and Limits of Consequentialism’, in D. Copp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003).

From Perfectionism to Liberalism ~ 77

jurisprudence such as the adequacy of social contract justifications of the nature and limits of state authority, the right to private property, and the justification of punishment. But the nature, justification, and application of Green’s liberal principles are set out most clearly in two important essays: ‘On the Different Senses of “Freedom” as applied to Will and the Moral Progress of Man’ (posthumously published in Works, ii) and ‘Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract’ (published in Works, iii). What is most distinctive about Green’s liberalism is the substance of his conception of liberal essentials—the package of individual liberties and state responsibilities that he endorses—and the way he justifies his conception of liberal essentials. The distinctiveness of this brand of liberalism is perhaps best seen in contrast with two other conceptions of liberalism—a more libertarian conception of liberal essentials and their justification that dominated the British Liberal Party at mid-century and the sort of contemporary political liberalism, currently fashionable in AngloAmerican philosophical circles, that justifies liberal essentials as required if the state is to be neutral among rival conceptions of the good life that its citizens might hold. Green’s liberalism is often referred to as New Liberalism, in contrast with the Old Liberalism that it challenged.51 It differs from the Old Liberalism in both substance and justification, whereas it differs from contemporary liberalism primarily in matters of justification. A good part of the agenda of the Liberal Party during much of the nineteenth century consisted in reforms that sought to undo 51 For useful discussions of the old and new liberalisms, see, e.g., Peter Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Stefan Collini, Liberalism and Sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and Political Argument in England 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) and Liberalism Divided: A Study in British Political Thought 1914–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists, esp. ch. 5; and A Simhony and D. Weinstein (eds.), The New Liberalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

78 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

limitations that the state placed on the liberties and opportunities of citizens, especially when these forms of state intervention tended to reinforce class privileges. This political culture was exemplified in the repeal of the Corn Laws, opposition to religious persecution, and several electoral reforms. The 1832 Reform Bill extended the franchise to the upper middle class; the 1867 Reform Act extended it to approximately 1 million urban workers; and the Reform Act of 1884 extended it still further to include another 2 million agricultural workers. But in the later part of the nineteenth century there emerged a new view about the role of such reforms within the Liberal agenda. Earlier Liberals, such as Herbert Spencer, thought that reform should be limited to the removal of state interference with individual liberty. Liberalism, on this conception, stood for individualism and laissez-faire. For instance, as Spencer sees it, ‘[I]n essence Liberalism stands for the freedom of the individual versus the power of the state. [Whereas] in essence Toryism stands for the power of the state versus the freedom of the individual.’52 By contrast, the New Liberals thought that these reforms that extended economic, social, and political liberties had to be supplemented by social and economic reforms in areas of labour, education, and health designed to redress the effects of inequality. These new reforms gave the state positive, and not just negative, responsibilities that required interference with individual liberties. It was these constructive reforms that drove a wedge between the Old and the New Liberals, and Green clearly aligned himself with the New Liberals.53 Green accepts most of the older Liberal reforms that undo illberal forms of governmental interference. He supports the 52

The Principles of Sociology, 3 vols. (New York: Appleton, 1896), i. 606. The emergence of a New Liberalism in reaction to the Old Liberalism within the British Liberal Party bears some comparison with the rise and fall of the laissezfaire interpretation of substantive due process within American constitutional history, in which New Deal liberalism emerged in part as a reaction to the perceived economic and moral failings of the Lochner-era doctrine of economic due process that treated liberty of contract as a fundamental constitutional right. 53

From Perfectionism to Liberalism ~ 79

various extensions of the franchise (Works, v. 230, 234), defends various forms of religious freedom (Works, iii. 417), attacks the system of primogeniture that restricts the bequest of property to the oldest son (Works, ii. 529–30, iii. 378, 433), and condemns the American institution of slavery and the southern cause in the Civil War (PE §209; Works, ii. 420, iii. 372–3). But Green advocates constructive as well as negative reforms. He supports (1) regulation of labour contracts to limit workplace hours and improve factory conditions (Works, ii. 515, iii. 365–9, 373); (2) measures designed to provide greater opportunities, especially for agricultural workers, to own land (Works, ii. 515, 532–4, iii. 377–82); (3) various public health and safety measures (Works, ii. 515, iii. 373–4); (4) education reform, including compulsory state-financed elementary education and restructuring of curricula and financing in secondary and higher education so as to equalize educational opportunities regardless of class background (Works, ii. 515; iii. 369, 387–476; v. 285–6, 326–8); (5) the improvement of educational and economic opportunities for women (PE §267; Works, v. 326–8); and (6) the regulation of the distribution and consumption of liquor (Works, iii. 382–6). Does this mix of negative and constructive reforms make for a coherent package? This selective concern with individual liberties may seem unprincipled. Older libertarian Liberals would view this selective concern for individual liberties as inconsistent. And even if it is not inconsistent, it may seem ad hoc. However, Green resists these concerns. He thinks not just that the New Liberalism can be given a principled defence but also that it is a defence that rests on the best conception of the very values to which the older Liberals appeal (Works, ii. 345–6, iii. 370–2). In Green’s view, freedom is the ultimate moral and political value.54 But we must understand the 54 Of course, Hegel also thinks that freedom is the ultimate ethical and political value, in terms of which moral and political progress can be measured. See, e.g., Philosophy of History, esp. ch. 3, and The Philosophy of Right, §142. My discussion of Green’s account of freedom might be usefully compared with Neuhouser’s helpful

80 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

different kinds of freedom he recognizes. In ‘On the Different Senses of “Freedom” as applied to Will and the Moral Progress of Man’ Green recognizes three kinds of freedom. (1) Juridical freedom is the absence of compulsion or restraint by others. This is the kind of freedom prized by the older Liberals and protected by the Liberal Party’s negative reforms. (2) Moral freedom is the sort of freedom of the will manifested in both praiseworthy and blameworthy behaviour. For Green, as we have seen, this is action performed by an agent who can distinguish between the intensity and authority of her desires, deliberate about what to do, and act in accordance with her deliberations (§§VIII–IX). (3) Real or perfect freedom exists in so far as an agent correctly pursues her own personal good and its constitutive commitment to the common good. This sort of freedom is just self-realization. We can assess how much of each kind of freedom an agent and her actions display. We can also ask to what extent social and political systems, institutions, and policies promote the various kinds of freedom of people within such systems. We can now begin to see how Green hopes to defend the New Liberalism by appeal to freedom. While he recognizes and attaches importance to each form of freedom, both juridical and moral freedom are subordinate in importance to real freedom (Works, ii. 308–9, iii. 370–1). Real freedom cannot be achieved without various juridical freedoms, but juridical freedoms alone are insufficient to produce real freedom (iii. 371). This is because selfrealization requires positive conditions as well as the absence of restraint. Green thinks that a well-rounded education and access to land or other property play an important part in the development of moral personality and that grinding poverty and a culture of drunkenness inhibit the development of moral personality. It is the

discussion of Hegel’s conception of freedom. See Frederick Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

From Perfectionism to Liberalism ~ 81

state’s duty to promote real freedom, which it cannot do without constructive, as well as negative, reforms. It would be natural to worry that, whatever the merits of this perfectionist defence of state intervention, it is a mistake to cast it in terms of freedom. On this view, the only legitimate kind of freedom is the sort of negative freedom that involves the absence of restraint or compulsion. Making morally good choices—perhaps ones that contribute to self-realization—may be a good thing, but it is not itself a form of freedom. So it is a mistake—a potentially pernicious one—to defend restrictions on individual freedom ( juridical freedom) as freedom-enhancing. Such restrictions should be recognized for what they are—freedom-limiting—and defended, if at all, in spite of that recognition.55 But Green would not accept the assumptions underlying this objection. He does not see himself as smuggling partisan goods in under the guise of freedom. Nor would he concede that juridical freedom is the lone legitimate kind of freedom. He believes that all three kinds of freedom—juridical, moral, and perfect freedom—are aspects of one underlying idea, viz. self-determination (ii. 315–16). Self-determination requires juridical freedom, because if I act under compulsion or restraint by another then I am not selfdetermining. But if I am to be self-determining in a way that supports ascriptions of responsibility, neither can I be determined by internal forces, such as passions or impulses, in a way that bypasses my judgement. I must act on desires that I can and do reflectively endorse. This is why self-determination requires moral freedom. But we saw that Green thinks that the very conditions that make choice morally free also determine the appropriate end of choice (§176). A moral self or personality is not to be identified with any set of appetites or desires; it essentially involves capacities for the deliberative control of thought and action. But then full self-determination 55 See Berlin’s attack on positive liberty and, in particular, his criticisms of Green in ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 118–72, esp. 132–3, 141–54.

82 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

involves reflective endorsement of ways of life that embody deliberative control of thought and action. This is why full selfdetermination takes place only in the process of self-realization. This begins to explain Green’s belief that the three kinds of freedom that he recognizes are three aspects of a single value of which self-realization is the fullest expression. Getting clear about this also yields a better understanding of Green’s rationale for his particular mix of negative and constructive reforms. Though Green adopts the perfectionist idea that the state is to promote the human good, his understanding of that good in terms of self-realization gives a special shape to the role for state action: ‘[I]t is the business of the state, not indeed directly to promote moral goodness, for that, from the very nature of moral goodness, it cannot do, but to maintain the conditions without which a free exercise of the human faculties is impossible’ (‘Liberal Legislation’, in Works, iii. 374). We can see why he thinks that the state’s promotion of self-realization among the citizenry cannot be pursued directly by looking at Kant’s reasons for thinking that we cannot have a duty to aim at the perfection of others. In The Metaphysics of Morals Kant contrasts the ends of perfection and happiness. He claims that my duty towards myself is to promote my perfection, rather than my happiness. But towards others my duty is to promote their happiness, rather than their perfection (385–8). One reason he gives for this asymmetry is that I cannot aim at the perfection of another, precisely because one’s own perfection, Kant believes, requires that the agent himself set his ends (386). Green is making a similar point. If my good consists in self-realization, which involves a form of self-determination, then attempts by others to advance my good in ways that bypass my agency are bound to fail. But whereas Kant appears to conclude that one cannot promote the perfection of another, Green takes the point to show how one should promote the perfection of others. If your goal is to win a competitive race, I cannot help you achieve this goal by running the race for you. But I can help you train and ensure that the race From Perfectionism to Liberalism ~ 83

is fair. Similarly, if the goal is your self-realization, I cannot help you achieve that goal by making all your intellectual, professional, and personal choices for you. But I can remove obstacles to your deliberations and activities, and I can provide a number of intellectual and material resources to assist your deliberations and the execution of your plans. I can promote your agency in ways that engage your deliberative capacities (PE, §332). This explains Green’s support of a number of negative reforms of the Liberal Party. Various liberties of thought and action— including freedoms of speech, association, worship, and occupational choice—are necessary conditions of free and informed decisions about how best to lead one’s life. But such liberties are necessary, not sufficient, conditions of self-realization: ‘[T]hough of course there can be no freedom among men who act not willingly but under compulsion, yet on the other hand the mere removal of compulsion, the mere enabling of a man to do as he likes, is in itself no contribution to true freedom’ (‘Liberal Legislation’, Works, iii. 371). Self-realization—true freedom—requires not just some forms of juridical freedom but a variety of positive material and intellectual conditions. A sound education in arts and sciences is necessary to develop deliberative competence. Basic healthcare is essential not just to making possible a decent lifespan but also to the proper development of young minds and bodies. Access to land or other property plays an important part in the development of moral personality. Labour contracts between parties of substantially unequal bargaining position compromise the autonomy of the weaker party. And a culture of drunkenness not only harms the drunkard’s dependants but prevents him from realizing his full potential. This explains Green’s concern to reform education and healthcare and regulate property rights, labour contracts, and the distribution and consumption of liquor. These sorts of positive reforms are just as essential to true freedom as the negative ones. It would be nice if we could effect such reforms by the purely voluntary efforts of individuals: ‘But we must take men as we find 84 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

them. Until such a condition of society is reached, it is the business of the state to take the best security it can for the young citizens’ growing up in such health and with so much knowledge as is necessary for their real freedom’ (‘Liberal Legislation’, Works, iii. 375). So the state must engage in positive reforms, even if they come at the price of some loss of juridical freedom, provided it does not threaten those juridical freedoms without which real freedom is impossible. Green is committed to the claim that those whose juridical freedom is constrained in the course of such constructive reforms suffer no violation of rights. He believes that the state ought to pursue a common good. But the common good also has an important role to play in defining individual rights. Green denies that there is any right to do as one pleases (ii. 345). He denies that individuals could have rights independently of their social relations to others; an individual only has rights to conditions, positive or negative, that contribute to a common good (ii. 350, 428, 449–50, 455, 512; iii. 372). On this view, it follows that state action to enact constructive reforms limits liberty but does not violate rights. If upon new conditions arising, or upon elements of social good being taken account of which had been overlooked before, or upon persons being taken into the reckoning as capable of participation in the social well-being who had previously been treated merely as a means to its attainment,—if in any of these ways . . . the reference to social well-being suggest [sic] the necessity of some further regulation of the individual’s liberty to do as he pleases, he can plead no right against this regulation, for every right that he has possessed has been dependent on that social judgment of its compatibility with general well-being which in respect to the liberties in question is now reversed. (Principles of Political Obligation, Works, ii. 453–4)

One might agree that even if constructive reforms harm those whose liberty they restrict they nonetheless violate no rights. But Green believes that the common good plays an important role in constraining the pursuit of individual good. The good for From Perfectionism to Liberalism ~ 85

each consists in his self-realization, and this, we have seen, involves contributing to a common good. One might read Green as saying that the moral permissibility of pursuing one’s own perfection is conditioned on suitable recognition of the interest of others in their own perfection. This would be an egalitarian moral constraint on the pursuit of individual goods that are conceptually independent of each other. But this interpretation does not capture Green’s distinctive claim that the common good is part of one’s own good in the sense that one’s own good depends upon the good of others, including that of the remotest Mysian. It is this claim that leads Green in ‘Liberal Legislation’ to say that even slave owners in ancient Greece lacked true freedom inasmuch as their position depended on the slavery of others (iii. 371–2). This means that if the state has to interfere with some of A’s juridical freedoms in order to make possible a common good in which B, as well as A, can participate, then the state’s action does not harm A. Indeed, in allowing B to participate in a common good with A, the state apparently benefits A, as well as B. We might even accept Green’s claim that constructive reforms benefit those whose liberty they restrict. But our doubts about extreme harmony (§§XIX–XXI) call into question the further claim that constructive reforms could not possibly disadvantage those whose liberty they restrict. Fortunately, Green does not need this claim to defend the New Liberalism. He can plausibly defend a mix of negative and constructive reforms in so far as he can appeal either to the state’s duty to promote a common good or to a conception of individual rights regulated by the common good. These claims allow us to see how Green offers a principled perfectionist defence of the New Liberalism, one which aspires to draw on the very value of freedom so dear to the Old Liberalism. They also put us in a position to contrast the sort of perfectionist liberalism that Green endorses with the influential strand in recent Anglo-American philosophical defences of liberalism that see liberal essentials as required if the state is to be neutral among rival 86 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

conceptions of the good. Liberal neutrality places limits on the justification of state action. Liberal governments, on this view, can and must enforce individual rights and any further demands of social justice, but they are not to undertake any action as a way of promoting a particular conception of the good life. Each individual citizen in a liberal regime should be free to form and pursue his own conception of the good, but the state should not be in the business of regulating what should be a matter of personal conscience. On matters of the good, a liberal state must be strictly neutral.56 Liberal neutrality can be motivated in reaction to natural concerns about how a perfectionist politics appears liable to restrict political and personal liberties of thought and action in its attempt to promote a particular conception of the good. It is easy to suppose that an authoritarian political regime committed to extensive paternalistic and moralistic interference with the civic and personal liberties of citizens is the inevitable outcome of perfectionist politics. For those who see elite rule of the sort found in Plato’s Republic as the logical expression of perfectionist politics, liberal essentials may seem to require neutrality about the good. Despite this appeal, liberal neutrality is not unproblematic. For one thing, it is hard to see how a liberal state can be neutral among all conceptions of the good, inasmuch as it cannot tolerate individuals pursuing illiberal conceptions of the good, for instance those that make the persecution of heretics a condition of personal salvation. Moreover, it is not clear why we should not want the state to act in certain ways so as to help citizens lead better lives. The education of citizens, public health and sanitation, and a variety of public goods are things we expect a liberal state to 56

See, e.g., Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 94, and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Ronald Dworkin, ‘Liberalism’, reprinted in Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 181–204; Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice and the Liberal State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980); Charles Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); and Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

From Perfectionism to Liberalism ~ 87

provide, but it is hard to see how a state that is genuinely neutral about the good can justify such measures. Perfectionist liberalism promises to deal with natural worries about perfectionist politics without the problematic commitment to neutrality. Green’s perfectionist liberalism is part of a classical liberal tradition, forcefully articulated by Mill, which grounds liberal essentials in a conception of the good that prizes the exercise of a person’s rational capacities. In Green’s version, the good consists of self-realization and the exercise of the very deliberative capacities that make one a moral agent. Like Mill, Green concludes that the state cannot foster this kind of good by regular use of paternalistic or moralistic intervention. Liberties of thought and action are central to the exercise of these deliberative powers. But equally essential are certain positive conditions, such as health, education, and a decent minimum standard of living. Even moralistic or paternalistic intervention can sometimes be justified when, without it, people’s deliberative powers will be severely compromised.57 If liberal essentials can be justified by the right sort of perfectionist account of the good, then the perfectionist need not be illiberal. And this sort of perfectionist liberalism explains ways in which many liberals do think that the state can and should help its citizens lead better lives. If so, Green’s perfectionist liberalism contributes to a tradition of classical liberalism that has enduring significance.

XXV. INFLUENCES ON GREEN Unlike philosophers such as Hobbes or Descartes, who aspire to set aside previous philosophical conceptions and begin the 57

Though Mill rejected Green’s views on temperance legislation, their disagreement was largely an empirical one over the actual scope and consequences of drunkenness. Green’s endorsement of temperance legislation might be usefully compared with Mill’s selective endorsement of paternalism, including the prohibition on selling oneself into slavery (OL v. 11).

88 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

construction of their philosophical systems on new foundations, Green roots his ethical theory firmly in ancient and modern philosophical traditions. His method is dialectical and syncretic, examining different ethical traditions and forging his own view out of what he regards as the insights and resources in these traditions. Green’s judgements about what is attractive or problematic in various traditions not only inform his own ethical theory but also suggest interesting, sometimes novel, interpretative strategies for reading the history of ethics. Sometimes, Green’s intellectual debts are comparatively easy to discern, at least in outline. At other times, however, Green’s debts are harder to identify. This is because he does not always identify expressly those philosophers he means to engage, and, even when he does, it is not always clear what historical texts and passages he has in mind. Here I shall concentrate on a few of the most obvious influences on Green. Among the formative influences on Green is the naturalistic tradition in ethics that he takes to be the chief rival to his own rationalistic approach. Here, Green seems to have in mind different strands within the modern British ethical tradition. Presumably, he targets Hobbes’s psychological egoism and his conception of morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives. He is also concerned with Hume’s sentimentalism. Most clearly of all, he criticizes the utilitarianism associated with Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Sidgwick, though he is especially critical of those forms of utilitarianism that he thinks appeal to psychological hedonism. We have seen that Green associates naturalism with empiricism, which explains why he begins his attack on ethical naturalism with a more general examination and criticism of empiricist metaphysics and epistemology. His critique of empiricism is indebted to Kantian claims. In particular, he claims that all experience is implicitly relational and that all empirical knowledge presupposes the activities of a synthesizing subject. This subject must be selfconscious. She must distinguish herself from her appearances, Influences on Green ~ 89

assess the evidence for her appearances, and regulate her thoughts in accordance with these deliberations, assenting to appearances only for good reasons. Green’s attack on ethical naturalism begins with a parallel claim about the role of self-consciousness in practical responsibility. Responsibility requires an agent who can distinguish herself from particular desires, deliberate about the objects of desire, and regulate her actions in accordance with her deliberations. In committing himself to this conception of agency, Green is rejecting the Humean claim that reason can only be the slave of the passions and Humean scepticism about the self. In doing so, he appeals to ideas familiar from Plato, Aristotle, and others in the Greek tradition that associate moral capacity with an ability to regulate goodindependent desires in light of good-dependent desires and to ideas familiar from Butler, Reid, and Kant in the modern tradition that make the ability to distinguish between the intensity and authority of desire a condition of moral personality. Recognizing a moral personality that can act on good-dependent desires allows Green to resist psychological hedonism. He appeals to Butler’s point that it is a fallacy to infer that pleasure is the object of desire from the fact that pleasure is expected to attend the satisfaction of desire and claims that when psychological hedonism is stripped of this fallacious defence, it will seem implausible. Though Green agrees with Sidgwick that evaluative hedonism is logically independent of psychological hedonism (the former does not presuppose the latter), he thinks that there is little to recommend evaluative hedonism if we are clear about rejecting psychological hedonism. Green thinks that moral personality furnishes not only a necessary condition of responsible action but also the proper object of responsible action. Only an imperative that aims at self-realization— the development and exercise of deliberative capacities—can be a categorical imperative that applies independently of contingent and variable aims. So, like Kant, he takes rational nature to be an 90 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

end in itself. But Green insists that in pursuing a life regulated by his rational nature, an individual must seek to express his deliberative capacities in his relations with others. Though Green credits the Greeks with first recognizing the importance of a common good to self-realization, he concludes that the drive for interpersonal permanence finds its fullest expression in interpersonal associations with universal membership. This conception of a universal common good depends, Green thinks, on Christian recognition of common humanity and disinterested benevolence and Enlightenment conceptions, especially in the Kantian and utilitarian traditions, of impartial concern for all of humanity. As we have seen, Green regards the achievement of this non-competitive common good as a distinctive and distinctively valuable form of freedom. Like Hegel, he thinks that moral progress consists in the gradual recognition and advancement of this sort of freedom. This means that the goal of self-realization is a moral and political ideal towards which individuals and communities may aspire and approximate, but it remains an ideal the attainment of which would be a historical and political achievement. This quick survey suggests many formative influences on Green’s ethical theory. Perhaps the strongest influences are the Greeks (especially Aristotle), Kant, and Hegel. It is not easy to decide which, if any, of these three influences on Green is greatest. It is not uncommon for readers to emphasize the Hegelian dimensions of Green.58 But despite Green’s sympathy with a number of general Hegelian commitments—especially idealism, a progressive view of history, social organicism, and the supreme moral and political value of freedom—his version of these commitments and the ways he defends them show little direct influence by Hegel.59 58

See, e.g., Anthony Quinton, ‘Absolute Idealism’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 57 (1971), 303–29. 59 It is significant that despite scattered references to Hegel in some of Green’s early lectures, there is no analysis of Hegel’s thought in Green’s mature writings comparable to his ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant’ (posthumously published in

Influences on Green ~ 91

Moreover, many of the most important elements of Green’s perfectionism—especially the ethic of self-realization itself, its grounding in rational agency, and its concern with the common good—are traceable to the influence of Aristotle and Kant. It is perhaps not unreasonable to follow Sidgwick who regards Green principally as a Kantian or, even better, Green’s student D. G. Ritchie who suggests that it is perhaps least misleading to say that Green ‘corrected Kant by Aristotle and Aristotle by Kant’.60 We have already examined Green’s relation to Aristotle at some length. It is worth looking at Green’s relation to Kant.

XXVI. GREEN AND KANT Green is clearly sympathetic to central Kantian doctrines. First, as we have seen, Green’s criticism of empiricist metaphysics and epistemology is deeply indebted to Kant’s views of empirical knowledge in the first Critique. Though Green offers idealist criticisms of the Kantian dualism between noumena and phenomena, Green himself seems committed to a similar dualism about the self (§V). Second, like Kant, Green thinks that moral requirements apply to all moral agents in so far as they are agents—that is, in so far as they have capacities for practical reason and independently of contingent inclinations and interests. So Green agrees that moral requirements, which he sees as demands of self-realization, are categorical imperatives. Third, Green appears to base his conception of the common good and the impartiality that it demands on Kant’s Formula of Humanity: treat humanity, whether yourself or

Works, ii) or his discussion of Greek ethics in the Prolegomena (III. v). A reasonable conclusion, supported by the reminiscences of Sidgwick and Caird (in Green’s papers at Balliol College), is that, while Green was influenced by Hegelian ideas early in his career, he became increasingly critical of Hegelianism and increasingly intent on developing his own views by engagement with other traditions. Cf. Ben Wempe, Beyond Equality (Delft: Eburon, 1986). 60 See Sidgwick, Lectures, 3, and Ritchie, The Principles of State Interference 139–40.

92 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

any rational agent, always as an end in itself and never merely as a means (G. 429; KpV 87, 131). Finally, as Green’s criticisms of utilitarianism show, he accepts the Kantian claim that the moral quality of an action depends not just on the kind of action performed but also on the intentions or motives of the agent who performs it. Despite these points of similarity, Green is not uncritical of Kant. The Prolegomena promises, but never really delivers, a critical discussion of Kant’s ethical theory (§156). We have to put together Green’s reservations about Kant’s ethical theory from his stray remarks in the Prolegomena and his lectures on Kant’s ethics (published posthumously in Works, ii). Unlike some other idealist critics of Kant, Green thinks that the main problems are ones of presentation (ii. 124). Though it is possible to understand the criticisms of Kant as internal or friendly criticisms, they include matters of substance and not merely presentation. We might group Green’s disagreements with Kant’s ethical theory under three main heads: (1) morality, responsibility, and freedom; (2) the categorical imperative and the good will; and (3) eudaimonism. (1) Morality, Responsibility, and Freedom. Kant is an incompatibilist about responsibility and causal determination. He maintains freedom and responsibility only by invoking the phenomena/ noumena dualism. An agent’s actions are unfree in so far as they are phenomenally determined, but they are free in so far as they are noumenally determined. Kant also claims that an agent’s intelligible character is associated with determination by rational motives, whereas his empirical character is associated with determination by sensuous motives. It seems to follow that one acts freely only when acting for the sake of practical reason. Green recognizes that this version of the Kantian account of freedom is open to the objection, clearly formulated by Sidgwick, that only the virtuous are responsible for their actions (Works, ii. 107–9).61 If, as Kant sometimes suggests, only those with a good 61

Sidgwick, Methods, appendix.

Green and Kant ~ 93

will are truly autonomous and autonomy is a condition of freedom, then, as Sidgwick recognized, only the virtuous are free. 1. Negative freedom involves freedom from determination by sensuous motives; positive freedom involves determination by practical reason. 2. Positive freedom and autonomy are the same thing. 3. Responsibility requires positive freedom and, hence, autonomy. 4. Autonomy and heteronomy are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive conditions. 5. Only the virtuous or those with a good will are autonomous; all others are heteronomous. 6. Hence, only the virtuous are free; all others are not responsible. This is one case where Green thinks that the objection applies, if at all, only to the terms in which Kant sometimes states his account of freedom. Kant’s considered view avoids this difficulty, because it contrasts two kinds of positive freedom: (a) the capacity to act according to law and (b) the exercise of this capacity. Responsibility requires (a), not (b); those who have the capacity to exercise practical reason but do not are just as responsible as those who have the capacity and do exercise it (Works, ii. 95–7, 134–7). However, Green recognizes more serious concerns about the Kantian account of freedom. Kant believes that (a) freedom requires the capacity for determination by reasons, rather than by sensuous motives (KrV A534/B562, A553–4/B581–2, A802/B830; KpV 61–2, 72, 87; G. 446–8, 457, 459–60); (b) this capacity requires transcendental freedom, that is, noumenal determination of the will (KrV A534/B562; KpV 3–4, 43, 46, 94–106; G. 450–3, 455–7); and (c) transcendental freedom is compatible with what we do and can know (KrV A538–58/B566–86; KpV 3–6, 47–9, 54, 95–106, 114, 133; G. 450–3, 455–7). Green thinks that transcendental freedom is neither necessary nor sufficient for freedom and responsibility. It is insufficient, because Kant’s appeal to noumenal and phenomenal selves provides no response to incompatibilism (Works, ii. 100–9). 94 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

One problem concerns how to understand the notion of noumenal determination. Either the determination in question is causal or it is not. If it is causal, then noumenal determination is impossible, because there is no such thing as a free cause and only phenomena are causally linked. If the determination in question is not causal, then it is unclear how it is that an agent’s actions, if noumenally determined, could be imputed to his character. This is why indeterminism seems to threaten responsibility; it is unclear why we should hold someone accountable for actions that are not caused by his character. An action’s determination by aspects of an agent that are in principle unknowable (an agent qua noumenon) cannot explain why the agent is responsible for the action (§110; cf. Works, ii. 95). Another problem is that we cannot make sense of one and the same event being both phenomenally determined and noumenally free. Intelligible and empirical characters are not two different things, but one thing under two different aspects or descriptions (Works, ii. 101–4). But causal determination is a referentially transparent relation. If an event is determined, then it is true of it under all descriptions that it is determined. If so, then actions cannot be phenomenally determined but noumenally free.62 Fortunately, Green thinks, transcendental freedom is not necessary for responsibility. Freedom does not require that actions lie outside a causal nexus. It requires that an agent’s choices not be determined by the agent’s inclinations, independently of her deliberations. Determination by motives in the right sort of way—in a way that is dependent on the agent’s deliberations—is not only compatible with but also a condition of responsibility (ii. 95). Green’s compatibilism seems thoroughly naturalistic. However, he agrees with Kant that freedom implies non-naturalism, though for somewhat different reasons. Kant’s account of freedom is 62 See Terence Irwin, ‘Morality and Personality’, in A. Wood (ed.), Self and Nature (Ithaca: Comell University Press, 1984), 31–56, esp. 38.

Green and Kant ~ 95

non-natural in so far as it presupposes transcendental freedom. By contrast, Green rejects transcendental freedom. But he thinks that the sort of self-consciousness required for responsibility requires a subject that is prior to and independent of particular episodes of experience. Hence, Green’s account of responsibility is non-natural in so far as it posits a subject that is outside of experience and that is not in space and time (cf. §§32, 51–4, 65). But we may wonder whether positing a subject independent of particular episodes of experience requires positing a subject independent of all experience. Indeed, in so far as Green’s theoretical and practical philosophy depends upon self-consciousness it seems to require the possibility of making the subject of consciousness an object of consciousness. The self may be outside immediate sensory experience, but is not outside thought or knowledge. I suggested earlier (§VII) that Green can and should claim that the self is outside immediate sensory experience without claiming that it is outside space and time. Provided that he resists this kind of non-naturalism, he can reject Kant’s doctrine of transcendental freedom. (2) Categorical Imperatives and the Good Will. Green contrasts his own understanding of moral requirements and moral motivation with Kant’s account of these matters as presented in the Critique of Practical Reason and the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. In claiming that moral requirements express categorical imperatives, Kant insists that duty must be independent of all empirical motives and inclinations and must depend on features of rational agents as such. He also contrasts sharply moral and non-moral motivation. For Kant, all non-moral motivation is empirical; it aims at satisfying the agent’s desires. An agent’s desires aim at his own good (KpV 22, 34), which Kant seems to construe hedonistically (KpV 21). By contrast, moral motivation requires a good will, and this requires that the agent act from a sense of duty, not from emotion or inclination. Kant often expresses this dualism in terms of sharp contrasts. In the second Critique, he describes inclination as ‘blind and slavish’ and insists that a rational being regards them as 96 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

‘burdensome’ and ‘wishes to be free of them’ (KpV 118). Kant uses similar language in the Groundwork where he claims that ‘reason in the consciousness of its dignity despises such [empirical] incentives and is able gradually to become their master’ (G. 411). This dualism is also at work in the Groundwork’s account of the good will, where Kant famously contrasts action done from a sense of duty and action done from inclination in his discussion of four kinds of conformity to duty. Neither the prudent shopkeeper, who treats customers fairly as a policy of prudence, nor the sympathetic man, who performs beneficent actions out of a sense of sympathy, displays moral worth. By contrast, Kant finds moral worth in the person who performs beneficent actions even though his own sorrows have extinguished his natural sympathy for others and in the person who performs beneficent actions despite congenital indifference to the sufferings of others. These are both grudging moralists, whose sense of duty must suffice in the absence of natural emotions and inclinations or must overcome contrary emotions and inclinations. By contrast, for Green duty need not be independent of desires; it need only be independent of natural or pre-deliberative desire. Or if, like Green, we distinguish between mere desires and motives—desires that are the product of the right sort of deliberative endorsement—then we can say that duty must be independent of mere desire but need not be independent of motives (Works, ii. 91–2, 124–5). Duty consists in acting on desires that aim at the agent’s self-realization. This, Green believes, involves acting so as to develop and exercise one’s own deliberative capacities which, properly understood, requires aiming at a common good. This gets us to something very much like Kant’s Humanity Formula of the categorical imperative. But Green’s route to the Humanity Formula need not be independent of properly moralized desire. This explains Green’s reservations about Kant’s claims about the good will. Green interprets Kant’s good will as requiring the absence of natural emotions and inclinations, which are directed Green and Kant ~ 97

at the agent’s own pleasure. This, Green claims, implies ‘that what we are apt to think the best acts, acts of instinctive kindness, are set down as having no moral value’ (Works, ii. 155). Green believes that Kant’s doctrine of the good will is too strict in forbidding sensuous motives (§§155–6); motives, as distinct from pre-deliberative desire, need not taint moral motivation. Green believes that the plausibility of Kant’s claims about the good will depend upon his hedonistic assumptions about non-moral motivation (Works, ii. 127–9, 139–41). Indeed, Green thinks that Kant’s hedonism about non-moral motivation rests on the fallacy, which Butler exposed, of mistaking the pleasure one expects to attend the satisfaction of desire with the object of desire (ii. 140). If an agent’s benevolence ultimately aimed at her own pleasure, this would jeopardize the moral worth of her benevolence. But it is a mistake to assume that benevolence must aim at the agent’s own pleasure. Genuine benevolence reflects a sympathetic recognition of the legitimate claims others make on one. It is a mistake to assume that because the genuinely benevolent person experiences pleasure from acting beneficently (and expects to do so) that this pleasure is what she aims at. If the agent’s instinctive sympathy is consequent upon her recognizing the legitimate moral claim others make on her—in the sense that it was originally motivated by that recognition or is sustained by that recognition—then the motive of sympathy should not taint the moral worth of her actions. Indeed, precisely because recognition of what one has reason to do normally motivates the agent to act that way, the person of moral worth will normally act on her emotions and inclinations—but these will be moralized emotions and inclinations (ii. 110, 131). In these claims Green may see himself as once again articulating Kant’s considered view more clearly than Kant did. For in commenting on the motivational obstacles to duty in the case of the grudging moralists Kant claims that such ‘subjective restrictions and hindrances, . . . far from hiding a good will . . ., rather bring it out by contrast and make it shine forth more brightly’ (G. 397). 98 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

Kant need not think that the presence of supporting emotions and inclinations disqualifies an agent from displaying a good will or that a good will requires contra-moral emotions or inclinations. It is rather that the operation of a sense of duty is especially clear in such cases. If so, Kant can ascribe a good will to the agent who is beneficent, as morality requires, from sympathetic inclination— provided that the inclination is suitably regulated by her sense of duty. This reduces the disagreement between Kant and Green on the good will. But whereas Kant may not think that the presence of inclination disqualifies an agent from displaying a good will or that a good will requires contra-moral inclination, nonetheless he seems to think that the person in whom a sense of duty must overcome indifference or contrary inclination (the grudging moralist) can and does display a good will (G. 398). Green’s claim that we are apt to assume that the virtuous person will have suitably moralized emotions and desires (ii. 155) suggests that he would regard the grudging moralist as deficient. Perhaps Green would agree with Aristotle that the grudging moralist displays continence, rather than virtue, inasmuch as it is the mark of the virtuous person that he does not experience a conflict between the rational and non-rational parts of his soul and that appetite and emotion harmonize with right judgement (NE 1102b14–28).63 63 In Kant’s writings on virtue, it is possible to see him assigning or at least allowing emotions and inclinations a more constructive role. In the Metaphysics of Morals (the Doctrine of Virtue) Kant associates virtue with autocracy—a moral strength of will in the face of recalcitrant inclinations (MS 405). What he objects to in the nonautocratic person is not the presence of emotion or inclination as such, but her tendency to treat emotions or inclinations as sufficient reasons for action; this is to let emotion and appetite master her (MS 408; Anthro 251). Overcoming the tendency to treat appetite or emotion as a sufficient reason for action does not require the squelching or extirpation of emotion or desire as such. In the Doctrine of Virtue Kant insists that emotion and inclination can and should be the ally of practical reason; such passions are practical, not pathological (MS 456). In particular, he claims that the cultivation of certain emotions and inclinations is itself a duty, because the operation of suitably trained emotions and inclinations reinforces the motivation of duty and can help accomplish what a sense of duty alone might not. For example, this is what Kant says about the duty to cultivate sympathy that will help to provide

Green and Kant ~ 99

Green also believes that Kant’s hedonism about non-moral motivation vitiates his attack on prudence (ii. 138–40). Whereas Green denies the existence of any imperative to promote the satisfaction of the agent’s desires or the agent’s pleasure, he thinks that there is a categorical imperative to engage in self-realization. Indeed, this conception of prudence is the foundation of Green’s entire ethical theory. (3) Eudaimonism. In this respect, Green’s form of perfectionism fits within the Greek eudaimonist tradition of which Kant is so critical. Greek eudaimonism claims that an agent’s practical reasoning ought to be regulated by a correct conception of his overall good and that the virtues are traits of character whose exercise must contribute to the agent’s own eudaimonia. In so far as the virtues aim at a common good, the common good must contribute causally or constitutively to the agent’s own eudaimonia. Green appears to be a kind of eudaimonist in so far as he thinks that an agent’s practical reasoning ought to aim at the agent’s own permanent good, viz. self-realization, and in so far as he justifies virtue’s concern with a common good by its constitutive contribution to the agent’s own self-realization. If Green is a eudaimonist, then his views seem to be at odds with Kant’s, inasmuch as Kant is a vigorous critic of eudaimonism. Famously, Kant thinks that all previous moral philosophies are motivation for our duty to promote the happiness of others (MS 457). Kant’s concern about motivation that rests entirely on natural appetites and emotions is that its coincidence with the moral law is imperfect and accidental. This concern can be met provided that the content, weight, and scope of these affective and conative states have been appropriately shaped by one’s conception of the moral law. When one acts in accord with duty on the basis of such moralized emotions and inclinations, one acts for the sake of duty, not because duty functions as one’s ultimate aim, but because it functions as a constraint or limiting condition on the form and expression of one’s emotions and inclinations. If so, Kant can explain the need to cultivate emotions and inclinations that harmonize with the moral law, and this explains his insistence that the virtuous person can and should be ‘both valiant and cheerful’ in performing her duties (MS 484; cf. 485). My understanding of these matters has been influenced by Anne Margaret Baxley, ‘Kant’s Theory of Virtue’ (University of California, San Diego, Ph.D. dissertation, 2000).

100 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

heteronomous in so far as they base morality on sentiment, inclination, or interest (G. 432–3, 443–4; KpV 20–8, 35–6). Indeed, in so far as Kant thinks that happiness consists in the satisfaction of desires that aim at pleasure (KpV 21), he appears to think that all such theories are ultimately hedonistic. Kant’s critical focus on Greek eudaimonism is quite selective; he focuses on Epicurean and Stoic accounts of the relation between virtue and happiness (KpV 111–12; cf. 20–8, 35–6), surprisingly ignoring the contributions of Plato and Aristotle to the eudaimonist tradition. The Epicureans are hedonists who think that virtue aims at mutual advantage and is instrumentally valuable because it allows each to maximize his own pleasure. The Stoics identify happiness with a conception of virtue as a life lived according to nature, which for rational animals is a life lived according to reason. According to Kant, both Epicurean and Stoic ethics tie virtue to happiness (and ultimately to pleasure) but they do so in different ways. The Epicureans define virtue in terms of an antecedently and independently understood conception of happiness as pleasure. By contrast, Kant thinks that the Stoics define happiness in terms of consciousness of one’s virtue. This isn’t quite right: whereas the Stoics may think that consciousness of one’s own virtue brings pleasure, they identify happiness with virtue itself. But Kant also believes that whereas the Epicureans understand virtue in terms of an independent conception of happiness, the Stoics understand happiness in terms of an independent conception of virtue. So, although both treat virtue and happiness as co-extensive, they recognize different explanatory asymmetries between these two notions. Kant thinks that the Stoic view here is much better and less heteronomous than the Epicurean view (112). But he thinks that even the Stoic view is mistaken, in so far as it identifies what he regards as two quite distinct properties: virtue and happiness. Of course, virtue and happiness are independent notions for Kant, mainly because he holds a subjective and ultimately Green and Kant ~ 101

hedonistic view about happiness. But while the Epicureans are hedonists, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics reject hedonistic conceptions of happiness.64 Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics all think that virtue (a) must promote the good of the agent, (b) involves regulating one’s appetites, emotions, and actions by one’s rational faculties, and (c) promotes the good of others. Whereas the Stoics identify virtue and happiness, Plato and Aristotle treat virtue as the controlling ingredient in happiness. Once we appreciate the perfectionist character of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic views of happiness, it is not clear that Kant has any good objection to their eudaimonist conceptions of virtue. To the extent that Green’s ethics of self-realization appeals to an emphatically anti-hedonistic conception of the agent’s own good, it is similarly unclear whether Kant’s worries about Greek eudaimonism apply to Green’s own eudaimonist view. But Kant also objects to eudaimonist theories on the apparently independent ground that they must treat morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives. Imperatives are hypothetical if their application to an agent depends on some aim or interest that is independent of or extraneous to her rational agency; they are categorical imperatives if their application depends upon features of rational agents as such (G. 414; KpV 20–1). Because prudence aims at the agent’s own happiness or good, which Kant understands as a standard independent of rational agency, he declares prudential imperatives to be hypothetical (G. 432–3, 443–4; KpV 20–8, 35–6). Because eudaimonist theories define virtue in terms of promoting the agent’s own happiness or good, their demands are prudential and, hence, hypothetical (KpV 111–12). This objection might seem to apply equally to Green’s own ethics of self-realization. However, eudaimonists need not view morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives. Aristotle’s position is instructive here. 64 Plato’s Protagoras defends hedonism, but I take that dialogue to be a transitional dialogue, which does not represent Plato’s own considered view. Plato criticizes hedonism in the Gorgias, the Republic, and the Philebus.

102 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

He defends his own conception of eudaimonia as an end appropriate for beings such as ourselves. In particular, we are rational animals, and rational animals have reason to pursue a life of virtue where that is understood to consist in the regulation of one’s emotions, inclinations, and actions in accordance with one’s deliberations about what is best. On this view, the content of happiness is derived from a conception of rational animals. But then the imperatives of eudaimonia appear to be categorical, rather than merely hypothetical, imperatives.65 As we have seen (§XIV), in the Prolegomena Green is quite emphatic that self-realization does not appeal to values independent of agency (§193). In so far as Green treats self-realization as an objectively necessary end for any rational agent, he is entitled to view its demands as categorical imperatives. Though most of Kant’s worries about eudaimonism seem to miss their mark and do not apply to Green’s perfectionism, one of his ideas about Stoic eudaimonism might apply to Green. Abstracting from his doubts about Greek eudaimonism, it is possible to see Kant questioning whether Stoic ethics really fits within the eudaimonist tradition. If eudaimonists are supposed to found moral notions such as virtue or duty on an independent conception of the agent’s happiness, and if, as Kant believes, the Stoics define happiness in terms of an independent conception of virtue, then the Stoics cannot be eudaimonists. Whereas both the eudaimonist and the Stoic identify virtue and happiness, according to Kant they disagree about which notion is explanatorily prior. One can see how Kant, who interprets the Stoics this way, might doubt whether they are genuine eudaimonists. Or, one might say that 65 Cf. Terence Irwin, ‘Kant’s Criticisms of Eudaemonism’, in S. Engstrom and J. Whiting (eds.), Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 63–101. One difference remains. Kant’s categorical imperatives apply to rational agents as such, including gods as well as mortals, though they appear as imperatives only to finite mortals (G. 414, 455; KpV 20, 32, 82). By contrast, Aristotle’s account of the human good is really a good for any rational animal, but not a good for all rational beings; the good for gods is different than the good for rational animals (NE 1098a12–16, 1159a6–12, 1178a19–21, 1178b5–8, 1178b33–5).

Green and Kant ~ 103

their eudaimonism is purely formal, inasmuch as they do think that virtue pays, but not substantive, inasmuch as there is no prior or independent constraint on the content of the agent’s happiness. A similar claim might be made about Green. Green seems to fit within the eudaimonist tradition in so far as he justifies moral demands in terms of a prior and independent conception of the agent’s own good. But it may look as if he has no independent conception of the personal good and simply identifies a personal good with anything the agent has reason to pursue: ‘It is superfluous to add, good to himself, for anything conceived of as good in such a way that the agent acts for the sake of it, must be conceived as his own good’ (§92). This would explain what might seem like a slide from the claim that it is a moral duty to pursue a common good to the claim that it is part of the good of each to seek a common good. But then one might doubt that Green’s perfectionism is genuinely eudaimonist. Alternatively, one might conclude that Green’s eudaimonism is purely formal, inasmuch as he thinks that pursuit of a common good contributes to the good of each, but not substantive, inasmuch as Green has no conception of a person’s good independently of what he morally ought to do. Though this is an understandable concern about the eudaimonist credentials of the Stoics and Green, I think that it reflects a misunderstanding of both. Recall our discussion of Aristotle. He recognizes several independent constraints on the content of eudaimonia, one of which is that an account of the good of x reflect the sort of thing x essentially is. Relying on this constraint (among others), he argues that a person’s good consists in the exercise of her deliberative capacities. Though this account of a person’s good does not obviously involve reference to other people, we saw that Aristotle’s discussion of friendship shows how the good of others can and does contribute constitutively to the agent’s own good. This strategy for justifying concern for others, whatever its merits, is eudaimonic. As Green points out, the scope of Aristotle’s justification of other-regarding concern is too 104 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

narrow, limited as it is to other citizens in a just city-state. The Stoics were sympathetic with Aristotle’s eudaimonism but sought to justify other-regarding concern for anyone who shares the agent’s rationality. The Stoics identify a good life with a life lived according to nature. Because they identify human nature with reason, they think that we each have a natural affinity for reason as such, wherever we find it in humanity. In this way, the Stoics try to justify universal concern for rational agents on eudaimonist grounds. We might wonder if they succeed in this. We can see why a rational animal might identify his happiness with his rational agency, but, without further argument, it is unclear why a concern for his own rational agency should underwrite a concern for rational agency as such.66 Aristotle’s conception of friendship and its commitment to the interpersonal extension of the agent’s own interests suggests what such further argument might look like, and Green can be seen as deploying a similar argument. Green insists that my concern with self-realization gives me reason to seek a more permanent good in which I undertake activities of lasting significance and make their outcomes depend upon my deliberations and efforts. Interpersonal associations—in which the intentional states, deliberations, and actions of each associate influence other associates—likewise contribute to a wider or more permanent good. We saw how Green can develop this Aristotelian idea to account, as Aristotle would not, for other-regarding concern with wide or universal scope. Green has no legitimate claim to 66 Perhaps Stoic commitments to divine design and theodicy provide the resources for this additional argument (see, e.g., Cicero, De Natura Deorum, tr. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Loef, 1940), 6k. ii, and The Hellenistic Philosophers, i, ed. A. Long and D. Sedley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), §54). If each rational agent is a proper part of a community of rational agents that is ordered so as to be the best of all possible worlds, this may establish the sort of interdependence among rational agents that would allow each to see how a concern for his own agency supports a concern for other rational agents. Indeed, this might give the Stoics a defence of extreme harmony that would bear comparison with Green’s idealist defence (cf. §XXII). Cf. John Cooper, ‘Eudaimonism, the Appeal to Nature, and “Moral Duty” in Stoicism’, in Engstrom and Whiting (eds.), Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics.

Green and Kant ~ 105

provide reconciliation of the popular opposition between self-love and benevolence if his reconciliation rests on a stipulative redefinition of ‘self-interest’ in terms of other-regarding duty. Only if we interpret Green as this sort of substantive eudaimonist, who begins with a recognizable conception of the agent’s own good and argues for the interdependence of the agent’s own good and the good of others, are we in a position to see how he can plausibly claim to undermine the popular contrast between selflove and benevolence (§232). If these interpretative claims are right, Green’s perfectionist ethical theory fits within the eudaimonist tradition. Does this sort of eudaimonism violate legitimate Kantian strictures? Self-realization, Green argues, includes the good of other rational agents. The good of others contributes constitutively, and not just instrumentally, to the agent’s own good. Indeed, these demands of self-realization, as with others, are categorical, not hypothetical, imperatives. Eudaimonism, Green believes, is no bar to endorsing the Humanity Formula of Kant’s categorical imperative. If so, there may be no good Kantian objection to this brand of eudaimonism. Does Green’s eudaimonism have something to offer that Kant overlooks?67 We might want to know why the Categorical Imperative should have authority for us. Why should we identify with our rational selves? And if we do, why should identification with my rational self lead me to be concerned about other rational selves? Kant may argue that reasons can only be grounded in the agent’s rational nature and that this explains the authority of one’s rational self. But this does not explain why I should identify with rationality or rational agents as such, rather than with my own rational nature. By contrast, Green’s brand of perfectionism attempts to answer both questions. Like Kant, he thinks that 67 My thoughts in this paragraph were stimulated in part by Irwin’s suggestions about how Kant’s ethics might have profited from a more sympathetic study of eudaimonism. See Irwin, ‘Kant’s Criticisms of Eudaemonism’, 94–5.

106 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

I should identify with my rational self, because it is the rational self on which moral personality depends in the first place. But he also thinks that he can explain why one rational self should be concerned about other rational selves. For the same reasons that a moral agent committed to self-expression will seek intrapersonal permanence, she will also seek interpersonal permanence in the form of a concern for rational agents that is universal in scope, though perhaps variable in weight. Green’s perfectionism provides a distinctive answer to an important question about the authority of the Humanity Formula that Kant does not face squarely enough.

XXVII. GREEN’S IMPACT Having said some things about the main themes of the Prolegomena, the role of Green’s perfectionism in his political thought, and the philosophical figures and traditions on which he draws, we should turn to a discussion of Green’s significance. Part of Green’s significance is the impact he had on his contemporaries and subsequent generations of philosophers. Green’s metaphysical, ethical, and political views inspired many, especially in Britain. Because Green’s most important work was published posthumously, his direct influence on others results largely from his teaching, public lectures, and political activities. Though Green was keenly aware of his own limitations as a clear and dynamic communicator and sometimes despaired of his ability to present idealist principles in a clear and rigorous fashion, he nonetheless inspired many students and peers by his intellectual, moral, and spiritual seriousness.68 Even students who had trouble making sense of Green’s idealism were impressed by him.69 68

See, e.g., the exchange of letters between A. C. Bradley and Green, apparently in December 1872 (Works, v. 444–8). Also see Works, v. 485 n. 69 This bemused but affectionate reception is reflected in the Balliol ditty: ‘I am the self-distinguishing| consciousness in everything;| the synthetic unity| one in multiplicity, |the unseen nexus of the seen| sometimes known as Tommy Green.’

Green’s Impact ~ 107

His metaphysical and ethical views were sympathetically received and developed in Britain by Bernard Bosanquet, Edward Caird, R. B. Haldane, J. S. Mackenzie, J. H. Muirhead, R. L. Nettleship, Hastings Rashdall, D. G. Ritchie, and Arnold Toynbee. Green’s metaphysical and ethical views also had an influence in the United States. The young John Dewey developed his form of pragmatism out of idealist metaphysical and epistemological claims, and he articulated an ethics of self-realization in conscious response to Green.70 Later, Brand Blanshard showed the influence of Green, among others, in reacting to the then dominant Logical Positivism by defending a form of absolute idealism and a form of ethical naturalism.71 The legacy of Green’s political lectures and activities, we have seen (§XXIII), was quite significant. He helped make secondary and higher education available to all qualified students, regardless of financial and class background, and he played a major role in the process of opening up Oxford University to study for women. In addition to these educational reforms, Green was an influential advocate of labour regulations affecting the health and safety of workers, land reform, and temperance regulations. But beyond these specific reforms, we have seen, Green had an important impact on the direction of the Liberal Party in Britain. His egalitarian concern with human perfection, especially his insistence that laws and institutions Quoted in John Skorupski, English-Language Philosophy 1750–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 87. 70 The early Dewey wrote three articles explicitly dealing with Green’s idealist metaphysics and ethics: ‘The Philosophy of Thomas Hill Green’ (1889), ‘Green’s Theory of the Moral Motive’ (1892), and ‘Self-Realization as the Moral Ideal’ (1893), reprinted in The Early Works of John Dewey, iii–iv (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969 and 1971). Though Dewey remains indebted to Green in important respects throughout these essays, they become increasingly critical. In the last, Dewey aims to defend an ethic of self-realization that appeals to a less idealized conception of self that is to be realized. Neither Dewey’s criticisms of Green nor his own alternative conception of self-realization are sufficiently clear to assess easily. 71 See, e.g., Brand Blanshard, The Nature of Thought (London: Allen & Unwin, 1939) and Reason and Goodness (London: Allen & Unwin, 1962).

108 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

serve the common good, provided an intellectual foundation for the development of a new form of liberalism that required the state not simply to forbear from interfering in the liberties and opportunities of its citizens but also to provide various positive conditions and resources on which citizens may draw in pursuing better lives. Despite significant differences among them, a number of influential figures in the New Liberalism can claim to be heirs of Green’s political philosophy. Bosanquet and Ritchie were students and self-proclaimed disciples of Green, though they are often seen to develop perfectionist politics in very different directions. Bosanquet is often thought to take Green to the Right.72 On the one hand, he distinguishes sharply between the individual’s actual will and his real will and sees state action as a better approximation to the real will of its citizens. On the other hand, Bosanquet also emphasizes the limits on the way in which one agent, especially the state, can promote the perfection of another and consequently argues against an extensive role for the state in constructive reforms. By contrast, Ritchie is often thought to take Green to the Left.73 He recognized that Green’s constraints on how the state may promote the perfection of its citizens are not prohibitions on state action per se and emphasized the state’s positive role in helping its citizens to make the most of their capacities and equalizing their opportunities to do so. Other figures in the New Liberalism who were neither students nor disciples of Green were nonetheless influenced by him. Haldane, who served as Lord Chancellor during the first Labour government, shared Green’s idealism and many of his political commitments. L. T. Hobhouse, who was an undergraduate at Oxford just after Green’s death, rejected Green’s idealism but admired and was influenced by his ethical concern with the common good and 72 See Bernard Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State, 4th edn. (London: Macmillan, 1923) (originally pub. 1899). 73 See, e.g., Ritchie, The Principles of State Interference.

Green’s Impact ~ 109

his brand of constructive liberalism.74 Though sharply critical of the sort of social organicism that he found in Bosanquet and other idealists, Hobhouse largely exempted Green from the scope of his criticisms.75 Like Ritchie, Hobhouse emphasized Green’s idea that individuals have rights only to those interests and liberties that serve a social good and pushed Green’s liberalism further to the Left in assigning the state a positive role in promoting the good of its citizens.

XXVIII. GREEN AND BRADLEY Some comment should be made about Green’s relation to Bradley—the other main figure of British idealism. They share important philosophical commitments. In metaphysics and epistemology, both are deeply critical of empiricism and endorse a form of absolute idealism. In ethics, both reject the incompatibilist view of freedom and determinism, both reject psychological and evaluative hedonism and are critical of utilitarianism, and both defend an ethics of self-realization. Given these similarities, it is perhaps surprising how little evidence there is of significant interaction and influence between the two. As an undergraduate at University College, Oxford (1865–9), Bradley attended Green’s lectures and was apparently very much impressed by him.76 But in Ethical Studies, published in 1876, Bradley refers to Green only once, citing Green’s criticisms of hedonism. Though there is evidence that Green had read and admired some parts of Ethical Studies in manuscript,77 there is no reference to Bradley or Ethical Studies in Green’s Prolegomena. 74 Hobhouse’s criticisms of idealist political theory can be found in his Metaphysical Theory of the State: A Criticism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1918); his version of constructive liberalism can be found in Liberalism (London: Henry Holt, 1911). 75 See Hobhouse, Metaphysical Theory of the State, 24, 83, 99, 118–25. 76 Works, v. 105–82. Also see A. E. Taylor’s remarks about Bradley’s relation to Green in his obituaries of Bradley in the Proceedings of the British Academy, 11 (1924–5), 458–68, and Mind, 34 (1925), 1–12. 77 Green’s letter to Bosanquet of 8 July 1876 (Works, v. 465).

110 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

These facts suggest that Green and Bradley may have formed their views largely independently of one another,78 perhaps in a common exposure to Jowett’s curriculum of ancient and modern, including German, philosophy. Moreover, the lack of mutual interaction and influence may reflect real differences of substance, method, and style in their work. Though Green and Bradley share some metaphysical and epistemological commitments, they draw different conclusions. They agree that our sensory experience presupposes relational concepts. Green accepts these relational presuppositions; he accepts our claims to empirical knowledge, provided that this is not understood as knowledge of a world as it is independently of how it appears to us. By contrast, Bradley rejects the reality of relations, which ultimately leads him to embrace a sort of Parmenidean monism that must deny the reliability of the senses. It is often observed that Green is more Kantian and less Hegelian than Bradley.79 This is true in ethics, no less than metaphysics and epistemology. In part, the difference is methodological. Whereas Green’s ethics is profoundly dialectical in the sense of being motivated by, embedded in, and constrained by intellectual dialogue with the views of earlier and ongoing traditions in ethics, his work is not, as Bradley’s is, dialectical in the specifically Hegelian sense of being organized around an intellectual progress through thesis–antithesis–synthesis. Whereas Green’s ethics is dialectical, 78

This is Taylor’s conclusion in his British Academy obituary of Bradley, p. 464. Taylor reports Bradley as saying that ‘Green’s work would have been of more permanent value if he had selected Hegel rather than Kant as the thinker whom he should either follow or desert only when he was absolutely clear about his reasons for disagreement’ (Mind obituary, p. 8). Indeed, in a letter to William James Bradley writes: ‘Green was in my opinion no Hegelian, and in some respects was anti-Hegelian’ (quoted in Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists, 51). Cf. Sidgwick, Lectures 3, and Ritchie, The Principles of State Interference, 139–40. However, even Bradley’s enthusiasm for Hegel was known to have its limits. Taylor recalls Bradley tempering his recommendations that others consult Hegel by saying: ‘but you must always remember that the man [Hegel] had a perfect itch for making out black to be white if he possibly could’ (Mind obituary, 6–7). 79

Green and Bradley ~ 111

Bradley’s is Dialectical. Despite sympathies with several substantive Hegelian commitments, Green is sceptical of the value of Hegelian Dialectic (Works, iii. 146). Freed of the need to shoehorn other philosophers into a Dialectical moment, Green is able to treat other traditions and philosophers more sympathetically and constructively. Moreover, the different ratios in which Green and Bradley mix Kant and Hegel are also reflected in substantive differences in the forms in which they espouse perfectionism. After criticizing both hedonism and Kantian good will as inadequate conceptions of the good, Bradley begins to set out his constructive perfectionist conception in the essay ‘My Station and its Duties’ (essay V). There Bradley famously argues that we cannot conceive of individuals independently of their relations towards others in their community, that their social roles establish their moral duties, and that because one’s identity is socially defined performing one’s station and its duties is good for one. This ethic appears to make the content of one’s duties hostage to the actual social division of labour within one’s community in a way that is conservative and potentially troubling. Existing social relations appear to determine not only whom one should have moral concern for but how one should express that concern. There is danger here of moral parochialism. It is true that ‘My Station and its Duties’ is not the last moment in Bradley’s Dialectic. He supplements that ethic, which supplies the social component of self-realization, with an irreducibly distinct personal component of self-realization (essay VI). But that does not really address the worry that the scope and form of other-regarding concern is parochial. The Kantian character of Green’s perfectionism gives it resources here that Bradley’s Hegelianism may not have. Green thinks that selfrealization requires a commitment to the common good, which, as we have seen, he insists must be universal in scope. Moreover, like Kant, Green thinks that concern for the good of another is concern for her as a rational agent. But then concern for another 112 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

should aim at her agency or perfection, not at reproducing her role in an existing social division of labour. Of course, Green will think that her good includes the good of others. But it is one thing to think that an agent must be appropriately related to others to thrive; it is another thing to assume that she can only thrive if she maintains existing relations to others. Green’s Kantianism makes it easier to see how he can accept the former without the latter. The clear reforming potential of Green’s perfectionism may explain another obvious substantive difference between Green and Bradley. Green saw the political implications of his perfectionism, which he explored both theoretically and practically. These explorations, as we have seen, had a significant influence on the development of British Liberalism. By contrast, Bradley was not politically active or reflective. It was up to others to explore the political implications of Bradley’s view.80 It must also be said that Green’s and Bradley’s styles are very different. Green is much more interested in the history of ethics than Bradley is. Though Bradley shows some critical interest in Kantian ethics, and Green does not always identify the historical figures he discusses or offer detailed discussions of specific passages in the writers he does identify, it is nonetheless true that Green’s ethics is historical, whereas Bradley’s is not. In particular, Green’s own ethical theory emerges from extended and imaginative engagement with ancient and modern traditions in ethics. In aiming to bring together the best elements in the ancient and modern traditions, Green aims to engage diverse audiences. By contrast, Bradley’s interest in other traditions seems to be almost entirely polemical. His dogmatic style makes it hard for Bradley to reach those not already convinced of his form of idealism.81 80

Bosanquet sees himself as an intellectual heir to both Green and Bradley. See, e.g., The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. viii. 81 Sidgwick had a strong negative reaction to Bradley’s style, which he conveyed in his review of Ethical Studies, in Mind, 4 (1876), 545–9. He describes Bradley’s chief aim as ‘not merely directly dogmatic, but even vehemently propagandist’ (p. 545).

Green and Bradley ~ 113

In light of such serious differences in substance, method, and style, it is unfortunate that so many contemporary readers are familiar with the ethical theory of British idealism only though Bradley’s Ethical Studies. Bradley’s Ethical Studies may be pithier than Green’s Prolegomena, but Bradley’s work is no substitute for Green’s.

XXIX. GREEN AND SIDGWICK If Green and Bradley altogether missed the opportunity for communication, Green and Sidgwick missed the opportunity for successful and profitable communication. Green and Sidgwick were schoolmates at Rugby. Their friendship lapsed during their undergraduate studies, but was renewed during a vacation together in Switzerland in 1862. They seem to have had intellectual respect for each other. Sidgwick admired Green’s grasp of political matters, and Green’s discussion of utilitarianism in the Prolegomena shows that he thinks Sidgwick’s version is uniquely consistent and resourceful. However, this mutual respect seems to have been insufficient to enable them to form a just assessment of each other’s views. Though there is failure sympathetically to engage the other on both sides, I think that Sidgwick’s failure is perhaps greater. In many ways, they were exemplars of two different philosophical and ethical traditions in Britain at that time. Green represented an Oxford tradition of religious, or at least spiritual, education, to which he gave philosophical expression with the help of abstruse German philosophy and practical expression in the form of an almost ascetic life of Christian citizenship. By contrast, Sidgwick He observes that ‘just at the nodes of his argument, he lapses provokingly into mere debating-club rhetoric’ (p. 545). From which Sidgwick concludes that ‘really penetrating criticism, especially in ethics, requires a patient effort of sympathy which Mr. Bradley has never learned to make, and a tranquillity of temper which he seems incapable of maintaining’ (p. 545). Such comments may raise questions about Sidgwick’s own patience and tranquillity of temper; however, this is compatible with him correctly perceiving such vices in Bradley.

114 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

represented a Cambridge tradition of analytic philosophy that prized precision and rigour. Sidgwick aimed to put ethics on a scientific footing, eschewing both moralizing and any ethical traditions or positions that required metaphysical or supernatural commitments. Reacting to what he then perceived to be the undeservedly greater influence of the Oxford idealists, C. D. Broad expressed a Cambridge perspective on the contrast between Sidgwick’s rationalism and the Oxford idealism in this way: ‘Even a thoroughly second-rate thinker like T. H. Green, by diffusing a grateful and comforting aroma of ethical “uplift,” has probably made far more undergraduates into prigs than Sidgwick will ever make into philosophers.’82 Broad would no doubt have been heartened to witness the change in comparative fortunes of Sidgwick and Green. But Broad’s comment and the attitude towards idealist ethics and Green, in particular, that it reflects are unfortunate and unjustified. In understanding and assessing Sidgwick’s treatment of Green, it will help to remember some features of Sidgwick’s ethics. In The Methods of Ethics Sidgwick describes his inquiry as ‘an examination, at once expository and critical, of the different methods of obtaining reasoned convictions as to what ought to be done which are to be found—either explicit or implicit—in the moral consciousness of mankind generally’ (Methods, v). He identifies three methods worth serious examination: intuitionism, egoism, and utilitarianism. In its broadest sense, intuitionism is a form of philosophical foundationalism that claims that moral knowledge must rest on self-evident moral beliefs (98, 200–1). Self-evident beliefs must meet four conditions: (a) their content must be clear and precise, (b) their truth must be evident upon reflection, (c) they must be mutually consistent, and (d) they must be capable of sustaining a consensus (338–42). This broad, epistemological sense of 82 C. D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1930), 144.

Green and Sidgwick ~ 115

intuitionism must be distinguished from a narrower sense, which he calls ‘dogmatic’ intuitionism, according to which the precepts of common-sense morality, which make no direct reference to the consequences of actions, are fundamental intuitions (97–102). Sidgwick rejects dogmatic intuitionism on the ground that the precepts of common-sense morality do not meet the tests of selfevidence. On closer examination, they prove to be either false (e.g. always keep your promises) or uninformative (e.g. keep your promises unless it violates some stronger obligation) (342, 360–1). Instead, he accepts philosophical intuitionism, which says that moral knowledge must rest on the acceptance of self-evident first principles in ethics (98–100, 200–1, 338–42, 379–87). In the process of criticizing the precepts of dogmatic intuitionism, Sidgwick is led to those axioms—justice, self-love, and benevolence—that he believes do meet the tests of self-evidence (379–83, 386–7). This explains the way in which he finds truth in each of the three methods of ethics—egoist and utilitarian first principles each rests on a fundamental intuition—and why he reluctantly ends the Methods by recognizing a dualism of practical reason between egoism and utilitarianism (xv–xxi, 162–75, 496–509). Egoism and utilitarianism, as such, are silent about the nature of the good to be promoted. But Sidgwick appeals to his assumptions about self-evidence in order to defend hedonism and reject alternative conceptions of the good. His discussion of hedonism begins from the idea that pleasures are mental states or feelings that the person having them wants to sustain and tends to take steps to prolong (42, 125), which he refines, concluding that pleasure is a feeling which the person having it regards, considered in itself, as desirable (127, 131). Sidgwick finds it evident upon reflection that pleasure, so understood, and pleasure alone is that at which it is rational to aim (400–1, 406–7). He rejects all non-hedonic conceptions of the good. In particular, he considers perfectionist traditions that take the good to be self-development or self-realization and rejects such views as too indefinite to merit serious study. 116 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

I conclude that the notion of Self-realization is to be avoided in a treatise on ethical method, on account of its indefiniteness: and for a similar reason we must discard a common account of Egoism which describes its ultimate end as the ‘good’ of the individual, for the term ‘good’ may cover all possible views of the ultimate end of rational conduct. Indeed it may be said that Egoism in this sense was assumed by the whole ethical controversy of Greece; that is, it was assumed on all sides that a rational individual would make the pursuit of his own good his supreme aim: the controverted question was whether this Good was rightly conceived as Pleasure or Virtue, or any tertium quid. (Methods, 91–2)

Because non-hedonic versions of eudaimonism and perfectionism appeal to metaphysical and contestable conceptions of the good, they cannot hope to meet Sidgwick’s standards of self-evidence and can safely be discarded in a scientific treatment of ethics. This dismissive attitude towards all non-hedonic conceptions of eudaimonism and perfectionism is quite breathtaking. A more cautious philosopher might wonder whether it was more reasonable to rethink the epistemological principles that force one to reject all non-hedonic ethical theories out of hand than to follow such principles wherever they lead. In particular, one might try to bring precision and rigour to the analysis and assessment of the metaphysical commitments on which these non-hedonic conceptions of the good depend. Sidgwick’s dismissive attitude towards Green in the Methods contrasts with Green’s attitude towards utilitarianism and Sidgwick in the Prolegomena. There, as we have seen, Green treats utilitarianism as the main rival to ancient and modern forms of perfectionism (esp. Book IV). Though Green is critical of hedonistic conceptions of utilitarianism, he is careful to acknowledge that the utilitarian conception of impartiality, as distinct from a specifically hedonistic conception of value, has been a very progressive influence not only in ethical theory but also in moral and political life (§§329, 331–3). Indeed, I noted that Green’s perfectionist critique of hedonism does not require him to reject utilitarianism Green and Sidgwick ~ 117

per se (§XXIII). Now much of his critique of hedonism focuses on earlier utilitarians—such as Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill—and points out how ethical hedonism becomes incoherent if combined with psychological hedonism and how ethical hedonism may be speciously defended by tacit appeal to psychological hedonism (§XIII). This may produce effective criticisms of earlier hedonistic utilitarians, but it appears likely to be ineffective against an evaluative hedonist who eschews psychological hedonism, as Sidgwick did. If so, much of Green’s polemic against utilitarianism does not really address Sidgwick’s version. To his credit, Green recognizes this (§§222, 334, 351). He has more general criticisms of hedonism that are meant to include Sidgwick’s version as well. For instance, he thinks that the idea of a greatest possible sum of pleasures, at which he thinks the utilitarian must aim, is impossible, for a sum of any given magnitude can always be increased (§359). But his most general critique is that when evaluative hedonism is stripped of fallacious defences—which in effect infer that we aim at pleasure from the fact that we expect pleasure from the achievement of our aims—it will just seem implausible. Many things in life, especially acts of heroism or benevolence, are valuable independently of and out of proportion to the pleasure they bring (§§159–61, 357). Moreover, implicit in Green’s defence of self-realization is an argument for treating perfection, rather than pleasure, as the good. One can ask about any conception of the good why one should care about the good, so conceived. Sidgwick says nothing about why we have reason to care about pleasure. The Epicureans, for instance, defended the pursuit of pleasure as a natural impulse.83 But Sidgwick’s epistemological principles seem to preclude his offering any such justification. By contrast, Green’s defence of selfrealization makes the content of the good consist in the exercise of 83 See Cicero, De Finibus, i. 30, ii. 31. Of course, Green would not be impressed by the Epicurean appeal to pre-deliberative desires.

118 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

the very same capacities that make one a rational agent in the first place. This promises to explain why one has reason to be concerned about the good, conceived in perfectionist terms. Also, Green is sensitive to Sidgwick’s charge that it is an advantage of hedonistic utilitarianism, in relation to self-realization, that hedonism represents a clear and more definite end than selfrealization and that, as a result, utilitarianism provides more specific practical guidance than perfectionism (§§193, 315, 337, 358). Bradley seems content to concede these claims and dispute the importance of practical guidance.84 While Green sometimes endorses Bradley’s response, it is significant that he also contests these claims. In particular, he argues that this assessment overestimates the determinacy of utilitarian calculations (§§316, 344) and underestimates the guidance provided by self-realization (§§306, 353). Indeed, we discussed ways in which his own liberal reforms in the franchise, labour regulations, and education were plausible examples of the sort of practical guidance that perfectionist principles can provide (§§XXIII–XXIV). While Sidgwick’s main ethical work, The Methods of Ethics, discusses Green’s critique of hedonism only in passing and simply dismisses Green’s positive ethical doctrine, he does offer a more sustained assessment of Green’s views in his Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and J. Martineau. There Sidgwick explains and criticizes both the metaphysics and epistemology and the ethical theory of the Prolegomena. A thorough discussion of Sidgwick’s critical commentary is not possible here, but we can make a few observations. Sidgwick raises some interesting questions about Green’s metaphysical and epistemological arguments.85 Even if our experience of nature requires a unifying form of consciousness, why should we attribute personality to this consciousness, as we must, if we 84

See Ethical Studies, 139, 193–201. Sidgwick also discusses Green’s metaphysics and epistemology in ‘The Philosophy of T. H. Green’, Mind, 25 (1901), 18–29. 85

Green and Sidgwick ~ 119

are to view it as God (9–13)? And Sidgwick is puzzled by how Green’s metaphysics and epistemology are supposed to be relevant to his ethical theory (14). Indeed, one worry is whether they are even compatible. If Green is going to be a non-naturalist about the self, treating it as outside time and space, then how are we to make sense of the self acting in time and being a proper subject of ascriptions of responsibility (Lectures, 100–1, 116). Here, Sidgwick seems to see that some aspects of Green’s non-naturalism about the self reintroduce the very dualism for which Green criticizes Kant. The right response for Green, it seems, is to insist that while the self may be independent of particular episodes of sensory experience, it is not outside consciousness and is not outside space and time. About Green’s ethics, Sidgwick makes several critical points, most of which concern either Green’s critique of hedonism or his own ethic of self-realization.86 Sidgwick is keen to point out that he (Sidgwick) is not a psychological hedonist, so that Green’s criticisms of evaluative hedonism that depend on criticizing psychological hedonism do not apply to him (127).87 He goes on to respond to Green’s worries that there is some kind of incoherence in the hedonist appeal to a greatest possible sum of pleasures, much as he does in the Methods (Lectures, 108–13, 120–3). But Sidgwick never really addresses Green’s more fundamental worries that hedonism is implausible, rather than incoherent. Sidgwick defends hedonism by appeal to its self-evidence: ‘My own answer to the question . . . Why is the ultimate good . . . held to be pleasure? 86 Sidgwick also criticizes Green’s understanding and use of the history of ethics, especially his account of Hume (104–5) and Greek ethics (80–99). A very good discussion of their respective interpretations of Greek ethics in general, and Aristotle in particular, which challenges the superiority of Sidgwick’s interpretation, is T. H. Irwin, ‘Eminent Victorians and Greek Ethics: Sidgwick, Green, and Aristotle’, in B. Schultz (ed.), Essays on Henry Sidgwick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 279–310. 87 Of course, one might defend evaluative hedonism by tacit appeal to psychological hedonism, even if one had officially rejected the latter doctrine.

120 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

Is that nothing but pleasure appears to the reflective mind to be good in itself, without reference to an ulterior end’ (107). But Green’s question is precisely whether this is evident. Many things seem valuable independently of and out of proportion to the pleasure they produce, and the hedonist lacks a clear explanation of the normativity of pleasure.88 Here, unlike the Methods, Sidgwick does discuss Green’s own perfectionist ethic. He repeats his conviction that self-realization is a less definite standard than hedonistic utilitarianism (Lectures, 107), though I do not think that he really responds to Green’s claim that this exaggerates both the comparative determinateness of the two principles and the importance of determinacy. But Sidgwick also claims that Green’s perfectionism is ambiguous in important ways. He thinks that Green is ambiguous about whether the good is (1) the satisfaction of reflective or selfconscious desire or (2) perfection understood as the exercise of one’s rational capacities (36–42). But this concern fails to track Green’s understanding of the progress from (1) to (2). Self-conscious desire is the condition for agency and the ascription of responsibility. But it doesn’t distinguish between good and bad willing. As we have seen, Green thinks the conditions of agency also explain why self-realization is the proper object of self-conscious desire (§176; §XIV). 88

Sidgwick thinks that hedonism is harder to resist if we assume, as Green allows, that the good must involve some element of conscious life (124–7). For then, Sidgwick thinks, putative non-hedonic goods, such as virtue or beauty, cannot be genuine intrinsic goods, inasmuch as they are not elements of consciousness. Their value must be explained by their contribution to conscious life, as the hedonist claims. But there are several problems with this argument. (1) Even if the value of such goods must consist in their contribution to consciousness, it does not follow that the relevant contribution is the production of pleasure. (2) There is no compelling reason to accept Sidgwick’s restrictive assumption that all value must involve some element of consciousness. Elements of a conscious life (e.g. personal integrity or various forms of personal, professional, or athletic achievement) might be valuable without being states of consciousness. (3) Green’s idealism entails that all reality is an aspect of consciousness, in which case Green’s focus on conscious life or even consciousness is not restrictive, as it is for Sidgwick.

Green and Sidgwick ~ 121

Sidgwick sees that (2) is Green’s considered view, but he thinks that this goal—perfection—is also ambiguous between (a) the exercise of the full range of an individual’s rational capacities and (b) the exercise of specifically moral capacities connected with the common good (46, 61, 71). Sidgwick thinks that Green’s waffling between (a) and (b) explains his vacillation about whether the virtuous person is really self-sacrificing or not (65–8). If perfection involves only moral capacities,—(b)-perfection—then it is hard to see how morality could demand genuine self-sacrifice. However, morality might demand genuine self-sacrifice if the agent’s perfection includes the exercise of various rational capacities, not just moral ones, that is, (a)-perfection. Sidgwick clearly thinks that Green could be entitled at most to the broader notion of perfection, (a)-perfection. For this reason, Sidgwick thinks that despite all Green’s talk about a common, non-competitive good, he cannot really avoid recognizing his own dualism of practical reason between perfection of the agent and perfection of others (56, 78, 106). On the one hand, Sidgwick’s criticism is unwarranted in so far as it assumes that the perfection of the individual’s own rational capacities and the perfection of others are unrelated ends. As we have seen, Green argues that pursuit of a permanent good must aim at forms of interpersonal association in which one values the good of associates for its own sake (§§XV–XIX). To this extent, (b)-perfection must be a part of (a)-perfection. In so far as this is true, Green’s considered view must be that any sacrifices that morality makes agents undergo are fully compensated sacrifices, just as intrapersonal sacrifices during one period within a life can be compensated for by greater gains later. In either case, they can still be viewed as losses of something valuable, while being compensable. Green can also distinguish between actual and apparent sacrifice. Those who do not yet have a proper conception of the self and its realization will perceive the common good as making genuine sacrifices that go uncompensated. But with a proper conception of 122 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

self-realization, Green can claim, such apparent sacrifices will be revealed as merely apparent sacrifices or as genuine but compensated sacrifices. On the other hand, we have expressed doubts about extreme harmony (§§XX–XXII). Even if the perfection of others forms a distinct and distinctively valuable part of my own perfection, it does not exhaust my own perfection. The opportunity cost of attending to the other-regarding aspects of my own perfection is the lost opportunity to contribute to more self-confined aspects of my own perfection. If so, Sidgwick is right to say that (a)-perfection and (b)-perfection are distinct, even if they are not independent. But then many sacrifices that the perfection of others demands will be genuine, and not all of them will be fully compensable. And this is enough to raise the spectre that there will be a kind of dualism of practical reason, not exactly between self and others, but between self-confined and other-regarding aspects of one’s own perfection. But we know from Sidgwick’s own dualism of practical reason that he cannot think that commitment to dualism, as such, is a fatal flaw. So there remains the question whether it is better to think of the conflict between self and others in hedonistic terms, as Sidgwick does, or in perfectionist terms, as Green does. This issue poses many questions. Does pleasure or self-realization provide a better measure of what makes a life go well? Which standard has better resources to explain why one has reason to pursue one’s own good, so conceived? Which standard provides a better account of the moral bonds among associates? Does the hedonist or the perfectionist provide a more satisfying account of the scope and stability of one’s reasons to be concerned about the good of others? Because Sidgwick does not give an adequate account of the motivation and justification of Green’s perfectionism, he is not in a position to recognize these comparative questions or to address them fairly. Our discussion of these matters suggests that on these issues Green’s position compares favourably with Sidgwick’s. Green and Sidgwick ~ 123

Sidgwick is not an unintelligent critic. Most of his criticisms fasten on some genuine obscurity or ambiguity in Green’s argument; he has a good eye for philosophical extravagance; and some of his criticisms pose significant worries. But I think that it is fair to say that Sidgwick never manages to engage Green’s perfectionism sympathetically, which prevents him from recognizing its strengths and from seeing potential weaknesses in his own hedonism.89

XXX. GREEN’S LEGACY It is perhaps not unreasonable to treat Sidgwick as an early and influential representative of the sort of analytical ethical theory that now dominates Anglo-American moral philosophy. Sidgwick’s failure to engage Green’s Prolegomena sympathetically represents a missed opportunity within the analytic tradition for fruitful dialogue about the merits of a metaphysical approach to ethics and an interesting form of perfectionism.90 The comparative neglect of the Prolegomena over the last seventy years has certainly contributed to the neglect of such options within the analytic tradition.91 With the recent resurgence of interest in the history of

89 This assessment of the adequacy of Sidgwick’s critique of Green contrasts with the more unreservedly favourable assessment offered by J. B. Schneewind in Sidgwick’s Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 400–11. 90 The opportunity is not missed by Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907). Rashdall dedicated this work to both Green and Sidgwick, who were his teachers. Though not uncritical of Green, it tries to develop a form of perfectionism that is indebted to Green but with the sort of analytical precision and rigour that Sidgwick exemplified. 91 Happily, there are signs of remedying this neglect. Parfit’s Reasons and Persons makes a powerful case for the value of metaphysical approaches to ethics. Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), presents a systematic account of the justification, content, and implications of a perfectionist ethical theory. And George Sher, Beyond Neutrality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), presents an attractive defence of a perfectionist approach to politics.

124 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

philosophy generally, and the history of ethics in particular, now is an appropriate time to undertake a re-examination of the Prolegomena and Green’s ethical theory. If we approach systematic ethics in the way Green himself did—by conscientious engagement with important traditions in the history of ethics—we will look to the Prolegomena not just as a significant work in the history of ethics but also as a work of enduring significance. One aspect of Green’s legacy for students of ethical theory and the history of ethics is the way he blends systematic and historical concerns. Though his primary concern is systematic, he draws heavily on various ancient and modern ethical traditions. He looks to the history of ethics sometimes for foils for his own view, but more often for resources for articulating what seem to him the most important issues and the most promising approaches. Though Green’s main concern in the Prolegomena is not historical scholarship, the fact that he brings his own systematic concerns to his study of the history of ethics results in some novel or neglected interpretative strategies. This is true of his reading of Aristotle, which stresses the regulative role that the common good plays in the specification of the virtues,92 of the role that psychological hedonism plays in the tension between hedonistic and perfectionist elements in Mill’s utilitarianism, and of the perfectionist potential of Butler’s and Kant’s conceptions of agency. These sorts of claims provide one model of how combining systematic and historical perspectives in ethics can be mutually beneficial. Green’s Prolegomena also deserves continued study for its contribution to the perfectionist tradition. It offers distinctive ideas about the justification, content, and implications of perfectionism. Perfectionist ideals are often grounded in conceptions of human nature. But human nature can be conceived of in biological or in moral and metaphysical ways. It is hard to find capacities that we have that are biologically essential and whose exercise seems 92

This is emphasized in Irwin, ‘Eminent Victorians and Greek Ethics’.

Green’s Legacy ~ 125

distinctively valuable.93 Indeed, it isn’t obvious how an appeal to biology can address the normative question about why we should care about the exercise of our essential capacities. By contrast, Green’s perfectionist ideal is grounded in a metaphysical and normative conception of human nature, in particular in a conception of the deliberative capacities essential for responsibility and the possession of reasons for action. Such an approach promises to avoid problems associated with the biological approach and, in particular, to ground the normativity of perfectionist ideals. This deliberative conception also has interesting implications about the content of the good. Because there are many different ways of exercising one’s deliberative capacities well, Green’s perfectionism can avoid a certain kind of elitism and recognize a kind of pluralism about the good. But pluralism about the good can and should eschew neutrality about the good. Green’s conception of self-realization explains what we tend to find objectionable about shallow and undemanding lives, even when they are contented or successful in their own terms. Moreover, Green’s arguments about the role of the common good in the self-realization of each person help explain the traditional and common view that we are social animals who can only flourish properly in the right sort of community. The content of Green’s perfectionist ideal also suggests some of its implications, especially its political implications. Green’s perfectionism leads him to endorse a classical form of liberalism, not unlike Mill’s, that contrasts with both libertarian liberalism and liberal neutrality. Self-realization can only be achieved if those with deliberative competence are autonomous in significant ways. For this reason, Green often agrees with libertarian liberals in opposing regular use of paternalistic and moralistic interference by the state. Liberties of thought and action are essential to the 93 Kitcher raises some relevant questions about Hurka’s attempt to ground his perfectionism in a biological essence in Philip Kitcher, ‘Essence and Perfection’, Ethics, 110 (1999), 59–83.

126 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

exercise of deliberative powers. But equally essential are certain positive conditions, such as health, education, and a decent minimum standard of living. Even if the state cannot contribute directly to the perfection of its citizens, it can remove obstacles to and provide resources for each citizen to realize her deliberative potential. For this reason, Green rejects libertarian constraints on state action and endorses various constructive roles for the state to play in the improvement of the lives of its citizens. But if we justify a conception of liberal essentials that includes positive and negative state action by appeal to perfectionist ideals, then we defend a form of liberalism that eschews neutrality among conceptions of the good. As we have seen, pluralism about the good does not require neutrality about the good. Indeed, it is a merit of this sort of classical perfectionism that it explains ways in which many liberals do think that the state can and should help its citizens lead better lives. If so, Green’s perfectionist liberalism contributes to a tradition of classical liberalism that has enduring significance. At least one other aspect of Green’s legacy deserves comment. One important aspect of traditional debates about the normativity of morality concerns the authority of other-regarding moral demands. As modern moral traditions recognize, moral demands are impartial; they impose categorical duties to respect and aid others, independently of the agent’s own aims and interests. But heeding these other-regarding duties often appears to constrain the agent’s pursuit of her own aims and interests. This creates a tension between living right and living well. Sidgwick, who interpreted the elements of this tension hedonistically, treated it as a fundamental dualism of practical reason. Those who hold a broadly prudential conception of practical reason see this tension as raising doubts about the rational authority of other-regarding moral requirements. Indeed, these doubts can arise even if practical reason can itself be impartial—even if agents have nonderivative reason to promote the welfare of others. For as long as prudence is one part of practical reason, conflict between Green’s Legacy ~ 127

impartial and prudential reason remains possible. Without some reason to treat impartial reason as superior, the supremacy of other-regarding morality must remain doubtful. Green’s arguments about the role of the common good in selfrealization address these doubts by calling into question the sharp contrast between self and others that they presuppose. He argues that the right sort of interpersonal association extends the agent’s own good so that the good of others is a part of his own good in much the same way as his own future good is. On this view, people’s interests are metaphysically, and not just strategically, interdependent. Moreover, this justification of other-regarding concern is robust. It explains how each person should regard this interdependence as good: the right form of interpersonal association makes possible the fuller realization of the very deliberative powers that make each person an agent in the first place. Green’s argument makes the justification of other-regarding concern prudential but non-instrumental, and it provides an inclusive conception of the common good that justifies other-regarding concern with wide scope. Moreover, the associational relations that justify concern on this view are commonly regarded as morally significant relations as well. These claims imply that acting on other-regarding moral demands is a counterfactually reliable way of advancing the agent’s own interests. This is not enough to deliver the strong rationalist thesis that the authority of other-regarding morality is always supreme or overriding. To establish that would require the truth of Green’s assumptions about the extreme harmony of interests. Extreme harmony, I have argued, is implausible (§§XIX–XXII). Self-confined and other-regarding aspects of a person’s welfare can conflict, and there is no a priori reason to suppose that otherregarding aspects must dominate. But Green’s failure to vindicate the supremacy of other-regarding morality does not leave us where we started in thinking about the authority of morality. He makes a plausible case for rejecting the simple contrast 128 ~ Perfectionism and the Common Good

between prudence and altruism and for thinking that the good of others forms a distinctive and valuable part of a person’s good, the importance of which must be reckoned in the balance of reasons. If practical reason is purely prudential, this vindicates the weak rationalist thesis that there is always reason to act on otherregarding demands, such that failure to do so is pro tanto irrational, even if it leaves the supremacy of other-regarding demands in doubt. If practical reason has impartial elements as well, then Green’s claims help defend an even stronger rationalist thesis. For then both impartial reason and prudence, in one voice, speak in favour of other-regarding morality, and only prudence, in another voice, might speak against it. This does not settle how often the balance of reasons will tip in favour of other-regarding morality, but it suggests a reasonably robust defence of the rational authority of other-regarding morality. Green may not be able to avoid entirely some version of Sidgwick’s dualism, but his attempts to overcome that dualism provide a distinctive and valuable contribution to debates about the authority of morality.94 Green’s methodological blend of historical and systematic concerns, his conception of the justification, content, and implications of perfectionism, and his contributions to explaining the normativity of other-regarding moral demands are all aspects of his ethical theory that deserve careful attention and further scrutiny. More generally, I hope that this survey of the context, content, and implications of Green’s Prolegomena suggests that it is a neglected classic in the history of ethics, comparable in significance to Bradley’s Ethical Studies and Sidgwick’s Methods of Ethics. Renewed interest in understanding and assessing the contributions of significant figures and traditions in the history of ethics should certainly be extended to include Green’s Prolegomena. Students of systematic ethics, as well as the history of ethics, should study it with considerable interest and profit. 94 For further discussion, see David O. Brink, ‘Self-love and Altruism’, Social Philosophy & Policy, 14 (1997), 122–57.

Green’s Legacy ~ 129

This page intentionally left blank

 

This is a brief and extremely selective bibliographical essay. A more comprehensive, though now slightly dated, bibliography can be found in Geoffrey Thomas, The Moral Philosophy of T. H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Green’s Prolegomena is available as Prolegomena to Ethics, ed. D. O. Brink (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). Green’s political writings, together with some selections from the Prolegomena, are available in Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, ed. P. Harris and J. Morrow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Otherwise, Green’s writings are available only in his collected works. Shortly after Green’s death and the publication of the Prolegomena, R. L. Nettleship oversaw a three-volume edition of the Works of T. H. Green (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1885–8) that contained Green’s main philosophical publications and lectures (except the Prolegomena), some miscellaneous lectures, and Nettleship’s own memoir of Green. Recently, Peter Nicholson brought out a five-volume edition of the Collected Works of T. H. Green (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997). The first three volumes reprint Nettleship’s edition, the fourth volume contains the 1883 edition of the Prolegomena, and the fifth volume contains additional unpublished essays, public speeches, and selected correspondence. Green’s papers are collected at Balliol College and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. For information about Green’s life, the best sources are Nettleship’s memoir (Works, iii) and Melvin Richter, The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and his Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964). Also useful is Thomas, The Moral Philosophy of T. H. Green, ch. 1. Some insight into Green’s character and the impression he made on others can be gleaned from M. A. Ward’s Robert Elsmere (London: Macmillan, 1888). Elsmere’s wise and inspirational mentor Professor Grey is clearly

modelled on Green, and there are echoes of Green’s spiritual outlook in Elsmere’s spiritual crisis and development. For a brief but useful sketch of Green’s role in nineteenth-century philosophical developments, see John Skorupski, English-Language Philosophy 1750–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), esp. ch. 3. Book I of the Prolegomena, which contains Green’s criticism of empiricism and his defence of idealism, might be read in conjunction with Green’s ‘Introductions to Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature’ (Works, i) and his ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant (The Critique of Pure Reason)’ (Works, ii). The best discussion of Green’s metaphysics and epistemology is Peter Hylton, Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), ch. 1. The remaining books of the Prolegomena, containing Green’s ethical theory, might be read in conjunction with his ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant (the Metaphysic of Ethics)’ (Works, ii) and ‘On the Different Senses of “Freedom” as applied to the Will and the Moral Progress of Man’ (Works, ii). Given Green’s interest in and discussion of ancient and modern traditions in the history of ethics, it would be useful to read these books of the Prolegomena in connection with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Butler’s Sermons, Kant’s Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason, Hegel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of History and The Philosophy of Right, Mill’s Utilitarianism and On Liberty, Sidgwick’s Methods of Ethics, and Bradley’s Ethical Studies. Sidgwick’s Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and J. Martineau (London: Macmillan, 1902) contains interesting criticisms of the Prolegomena. Thomas’s The Moral Philosophy of T. H. Green discusses many aspects of Green’s ethical theory. One of the best discussions of Green’s ethical theory is Terence Irwin’s ‘Morality and Personality: Kant and Green’, in A. Wood (ed.), Self and Nature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), which focuses on the role of moral personality in Green’s critical reconstruction and defence of themes in Kant’s moral psychology. John Skorupski, “Desire and Will in Sidgwick and Green” Utilitas 12 (2000), 307–28 offers an important comparative study of the moral psychology and theories of the good in Green and Sidgwick. Peter Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), ch. 2, provides a useful discussion of the role of the common good in Green’s ethical thought. David O. Brink, ‘Self-love and Altruism’, Social Philosophy & Policy, 14 (1997), 122–57, makes use of Green’s claims about

132 ~ Bibliographical Essay

self-realization and the common good to help motivate a perfectionist defence of the authority of morality. Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) provides a vigorous contemporary statement of a perfectionist ethical theory, in the course of which he discusses perfectionist predecessors, including Green. Green’s most important political writings are Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (Works, ii), ‘On the Different Senses of “Freedom” as applied to the Will and the Moral Progress of Man’ (Works, ii), and ‘Liberal Legislation and the Freedom of Contract’ (Works, iii). The best discussion of Green’s political philosophy is Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists, esp. chs. 2–5. Green’s role in the development of the New Liberalism is usefully discussed in Peter Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Stefan Collini, Liberalism and Sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and Political Argument in England 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) and Liberalism Divided: A Study in British Political Thought 1914–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); and A. Simhony and D. Weinstein (eds.), The New Liberalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Bibliographical Essay ~ 133

This page intentionally left blank

 Numerical references are to sections of the text, rather than page numbers. Other references are to the Acknowledgements and Bibliographical Essay.

Ackerman, Bruce XXIV agent-neutrality XXIII agent-relativity XXIII agency IX; corporate XXII alter ego XV altruism XXX; reconciled with self-love XV–XVII Annas, Julia XVIII Anscombe, Elizabeth X appearance V Aristotle I, IX, X, XIII, XVI–XVIII; complete and incomplete goods XVII; and eudaimonism XVI, XXVI; on friendship XVI; influence on Green XVI, XXV; and partiality XIX; rejecting the popular contrast between self-love and altruism XVII; on the scope of the common good XVII authority of morality XXX authorship XI autonomy XXVI Balliol College II, XVI Baxley, Anne Margaret Acknowledgements; XXVI belief X; and directions of fit X Bentham, Jeremy III, XIII, XXIII, XXV Berkeley, George VI Berlin, Isaiah XXIV

Blanshard, Brand XXVII Bosanquet, Bernard XXVII, XXVIII Bradley, A. C. II, XXVII Bradley, F. H. I, XII, XIII, XX, XXVIII, XXX Brink, David XIII, XXII, XXIII, XXX; Bibliographical Essay Broad, C. D. XIX, XXIX; and self-referential altruism XIX; unpleasant remark about Green XXIX Butler, Bishop Joseph IX, XII, XXV Caird, Edward XXVII Cambridge University XXIX causation IV character XI Christianity II, XXV Cicero XVIII, XXVI Clarke, Peter XXIV; Bibliographical Essay Collini, Stefan XXIV; Bibliographical Essay common good XV–XVI, XVIII; scope of XVIII community XVI, XVIII compatibilism IX, XXVI

compensation XXI; see also sacrifice competition of interests XV, XX connectedness and continuity XIX consciousness IV, V, VIII–IX; unity of IV Cooper, John XXVI Darwall, Stephen Acknowledgements deliberative capacities IX, XXIV Democritus IV Descartes, René XXV desire IX; and directions of fit X; importance of distinguishing content and ownership XI, XV; strength of IX, X determinism IX Dewey, John XXVII dialectic XXVIII Dimova-Cookson, Maria Acknowledgements directions of fit X dualism V, VII, XXVI; of appearance and reality V; Kantian dualisms V, XXVI dualism of practical reason XXIX, XXX duties of station XIX, XXX Dworkin, Ronald XXIV educational reform II, XXIV egoism XI, XVI–XVII, XXIII; psychological XII emotion XXVI empiricism III–IV, XXV Epicureans XXVI epistemic responsibility VIII equality XIX, XXIV; of the sexes XXIV eudaimonism XVI–XVIII, XXVI experience III–IV experience machine XXIII fallacy of inferring that pleasure is the object of desire from anticipation of pleasure in

136 ~ Index

satisfying one’s desires XII, XIII fallibility VI family XV, XVI Fichte, J. G. V franchise XXIV free will IX, XXIV, XXVI Freeden, Michael XXIV; Bibliographical Essay freedom XXIV; of contract XXIV; different senses of XXIV friendship XVI God VII good XI, XXIX; permanence of XV, XVIII; personal XI; see also common good good will XXVI; distinguished from bad will XII, XIV; see also Kant, Immanual Greek ethics I, XVI–XVIII, XXV, XXVI Green, T. H.: and the history of ethics XXVIII, XXX; influence XXVII; life and work II guidance XXIII Haldane, R. B. XXVII happiness XXIII, XXVI harmony XV, XX–XXII; extreme XX–XXII; moderate XX hedonism XIII; comparative definiteness of XXIII, XXIX; evaluative XIII, XXIII, XXIX; evaluative as resting on fallacy of psychological hedonism XII, XIII; psychological XII; incompatibility of evaluative and psychological XIII; see also utilitarianism heteronomy XXVI Hegel, G. W. F. I, XIV, XVI, XXIV, XXV, XXVIII higher pleasures doctrine XIII; see also Mill, John Stuart Hobbes, Thomas XXV Hobhouse, L. T. XXVII

human nature XXX humanity XIX, XXV Humberstone, I. L. X Hume, David IV, XXV Hurka, Thomas Acknowledgements; XXX; Bibliographical Essay Huxley, Aldous XXIII Hylton, Peter IV; Bibliographical Essay idealism III, V–VI, XXII; and extreme harmony XXII immortality XV impartiality XIX; superiority of Kantian conception XIX imperatives: categorical XIV, XXVI; hypothetical XXVI inclination XXVI indeterminism IX, XXVI individualism XXII intellect X Irish land reform XXIV Irwin, Terence Acknowledgements; XXVI, XXIX, XXX; Bibliographical Essay Jowett, Benjamin II justice XIX Kant, Immanuel I, III–V, VII, IX, XIV, XIX, XXV, XXVI, XXX; and agency IX; contrasting happiness and perfection XXIV; criticizing eudaimonism XXVI; and dualism III, V, XXVI; and the good will XXVI; as hedonist about non-moral motivation XXVI; on humanity and impartiality XIX; influence on Green I, III, XXV, XXVI; planned critical examination of XXVI; and synthetic unity of apperception III Kitcher, Philip XXX Kraut, Richard XXIII Kymlicka, William XXIV

labour regulation XXIV Larmore, Charles XXIV liberalism I, II, XXI, XXIV, XXVII; and extreme harmony XXI; and freedom XXIV; new and old XXIV, XXVII; and neutrality XXIV Locke, John IV, XXII, XXV Mackenzie, J. S. XXVII man X Mill, James III, XXIII, XXV Mill, John Stuart III, XII, XIII, XXIII, XXV, XXX; committing fallacy of psychological hedonism XII; competent judges XIII; dignity passage XIII; higher pleasures doctrine XIII; intellectual debt to XIII; proof of utility XIII; as psychological hedonist XII, XIII, XXIII Momtchiloff, Peter Acknowledgements Moore, G. E. IV moral reform XXIII, XXIV, XXVIII motive X; moral relevance XXIII; strength of X Muirhead, J. H. XXVII Nagel, Thomas XXIII naturalism VII necessities of life XXIV Nettleship, R. L. V, XXVII; Bibliographical Essay Neuhouser, Frederick Acknowledgements; V, XXIV neutrality XXIV Nicholson, Peter Acknowledgements; XVI, XX; Bibliographical Essay non-naturalism VII, IX, XXVI, XXIX normativity XIV, XXX Nozick, Robert XXII, XXIII objectivity V–VI, XXII Oxford University II, XXIX Parfit, Derek XXII, XXX Parker, Charles II

Index ~ 137

partiality XIX, XXIII paternalism XXIV perception IV perfectionism XIV, XXIII, XXIV, XXIX, XXX; see also self-realization personal identity XXII personality IX, XXVI persons as ends XXVI Plato IX, XVI, XVIII, XXIV, XXVI pleasure XIII; objective and subjective distinguished XII; see also hedonism practical deliberation IX progressive view of history XXV prudence XXX punishment XXIV Quinton, Anthony XXV Rashdall, Hastings XXX rational endorsement IX Rawls, John XXII, XXIV realism V, XXII reality V Reid, Thomas IX relations IV religion II; see also Christianity remotest Mysian XVIII, XIX responsibility IX, XXVI Richter, Melvin Bibliographical Essay rights XXIV Ritchie, D. G. XXV, XXVII Rovane, Carol XXII Russell, Bertrand IV sacrifice XXII, XXIX Scepticism IV Schneewind XXIX self VIII, IX, XV self-consciousness IV–V, VIII–IX self-love XVI–XVII, XXVI; reasonable self-love distinguished from selfishness XVII; reconciled with altruism XVI–XVII self-realization XIV, XXIII; as a categorical end XIV, XXVI; and common good XV;

138 ~ Index

comparative indefiniteness of XXIII; guidance of XXIII; and motive XXIII; see also perfectionism self-referential altruism XIX, XXIII sensation IV Sher, George XXX Shoemaker, Sydney XXII Sidgwick, Henry III, XI, XIII, XX, XXV, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX; and Bradley XXVIII; criticism of Kant’s conception of autonomy XXVI; criticisms of self-realization XI, XX, XXIX; and evaluative hedonism XXIX; and psychological hedonism XIII, XXIII, XXIX; relation to Green II, XXIX; and utilitarianism XXIII, XXIX Simhony, Avital Acknowledgements; Bibliographical Essay Skorupski, John Acknowledgements; XXVII; Bibliographical Essay slavery XVIII, XXIV Smith, Michael X social organicism XXII, XXV Socrates XVI Spencer, Herbert XXIV Stampe, Dennis X Stoics XVIII, XXVI Symonds, Charlotte II Tadiello, Alan Acknowledgements Taylor, A. E. XXVIII temperance II, XXIV theology; see Christianity Thomas, Geoffrey Bibliographical Essay Toynbee, Arnold XXVII transcendental freedom XXVI transcendental idealism V utilitarianism XXIII; apparent definiteness of XXIII; commitment to hedonism

problematic XXIII; contrasted with self-realization XXIII, XXIX; definiteness disputed XXIII; and impartiality XIX, XXIII; incoherence of greatest possible sum of pleasures XXIX; incompatibility of hedonistic utilitarianism and psychological hedonism XIII; independence of hedonistic utilitarianism and psychological hedonism XXIII; progressive influence of XIX; rough extensional equivalence with perfectionism XXIII; see also hedonism

Velleman, David X virtue XXVI; and the common good XXVI, XXX; and happiness XXVI; unity of XXX Ward, M. A. Bibliographical Essay Weinstein, David Acknowledgements; Bibliographical Essay Wempe, Ben Acknowledgements; XXV will X; distinguishing good and bad XIII–XIV; independence of belief and desire X; strength of X; weakness of X workmanship of the understanding IV–V Yaffe, Gideon Acknowledgements

Index ~ 139